Lewis' Great Defiance

In one of the loudest and brashest performances of his whole career John L. Lewis this week defied the President of the U.S. All his long, pent-up hatred of Franklin Roosevelt boiling over, John Lewis, like an angry, ranting, old-style tragedian, flatly rejected requests made in the name of his country.

After Lewis had decreed a strike of 53,000 miners in the soft-coal fields, after the President had made two mild, well-mannered pleas for peace, Lewis summoned newsmen to the elegant boardroom of the United Mine Workers to hear his great defiance.

Pale face glistening in the floodlights, he mugged for cameramen with evident satisfaction, faced an audience of reporters that jammed the room to the walls. Behind him stood three aides, two of them chomping gum. Waggling his eyebrows, in sonorous, sneering, ironic tones he intoned his letter: "Sir, "Your letter at hand. . . ." Denying that the defense program would be impaired, reasserting the loyalty of his miners, Lewis said that if the President were going to restrain him, "then, sir, I submit that you should use the same power to restrain my adversary in this issue, who is an agent of capital. My adversary is a rich man named Morgan, who lives in New York." It was J. P. Morgan, declared Lewis, member of the Board of U.S. Steel, who determined the policy of the mine operators.* If Morgan would submit to Lewis' demands, "then the business can be disposed of in ten minutes." Otherwise, the letter made clear, the strike would stand.

Coal & Steel. The strike was called only in "captive"/- mines owned by U.S. Steel, Weirton, Bethlehem, Republic, Wheeling, Crucible, Youngstown. But from those seven companies flows over 80% of the nation's defense steel. Without coal they cannot make steel. For coal, they are dependent on their captive mines.

Stockpiles, diminished by last spring's soft-coal strike, were already low, down to two to three weeks according to company estimates.

Lewis has been fighting for a union-shop contract in the captive mines. The steel companies had not been parties to the Appalachian agreement (which provided for a union shop), though many another captive-mine operator had signed, along with the commercial miners in the Appalachian district. Lewis threatened to strike the steel companies' mines a month ago. At the request of the National Defense Mediation Board, he agreed to a 30-day truce while the board tried to work out a formula for peace.

Last week a Board panel, without making specific recommendations, suggested to the President that both sides be asked: 1) to agree to accept as final the recommendations of the entire Board; or 2) to choose a joint board from both sides to settle the matter; and if that failed, select an arbitrator whose decision would be flat and final. In any event, the Board proposed to exact from both sides the promise to continue production of soft coal.

These suggestions Mr. Roosevelt promptly took up, suggesting further that Myron C. Taylor, former chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel, and John Lewis head such a joint board. He formally called upon both gentlemen to cooperate.

"Vengeful and Malignant." At this point Mr. Lewis tossed his first bomb.

Blowing clouds of fury from a thick cigar, he showed newsmen the answer he had written to the President. He would meet with Mr. Taylor, he wrote. But he raked the Board for being "casual and lackadaisical to the point of indifference," for calling before it "only the inferior executives of the corporations involved," and for dumping "its own sorry mess into the already overburdened lap of the Chief Executive."

He lambasted Sidney Hillman, his hated rival in C.I.O. and head of the labor division of OPM. "Mr. Hillman, of course," said Lewis, "is responsible for the fantastic procedure which has been followed. His attitude of vengeful and malignant opposition to the interests of the United Mine Workers is only equaled by the fury of his actions against the United Construction Workers* in the Currier Lumber case." As for calling off the strike--in his own brand of inflated English, Mr. Lewis told the President of the U.S. to go jump in the lake.

At week's end, Franklin Roosevelt sat down and wrote a second plea to the man who had chosen to put his personal feuds above the welfare of the country.

"For the Third Time." Mr. Roosevelt guessed what Lewis' answer would be.

Almost before Lewis finished his philippic against J. P. Morgan, the President was busily inditing another plea: "Whatever may be the issues between you and Mr.

Taylor or you and Mr. Morgan ... for the third time your Government . . . asks you and the officers of the U.M.W. to authorize an immediate resumption of mining." No immediate answer came from proud, peculiar Mr. Lewis. The Roosevelt patience was at last exhausted.

That evening, broadcasting to the nation in his Navy Day speech, the President clipped Mr. Lewis a glancing blow on his jutting jaw, declared: "Our national will must speak from every assembly line--yes, from every coal mine. ... It cannot be hampered by the selfish obstruction of a small but dangerous minority of industrial managers . . . [or] by the selfish obstruction of a small but dangerous minority of labor leaders who are a menace to the true cause of labor itself, as well as to the nation as a whole." Whether or not John Lewis would eventually give heed to his President's solemn, angry words, he had already done what few men of this generation or any other had ever done: flatly, bitterly, defiantly ignored three requests made by a President of the U.S. in the name of public necessity.

Fire the Boss? The Governor of New Jersey had a unique suggestion last week for solving a bitter labor dispute. At Air Associates, Inc., in Bendix, N.J., management and C.I.O. leaders wrangled over reinstating union workers who had been fired from their jobs. Production of $5,000,000 worth of aircraft parts had been delayed by a month-long strike.

To company President F. Leroy Hill, Governor Charles Edison sent a blistering telegram in which he declared that the trouble "seems to be you. . . . You are angry and tired. These are not the elements out of which grows industrial peace." In so many words the Governor told Mr. Hill that he ought to get out for a time and let somebody else run his plant.

This extraordinary way of handling a strike was not much more extraordinary than what preceded it. On the management's side was their claim that out of 650 employes only 206 voted for a C.I.O. union in a plant election and, although over a third of the plant's employes did not vote, the union was certified as bargaining agent. When a strike was called during contract negotiations, said the company, only about 150 men walked out. When the management advertised for new workers, some 2,500 applied.

On the union's side was the fact that even members of the National Defense Mediation Board got thoroughly fed up with the management's attitude in the negotiation. The union, claiming 550 strikers, accused the management of not bargaining in good faith, laying off a union delegate, locking out the union negotiating committee. The strike was called off when the management and the union agreed to continue contract negotiations. For days union and company wrangled.

So another strike was called. The Mediation Board put strong pressure on the company directly and indirectly (the Army even threatened to take away the company's contract). Although only a minority of the workers had struck, New Jersey police could not give the plant adequate protection and the police finally shut off the streets so that the workers could not reach the plant. Finally the plant, which now has some 800 employes, of whom only 150 had originally gone on strike, was picketed by 3,000 shouting pickets.

If the management wore no halo, it nonetheless had good cause to agree with Hugh Johnson, who wrote last week of the labor situation that, while the general population and business are suffering from taxes and priorities, "organized labor . . . is not only required to give up nothing but is being permitted, if not encouraged, to use this crisis to entrench itself in a campaign of intimidation. . . ."

At week's end the strike was called off when the company agreed to take back all workers and continue contract negotiations. But another strike soon threatened: the union said that, while its men were given jobs, some machinists were put to scrubbing floors.

*Sniffed Banker Morgan: "What utter rubbish!" /- Mines owned and operated by steel compannies, railroads, utilities, etc. wholly for their own use. * Chief of C.I.O.'s construction workers is Mr. Lewis' brother Denny.

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