Strikers & Settlers

"To hell with the operators! We're not going back to work until we get our rights! To hell with 'em!"

Such was the greeting Edward Francis McGrady, NRA deputy administrator for labor, got one morning last week as a car whizzed him down Uniontown, Pa.'s Main Street to Fraternal Hall between noisy ranks of striking coal miners. He had just flown in from Washington as President Roosevelt's personal emissary in an attempt to persuade balky United Mine Workers to live up to the strike truce their national leaders had signed (TIME, Aug. 14). At Fraternal Hall Mr. McGrady, his mouth set in a straight hard line, shouldered his way inside to face 128 local union leaders. Doors slammed. Locks clicked. Outside thousands of strikers waited and listened.

As the American Federation of Labor's longtime lobbyist, Mr. McGrady knew how t o handle Congressional committees and "white collar" crowds. But this crew inside the hall was different. They had in effect repudiated John L. Lewis, their national president. They were angry and suspicious. "To hell with 'em!" was their attitude toward the mine operators. In their midst sat their real strike leader, a magnetic Irishman named Martin Ryan. Straight at him Mr. McGrady directed his harangue, brandished the magic name of Franklin D. Roosevelt: "I'm here acting for the President of the United States and asking you to go back to work. You want to see the truce? Well, here it is all signed, in black and white (flourishing papers). Men, you stand to lose nothing by your agreement. You stand to lose everything by rejecting it. In the past maybe agreements were not carried out. But, by God, this agreement will be. ... I pledge you that any grievances that may arise will be handled promptly. . . . Now can I go back to President Roosevelt and tell him you're supporting him 100%?"

A mighty cheer was his answer. The local leaders trooped out to their men, ordered the last 12,000 of them back to work on the morrow. Picket lines melted away. Governor Pinchot recalled his guardsmen from the coal fields. NRA was safely over its biggest hurdle to date.

Weighmen. But mining had scarcely been resumed in Fayette County before new truce troubles bobbed up to plague the industry. A prime item in the armistice allowed miners to select and pay their own weighmen to check the company's weighmen at the tipple scales. United Mine Wrorkers promptly proceeded to elect their own members as check weighmen. These the mine superintendents of the non-union Frick and Pittsburgh companies refused to recognize, on the ground that their non-union employes were unrepresented. Thus a new deadlock was created and NRA's special coal arbitration board headed by General Electric's Gerard Swope had its first "grievance" to straighten out. After hearing both sides the board ordered that: 1) election notices were to be posted two days in advance at each mine; 2) the election was to be held at the mine entrance; 3) any miner willing to help pay the check weighmen could vote; 4) the mine superintendent was to recognize the winner of such elections.

Coal Codes. NRA hearings were held in Washington last week on 27 different codes for the bituminous industry. Non-union mine operators from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, who supply 50% of U. S. soft coal, stoutly backed a $4-per-day trade agreement which virtually outlawed United Mine Workers from collective bargaining Operators of union mines in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Colorado with about 25% of the country's soft coal production favored a $5-per-day code presented by United Mine Workers. Alabama mine owners took the most reactionary position by refusing to go in under any general code, reserving the right to pay their men their present wages and keep them out of any kind of labor organization. United Mine Workers' President John Llewellyn Lewis ringingly offered a union code. He argued his organization was the only stabilizing influence in an industry ruled by "the law of the jungle," that tycoons, "in spite of fluent lip service to the principles of the National Recovery Act," were taking a "narrow and indefensible attitude" toward its execution. Important mine operators who supported his code included Cleveland's Frank E. Taplin (North American Coal Corp.), Chicago's George Bates Harrington (Chicago, Wilmington & Franklin Coal) and Omaha's Eugene McAuliffe (Union Pacific Coal Co.). After four days of red-hot controversy on the unionization issue, all coal codes were shunted back into conference where NRA deputies would hammer out some sort of agreement among 27 snarling factions. Unless the non-union coal operators voluntarily withdrew their restrictions on collective bargaining, as the steelmasters had already done, General Johnson was ready to kick the company union clause out of their code. Said he: "They'll meet with the devil himself if their workers select him to act for them!"

Another Baruch Man. Leaving pacification of the coal industry to General Johnson and his codemakers, President Roosevelt's new National Labor Board got off to a good start last week as a strike- settler in other troubled fields. Without waiting for New York's Senator Wagner, the regular chairman, to return from a European vacation, Dr. Leo Wolman of NRA's Labor Advisory Board took temporary command. Baltimore-born 43 years ago, this liberal economist has lately shot up to a position of major importance at NRA headquarters. He got his education at Johns Hopkins (A. B. 1911; Ph. D. 1914), taught at Hobart, Harvard and Michigan before settling down in his present professorial post at Columbia. Like General Johnson, he served during the War with Bernard Baruch's War Industries Board, as chief production statistician. He was later taken to the Paris Peace Conference with President Wilson. He can play the NRA game on his home grounds, since his special field of activity has long been U. S. labor unions and their ailments. Instinctively sympathetic to unionism, he did much valuable research for Sidney Hillman's Amalgamated Clothing Workers. As long ago as 1931 Dr. Wolman was raising a lonely voice in behalf of just such a Federal set-up as NRA to control production and prices. Last week he bustled about his NRA office, dictating to three stenographers at once, puffing a ubiquitous pipe--a happy man.

Hose Peace. Dr. Wolman's Labor Board first tackled the eight-week-old hosiery strike which has tied up 33 mills at Reading, Pa., kept 14.000 workers idle (TIME, July 31). The issue was recognition of the American Foundation of Full Fashioned Hosiery Workers by the non-union mill owners. Dr. Wolman summoned to Washington Hugo Hemmerich of the Berkshire Mills and friends, Emil Rieve of the union and friends, put one group in one room, one group in another, shuttled pacifically between them. Four hours later Dr. Wolman was able to announce that the Reading strike was off, that the mills would reopen this week. Terms of settlement: 1) all strikers are to be re-employed without prejudice; 2) one week later employes will secretly vote for representatives to negotiate with employers, the election presumably deciding the union-non-union issue; 3) if operators and representatives deadlock, the National Labor Board will render a final decision on both parties. Encouraged, Dr. Wolman & colleagues moved on to try their hand at a shirt strike in Pottsville, Pa.

Police. The American Federation of Labor virtually surrendered its moral right to strike last week when President William Green announced that his organization would undertake the job of policing the NRA program through local unions. Thus each man with a union card became a government eye to spot violations by employers, report them to General Johnson. In the New York area, heart of the NRA drive, Matthew Woll, dressy, vociferous A. F. of L. vice president, became policeman-in-chief.

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