No Show

No doubt about it, the United Mine Workers' 39th convention was Hamlet without Hamlet. The 2,800 delegates who had journeyed expectantly to Atlantic City blamed it all on fate. Fate had picked convention time to floor indestructible old John L. Lewis with appendicitis--a mischance that left him represented at the convention only by a glowering portrait and harsh words in the mouths of his underlings. From the start, the convention felt lost.

The Lewis words were enough, of course, to carry the business and set the strategy of the four-day meeting. Automatically, the listless delegates racked up some 1,400 resolutions, concerned mostly with new wage-&-hour demands to be sprung on the mine owners before the Government steps out of the coal-mining business. But the delegates stamped and whistled happily only when the resolutions: 1) praised Lewis; 2) called for a "substantial" raise in Lewis' $25,000-a-year salary; 3) proposed to create a new U.M.W. holiday to honor Lewis (probably Feb. 12, Lewis' birthday*).

John L.'s illness posed a big question: what would the miners do for a leader when Lewis is no longer around? The question remained unanswered. Like most of labor's absolute monarchs, Lewis is old (66). And without Hamlet himself, the U.M.W. was plainly no show at all.

* To the U.M.W., the fact that Lincoln was born on the same day is also significant.

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