Great Resurgence

(See front cover) On a long shiny table in Room 800 B of Washington's new Shoreham Hotel was signed one night last week the biggest, most significant work-&-wage contract in the history of U. S. labor. At one end of the table, his beefy bulk overflowing the chair, sat John Llewellyn Lewis, black-maned, bushy-browed president of United Mine Workers of America. At the other end was the thin, rigid figure of John De Lorma Adams Morrow, president of Pittsburgh Coal Co., who also heads the potent Northern Coal Control Association. Loudly and often had Operator Morrow sworn that he would never sign another agreement with United Mine Workers. Before him on the table now lay such an agreement--a fat document providing for the unionization of all the soft coal mines of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, part of Kentucky.-- Offshoot of the NRA coal code, the agreement prescribed conditions of labor for some 314,000 diggers in hitherto non-union mines. It gave United Mine Workers their own checkweightmen, their own grievance committees, freed them from the necessity of living in company houses, trading at company stores, opened new jobs now held by some 6,000 boys under 17. Out of it operators got the assurance that there would not be another bituminous coal strike at least until April 1, 1934-Room 800 B was pack-jammed with hard-boiled operators who for years had balked unionization of their properties, and with tough-fisted veterans who had fought and bled for their union. Together they bated their breath as Mine Leader Lewis pulled the contract to him, squiggled his name. A moment later Operator Morrow signed. Signatures of other operators and U. M. W. officials completed the deal which unionized 95% of the soft coal industry, gave NRA its first detailed wage agreement based on a code. Messrs. Lewis and Morrow jointly declared: "Unquestionably this agreement is the greatest in magnitude and importance that has ever been negotiated in the history of collective bargaining in the United States. ... It marks the beginning of a new era. ... All interests represented in the agreement are hopeful of its complete success."

Man-of-the-Hour. The Shoreham Contract's complete and unequivocal recognition of his union by the archfoes of organized labor marked the high point of Leader Lewis' career. Undoubtedly he, a hidebound Republican, could never have achieved this success if it had not been for a Democratic President whose New Deal had turned Industry and Labor topsy-turvy. But his foresight and energy in organizing coal miners under NRA, his ironhanded persistence in negotiating a union coal code with non-union operators, marked him as Labor's man-of-the-hour. A ragged broken band were United Mine Workers before March 4. They claimed 300,000 members but of these probably less than half paid dues. From field after field Leader Lewis' organizers had been kicked and cuffed out. A barricade of court injunctions thwarted attempts to advance unionization. Less than 25% of the country's soft coal was being dug under union contract. The National Recovery Act, guaranteeing Labor's right to bargain collectively, gave Leader Lewis his chance. The act was never intended to advantage either Labor or Capital. The clause that gave Labor a powerful organizing club was not fully appreciated by the Administration until, with the President's signature still wet on the Act, union leaders leaped into action. Among the first was United Miner Lewis. U. M. W. sound trucks invaded such battle-scarred coal fields as West Virginia's Mingo and Logan Counties, Kentucky's Harlan County. Free beer drew large crowds. Mine bosses looked on aghast as U. M. W. spellbinders told diggers of their NRA rights, shouted: "The President wants you to unionize. It is unpatriotic to refuse to unionize. Here is your union. Never mind about the dues now. Just join up!" And join up the miners did--150,000 in the first 30 days of NRA, 150,000 more since then. Here & there was last-ditch resistance by operators who tried to ram through company unions. But Leader Lewis had a long head start on them, with the result that he is now undisputed master of more than half a million working men. When NRA first began to negotiate a coal code, most operators who had thrown off the union yoke in 1927 pooh-poohed the idea that U. M. W. had their labor already sewed up, flatly refused to dicker with Leader Lewis. A serious bituminous strike in Pennsylvania helped to change their minds. By the time the coal code reached the stage of public hearings in August, Miner Lewis dominated the scene. Before a packed auditorium a Deputy NRAdministrator sang out: "We will now hear from the president of the United Mine Workers of America." Lewis, John L. Everyone in the hall knew the squat, bullnecked, heavy-pawed figure that swaggered out to the rostrum. There was a glint of arrogance in his grey eyes. He jutted his heavy jaw. Dramatically he introduced himself in the idiom of the true labor leader: "The name is Lewis--John L." When the titters had died away Lewis, John L. began to read in a surprisingly soft, resonant voice one of the best labor speeches ever made before NRA--a speech perfect in grammar, literate in expression, temperate in tone, earnest in thought. Only his closest friends knew that his wife, a onetime Iowa school teacher, had spent years straining coarseness and vulgarity from his diction, prodding him to soak his mind in good literature. Though he does not strut his learning, John L. Lewis is today the most intellectual and well-read leader in the whole labor field. He was not born to such graces 53 years ago in Lucas, Iowa. His father was a Welsh miner whose pioneer union activities forced the family to move to Illinois. At the age of 12 Son John, big of body, loud of lungs, went into the mines as a mule-driver. Later he mined silver in New Mexico, copper in Arizona, gold in Colorado. Smarter than most, he got a job as U. M. W. lobbyist at Springfield, 111. He still lives there in a two-story stucco house on a corner lot, with a private telephone number, a Chevrolet in the garage. In 1908 old Sam Gompers visited Springfield, spotted Lobbyist Lewis as a likely youth to serve the American Federation of Labor. After six years of chores for Gompers John Lewis attended his first A. F. of L. convention, mixed with the leaders, learned the tricks of Labor politics. After the War a U. M. W. shuffle resulted in the appointment of Lewis as vice president. When the regular president had a nervous breakdown, he stepped into his shoes. In 1920 he was duly elected U. M. W. president. Even before that time he had started to build up a personal machine which has kept him in a $12,000 per year office ever since, and made him an army of enemies.

