New Shoes for Mr. Murray

Philip Murray, who a year ago stepped into John L. Lewis' squeaky shoes as president of C.I.O., last week had blisters on his heels and corns on his toes.

As C.I.O. began its fourth annual convention in old Moose Temple in Detroit, Murray was a footsore, angry man with just enough dry humor left to make one crack. Accepting a gavel from Pittsburgh steelworkers, he remarked wryly that he had had to stop Milwaukee delegates from presenting him with a piece of Wisconsin cheese. Said Murray with his thick Scots burr: "Whilst the intent is good, it obviously would not be in good taste for the President . . . under these circumstances to either accept a ham or a piece of cheese. . . ."

For years Murray had loyally followed Lewis. During the past year, though he had won the approval of most men in C.I.O., and many a man outside, he had received not one public pat on the back from Wrong John. Lewis had sulked, talked loudly offstage, tossed many a sour cabbage from the wings. Finally he tossed a bomb--the union-shop argument that ended in the captive-mine strike.

Murray felt bound to support Lewis in an issue as dear to labor. And after years of allegiance, there were emotional bonds that could not easily be sloughed off. But Murray also wanted to plump for national defense. He and the delegates who were in the same dilemma were embittered and perplexed.

Dead Cat. Pale from his long, recent illness (heart attack), Phil Murray plunged into his dilemma head first. He bitterly attacked the National Defense Mediation Board, from which he himself had resigned. He declared that A.F. of L. members of the Board, who had voted against a union-shop contract in the captive mines, were guilty of "the vilest kind of treachery," and demanded that the convention stand firmly behind John Lewis.

There was perfunctory applause. A resolution was passed.

Then, before the convention could catch its breath, Murray passed quickly on to other matters. From then on, John Lewis was a dead cat in a barrel.

Behind closed doors, in committee meetings, disputes sputtered all week. In the Statler's lobby and bar, there were several short but solid fist fights between C.I.O. brethren. Though Lewis stayed in Washington, Daughter Kathryn was at the convention. So was Brother A. D. ("Denny") Lewis. Surrounded by delegates of his construction-workers union, he sat glowering on his hunkers through the convention, ostentatiously keeping his seat whenever the rest of the delegates rose to applaud. When Brother Denny went abroad he was accompanied by a beefy bodyguard.

But Murray was boss of the convention, boss of C.I.O. He and his aides pushed through one resolution after another supporting President Roosevelt's foreign policy. John Lewis' isolationist stand was thoroughly repudiated.

At week's end, John was still in the barrel and the convention was won. The majorities that lined up with Murray left no doubt of his power within C.I.O. Phil Murray and all officers on his executive council were re-elected for another year. Mr. Murray stood at last in his own shoes.

Finger on the Pulse. The country liked to see the unpopular and fearsome Mr. Lewis take a pratfall. But the public's applause had reservations. If Murray was now really in control of C.I.O., what could the U.S. expect from C.I.O. in the critical months to come?

It was apparent that, just as Murray had grown out of Lewis' brogans, C.I.O. had grown out of its pants. Its 900,000 new members during the past year had swelled its ranks to nearly 5,000,000.

Its important gains had been in the South, where the history of labor wars is spattered with tar & feathers, gunpowder and blood. C.I.O. could boast contracts with textile mills in every Southern State except Mississippi. C.I.O. had organized sugar refineries, communications, aluminum companies, construction firms, auto plants, oil fields, newspapers, canneries, steel mills, coal mines.

Up & down the country C.I.O. had cracked open anti-union fronts, had won new contracts boosting wages. In one year C.I.O. had added to the wages of its members, according to Murray, some $1,250,000,000--though, at a time when inflation threatened, many an economist doubted whether this would add to economic equilibrium.

Last week C.I.O. made plain that it was not planning to give up its fight for growth--not even for the sake of defense. Said Delegate Joseph Cannon, of the distillery workers: "If we give that up, what is the use of fighting Hitler?" Said Murray, talking tough like John L. Lewis:

"The C.I.O. . . . will fight every inch of the way against the enactment of labor-baiting, labor-manacling legislation . . . which has for its purpose the strangulation of labor in America. . . . When you talk of labor in America you talk of America--labor is America, America is labor."

In an unexpected burst of petulance, Murray charged that Washington was infested with "dishonest" representatives of big business "purportedly working for a dollar a year . . . obviously in the city of Washington sabotaging the national defense efforts."

A great deal less partisan and petulant sounded Philip Murray's Industry Council Plan. As a substitute for $1-a-year men and the confusion of Government boards and bureaus overlapping one another like shingles on a roof, Murray would set up over each basic industry a council of workers and managers, presided over by a Government-appointed chairman. Councils would coordinate all the facilities, materials, manpower in their separate industrial fields, so that steel, for example, would pour out as though from one great nationwide plant. Over all the councils would sit a National Defense Board. His plan, said Murray, was intended to bring labor, management and Government together, "everybody having their finger directly on the pulse of our national industrial problem."

Although the public might suspect that what he had in mind was a new kind of NRA, fear that such councils might create dangerous monopolies and collusions, yet talk of fingers on the pulse made better sense than talk of fingers at the throat.

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