Old & Healthy

LABOR Old & Healthy To more aggressive labor leaders, the American Federation of Labor has long seemed as limp as a well-chewed cigar. In 1938, after John L. Lewis led the C.I.O. out of the A.F.L., he said his new union "has made it perfectly safe for the A.F.L. to come along and gather up the butcher and the baker and the candle-stickmaker ... All they need to do is trail along . . . behind the C.I.O. and we will keep the wind off them."

Last week, as 700 A.F.L. delegates moved quietly into San Francisco for the A.F.L.'s 70th annual convention, the faces and the pattern were familiar. President Bill Green, 78, denied reports that he would retire--as he has for many years. Secretary-Treasurer George Meany, 57, pompously chomping a cigar, was still waiting patiently to take over Green's job. No noisy battles disturbed the convention calm. "We've been around a long time," explained President George Harrison of the Railway Clerks' union. "We know each other too well to get excited." The convention yawned through dull speeches and rubber-stamped everything the executive council and committees offered.

The A.F.L., however, is by no means as dead as it looks. It has some 9,000,000 on its rolls while the C.I.O. claims only 6,000,000, probably has no more than 4,500,000. A.F.L. treasuries are bulging--the Teamsters Union alone has a balance of $26 million, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union has $38 million and the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has $45 million. At the convention, the A.F.L. embarked on a revolutionary policy of compulsory contributions to a political education fund.

At its 7th convention, the old A.F.L. was bigger, stronger and more confident than ever; not brilliance, not class warfare, but cautious truculence has made it the biggest and possibly the most powerful labor organization in the free world.

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