Many a coal miner considers President Lewis a racketeer. That is because he is as ruthless as any political boss in running his organization. Dissenters are put down with fist and foot. Every U. M. W. election brings its charge that ballot boxes have been stuffed with Lewis votes from locals which exist only on paper.

Many a miner considers President Lewis a strikebreaker. That is because he called off the 1919 coal strike in the face of a Federal injunction with the statement that "We can't fight the Government." He was also accused of strikebreaking when in 1927 after the lapse of the Jacksonville agreement he permitted temporary wage contracts to be negotiated in Illinois and Indiana.

Many a miner considers President Lewis a hireling of the operators. That is because he sanctioned the signing of a Kentucky wage agreement on the eve of the 1922 strike. Frank Farrington, U. M. W. leader in Illinois, accused him of receiving $100,000 from Kentucky operators for letting them run while northern mines were closed. Later President Lewis showed that Leader Farrington was down for $25,000 per year on the payroll of Peabody Coal Co.

President Lewis' personal triumph at the Shoreham Hotel last week tended to overshadow these old familiar charges. Right or wrong in his past tactics, he had been quick enough, shrewd enough, dogged enough to squeeze the maximum benefits for his men from NRA. In three short months he had jacked U. M. W. out of disintegration and despair, energized it into the greatest single affiliate of the American Federation of Labor. He was the prime embodiment of Labor resurgent under the New Deal. As such he was prepared to stride into the A. F. of L. convention this week in Washington and take command.

Lewis for Green? Flushed with his own importance, Miner Lewis contested the A. F. of L. presidency with Cigarmaker Sam Gompers in 1921. He was beaten, 12,324-to-25,022, largely because of the efforts of dapper, vociferous little Photo-Engraver Matthew Woll, an A. F. of L. vice president and Gompers' campaign manager. In 1924 Gompers died. "Crown Prince'' Woll claimed his job. Miner Lewis got his revenge by ditching Woll, forcing the selection of an inconspicuous little Baptist named William Green who was then secretary-treasurer of U. M. W. This week A. F. of L. President Green comes up for re-election for the ninth time. Only Miner Lewis is strong enough to beat him. But Miner Lewis softly denies any ambition to displace his own man. To all suggestions that he try to get the highest labor title in the land, he replies: "But I'm for Bill Green." If John Lewis stays for Bill Green until the ballots are counted, Bill Green will be reelected. If he does not, the next president of A. F. of L. will be John L. Lewis.

An A. F. of L. change from Leader Green to Leader Lewis would be more of a shift in personality than in policy. Both men are conservative, are damned by left-wing laborites. Both believe in backroom dickers. Both would give a point in principle to gain a point in practice. Neither favors a U. S. Labor Party. With John Llewellyn Lewis as A. F. of L. president the country would be treated to better Labor oratory, more lively photographs in the rotogravure press, more stirring statements out of Washington. But otherwise U. S. Labor would undergo no great transformation.

