Lewis & the Lion

Two coalminers' sons sat at a walnut-stained steel desk in a Pittsburgh office last week, swaying the lives of at least a half-million other men, shaping the destiny of the whole U. S. One of them, dynamically champing a stogie, was Benjamin Franklin Fairless, a dark, stocky, kinetic corporation executive. The other, suavely puffing a cigaret, was Philip Murray, a lean, grey, scholarly labor leader. When their first talk was over the Labor Leader cried, and no impartial observer disputed him: "This is unquestionably the greatest story in the history of the American Labor movement."

Forty-one years ago in dingy Pigeon Run, Ohio, when Ben Fairless was 5, his father swore that the boy should never go into the mines. He never did. After high school he taught until he had some money saved, then went off to study engineering at the College of Wooster and Ohio Northern University. Up, up, up the industrial ladder he climbed--vice president & general manager of United Alloy Co. at 36, president of Central Alloy Steel Corp. soon thereafter, executive vice president of Republic Steel at 40. Finally, at 45, the boy from Pigeon Run became president of Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., biggest steel-producing unit in the world, biggest subsidiary of colossal U. S. Steel Corp.

Forty years ago in a dingy town of Lanarkshire, Scotland, when Phil Murray was 10, he went down into the mines to earn his living. Eight years later, migrated to the U. S. with his family, the studious youngster came out of the mines for good. Working twelve hours a day in a Westmoreland County, Pa. mine, he complained to the weighmaster one day that he was being short-weighted, got into a quarrel about it, knocked the weighmaster down, was fired. His fellows retaliated by organizing a union, electing young Murray president, threatening a strike. Up, up, up the Labor ladder he climbed until at 34 the boy from Lanarkshire became a master of debate who knew more about the coal industry than most operators, was vice president of United Mine Workers, biggest union in the land. When U.M.W.'s President John L. Lewis prepared to risk the future of his C.I.O. last summer in a great drive to organize Steel's 550,000 workers (TIME, June 15 et seq.), pious and persuasive Philip Murray was his choice for chairman of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee.

From the moment John Lewis revealed his plan, the nation braced itself for what promised to be the greatest industrial war in its history. Steel, one of the biggest and easily the toughest U. S. industry, which had ruthlessly resisted Labor's every attempt to organize its ranks, roared its defiance in full-page newspaper advertisements. The American Iron & Steel Institute, speaking for 19 out of 20 of the nation's steelmasters, announced in conventional union-fighting terms: "The steel industry will oppose any attempt to compel its employes to join a union or to pay tribute for the right to work." Imperturbable, armed with a $500,000 C.I.O. war chest, Captain Murray sent his organizers out to the grim midland steel towns, began quietly enlisting workers in the moribund little Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers. From time to time reports were made of the union's progress, but the steelmasters, after their first outburst, were ominously quiet. For a few weeks the Motor War of 1937 stilled talk of the greater war to come. Soon as it was over, Leader Lewis squared off at his next adversary. Of U. S. Steel, master of nearly 40% of the industry, which had steadfastly refused to recognize an "outside union" since its founding in 1901, the burly boss declared last month: "United States Steel through the years has been the crouching lion in the pathway of Labor." Observers confidently set April, the month in which all but one of U. S. wars have begun, as the time when Lewis and the Lion would clash.

Then, with breathtaking suddenness last week, U. S. Steel's Fairless and C.I.O.'s Murray made peace before the firing of a single gun. A well-kept secret, their first meeting was revealed to an incredulous world at 3 p.m. when the New York Stock Exchange closed, in an announcement to company union leaders in Carnegie-Illinois' 27 plants. Almost simultaneously five of Steel's "independents"-- Bethlehem, National, Republic, Youngstown Sheet & Tube and Inland--tumbled over each other's heels in a rush to anounce granting of C.I.O.'s wage & hour demands: Common labor pay up from $4.20 to $5 per day; hours down from 48 to 40 per week; time-&-a-half for overtime. As other independents joined the procession in conventional Steel fashion, Big Steel capped the rest when at his second conference with Mr. Murray, Mr. Fairless signed an agreement which not only granted the same wage & hour concessions but recognized Amalgamated as bargaining agent for all its members among Carnegie-Illinois' 120,000 employes. The Corporation promised no interference with union recruiting, no discrimination against union employes. The Union agreed to solicit no members on company property, use no intimidation or coercion anywhere. Scheduled was a conference this week to work out a detailed contract effective until Feb. 28, 1938.

How? Once the nation had grasped the fact that Lewis and the Lion were actually lying down in peace, it began asking how the thing had happened. Patently, this historic conciliation was no impulse of the moment. Exultant John L. Lewis furnished a partial explanation: "It has been made possible by the farseeing vision and industrial statesmanship of [U. S. Steel's Board Chairman] Myron C. Taylor. From time to time over a period of several months in New York and Washington, Mr. Taylor and I have engaged in conversations and negotiations. We were each conscious of the great weight of responsibility and the far-reaching consequences attached to our decisions. Labor, industry and the nation will be the beneficiaries."

Granted the astonishing circumstance that Messrs. Taylor and Lewis had been conversing secretly for months, who had brought this Hitler-Stalin combination together? Some observers credited Thomas Moses, president of U. S. Steel's H. C. Frick Coke Co. and a boyhood friend of Leader Lewis. Washington correspondents remembered that Chairman Taylor has lately been a frequent White House visitor, asked President Roosevelt if he had had anything to do with it. Grinning, the President remarked knowingly that whenever he and his old friend Myron Taylor got together they always discussed the welfare of the nation.

