Cancelled Debt

Next to tossing off a round phrase of his own or snagging a quote from Shakespeare, John Llewellyn Lewis likes nothing more than to be shaved in bed. At times of stress, he indulges this soothing fancy whenever a barber is within telephone call.

Last week was a stressful time for John L. Lewis, and a barber of Manhattan's Hotel Commodore ministered daily to the supine prince of Labor.*

There was a pretty threefold situation: 1) Expensively lodged in the Commodore, with his lawyers and lieutenants of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis was at a crucial point of his down & up career. The mine operators had refused to write into a new contract a guaranty that the A. F. of L.'s puny but ambitious mine union should not be allowed to poach on his preserves--thereby endangering the solidity of U: M. W., the keystone of C. I. 0. And if Miner Lewis sought a showdown in the form of costly last ditch strike the security of U. M. W. and C. I. 0. would be equally endangered.

2) At the Biltmore Hotel three blocks away some 100 mine operators were facing their own situation; six-weeks of shut-down had helped them to get rid of half of their coal piles and any longer stoppage would only cost them money which they could ill afford to lose. But some operators still held out. Many a potent mine owner, ready to sign at union terms, accused the holdouts of stalling in hope of provoking an industrial war in which U. M. W. might be licked.

3) Between and under the two hotels rumbling subways and trains entered Grand Central Terminal--all powered by electricity made from coal. The trains, like most U. S. industry, would not rumble much longer unless John Lewis and the operators agreed on a new labor contract. Unless 460,000 miners went back to work in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, Kentucky, 22 other coal-bearing States, there might be such a strike as the U. S. has not seen in the days of Franklin Roosevelt.

This was the situation when Franklin Roosevelt at last intervened. To Spokesman Charles O'Neill for the operators, John Lewis for the miners, the President issued a polite ultimatum: they were plainly in agreement on the principle of union hiring; let them within 36 hours settle the technicalities, start digging coal. Back in Manhattan the two sides were still wrangling when the time limit set by the President expired. Early in the morning as the meeting broke up U. S. Conciliator John Roy Steelman issued a statement: ". . . As Government representatives, we are asking that such companies and associations as are in agreement with the [union] sign contracts and begin operations immediately ... to relieve the grave crisis facing the nation. ... It is the purpose of the Federal Government to render every possible assistance. . . ."

Miners and operators alike knew what this meant: Franklin Roosevelt not only endorsed John Lewis' demands for a union shop*but invited operators and their district associations to break ranks, sign as a public duty. If they refused, the Administration would back John Lewis in the resultant war.

With division in the operators' ranks only one result was possible. By this week, 16 of the 21 Appalachian operators' associations, along with the rest of the industry, had signed at the Lewis-Roosevelt terms. Spotty strife might still go on, but the national crisis had passed.

Jubilant were John L. Lewis and his friends. Their union had gone through the valley of the shadow of disruption and emerged with heightened prestige. In their joy they spoke well of Franklin Roosevelt. U. M. W. and C. I. O.'s Labor's Non-Partisan League put up $560,000 in 1936 for the Democratic campaign chest. They had waited long for payment.

Meanwhile in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, where operators had not signed, a little coal war got in motion. Into bloody Harlan County, Governor Chandler sent troops. Cried U. M. W.'s District President William Turnblazer to his miners, who won recognition in Harlan only last year: "You can't dig coal with bayonets or with tin soldiers."

* Once in a Pittsburgh hotel room, a mine-union official named Pat Fagan found abstemious Mr. Lewis under towels at an early hour. "My Lewis God!" roared Mr. Fagan "Eight o'clock in the morning, and the -- -- --- is already passed out!". * By the literal wording of the agreements signed last week, John Lewis actually got a closed shop (meaning that all men hired must belong to the union before they can get jobs). As the union interprets it, nonunionists may be hired, must then join up. Either way it protects John L. Lewis from A. F. of L. encroachment

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