Miners Meet

When he was a youngster bumming around the coal fields of the West a generation ago, big, red-headed John Llewellyn Lewis once had the job of driving a mine mule named Spanish Pete. Pete was a mankiller. Rounding a tunnel curve one day, the creature slewed around, reared, raised its hoofs, prepared to bash Lewis against the mine wall. Young John had just enough time to spike Pete between the eyes with the point of the sprag of his coal car. To avoid imminent fine and dismissal, the young mine worker rubbed clay over the prostrate Pete's fatal wound, explained to the foreman that the animal had just dropped dead of natural causes.

Of their formidable president, United Mine Workers of America like to tell this tale as an illustration not only of his strength and courage but of his resource and guile. Last week, for the first time since they moved their headquarters from Indianapolis, 1,716 U. M. W. leaders met in Washington for their biennial convention. There was more money ($2,298,000) in the treasury, more members (540,000) on the rolls than ever before in the union's 46 years. But what made the miners' convention really significant was that the doughty conqueror of Spanish Pete would, if he could, change the course of the entire U. S. Labor Movement.

John Lewis is an industrial unionist. Any worker in the coal industry can find a place in his United Mine Workers. For a greater labor movement and a more united front, John Lewis wants to see 40,000,000 U. S. workers organized in industrial unions like his and amalgamated into something like the American Federation of Labor. MINER LEWIS, HIS HOUSE & OFFICE--He takes his unionism vertically. Less than 15% of the workers in U. S. industry now belong to the A. F. of L., whose total membership is short of 3,500,000. Fundamentally it is an association of craft unions dominated by skilled workers. These fear that their pay differential would decrease if they had to do their wage bargaining along with unskilled workers. Having fought the A. F. of L. Executive Council for two years from within, Miner Lewis lately quit to fight it from without (TIME, Dec. 2). Head of the biggest single A. F. of L. union, he rounded up seven other A. F. of L. unions into a Committee For Industrial Organization. Purpose: to spread industrial unionism. Last month the A. F. of L. Executive Council, sitting at Miami, ordered the Lewis committee dissolved. The answer to this order came last week when the miners met in Washington. Raising his beefy bulk above the assembled delegates in Constitution Hall, President Lewis put the case bluntly: "All the members of the Executive Council will be wearing asbestos suits in hell," before he is willing to knuckle under. But: "There is only one place in the United States from which I take my orders, and that is the convention of the United Mine Workers." He warned the U. M. W. that membership in the Committee For Industrial Organization would provoke continued hostility from the craft-union front. "Are you willing to assume that responsibility?" asked John Lewis.

"YES!" roared the delegates.

Thereupon John Lewis settled back to let others do some talking while he cast an eye over the faces before him.** They were faces to be reckoned with, these top sergeants of a force fundamentally dedicated to class warfare. Plenty of them had been under fire. There was chunky Bill Blizzard, a delegate from West Virginia who took part in the famed Mingo March of 1921 which brought out the U. S. Army and ended in a treason trial in the same Charles Town, W. Va. courthouse where John Brown was found guilty. There was Powers Hapgood from Illinois, nephew of oldtime liberal Editor Norman Hapgood. He had worked his way around the world in coal mines, had been fired on for distributing handbills in Pennsylvania. In a thoroughly rebellious spirit such delegates as these introduced hundreds of resolutions favoring President Lewis' stand for industrial unionism, voted approval of a radio campaign to spread their leader's views, authorized their executive board to withhold U. M. W.'s $48,000 annual tax to the A. F. of L. Some delegates were also of a mind to chuck A. F. of L.'s President William Green, who got his cheek slit in a coal mine, out of the small office he holds in the U. M. W. It therefore took considerable courage for Miner Green to march into the convention and plead that "experience has taught us that both plans [of union organization] can be included" in the Federation. But William Green's words fell on hostile ears. At one point he was booed so relentlessly that John Lewis had to heave himself up and wave for silence. "What delegates wish to change their votes after the address of the President of the American Federation of Labor?" cried Miner Lewis. Silence. "What delegates wish to renew their decision?" The cheering delegates rose to a man.

This rousing mandate opened a new destiny for John Lewis. Thus solidly backed by his own men, he was sure to make a desperate fight for industrial unionism on the floor of the Federation's Tampa convention this autumn. If he wins, John Lewis will be a figure to be reckoned with in U. S. Industry. If he loses, he is likely to pull his eight allied unions out of the A. F. of L., historically rend U. S. Labor.

Other conventionalities: The delegates did not pass a resolution . which proposed "that we seek legislation to do away with the Supreme Court, for unjust decisions," but they did pass one urging legislation to banish "fear of Constitutional inhibitions on the part of Federal courts."

Every Labor convention must have at least one good, healthy snarl at Capitalism. "Do you . . . stand with the President of the United States?" asked Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward Francis McGrady. Up went a mighty affirmative roar. "Let that," declared New Dealer McGrady, "be the answer to the money bags of Wall Street!"

The miners voted to "go forward with Roosevelt, fighting under his banner for re-election." As "evidence of our sincerity of purpose," they authorized the executive board to dip into the general war chest "in support of this program."

To the rafters they applauded social-minded Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Josephine Roche, great friend of Labor, first Colorado mine owner to bargain with U. M. W., who declared: "To stigmatize the battle to bring security to our people ... is nothing less than a travesty on justice. . . . 'O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!' "

Pennsylvania's Senator Joseph Guffey made his money in oil, is making his political reputation in coal. To the miners he cried that if the little NRA for the soft coal industry, set up under the Guffey Bill, is declared unconstitutional, "I promise you that so far as I am concerned, the battle will continue. ... I am in this fight to a finish!'' Thereupon the miners rushed up and wrung "Joe"' Guffey's hand so vigorously that he had to nurse it for the rest of the day.

*The genuine Colonial house is in Alexandria, Va. The moderne office is at U. M. W. headquarters on the seventh floor of Washington's Tower Building.

**Another whose eyes explored the sea of miners' faces was Detective John Apostolides, famed Communist-spotter of the District of Columbia police.

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