Turning Point?

Years hence, when John Llewellyn Lewis looks back from a dazzling height or a dark depth at the first week of July 1937, he may well mark it as a turning point in his remarkable career. It was the week in which Public Opinion, veering away from both Labor and Management in sheer irritation with their five-week wrangle on the Steel Front, was summed up by Labor's great friend Franklin Roosevelt in Shakespeare's phrase:

"A plague o' both your houses." It was the week in which Labor's even dearer friend, Madam Secretary Perkins, at last admitted (after the preceding week's Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decision) that the potent Sit-Down was an illegal weapon, deplorable and unworthy. And it was the week when John Lewis' C.I.O. was being blamed, rightly or wrongly, for terroristic acts with dynamite at Bethlehem Steel's plant near Johnstown,

Pa. and in Ohio's Mahoning Valley. The word "dynamite" aroused against C.I.O. a vigilante spirit before which no labor union could long survive.

Yet last week was also a week in which, with strike action halted, C.I.O. could consolidate its gains, refresh its leadership, impose discipline. And it was the week in which, though halted elsewhere, C.I.O. at last cracked the Inland sector of "Little Steel's" united front.

"Diplomatic Illness." Inland Steel Co. had followed throughout the tactics of its bigger independent allies--Bethlehem, Republic and Youngstown Sheet & Tube. Last week, like them, it was prepared to reopen its East Chicago plant without any C.I.O. agreement, a sure invitation to violence unless Governor Maurice Clifford Townsend of Indiana would send troops to the East Chicago area. Governor Townsend refused to do so. He was reported sick abed at home with tonsillitis.

Shortly he emerged from an Indianapolis hotel room to announce that he had settled the C.I.O.-Inland dispute, at least temporarily, by getting each side to pledge certain things to him though not to each other. The truce was to last until the National Labor Relations Board should give an official ruling. Inland's final pledge was not to discriminate between strikers and non-strikers when the march back-to-work began. C.I.O.'s regional director, Van A. Bittner, telephoned the East Chicago pickets: "For God's sake don't let anything interfere! We've obtained a very fine settlement." The grim picket line became a victory parade and 12,000 men returned to their jobs.

Successful though he was with Inland, Governor Townsend was curtly rebuffed by Youngstown Sheet & Tube's Frank Purnell, whose Indiana plants had been closed down. He would never, wired the steelman, make any agreement with C.I.O. directly or indirectly or ''through the Governor's office." The company announced the reopening of its Indiana Harbor mill but when the Governor sent no protective troops, the gates remained locked.

In Johnstown the dynamiting of the Bethlehem plant's water supply not only threw 6,000 men out of work once more but raised 2,000 ghosts. The great Quemahoning Dam above the city is eleven times as big as the one that let go in 1889 and if terrorists were abroad, where might they not strike next? Johnstown's loud Mayor Daniel J. Shields sent President Roosevelt an I-told-you-so telegram, called before him the district's two chief Labor leaders and warned them to get out of town or stay "at their own risk." The most determined of the two, James Mark of the United Mine Workers, replied by calling 40,000 miners to march on Johnstown for an Independence Day demonstration.

Mayor Shields was soon embarrassed by the revival of a Federal action against himself & cronies for a Prohibition-time brewery operation. "That shows spleen on the part of the U. S. Government!" he raged. "Obviously it's being done to please John L. Lewis."

But more dangerous to the latter than Mayor Shields was a movement going forward among the Johnstown citizens who fortnight ago spent $50,000 advertising Johnstown's woes and protesting the interference of C.I.O. Last week it was learned that a guiding spirit among these citizens was John Price Jones, famed Manhattan publicist and fundraiser. A former resident of Johnstown, he had foregone his Harvard reunion to help formulate and promulgate nationally a "Johnstown Plan," calling for a chain of citizens' committees across the land to protect the right-to-work against exponents of the right-to-strike.

To businessmen, civic workers and Chambers of Commerce in more than 200 cities the Johnstown committee telegraphed: '"[We] desire to know if your community or group will send representatives to an organization meeting at a time and place to be decided for launching a national movement. Loyal Americans will not fail. . . ."

