Humble John

Over the U. S. last week hung the prospect of industrial war on a frightful scale. In a ballroom on the 19th floor of Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel, a onetime college professor in Alabama addressed the only men in the U. S. who could avert this calamity:

"You must not, you cannot break up this conference and go home to start a civil war. ... I have insisted, I now do insist, that you bring this matter to a civilized conclusion, that you furnish . . . coal to America, somehow, soon. I ask, I insist on behalf of the American people and the American Government that you not break up this conference today. . . ."

John Roy Steelman, director of the U. S. Department of Labor's conciliation service, was in a most unhappy state. His manuscript rattled in his hands, he stumbled over his words. At the behest of Madam Secretary Frances Perkins, he had come to Manhattan to make peace between operators in the great Appalachian coal fields and United Mine Workers' John Lewis, who for seven weeks had been unable to agree on a new labor contract. Having heard him out last week, John Lewis ironically announced that the same committeemen who had failed before would continue to negotiate along with "my humble self." Pudgy Charles O'Neill of Pennsylvania, the operators' spokesman-in-chief, likewise reappointed himself and his committee. "We are willing to undertake again the task of trying to reach an agreement."

Mr. O'Neill barked at Mr. Steelman, "but it will require more than platitudes or scoldings."

When Mr. Steelman began his labors, 340,000 soft-coal miners in nine Appalachian coal States had been off their jobs since April i, but they technically were not on strike. Last week this pretense was abandoned. In 17 more States (principally in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado) 125,000 more Lewis miners stopped work at a word from him. In Pennsylvania, 100,000 hard-coal miners were ready to go out this week, should anthracite operators prove as stubborn as their bituminous brothers had been.

Wrangling About What? John Lewis is not seeking higher wages for his miners. He is not after shorter hours.

To most people this seems to be merely a gross grab for power--terrific cost to Miner Lewis' own followers as well as to the whole U. S. The unreconstructed New York Sun for once thundered for what appeared to be a majority: "THE CALLOUS SELFISHNESS OF JOHN L. LEWIS. When a union calls a nationwide strike . . . that is bound to affect millions " . . that union must be prepared to submit a strong case to the public. . . . What sort of case has John L. Lewis? ... He is willing to see 400,000 miners quit work and millions of the public deprived of the necessaries of life . . . but he is not willing to see his labor empire threatened, even remotely, by a rival."

No fool, Miner Lewis has a case. In the competitive jungle of coal, the Lewis miners at last succeeded in stabilizing their wages & hours to the satisfaction of many an operator who had wearied of wage & price cutting. Whether in doing so they fatally hampered coal in its losing competition with such other fuels as gas and oil, is an economic question which John Lewis does not like to face. What he does believe is that his miners are so indispensable to C. I. O. that a reverse for them would be a reverse for the entire labor cause.

Strong-man Lewis respects the strong men of the coal industry enough to fear that if they ever throw his union into reverse, they might be able to run it out of the coal fields, perhaps with the assistance of other unions which would like to replace it. A. F. of L.'s weak but ambitious Progressive Miners of America would very much like to do so.

To stop A. F. of L., John Lewis asked the operators under contract to him to formalize their present, informal recognition of his supremacy by writing a "union shop" into a new agreement. This would guarantee that for the next two years only Lewis miners could get jobs in most coal mines. The operators refused. Miner Lewis then asked them to waive a clause in the old contract, which in effect forbade his men to strike, thus freeing him to fight A. F. of L. encroachment by making it costly for the employers. The operators refused. He then offered to keep his men at work under a temporary extension of their old agreement, pending further talk about his demands. The operators refused, insisted upon a two-year renewal of their old agreement without change. Nettled by this response from men with whom he had dealt amicably for years, angry Mr. Lewis reasoned that railways, banks, steel companies control many a coal mine. "Obviously," he growled, "the interference of outside interests has stopped an agreement."

Last week, as a "final offer," the operators' spokesmen proposed not only to continue checking off (i. e., collecting) the dues of Lewis miners, but to deduct an equal amount from nonmembers' paychecks as well and hand it over to the union. In addition, they would promise to deal only with the Lewis union in so far as the Wagner Act permits. John Lewis pondered it, finally agreed with his own lawyers that it was probably illegal.

Meantime, baffled John Public continued to burn 1,000,000 tons of coal a day. At Norfolk, whence much coal is transshipped by water to eastern cities, bunkers were nearly empty. Manhattan subways reduced service to the point where trains at peak hours carried four instead of the usual three passengers per seat. When all but a few A. F. of L. and non-union mines shut down last week, less than a month's supply for the U. S. remained aboveground, and much of that was hoarded by big users. Madam Secretary squeaked in Washington: "It is a very delicate and difficult situation."

It was especially delicate for Franklin Roosevelt. Abandoning all pretense of innocence, he telegraphed optimistically to Manhattan: ". . " The differences of viewpoint . . . appear not to be insurmountable. . . . The public interest is paramount. ... As President of the United States, I caution the negotiators on both sides to keep this in mind. . . ."

John Lewis expected something more than impartial imperatives from Franklin Roosevelt. This week Miner Lewis blazed up, told Conciliator Steelman to go to blazes. Few minutes later Secretary Perkins was at the council table. In five hours she got no farther than Mr. Steelman had. Then she played her last trump: an invitation to coal's grim group to take their row to Franklin Roosevelt himself. Promptly they accepted, packed their bags to meet next day in the White House.

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