War

In the paneled palace where John Lewis has his Washington headquarters, the heads of 43 C. I. O. unions assembled last week to appraise their past, plan their future.

One of the first to arrive for the first meeting of the recently established C. I. O. executive board was President Lewis himself, looking hot and tired in summer whites. "Hi, Jim, how are you, boy?" he greeted boyish, diffident James Barton Carey, secretary of C. I. 0. and president of its electrical union. Vice President Philip Murray was gravely on his dignity, as becomes a crown prince. Bronzed with a Florida tan, recovered from pneumonia, Vice President Sidney Hillman backslapped one & all. Mooning about like a bitter rabbit was little Alien Harry Bridges, whose services to C. I. O. on the West Coast may be terminated by deportation proceedings next week.

C. I. O. in 1940 is an imponderable which Mr. Lewis declines to define so long as an implied third-party threat may be useful in swaying the big parties his way.

That any Democratic candidate (including Franklin Roosevelt) would automatically qualify for C. I. O. support, regardless of what the President does or allows to be done to Labor meanwhile, John Lewis has significantly failed to say. Last week he said: ". . . The nation is still in crisis.

Economically we now stand little ahead of where we stood four years ago. ... I do not think the people will ... be content with timid solutions offered by government, solutions fearfully withdrawn before they can be really tested. Unless the nation is led unhesitatingly and courageously forward ... we stand in danger of ...

despair . . . black reaction . . . Fascism."

If the recent upsurge of anti-union legislation in California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan taught John Lewis anything, it was that Labor was not uniformly popular in all sections of the country even with vote-hungry politicians, and that Labor had better bestir itself politically. Leader Lewis now talked of forming "articulate groups of workers to declare themselves on social, political and economic affairs," and belligerently proclaimed: "Progressive Labor is not retreating." On his recommendation, his board proceeded to woo Youth and Farmers, tease the Aged by recommending $60-a-month Federal pensions for single oldsters over 60, $90 a month for married couples.

Impossible Peace. John Lewis has never agreed with Franklin Roosevelt that C. I. O.-A. F. of L. reunion per se is a good & necessary thing for Labor. He had his tongue firmly in cheek when he was pushed into renewing peace talks last February, stuck it in further when he noted in Franklin Roosevelt's "invitation" a scarcely veiled threat to impose peace if none could be found by negotiation. Four weeks after the negotiations bogged down, John Lewis last week announced: "Peace, as such, is a secondary consideration to the organization [of non-union workers] . . . The A. F. of L. is still in control of a small group of leaders firmly entrenched, reactionary in their attitude on public affairs, tolerant of many evils in the A. F. of L. . . . The C. I. O. board is unanimously convinced that the A. F. of L. is following a 'rule or ruin' policy. . . ."

A reporter asked: "Is peace impossible?"

"I know of no reason to think otherwise," growled John Lewis.

Growled William Green: "The leader of the C. I. 0. has again blocked labor peace. . . . The real reason is that . . . peace would automatically end his autocratic control. . . ."

War to the Enemy. "Until now," said John Lewis last week, "we have done no more than merely to defend ourselves. . . . "

Having in three years amassed 3,800,000 claimed members by notably aggressive "defense," Mr. Lewis announced last week that unpeaceful C. I. O. hereafter will carry its war to the enemy, which claims 3,600,000 members. First example of his new tactics followed forthwith. In Manhattan Mr. Carey's union sued for an injunction to restrain A. F. of L. from boycotting (refusing to install or handle) electrical products made by C. I. O. workers. Thus Labor, by requesting an injunction, turned upon itself a favorite weapon of anti-union employers.

Warrior Lewis was asked whether, as reported, C. I. O. plans to invade the vast construction field, which up to now has belonged almost exclusively to A. F. of L. and has long given the Federation its dominant leadership. "No comment," said he abruptly enough to keep the report alive.

Major C. I. O.-A. F. of L. conflicts are in progress or brewing in:

> Textiles, where C. I. O.'s temporary organizing committee under Sidney Hillman has just been turned into a permanent union with contracts covering some 400,000 of textiles' estimated 1,200,000 workers. A. F. of L. proposes to put organizers, money and life into a presently feeble rival, has yet to do much about it. Their big battleground: the South. > Automobile manufacturing, where, as in textiles, A. F. of L. owes its foothold to an anemic minority which recently deserted C. I. O. The Federation's Homer Martin slightly bettered his position last week. Instead of dealing with neither union in plants where both claim bargaining rights, big General Motors agreed to dicker with both when & if they can agree on representation by a common shop committee. Sadly aware that intra-union feuding has frittered away its union's active membership, the C. I. O. board planned a reorganization drive to regain lost ground, push Homer Martin clear out of the industry.

> Coal, where John Lewis last month pretty well stymied A. F. of L. for the next two years by winning a contract which binds most of the industry to employ only members of his United Mine Workers. But that did not end one of the fiercest wars in U. S. Labor: A. F. of L.'s small but growing Progressive Miners of America is still trying to proselytize Lewis men in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Alabama and elsewhere, lay the groundwork for demanding agreements in 1941. Meanwhile, the Lewis union, greatly strengthened by its victory, is chipping away at Progressive's main hailiwicks in Illinois, Kentucky.

> Shipping. On the Atlantic and Gulf coasts A. F. of L. mans the docks, C. I. O. mans the ships, and both want the whole hog. On the Pacific Coast, Longshoreman Bridges is all but supreme on the docks, has some seagoing personnel, but A. F. of L. has most of the sailors and the teamsters who haul to & from the waterfronts. C. I. O.'s eastern National Maritime Union last week took a grave setback when it gave up its strike against Standard Oil of New Jersey and four other tanker companies, leaving disgruntled Gulf Coast sailors likely meat for A. F. of L. or independent union organizers.

> Packinghouses, utilities, lumbering, shoes, aircraft, business offices. In these and many another, the same story generally holds good: C. I. O. in its first burst of organization in 1936-37 did the spadework; A. F. of L. came in later, organizing the same industries and even the same shops where C. I. O. had won Labor's first important gains.

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