Survival Value

In the past 70 years, there have been 13 Presidents of the U.S., six rulers of Britain, five Popes, 54 Premiers of France --but only three presidents of the American Federation of Labor.* The third, William Green, died last week at 82.

In 1924, when A.F.L. Founder Samuel Gompers died, aged 74, after 38 years in the federation's presidency, his heir-expectant was Matthew Woll of the Engravers' Union. But wing-collared Matt Woll was too hidebound a craft unionist for John L. Lewis, then as now president of the United Mine Workers. Lewis knew that he had no chance himself and, besides, he hoped to be U.S. Secretary of Labor in President Coolidge's Cabinet. He put forward the most conservative of his fellow mine union officials, Bill Green, and Green was elected.

Lewis expected to dominate the new president, a mild, friendly man--but Green disappointed him. Ten years later, Lewis was thundering denunciation at Green--"a frightened little man who would sell his own breed down the river," he called him. "I have done a lot of exploring of Bill Green's mind," snarled Lewis in one of his classic utterances in 1940, "and I give you my word there is nothing there."

As president of the A.F.L., Green turned out to be the symbol of the powerful, conservative forces in U.S. labor. They were tough and deep-rooted forces, drawing their principal strength from old, entrenched craft unions and dedicated single-mindedly to better working conditions. They resisted change and missed opportunities, but they had great capacity for survival.

Run of the Mine. Bill Green was 15 when he went to work beside his English-born father in the central Ohio coal fields. He soon observed that the companies were cheating the miners by paying only for large chunks of coal which did not fall through a 2-in. mesh. Green's reaction was typically undramatic. He went on working in the mine, became a first-rate miner, and for many years drew the highest pay at Morgan-Run. He joined the U.M.W., rose through its ranks to become (1906) state president. He got elected to the Ohio state senate, and there put through a bill making run-of-the-mine pay mandatory for miners, ending the abuse he had noted years before at Morgan-Run.

His parents were fervent Baptists, and Bill earned his first $5 for reading the entire Bible aloud for his illiterate father. His father wanted him to be a Baptist preacher. Bill settled instead for teaching Sunday school until he was in his 40s, and, to the time of his death, was in demand as a lay preacher.

Amnesty. When John Lewis set up his C.I.O., the defection nearly broke Green's heart, partly for sentimental, personal reasons: Lewis forced Green to resign from his beloved U.M.W.

With the death of the C.I.O.'s Phil Murray (TIME, Nov. 17) and Bill Green, Lewis found himself the lonely survivor of labor's big three. Last week he got off a wire of condolence to Green's 82-year-old widow. "The coal miners of the nation, of whom [your husband] was one until his final hour," he said in a rare gesture of amnesty, "will join with me in expressing grief at his passing."

The rest of the U.S. tended to forget during the spectacular rise of the C.I.O., that to millions of quieter U.S. unionists Bill Green was still Mr. Labor. After the war, it was apparent how much vitality remained in Bill Green's A.F.L. It had numbered only 2,000,000 in 1933, rose to 7,000,000 in 1946 and counts 8,000,000 members today.

Green's probable successor: George Meany, 58, a Brooklyn plumber and former president of the New York State Federation of Labor, who has been secretary-treasurer of the A.F.L. since 1939. Green first frowned on Meany's ambitions to succeed him as president, but after the 1947 convention, in which Meany took a leading role, it has been apparent that he had the inside track for the job.

* Including an almost forgotten miner, John McBride, who served a year in 1895.

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