In Ohio-Three confessed dynamiters were arrested at Warren. A C.I.Organizer called Gus Hall (real name: Arvo G. Halberg) who ran for councilman in Youngstown two years ago on the Communist ticket, was sought all week by police as the "brains" of a gang of wreckers. Blasts in Canton had ruptured a water main and wrecked a culvert. Into the Warren station to give himself up walked Gus Hall, accusing Republic Steel and its allies of an "unadulterated frame-up." Meantime Republic's plant at Canton where some 2,000 workers had been interned for a month was reopened, and 3,000 of Governor Davey's militia stood by in Cleveland for the reopening of four more Republic plants.

"Plenty Smart?" The C.I.O. was prompt in purging Gus Hall & friends from its membership, and none too soon. Even Labor-loving Governor Murphy of Michigan, while viewing the rising tide of vigilantism with equal alarm, last week flayed the "communistic cliques" in C.I.O. for encouraging "disorder, violence and bloodshed."

In Governor Murphy's State, President Homer Martin of the United Automobile Workers also ordered a "purge," removing three Flint organizers and transferring an-other "because of unauthorized sit-downs." General Motors has had more than 200 "wildcat" strikes since it signed its contract last winter, and G. M. President William Knudsen announced last week that he would not negotiate a new contract until U.A.W. agreed to definite penalties for violations by its unruly members. Since the U.A.W. record is held against all C.I.O. unions. John L. Lewis dispatched John Brophy from his own staff to survey Homer Martin's bailiwick.

Saturday's newspapers brought John Lewis a new kind of editorial to read. It appeared in the New York World-Telegram, up to now fairly friendly. Still friendly, the bellwether of Publisher Roy Howard's nationwide flock was not critical. It said: "Until recently we had thought John L. Lewis plenty smart when it came to sensing public sentiment." But its faith had been shaken, the World-Telegram continued, by two incidents: 1) John Lewis' announcement last fortnight of a C.I.O. drive to organize Government employes at a time when "Lewis-haters were scaring their children with pictures of the Lewis eyebrows"; 2) an invitation to Harry Bridges, intense little leader of the Pacific Coast's maritime labor, to come to Washington for a conference this week. While Harry Bridges was only one of many maritime labor leaders invited, it was reported that he was to be offered C.I.O. leadership in the West in recognition of his wresting power from A. F. of L.'s western chief, Dave Beck (TIME, June 14). Whether or not he is technically a communist (he is not a party member), the World-Telegram warned: "Harry Bridges to millions in this country is communism personified."

Unmentioned by the World-Telegram was a smaller but even more obvious slip on the part of John L. Lewis. He was photographed last week with his wife and son at a party at the Soviet Embassy in Washington (see cut). Even Chief Justice Hughes has attended functions at the Russian Embassy. But as every good public relations counsel knows, one photograph open to misinterpretation is worth more to the enemy than a barrage of scurrilous speeches. And last week from Germany, United Press relayed just the kind of chit-chat to make such a John Lewis' Soviet Embassy picture thoroughly misunderstood : the Nazi Anti-Komintern was out with an article declaring that in a Moscow museum hangs a map of the future Soviet America, on which the name of Detroit is changed to Lewisgrad.

"A Governor Like Me!" The week ended on a note in which comedy was not unmixed with worry for John L. Lewis. Pennsylvania's volatile Governor George Earle, having flown to Johnstown for a surprise speech at the miners' Sunday demonstration, cried to 10,000 rain-drenched unionists: "You don't need violence when you have a man like Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, when you have a liberal Congress in Washington and a Governor like me in Pennsylvania, who respects the workers' rights!" Pledging his assistance in wringing contracts from the steel companies. Governor Earle shouted: "And I say to you, if you want the American public to be with you-- because your cause is righteous--stamp those Goddamn communists out of the labor movement!"

Chanted the crowd: "Earle for President in 1940!" Whether this made John L. Lewis smile, no one has said. But that the "LEWIS-ROOSEVELT BREAK IS HINTED'' headlined in Tuesday's New York Times made Lewis frown, no one needed to say. For the warning appeared over the signature of the Times' Louis Stark, dean of U. S. Labor reporters and a man not given to crying wolf.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.