Prettiest Tale was the Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph's. Just before Christmas, it reported, Chairman Taylor and his handsome wife were strolling through the lobby of Washington's Mayflower Hotel when Mrs. Taylor spied virile, bushy-haired Leader Lewis. Then, said the Sun Telegraph: "Mrs. Taylor said: 'Myron, I want to meet that man ... so bring him over here.' "

Why? Regardless of who was the Lewis-Taylor intermediary, a prime fact was that, between Recovery and Rearmament, steel business was booming toward alltime highs. Interruption by a hard-fought strike would have been enormously, wastefully expensive. Furthermore, in a sellers' market, Steel would obviously have little difficulty in passing on its increased labor costs to consumers. This it promptly began to do last week, with raises of $3 to $8 per ton.

By clinging to its 44-to-48 hr. week, the industry was depriving itself of a U. S. Navy demand for 25,000,000 lb. of steel which, by the terms of the Walsh-Healey Act, must be produced under a 40-hr. week (TIME, March 1). Vexed by Steel's refusal to meet these terms, thereby holding up construction of six destroyers and three submarines, President Roosevelt had barked that something must be done and editors were growling charges of sabotage. Cried Madam Secretary Perkins last week: "Now the Navy is safe!"

C.I.O. was becoming a formidable antagonist. Last week S.W.O.C.'s Chairman Murray claimed that his union now numbered 200,000 members. With half that number in its United Automobile Workers Union, C.I.O. had won recognition from great General Motors. When Steel crushed Labor's last big organizing drive in 1919, it had confronted an opposition far less cohesive and determined than C.I.O.'s--and the Sit-Down had not been invented. And in the White House now sits a President who is John Lewis' good friend.

Up Lewis. By last week's end virtually the entire steel industry had swung to the new wage and hour levels, effective March 16. For steel workers this meant an estimated 35,000 new jobs (or a full day's work each week at overtime pay), an estimated $100,000,000 of yearly pay, added to the $75,000,000 which their employers gave them last autumn. For John Lewis the new wages and hours, for which he could justly claim credit, and the Carnegie-Illinois recognition which was assuredly his, meant a big boost toward the top seat of the Labor world.

True, he had abandoned the demand for sole recognition of his union which led to the long stalemate with General Motors. Carnegie-Illinois announced that it would continue to deal with its company unions and any other groups of its employes who wanted to bargain. But the worth of C.I.O.'s entering wedge was demonstrated when its steel organizers announced that they had enrolled 6,500 new members within two days after the first Fairless-Murray conference. Driving ahead for contracts with the rest of U. S. Steel's units, and then with the rest of the industry, Leader Lewis and his lieutenants reasonably rejoiced that, though such individualists as Bethlehem's Grace, National's Weir and Republic's Girdler might still give them a stiff fight, they had at least broken Steel's solid front.

Swallowing hard last week were the American Federation of Labor craft unionists who had crowed that Rebel Lewis would come begging them for forgiveness when Steel had brought him to his knees. In Labor's family feud, the week marked a decided if not decisive break for C.I.O. Back in Coshocton, Ohio, his home town, for his 64th birthday, A. F. of L.'s President William Green pouted and pooh-poohed as usual, said C.I.O.'s failure to win sole recognition made its Carnegie-Illinois agreement not a triumph but a surrender. But the man who had dillydallied with A. F. of L. plans to organize Steel until it was too late, betrayed his real alarm when he sent letters to all State and city labor councils, exhorting them to Federation loyalty, to action against C.I.O., to the crucial step of expelling C.I.O. locals from their membership. Back shot a tart reply from the president of Massachusetts' State Federation of Labor announcing that he and his associates had no intention of fighting their fellow unionists. In New Jersey, A. F. of L.'s International Association of Machinists launched a drive, "with C.I.O. approval," to turn itself into an industrial union. In Aluminum Co. of America's New Kensington, Pa. plant, a majority of the Aluminum Workers Union local seceded outright from A. F. of L. to enlist with Leader Lewis, planned a national convention next month to mobilize. Best the Green cohorts could return for these body blows were dark mumblings about an A. F. of L. boycott of C.I.O.-produced goods.

While soft William Green talked, hard John Lewis was acting. Driving on against the second of the automobile industry's Big Three, his U.A.W. lieutenants opened their Chrysler conference with a bold demand for sole recognition, were refused, showed their strength this week by calling a sit-down which closed all of Chrysler's automobile plants in the Detroit area, throwing 55,000 employes out of work. Shut, too, by U.A.W. sit-downs were three Hudson plants employing 10,000 men. In Akron last week a walkout by C.I.O.'s United Rubber Workers closed Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. (10,000 employes). In Manhattan, General Electric's New Dealing President Gerard Swope agreed to a conference with C.I.O.'s United Electrical & Radio Workers, commencing next week. In Boston, C.I.O. organizers announced formation of a new United Shoe Workers union, with 20,000 charter members. Abandoning his U.M.W. coal conference in Manhattan for a few days, Leader Lewis sped back to Washington to lay plans for major organizing drives in Textiles and Oil. Contemptuously he brushed aside newshawks' questions about the animadversions of William Green. Snapped the Man of the Year-to-date: "I have work to do."

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