In Detroit

"William Green sounds to me like a 7-year-old boy defying his parents," rumbled John L. Lewis at a huge mass meeting of C. I. O.'s Transport Workers' Union in Manhattan last week. "He speaks with much sound and fury. He goes into a trance and words come forth that are meaningless. He becomes inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity."

This time hulking John Lewis was belaboring Bill Green for saying at the A. F. of L. convention in Denver that Mr. Lewis was motivated by "consuming" political ambition. Mr. Lewis admitted "some political ambitions." They were, he said: 1) the re-election of Mayor LaGuardia of New York City, 2) to see Thomas Kennedy, secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, promoted next year from Lieutenant Governor to Governor of Pennsylvania. 3) to see New York State's American Labor party develop into "a major political party" and 4) to see the "C. I. 0. ticket win in Detroit tomorrow."

Mr. Lewis' interest in Detroit primaries was immediate. The occasion was C. I. O.'s first major effort to put its own candidates in office. Backed by Labor's Non-Partisan League, now nothing more than C. I. O.'s national political arm, the United Automobile Workers proposed to bid for control of the fourth city of the land. Detroit's charter provides for a nonpartisan primary with a run-off election. Since most of the municipal jobs are appointive the campaign hinges on the mayoralty and the nine seats on the common council, which is elected at large. The purpose of last week's primary was to narrow the field of mayoralty candidates from five to two, the councilmen candidates from 66 to 18.

Out of the running by his own choice was Mayor Frank Couzens, son of Michigan's late Senator James Couzens. The battle to succeed him developed into a three-cornered fight among C. I. O., A. F. of L. and Detroit's better businessmen. Sponsored by the city's conservative citizenry who earlier in the year were fearful that a united labor slate would sweep the field, was Richard W. Reading, long-time city clerk. The C. I. O. candidate was an oldtime Democrat named Patrick O'Brien, Michigan's 69-year-old veteran attorney general who made his liberal name as circuit judge during the copper mine strikes in Michigan before the War. A. F. of L. belatedly entered John W. Smith, who was Detroit's mayor in the middle 1920s and has been trying to get back into this office off & on ever since. Throughout the campaign the sole issue was C. L O.

In a drizzling rain Detroit went to the polls last week to roll up the heaviest primary vote in the city's history. The top two candidates, who will stand for election in November were conservative City Clerk Reading (137,000) and C. I. O.'s O'Brien (99,000). A. F. of L.'s Smith polled only 68,000 but Detroit did not overlook the fact that the two Labor candidates together pulled more votes than City Clerk Reading.

Moreover, every one of C. I. O.'s five councilmanic candidates remained in the running. Maurice Sugar, U. A. W.'s attorney, placed seventh with 88,000. Richard Frankensteen, U. A. W.,'s assistant president and hero of the "Battle of the Overpass" at the Ford plant, was ninth with 83,000. Thirteenth was Tracy Doll, president of U. A. W.'s Hudson local, followed in 14th place by Walter Reuther, head of the big, tough West Side local. And Ray Thomas, president of the Chrysler local, squeezed into 17th place. One of John L. Lewis' ambitions had not actually been realized, but he could truthfully say that C, I. O. had become Detroit's major opposition party.

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