Truce at a Crisis

(See front cover)

Fifty thousand soft coal miners were on strike in Pennsylvania, the Federal Government's whole recovery program was on the verge of being engulfed in a tidal wave of labor disputes, one evening last week as National Recovery Administrator Johnson climbed into a trimotored Army plane in Washington and flew off for a midnight meeting with President Roosevelt at Hyde Park. When General Johnson woke up next morning in Poughkeepsie's Nelson Hotel the coal strike had been called off for the time being. The recovery program was again moving forward on an even keel. By his night flight General Johnson had not only patched up a strike truce but had also hornswoggled out of Capital & Labor a high-sounding agreement to keep the peace while he did his NRA job. Almost overnight the Pennsylvania coal strike had flared up from a local ruckus in Fayette County to a national menace. Trouble started with H. C. Frick Coke Co., a subsidiary of U. S. Steel Corp. A few thousand Frick workers joined the United Mine Workers of America and struck in protest against the formation of company unions. The issue was whether the non-union Frick company would recognize the national union. It would not -- on orders from the non-union U. S. Steel Corp. The strike spread so rapidly that many a miner was left down the shaft when his fellows abruptly walked out above ground. Because steel production had been booming for weeks, necessitating coal mine operation at full capacity, strikers had plenty of cash in their pock ets. They walked out as if on a summer spree, full of noise and good cheer and enthusiasm. Governor Pinchot ordered guardsmen to Fayette County to help keep the peace (TIME, Aug. 7). By last week the strike had closed every Frick mine in the county. Other companies were beginning to feel its pinch. Some mines of great Pittsburgh Coal Co. had to shut down. So did others belonging to Bethlehem Steel. Operators were in a panic. As most of them are Republicans, they felt politically stranded without a friend at Democratic court. They knew their old hard-fisted methods of fighting a strike with armed guards would not put their men back to work this time. Therefore the mine guards slouched at their posts while strike pickets romped all over company property, bearing U. S. flags, singing, jeering the guards. One picket was shot dead by irate deputy sheriffs, three others were severely wounded, two dozen others slightly injured. Scores of boisterous strikers were arrested for dis orders. And still the strike spread. General Johnson headed into the vicinity of this disturbance last week when he went to Harrisburg to deliver an NRA "pep" speech. Taking Pennsylvania's labor troubles and the stiff-necked anti- union attitude of mine owners as his text, he cried: "I don't see why blood should flow and men refuse to talk to one another when the whole world is trying to get to gether. You can't get together with a man by throwing stones at him. I'd talk to the Devil himself if I thought there was a chance of making hell cooler. These few fierce local troubles will seem to the rest of the country like some one blowing a fire siren in the midst of a symphony concert!" After his speech General Johnson was invited to take the coal strike into his busy hands, try to settle it before it swept out of the State into the Midwest fields. He agreed. Buttonholing Governor Pinchot he flew him back to Washington, called in burly, black-browed President John Llewellyn Lewis of United Mine Workers, summoned by air from Pittsburgh rotund President Thomas Moses of Frick Coke. Then began a round of day & night meetings in General Johnson's office.

When Mr. Moses reached Washington he would not even put his legs under the same table with United Miner Lewis. A bulky, rugged individual, Operator Moses began life as a $1.75-per-day mule skinner in an Illinois mine, joined the union, worked up out of the pit to head U. S. Steel's principal coal holdings and gave up his union card. He stalked into NRA headquarters, was kept waiting five minutes, indignantly stalked out again. From his hotel he wrote General Johnson a scorching letter denouncing the Government's attempt to meddle in his coal business. The General angrily tore it into bits, blackened the air with oaths. But Operator Moses was not a free agent in the negotiations, for his real boss was William Archibald Irvin (pronounced Irwin), president of U. S. Steel Corp. Sitting in his Manhattan office at No. 71 Broadway, President Irvin, another up-from-the-ranks employer, dictated Frick Coke's labor policy. Most of last week he conducted a long-distance duel with General Johnson over the telephone.

