Year End

Vigorously tossing his grey mane in the face of a microphone, John Llewellyn Lewis last week on the eve of Labor Day week-end delivered a message to the Union on the State of Labor. For all U. S. Labor the preceding twelve months had been--by moderate estimate--the most significant in history. Both in power and numbers the U. S. Labor movement reached an all-time peak. In its Wagner Act decisions the Supreme Court had substantially upheld the labor laws of the New Deal. Springing full-grown from the forehead of

John L. Lewis, C. I. O. now claims 3,700,000 workers. A. F. of L. claims that it has more than made good its losses to C. I. O. by jumping its membership to 3,600,000.

But pre-eminently it had been John L. Lewis' year. Starting with the suspension of the ten C. I. O. unions by A. F. of L., the final break with William Green, the historic events of the labor year revolved largely about the powerful, leonine figure of the boss of C. I. O. The rise of the Sit-Down, the storming of the automobile industry, the peaceful capitulation of U. S. Steel Corp., the disastrous strike in "Little Steel" were strictly C. I. O. affairs.

Last week, in the brooding eloquence that springs so naturally from his Welsh heritage, John L. Lewis declared: "Out of the agony and travail of economic America the C. I. O. was born. To millions of Americans, exploited without stint by corporate industry and socially debased beyond the understanding of the fortunate, its coming was as welcome as the dawn to the night watcher. . . . It is now and henceforth a definite instrumentality destined greatly to influence the lives of our people and the internal course of the Republic."

Enemies. Nearly one-third of Mr. Lewis' speech was reserved for the enemies he acquired during the strike in "Little Steel," particularly Chicago's Mayor Kelly, whose policemen he said killed ten workers in the Memorial Day massacre at a Republic Steel plant. Conspicuously missing from the Lewis speech was any reference to Steelman Tom Girdler, on whom Mr. Lewis usually lavishes his fine talent for invective. Reason: on the advice of Columbia Broadcasting lawyers he deleted his sulphurous remarks about Mr. Girdler.* Also toned down were some of the phrases about Governor Davey, whose militiamen broke the strike in Ohio. Roared Labor Lion Lewis: "The steel puppet, Davey, is still Governor of Ohio, but not for long. I think, not for long! ... No tin hat brigade of goosestepping vigilantes or bible-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation-paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of Labor."

Capitalism. "Unionization, as opposed to Communism, presupposes the relationship of employment: it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profits. . . . The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against intrusion of alien doctrines of government. . . . Ordinary problems affecting wages, hours and working conditions, in most instances, will quickly respond to negotiation in the council room."

Farmer-Labor. "It becomes increasingly imperative that the farm population and the millions of workers in industry must learn to combine their strength for the attainment of mutual and desirable objectives and at the same time learn to guard themselves against the sinister propaganda of those who would divide and exploit them."

Franklin Roosevelt (whom Mr. Lewis did not call by name, but whose famed quotation "A plague o' both your houses" could not be mistaken). "Labor next year cannot avoid the necessity of a political assay of the work and deeds of its so-called friends and its political beneficiaries. It must determine who are its friends. . . . Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at Labor's table and who has been sheltered in Labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both Labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace. . . ."

*In a Labor Day speech, however, John L. Lewis restored some of the deletions, rumbled: "Eugene Grace and his puppet Girdler will not long flout the law in America.''

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