Amen

They had been summoned, all 200 of them, to rubber-stamp John L. Lewis' next move in the coal crisis. For three days a small brigade of U.M.W. local officials, whom imperious John L. calls his policy committee, had plumped themselves down in Manhattan hotel rooms (at the union's expense) to wait. They slept, ate, drank, played poker, smoked cigars and just sat--until the boss should deem it appropriate to speak. The three-week coal truce was due to expire midnight Nov. 30.

The deadline came & went: 400,000 miners left their jobs and glumly dug in for a "tough Christmas." Playing his role up to the hilt, labor's great ham let almost eleven hours go by before he lumbered into the Hotel Roosevelt ballroom and grandiloquently announced his decision: the miners could work, but only three days a week. The 200 committeemen removed their cigars and said, "Amen." Then they packed their bags and went home.

Back home some 400,000 miners heard the latest news with evident relief. Another strike would indeed have made Christmas even bleaker than it was apt to be anyhow in the coalfields of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Pennsylvania. The boss had called them out in March and again in June. In July he had put them on a three-day week; in September he had ordered them into a full-scale strike which had ended in the uncertain three-week truce. Among the highest paid industrial labor in the U.S. when they work, the miners had worked only a total of 160 days in 1949. They had lost some $450 million in wages. Their $150 million welfare fund, drained by 15 months of foolish, freehanded spending, was all but exhausted and all payments had been stopped. For such mighty sacrifices the miners had gained back exactly nothing. Unable to crack the operators' united front, Lewis had had to beat a retreat.

The difficulty was not all of his own making: the industry was sick; it could no longer sustain all its mines working full-time all year. The question was whether John L. had found the right answer: in effect a three-day week only divvied up the distress.

He had not given up. The three-day week had saved him from a possible Taft-Hartley injunction, would keep the rank & file quiet and keep the coal stockpile down to a size where he might be able to use a coal shortage as a bargaining weapon. Lewis had also gained time in which to try to divide management by making separate agreements--a strategy which Phil Murray had used successfully against the steel industry. He badly needed a way out.

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