The Overriding Loyalty

"I was home eating my junior food," said K. C. Adams, editor of the Mine Workers Journal. "It's already chewed--lamb and vegetables, chopped liver and prunes and applesauce that looks like gunpowder." Mr. Adams has a delicate stomach. "I asked Lillie [Mrs. Adams] to fix me some tea. She made it out of one of those little tea balls." Mr. Adams made the motions of gently dipping a tea ball into a cup, " 'Lillie,' I said, 'this tea with no leaves won't do me no good. I need the leaves and a gypsy to go with them.'"

Mr. Adams had just got the news: the Supreme Court had decided that his boss, John L. Lewis, was in contempt of court. Mr. Adams and the rest of the U.S. could only try to divine, with or without tea leaves, what would happen next.

Appropriate Decision. Mr. Adams could remember clearly the steps which had led up to this startling event. Last spring, after a 59-day coal strike, the Government had seized the nation's soft-coal mines and made a contract with Lewis. But six months later John L. decided that he wanted a better deal. When the Government said that the contract could not be reopened, Lewis said the agreement was off, threatened to strike.

Federal Judge T. Alan Goldsborough tried to restrain Lewis until the question of his right to call off the contract could be settled by the courts. Goldsborough ordered him. not to call the strike. Lewis called the strike anyhow, arguing that the Norris-LaGuardia Act took away the court's authority to enjoin workers in a labor dispute. Obediently his miners, nearly 600,000 of them, walked out. Goldsborough convicted him of contempt and the case went to the Supreme Court.

Now the decision was in, handed down, surprisingly, on a Thursday afternoon. Monday is usually "judgment day" in the U.S. Supreme Court. But the opinions of the justices were written, and Chief Justice Fred Vinson knew they were too hot to keep from a watchful press.

Goldsborough had fined Lewis $10,000. The Court upheld that. He had fined the union $3,500,000. The Court reduced that to $700,000, on condition that Lewis withdraw his new strike threat.

It was one of the worst blows a leader and his union had taken in the history of U.S. labor. In the case of John Lewis, who has ridden contemptuously over the Government, over the public, over his own labor colleagues and even over his own mine workers, the verdict was peculiarly appropriate. But the decision went beyond Lewis. It stirred up the tea leaves in all of organized labor's cup.

The Interests of Government. A court which is not noted for its unanimity of opinion followed a fairly clear line on the main question of Lewis' guilt. Justice Wiley Rutledge dissented. He belabored Goldsborough for his failure to draw a clear line between civil and criminal contempt--on both of which counts Goldsborough had held Lewis culpable. "No case in this Court heretofore has ever sustained such conglomerate proceedings and penalties," Rutledge wrote. He and Justice Murphy both thought that Goldsborough should be reversed.

But the other seven justices agreed that Lewis was wrong in defying the district court, no matter whether or not the court had any legal right--under the Norris-La-Guardia Act--to order him not to strike.

Said Vinson: "The interests of orderly government demand that respect and compliance be given to orders issued by courts. . . . [Lewis' defiance] was an attempt to repudiate and override the instrument of lawful government."

Lewis' miners were in it too--up to their necks. "The defendant Lewis, it is true, was the aggressive leader in the studied and deliberate noncompliance with the order of the District Court . . . [but] certainly it was the members of the defendant union who executed the nationwide strike." Loyalty to their leader did not minimize the gravity of their conduct.

The welfare of all citizens, including miners, said the Court, depends on the fact that they enjoy the rights of free men "under our system of government." That system must be maintained. "In our complex society, there is a great variety of limited loyalties, but the overriding loyalty of all is to our country and to the institutions under which a particular interest may be pursued."

The Thrust. The Court might have confined itself to the question of contempt, plastered Lewis with the fine and let it go at that. But not this Court. Boldly, Chief Justice Vinson struck out into the jungle country of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The case did raise the question of whether the Act can be applied when the Government is the employer. In other words, can workers under Government authority keep the right to strike? Lewis' miners were technically working for the Government when they struck.

Four justices (Rutledge, Frankfurter, Jackson and Murphy) held that the Act applied in the miners' case as much as in any industrial dispute. Said Murphy: "The whole thrust of the Norris-LaGuardia Act is directed toward the use of ... injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes. . . . This case is one growing out of a labor dispute."

The Sovereign. But five justices (Vinson, Black, Douglas, Reed, Burton) disagreed, and by the weight of their majority their ruling became the law.

The Government as the sovereign, they said, stands beyond the jurisdiction of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The Act only pertains to "persons" involved in labor disputes, and the sovereign is not "persons." Was it the intent of Congress, which wrote the Act, that the Act should not apply to Government? Union lawyers argued that if Congress intended to exclude the Government from the Act it would have said so. Congressman James Beck had argued at the time that Congress should have said so. Vinson impatiently, almost angrily, brushed aside that argument. "We do not accept his [Beck's] views."*

The day after the decision, Lewis clumped before the Senate labor committee to testify on labor legislation which would curb such labor leaders as Lewis. His appearance was notable for one statement. There was just no way to "guarantee" production of coal in a democracy, Lewis said. "Congress would have to give the executive such a tremendous grant of authority and build up such a power that the Republic would no longer exist."

The Supreme Court's decision would not limit Lewis' actions after June 30, when the Smith-Connally Act expires. It was under that Act that the Government had seized the mines in the first place. The only way to curb Lewis indefinitely would be for Congress to pass another bill continuing the President's power to seize struck property. Over Lewis hung that threat.

* Fiorello LaGuardia, surviving co-author of the Act, told the Senate labor committee two days later that the Court was correct in its interpretation of Congress' intent.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.