Principal mediators with General Johnson were Standard Oil's Walter Teagle and General Electric's Gerard Swope. Mr. Teagle called up Andrew William Mellon, persuaded that old gentleman to bring his Pittsburgh Coal Co. into line. When Charles P. O'Neill, head of the local operators' association, acidly remarked that the United Mine Workers were, after all, responsible for the strike, Miner Lewis hotly retorted: "Oh yeah? You organized company unions and then they turned on you." At one point the outlook was so dark General Johnson was moved to exclaim: "I stuck my nose into something that was none of my business and I got what was coming to me."

But General Johnson has a successful way of making other people's business his. An armistice was finally drawn up and signed by operators and union leaders. But in their versions Messrs. Irvin & Moses had succeeded in knocking out all reference to United Mine Workers. Its terms: 1) all strikers were to return to work without prejudice; 2) they were to have their own checker at the tipple scales (a union victory); 3) their demands were to be arbitrated by a board composed of Mr. Swope, Louis Kirstein (NRA Industrial Advisory Board member and manager of Boston's Filene's department store) and President George L. Berry of the Printing Pressmen's Union. Hearings on a code for the coal industry were set for Aug. 9 when the union v. non-union issue would be fought out all over again.

After General Johnson's arrival in Hyde Park to have the truce approved, President Roosevelt declared: "A great coal strike threatened the revival of manufacturing. . . . Never before has a strike of such threatened proportions been settled so quickly and so generously."

But the strike had not been settled. Fayette County miners, suspicious of the truce, refused to return to work at once. Over the weekend Leader Lewis worked frantically to regain control of his men, implored them to honor his signature on the armistice terms. Animosity was directed principally against the Frick mines whose reopening, under threat of renewed picketing and warfare, had to be post-poned one day. The Fayette County sheriff talked of appealing for U. S. troops to maintain peace. To prevent a recurrence of the Pennsylvania coal troubles elsewhere NRA appealed to the country for a moratorium on strikes and lockouts. Approving this, too, the President declared it was "on a par with Samuel Gompers' memorable War-time demand to preserve the status quo." Appointed by him to adjust NRA labor troubles was one more board chairmanned by New York's Senator Wagner. Labor's Windfall. Despite the President's declarations, the all-important issue of unionization behind the coal strike and many a lesser strike in other lines throughout the land had only been postponed. That issue grows directly out of the National Recovery Act where, written into law, is Labor's right to organize and bargain collectively. How it is to exercise this privilege is one of the toughest questions put up to General Johnson. The great "open shop" manufacturers of steel, rubber and automobiles have their answer: company unions. The American Federation of Labor has its answer: national unions. Therein still lies the biggest germ of dissension in the whole NRA program. For the A. F. of L. the National Recovery Act was a windfall second only to the World War. In 1916 U. S. organized labor had about 2,800,000 members. By 1920 it had more than 5,000,000. This gain was not due to improved conditions inside trade unionism but to favorable outside factors, including a limitation on immigration, the absence of millions of regular workers with the A. E. F., a Democratic administration at Washington that pampered Labor as a means of keeping up Wartime production. After 1920 the A. F. of L. began to coast downhill. In boom times workers felt they did not need to belong to a local to get a job. With Depression they discovered that even their union could not provide them with work at a good wage. By 1932 U. S. trade union strength was back at its pre-War level and the prestige and power of the A. F. of L. severely deflated. Air-tight organization was maintained in only four fields--transportation (the "Big Four" railroad brotherhoods, outside the A. F. of L.), building trades, printing and the theatre. The rest of U. S. industry was pretty much wide-open shop. Plant Unions. The National Recovery Act, with its collective bargaining pledge, sent the A. F. of L. rushing headlong into open-shop industries to organize its own unions before employers could corral workers into company unions. Under the law either type of union is legitimate so long as it is the one workers want. A. F. of L. organizers hurried from plant to plant, harangued prospective members, offered to reduce or waive initiation fees if they would only sign up. In some cases they even misled workers by telling them they had to join national unions to get NRA benefits. In the South they claimed 150,000 enrollments in 30 days.