Green on the Wave. Where John Lewis leaped in dramatically, William Green, aged 60, settled down quietly to ride the NRA wave. Leader Green was a depressed man this time last year. Helplessly he had watched his membership melt down toward the 2,000,000 mark. Now the Blue Eagle has swooped it aloft again.

President Green got himself an advisory job with NRA where he could apply pressure for Labor. He became the special guardian of the collective bargaining clause. On the inside of the NRA organization he has had such stalwart allies as Edward Francis McGrady (A. F. of L. lobbyist), Leo Wolman (Amalgamated Clothing Workers' statistician) and Donald Richberg (Railroad Brotherhoods' counsel) working with him. He loudly claimed a great victory when President Roosevelt struck all interpretations of collective bargaining from the coal code, loudly suffered a major defeat when automobile manufacturers wangled a "merit clause" for Labor into their code. The disturbing spectacle of warfare between Capital and Labor over enforcement of codes he accepted as a welcome indication of the march of his organization toward complete unionization of all industry.

On the eve of this week's A. F. of L. convention at which he would report an increase of 500,000 members under NRA, President Green was busy as a beaver on the Washington battlements. He presented General Johnson with a list of corporations which, he charged, were coercing their workers into company unions in violation of the law. Among the concerns named by Mr. Green were E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Aluminum Co. of America, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Delco-Remy, Kohler (plumbing), Jones & Laughlin Steel, Sinclair Refining, Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock, Frigidaire, Remington Rand, Louisville Gas & Electric, R. C. A. Victor. Five thousand employes of the last-named company at Camden, N. J. uprose to deny that theirs was a company union, insisted that it was an independent organization which did not want to join A. F. of L. Declared President Green:

"The 'employe representation' plans are a fraud from start to finish and Labor holds they are in direct violation of the Recovery Act. We shall continue to fight . . . astonishing evasions by great employers, some of them so bold and so hostile to the law that I am certain the administrator must take immediate and very drastic action."

Next day President Henry Ingraham Harriman of U. S. Chamber of Commerce declared that General Johnson considered the closed shop impossible under the Recovery Act. Simultaneously President Robert L. Lund of the National Manufacturers Association vigorously defended the kind of company unions to which Mr. Green had objected:

"Mr. Green and his associates look upon these organizations as competitive to their own. Considerably more workers are in such organizations than in those under Mr. Green. In fact the A. F. of L. unions include probably less than 10% of the workers in the industries where they are represented. The relations between workers and employers in [company union] plants are the best in the country. . . . The efforts of the A. F. of L. to secure control of Labor have proved the most serious obstacle to the attainment of the objective of the Recovery Act."

President Green cracked back in more spirited language than he had used in a twelvemonth: "If the Recovery Act could get from employers half the support it has had from Labor we would have double the number of newly employed. . . . The battle hymns of such gentlemen as Mr. Lund and Mr. Harriman have little place in the picture today. They sound too much like the alarm drums of special privilege, aroused by the determination of a nation to regain mastery over itself and to establish industrial freedom as a companion to our political freedom." Such shadow-boxing was only a foretaste of the A. F. of L. convention at which President Green was primed to denounce all those who dared to block Labor's advance as enemies of NRA, traitors to the U. S. Recovery Strikes-- More serious than word warfare was the spread of A. F. of L.-sponsored strikes throughout the land. Completely forgotten was last summer's truce to which Mr. Green himself subscribed. These strikes were undertaken or threatened to: 1) force better codes at Washington as in the cases of the silk industry at Paterson, N. J. and the boot & shoe industry at Brockton, Mass.; 2) gain union recognition as in the case of 100,000 New York City transit workers; 3) revenge NRA violations as in the case of light & power employes. Senator Wagner's National Labor Board could not settle old strikes as fast as new ones cropped up. Re-employment gains were heavily offset by men called off their regular jobs. Aware that striking Labor is one of the sure signs of recovery, President Green declared: "There have been some strikes but it is some indication of their character and cause to find that in every case Labor has been sustained by the National Labor Board. We have had to strike to compel obedience to the law and we expect we shall have to do so again."

--Already under union contract are most of the mines in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Arkansas, Wyoming, Montana, Washington. Alabama and Western Kentucky operators still balk at union-ization.

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