Mr. Lewis Is Never Happy

John Lewis, his fortunes up again, was still as surly as ever. As he stalked from an elevator in Washington's Carlton Hotel, he encountered a waiting newsman, who observed: "You must be very happy, Mr. Lewis." John L. growled: "I'm afraid you're stretching your imagination a bit."

By any stretch of the imagination, the only reason there seemed to be for John Lewis' scowl was force of habit--or a victory too easily won. With almost cynical resignation the coal operators had caved in to his demands. U.S. Steel's Ben Fairless and Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal's George Humphrey had led the parade. All the northern operators had followed. This week with the southern, midwestern and western operators awaiting John L.'s pleasure, union and management lawyers sweated out the final details of a contract.

The Arithmetic of Peace. No one was sure just what price Lewis had exacted in terms of hourly wage increases for his miners. The United Mine Workers said 35-c-; the operators said closer to 45-c-. The arithmetic was complicated by changing the $11.85 nine-hour day to a $13.05 eight-hour day (including an hour to travel from the mine portal to the face of the working and back, and a new half-hour lunch period). The arithmetic was further complicated by doubling the royalty paid into the miners' health & welfare fund to 110-c- a ton (between $50 and $60 million a year).

But the price Lewis had exacted from the nation's economy was calculable. Coalmen estimated that the additional cost of mining, in which labor runs to more than 60%, would run between $400 million and $1 billion a year.

The danger was that price rises would not stop there. A spokesman for Ben Fairless' U.S. Steel, the bellwether of all U.S. industry, argued that the higher costs could be absorbed between mine and consumer, that assured production was more important now than a slight price rise, that anything was better than another coal strike. The argument had a slightly brassy ring.

"Willing & Able." The railroads, which use 110 million tons of coal a year (about one-fifth of the nation's annual production), had been clamoring for higher rates in order to meet employees' demands for a 20-c--an-hour wage boost even before the new coal prices hit them. Now they would be clamoring louder than ever.

New steel prices would probably wait on examination of the second quarter's balance sheet. But steelmen could already figure their increased costs. Two tons of coal are needed to produce a ton of steel. Steelmen talked frankly of steel price rises of between $1 and $2 a ton. Big Steel had loaded another high-price rocket.

There was not even any assurance that John Lewis would not strike anyhow. Final contract negotiations stalled over his insistence on clauses which would make it possible for the miners to exploit the loopholes in the Taft-Hartley Act. The operators insisted on legal language that would protect them against a charge of attempting to evade the law. When they found the formula, they signed. A few hours later, John L. Lewis' 200-man policy committee approved the agreement which would send the miners back to work.

Small operators reacted violently against the big steelmen, the big coal operators, John Lewis. They called the whole contract a "conspiracy" between Big Labor and Big Business, callously contrived to squeeze out the small owners. The anxiety of the big operators over possible antitrust suits had been, in fact, one of the main causes of delay in negotiations.

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