The A. F. of L. is not a union itself but an aggregation of international unions organized by crafts. But the craft union idea was abruptly set aside in this new organizing rush and in its place was substituted the Federal plant union chartered directly by A. F. of L. Thus, instead of dividing the workers of a steel plant or an automobile factory up among half a dozen international unions, they were all organized into one group regardless of their different trades. Such plant unions were responsible only to the A. F. of L. which promised to represent them in Washington. In set-up and practice they were almost a direct counterpart of the company union, thus cutting the ground from under the employer who complained of outside interference or dictation in his business. By last week more than 50 plant unions had been chartered for steel, rubber and automobile workers. Prime driving force behind this activity was chunky, sandy-haired William Green, A. F. of L. president. He is not an exciting, inspiring figure. His words blow no trumpets. He is about as conservative as a labor leader can be. Yet he, more than any other man, secured "Labor's rights" in the Recovery Act and foresaw the New Deal's opportunity for advancing trade unionism from its dead low level. Presi dent Green is a plugger and only by plug ging can U. S. Labor be organized. Almost shouldered out of the New Deal picture has been A. F. of L.'s dressy, slick- haired vice president, Matthew Woll. a rampant Republican. At headquarters his colleagues call him a "publicity hog" be cause he will talk anywhere on anything. His principal aversion is Soviet Russia. Biggest and most potent personality in the A. F. of L. at the moment is United Mine Worker Lewis. In the 1922 coal strike he was at the pinnacle of his power when he got operators to sign the famed Jacksonville wage agreement. That expired in 1927. Lewis could not get it renewed. His soft coal organization melted away. The Recovery Act gave him his chance to recover lost ground. Today he claims that 90% of the soft coal miners are again organized. Leader Lewis will not consider the Pennsylvania strike settled until mine operators are ready to do business with his union.

Some of organized labor's smartest heads have been lent to NRA to get its program rolling. Chief among these are: A. F. of L.'s John Frey (metal trades), now a NRA Labor Advisory Board member; Sidney Hillman (Amalgamated Clothing Workers) who serves in the same capacity; Edward F. McGrady, A. F. of L.'s tall, dark, smooth national lobbyist, now General Johnson's deputy administrator for Labor; and Donald Richberg, counsel for the railroad brotherhoods, now NRA's $12,000-per-year attorney who last week told the U. S. that it was in the midst of its greatest revolution. And though she holds no union card, Labor has no better friend in the Administration than its Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins (Wilson).

It is no accident that the resurgence of Labor coincides with the presence in the Cabinet of its first woman, and she in the Labor Department. In Madam Secretary Perkins is concentrated all the philosophy of the New Deal and most of its instinctive sympathy for the working man. Early & late she has served as his able, articulate spokesman around the Cabinet table, before Congressional committees, at NRA hearings, on the stump. For the first time in years the working man may feel that there is a trained mind functioning for him in Washington. Gone are the easy platitudes of the politician; Miss Perkins speaks the idiom of the advanced welfare worker, the scientific sociologist.

By political tradition the Labor portfolio since its creation in 1913 has gone to union men. President Wilson first appointed Pennsylvania's fat, florid William Bauchop Wilson, an oldtime walking delegate. President Harding put in Pennsylvania's stubby, back-slapping James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis who retained his card as an organized steel worker and spent much public time promoting the Loyal Order of Moose. President Hoover picked William Nuckles Doak, a heavy-handed member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.

When President Roosevelt selected not only a woman but one without any labor affiliations for the bottom place in his Cabinet, the A. F. of L. squawked a loud protest. Declared Mr. Green: "The Secretary of Labor should be representative of labor, one who understands labor, labor's problems, labor's psychology, collective bargaining, industrial relations. . . . Labor can never become reconciled to the selection made."

