Twos Always Thus!"

"We attended when you fixed the hour," cried John L. Lewis. "We departed when weariness affected your pleasure. Our effort . . . has been in vain."

In a cigar-fogged suite in Washington's Shoreham Hotel, negotiators for the nation's soft-coal operators drooped dejectedly. For a weary month they had failed to lure labor's one-man theater into writ-fag a new contract for his United Mine Workers. Now the nation was living on stored coal. And now, because his only specific demand (for a miners' health & welfare fund) had been turned down, Lewis was about to halt even the pretense of negotiation. Balefully he intoned:

"When we sought surcease from bloodletting, you professed indifference; when we cried aloud for the safety of our members you answered--be content, 'twas always thus.

"When we urged that you abate the stench, you averred that your nostrils were not offended. . . . When we spoke of little children in unkempt surroundings you said--look to the state."

Mr. Lewis' voice fell away into gulfs of sadness. Clearly, in all his previous performances, he had been holding himself in for this scene. Then he boiled up again:

"You profess annoyance at our temerity; we condemn your imbecility. You are smug in your complacency; we are abashed by your shamelessness. . . . To cavil further is futile. We trust that time, as it shrinks your purse, may modify your niggardly and anti-social propensities."

Vibrating noticeably, Mr. Lewis stalked out. How long would the stored coal last?

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