The Savior

The Savior No other single man in the U.S., including the President, could have done it, but John L. Lewis did. Last week, playing his role as liege lord and savior, he put a $3 billion industry--all of the East's soft-coal mines--on a three-day week.

John L.'s presumption that he was coming to the rescue of the industry--as well as nearly 400,000 soft-coal diggers of his United Mine Workers--had some basis in fact. As a result of overproduction, diminishing demands and skidding prices, the soft-coal mines were indeed facing the perilous possibility of a cutthroat price war. If it came to the pinch, a lot of little companies might be destroyed and a lot of John's miners would be out of jobs.

In rotund phrases he pointed out, in the midst of negotiations for a new contract, that a three-day week would both spread the work and shore up coal prices.

To some operators it seemed like a good idea, but the big Northern bloc did not agree. Efficient operators would be unfairly penalized, they argued. Beyond that, their connivance might put them in violation of the antitrust laws.

So John grandly took the law into his own ham hands. The choice was a three-day week or an industrywide shutdown. In order "to remove the stresses & strains which could cause industry and public irritation," he ordered miners east of the Mississippi to go back to work after July 4, but only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

The lord of the coal mines did not say how long his order would stay in effect; it would undoubtedly last at least until the coal operators signed a new contract.

For 71 days, a walkout of 7,500 workers at the Bendix Aviation Corp. in South Bend, Ind. had strangled production of military jet engines, was also slowly throttling the flow of spare parts to the Berlin airlift. Last week Air Secretary W. Stuart Symington stepped in, invited the United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther and Bendix President Malcolm P. Ferguson down to Washington to face each other (though both live in Detroit, they had never met). After an all-night session at the Pentagon, they came to terms. Bendix agreed to withdraw a $2,000,000 damage suit against the union, to rehire immediately 43 of 47 wildcat strikers who marched off the job in a squabble over assembly-line speeds. The union agreed to new negotiations on wages and production schedules, and to withdrawal of charges of unfair labor practices against Bendix.

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