By last week Labor was not only reconciled to but jubilant over Miss Perkins. She had clearly showed her stripe when she stood up for mill workers at the steel code hearing before NRA (TIME, Aug. 7). That hearing was to have been the first important test of the union v. non-union issue. Madam Secretary Perkins had gone in person to the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Baltimore to talk with employes. She returned to Washington prepared to make vigorous war on the steel industry's proposed company unions--''War bridegrooms" she called them, harking back to the able-bodied citizens who got married to escape the draft. Before the hearings opened the steelmasters, confronted by Madam Secretary Perkins and General Johnson, backed down on the company union provisions of their code, thus permitting the dispute to shift to the coal fields where they hoped to fight it out obliquely. Though her major target thus disappeared, Madam Secretary Perkins had many another serious fault to find with the steel code. She flayed its low pay and long hours so effectively that the steel code was sent back into conference for revisions. Fagged by her efforts and Washington's heat, Miss Perkins dropped out of public sight for a week to catch her breath at Newcastle, Maine. She planned to address the state Federation of Labor at Springfield this week before returning to her Washington office. Madam Secretary Perkins' office is on the seventh floor of the ugly Labor Department building, sandwiched in between a garage and a cheap rooming house. It is a large bare room with north light. Madam Secretary Perkins uses a big flat-topped desk, piled with papers and equipped with two telephones. She arrives at 9 o'clock, eats lunch from a tray, goes out for dinner at 7, returns to work until midnight. Her long hours cost her the services of her first government chauffeur. She usually wears her hat in the office. Her secretary is an efficient, rather bossy person named Frances Jurkowitz--"Miss Jay" to all--one of whose first duties is to ensure her superior as much privacy as possible. Madam Secretary used to serve ginger ale out of her own pocket at press conferences but stopped it when someone remarked that the Government paid for the paper cups. She uses no powder, no rouge, no perfume, dresses mostly in severe blacks and dark browns. Her eyes are dark and brilliant. She has shapely white hands that flutter expressively as she talks. She uses the broad Bostonian "A," never gropes for words. In five months Madam Secretary Perkins has started an elaborate investigation by distinguished citizens to improve the Immigration Bureau; organized the new Federal Employment Service; launched a thoroughgoing survey of the shirt industry to weed out sweatshops; jacked up the Labor Statistics Bureau by appointing able Isador Lubin of Brookings Institute as its chief; secured the services of Charles Wyzanski Jr., onetime editor of the Harvard Law Review, as her solicitor. By her non-political appointments she has done much to raise the tone of her department from the low level to which it had dropped under her immediate predecessor. Miss Perkins' whole career has been a training for her Cabinet job. She was born in Boston 51 years ago. She was graduated from Mt. Holyoke College in 1902. She worked under Jane Addams at Hull House. In 1911 she witnessed Manhattan's Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire which burned 146 trapped girls to a crisp. That spectacle sent her to Albany to work for better factory laws. There she met "Frank" Roosevelt, "Bob" Wagner, "Al" Smith. They were friends of her reforms. Governor Smith gave her her first job in the State Labor Department. Governor Roosevelt made her the Labor member of his State Cabinet, took her to Washington March 4 as the ''best qualified woman in public life today."

Madam Secretary Perkins' ideology is simple: more pay, more comfort, more security, more peace of mind for the ordinary worker. What is a fair wage? Enough to permit a worker to call a doctor when his baby is sick without going on half rations for a month after. Unemployment insurance? "Many corporations dipped into their surpluses and reserves during the last few years to meet their dividend payments. Would it not be equally wise and just to make some of these reserves available for meeting payments in lieu of wages for employes who must be laid off from time to time?" Consuming power? "If we see the wage which goes to the investor is less because the wage which goes to the worker has got to be greater I think you'll hear all over this country 'aye' from people who will be glad to make the sacrifice." Madam Secretary Perkins sums up her philosophy thus: "It's time to treat ourselves to some civilization."

Miss Perkins tries to keep her private life strictly private. In 1913 she married Paul C. Wilson, then secretary to New York's Mayor Mitchel, now a statistician and efficiency engineer. No Lucy Stoner, she kept her maiden name in public so as not to interfere with her husband's activities. Her mother always introduces her socially as Mrs. Wilson. She has a 16-year-old daughter, Susanna Winslow Perkins Wilson. At NRA hearings Daughter Susanna was flustered by being constantly addressed as Miss Perkins. In Manhattan the Wilsons live on the fourth floor of the old fashioned red-brick apartment house at No. 1239 Madison Avenue (89th Street), keep their telephone number there secret. In Washington, Madam Secretary Perkins first lived with Mrs. Charles Gary Rumsey at No. 3304 O Street. When the Press discovered her residence she moved. Now it is reported that she makes her home at "Uplands." the Georgetown estate of Mrs. J. Borden (''Daisy") Harriman. She dabbles in water colors, likes modern art, despises the radio. Says she: "We New Englanders like to keep ourselves to ourselves."

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