Cat and Canary
John L. Lewis started out last week to redraw the map of U.S. labor--and perhaps that of U.S. politics, too.
Just eight years after he split American labor wide open by founding the revolutionary C.I.O., Lewis asked that he and his 600,000 miners be taken back into the older and more conservative American Federation of Labor. The news came as a mighty shock to millions : What was John Lewis up to now? The move was the result of secret negotiations, mainly between Lewis and big Bill Hutcheson, head of the Carpenters' Union, who once called Lewis a big bastard and was forthwith knocked flat. And the announcement came, fittingly enough, from the lips of pious-faced Bill Green, whom Lewis originally made president of A.F. of L., and later denounced as a "faithless ingrate" (and many other things). Summoning reporters to his office, Bill Green took quiet revenge, smugly smiled a "cat-ate-the-canary" smile, stated that his executive committee was sympathetically considering the application.
If, as seems likely, the Mine Workers return to the A.F. of L. fold, John Lewis will be the cat, Green the canary. Further, A.F. of L. will immediately become the predominant labor bloc in the country, with a membership approaching 7,000,000 as against C.I.O.'s 5,000,000. And finally, John Lewis will have boosted himself into a new strategic position to play politics (and probably bitter isolationist politics) in the election of 1944.
Background of an Opportunist. Of the art of politics John Lewis is a master. No one --except himself-- has ever beaten him. Now his switch back into A.F. of L., like his revolt from it in 1935, could be explained in one word: opportunism.
The miner son of a Welsh immigrant, John Lewis grew up not in the school of Socialist Eugene Debs but in that of the late, great Sam Gompers, who made the House of Labor one. From Gompers, Lewis learned the conservative tactics of straight trade unionism. In the early years in the Mine Workers he feared, hated and fought those "carrion birds," Socialists and Communists.
When Gompers died in 1924, it was no radical, but upstanding Baptist Bill Green whom Lewis nominated for the A.F. of L. presidency. By 1927 Lewis was strong enough in the hearts of the Republicans to be offered the Secretaryship of Labor by President Calvin Coolidge.
Left, Right. But the depression called for different tactics. Lewis dreamed not just of one big union, but of one big Labor party. To get it, as well as to keep his grip on coal, he needed to organize steel and the mass-production industries. He wanted to promote "industrial democracy." He wanted a vast union, with low dues, with a vote for every worker.
The narrow craft unionism and autocracy of the A.F. of L. stood in his way. In 1935 he joined his miners with seven other big A.F. of L. unions to form C.I.O., soon led them out of the Federation.
The dream nearly succeeded. Industry by industry, the workers moved into industrial unions. Steel, automobiles, rubber fell into his lap. Then, in 1937, Franklin Roosevelt, who received $600,000 from Lewis for his 1936 campaign, denounced the division in labor with his remark: "A plague on both your houses."
From then on, hatred for the President drove Lewis steadily Right. More important, he grew steadily more isolationist. He opposed the Roosevelt foreign policy. He played ball with the Communists who were then sabotaging the defense effort. He drove back into the Republican party. In 1942, mad with rage at his lifelong friend, Phil Murray, and intent on being the big boss wherever he was, he marched the miners out of C.I.O. entirely.
Two-Way Help. But by last week John L. Lewis needed company.
His demand for a $2 pay rise was not going as smoothly* as a somewhat similar demand back in 1941 which he won hands down. Jimmy Byrnes, the War Labor Board, the President and the country were lined up against him. Nothing would be lost, much might be gained by getting back into the Federation.
And, for its part, A.F. of L., which is already kicking hard against the President's hold-the-line order, will probably take him in. He brings with him not only numbers but the $7,000,000 Miners' treasury. Already he has tendered $60,000 in payment of 1943 dues. If the Executive Committee votes favorably, Lewis will walk into the A.F. of L. October convention with full credentials.
New Pattern. If that happens, John L. Lewis with his 600,000 miners, Bill Hutcheson with his 400,000 carpenters, and Dan Tobin, head of 600,000 teamsters, will emerge as the main masters of A.F. of L.
Few leaders of the blitzed C.I.O. talked for the record. Up-&-coming Walter Reuther, vice president of the Automobile Workers, was outspoken. Said he: "In his campaign to build up an anti-Roosevelt, anti-war movement, Lewis must have a mass labor movement to work in. Having failed to build his own, he must now rejoin the A.F. of L."
Shadow of 1944. Fact was that C.I.O. was whistling in the dark. A.F. of L. is now in a far more favorable position to pick off C.I.O. unions one by one. And more than ever the fate of the liberals within C.I.O. is bound up with the 1944 Presidential election.
On that election the new Lewis move will probably have a profound effect. As a matter of course he will throw his whole weight against a Fourth Term. But, in view of his isolationism, he will probably also gang up with the Old Guard against liberal Republicans of the stripe of Stassen or Willkie.
If that occurs, and if Lewis is successful, labor and the country will pay a heavy price--not in terms of domestic policy--but in world affairs; for John L. Lewis, who did not declare war during 1939 and 1940, still has not yet gone to war today.
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