Trouble to Be Shot

(See front cover)

Every important act of man tends to upset the balance of nature. Last week along 1,300 miles of Pacific littoral, from far south of Point Conception to far north of Cape Disappointment, clouds of seagulls flapped anxiously over the waves, ranging out beyond their normal habitats to look in vain for ship-strewn garbage. Because Pacific coast shipowners and the maritime labor unions were fighting, the seagulls were going hungry. It had been this way for two weeks and last week's end brought no improvement.

The gulls' plight was certainly not the fault of Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward Francis McGrady. All week he labored to bring the striking seamen to terms with their employers. He got no results, but there was peace along the Pacific waterfronts because the strikers, anxious to prevent any excuse for armed intervention, had their own patrols keeping order and rounding up drunks. There was peace also because the Attorney General's office in Washington found legal reasons to excuse the U. S. Marshal in Los Angeles for ignoring a court order to unload some 4,000 stems of bananas odorously rotting in the hold of S. S. California.

San Francisco's Mayor Angelo Rossi took the opportunity offered by settlement of an incidental warehousemen's strike to thank Mr. McGrady "on behalf of the people of San Francisco," for his "successful" efforts. But every one knew that this was sheer politeness. The Assistant Secretary had by turns persuaded and pounded tables, until local labor leaders called him Edward Ferocious McGrady. But on the main issue, whether the unions should continue to control the hiring halls (supplying any men they see fit to operators who need seamen or longshoremen), neither side gave any concession He did, however, win a promise that both sides would sit down together and begin negotiations this week.

The false peace which glossed over this bitter and unsettled maritime issue was typical of the situation on the entire main front of organized U. S. Labor. By last week it was clear that the Election, which temporarily obscured Labor's aims and aspirations, was only the starting gun for a Labor march up the avenue opened by the New Deal.

New Leaders & Old. In the midst of the seamen's strike, nobody concerned knew the whereabouts of Andrew Furuseth, president of the International Seamen's Union and for some 40 years the traditional leader of seagoing labor. The 82-year-oldster was said to have been in a sanatorium last May, but no one knew whether he was alive or dead and no one cared. His union was being run by his well-entrenched successors, old leaders who have no practical authority on the Pacific Coast and who flatly oppose the strike on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. The new leaders, Harry Renton Bridges in the West and Joseph Curran in the East were fighting their own battles on their own lines, aided by alliances with longshoremen and other maritime workers with whom Andy Furuseth never stooped to parley.

As between New Leaders Bridges & Curran and Old Leader Furuseth, so between old and new leaders in Labor's National organization was the issue drawn. But for the emergency in San Francisco, Mr. McGrady would have been flying 2,500 miles across country to Tampa, Fla. to act as peacemaker in Labor's biggest internal struggle of the generation. At Tampa this week the A. F. of L. holds its annual convention, and the old leaders, heirs of the late Samuel Gompers, headed by President William Green, were preparing finally to expel the insurgent new "industrial" unions headed by John L. Lewis and a corps of aggressive young associates. Since the Federation's Executive Council suspended ten unions of the Committee for Industrial Organization (TIME, Sept. 14 et ante), that momentous move had been hanging fire.

The chief C. I. O. unions boycotted the Tampa meeting and as William Green was about to depart from Washington, Mr. Lewis gave him a parting kick in the pants. He summoned him as a member of the United Mine Workers to answer charges in Washington this week of 1) conspiring to oust the U. M. W. from the A. F. of L.; 2) failure to conform to the official policies of U. M. W.; 3) fraternizing with avowed enemies of U. M. W.; 4) misrepresenting the objectives of U. M. W.

In theory this might result in Mr. Green's losing the presidency of the A. F. of L., for a man must hold a union membership card to be an officer. In practice it was little more than an insult, for it would be several months before Mr. Green could be tried and finally ousted by his original union in Coshocton, Ohio. Meanwhile, he has ample opportunity to join another A. F. of L. union, in fact is already an honorary member of the musicians' union.*

After this indignity to Leader Green, the craft union leaders assembled in Tampa in no conciliatory mood. The Metal Trades Department held their session ahead of the regular A. F. of L. meeting and their president, scholarly John P. Frey who presented the original charges against the C. I. O. unions, denounced the Lewis bloc for affording Communists a foothold in U. S. labor organizations. At the last minute, since Mr. McGrady could not be present, George L. Berry, president of the Printing Pressmen's Union and Federal Coordinator for Industrial Co-operation (NRA plan-maker), rushed to Tampa as the Government's umpire.

Diplomat McGrady. Out of all this will come only one sure thing: work for Ed McGrady. He has always been the New Deal's labor trouble shooter. Taken from his job as chief lobbyist of the A. F. of L., he was made General Hugh Johnson's labor-aide on NRA, soon after Assistant Secretary of Labor, began his travels from strike to strike. In 1933 he went to Uniontown, Pa. where striking United Mine Workers were meeting. In one speech he persuaded them to accept a truce and go back to work. In 1934 he spent six months on the Pacific Coast with the shipping strike. Same year he was occupied with the A. & P. strike; in 1935 with the Chevrolet strike (Toledo), the Edison strike (Toledo), the Industrial Rayon strike (Cleveland), soft coal strike negotiations, the longshoremen's strike (New Orleans). In 1936 he has been busy with the rubber strike (Akron), building service strike (Manhattan), anthracite negotiations, gas strike (Toledo), shipping strike (San Francisco). In three years he has spent less than a quarter of his time in his air-cooled Washington office, has flown an estimated 145,000 miles to stir the New Deal's peace porridge wherever labor troubles brewed. Today, with labor troubles brewing harder than ever, his peace porridge is getting hotter.

The burden falls on him because Madam Secretary Perkins is, in the eyes of Labor, an outsider. If she should retire, her job might be given to one of Franklin Roosevelt's liberal friends, such as Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City, or it might be given to Ed McGrady.

For McGrady, slim, dapper and energetic, Jersey City-born and South Boston-bred, has had a long career on the inside of both labor and politics. Although he looks like a man in his forties, he was already 22 years old when he got a job as a pressman on the Boston Herald 42 years ago. A good backslapper and able talker, he rose to head the local union, was spotted by George L. Berry, president of the International Printing Pressmen's Union, who picked him as an organizer. Berry, who belongs to the school of polished labor leaders, insisted that his organizers dress well and stop at the best hotels. Ed McGrady learned his lesson and today, elegant, with a good cigar in his mouth and the double-breasted manner of a gentleman of substance, he strides into strike conferences as Adolphe Menjou might, enter a ballroom.

His political career also began early, as a member of Boston's Common Council and of the Massachusetts Legislature. After the War, Samuel Gompers called him to Washington to mix labor and politics as a lobbyist for the A. F. of L. He proved an expert at it, affable, friendly, fair, efficient. He systematically canvassed every member of Congress, treated them to persuasion but not to parties, being himself a teetotaler, having joined in youth the St. Peter & St. Paul Total Abstinence Society.

Besides lobbying through the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Bill and preventing the confirmation of Judge John J. Parker, Herbert Hoover's nominee for the Supreme Court, McGrady enhanced his reputation by going in 1929 to Elizabethton, Tenn. to investigate for the A. F. of L. a strike of rayon workers, who were working 56 hours a week at 16-c- to 18-c- an hour. At 2 a. m. one morning a mob of truculent citizens routed him out of his hotel room and, with pistols in his ribs, drove him to Bristol, Va. By 8 a. m. he had hired a car, started back to Elizabethton where he and the union committee, with their wives and children, settled down in a shack opposite the sheriff's office and lived there for three weeks, standing guard by turns with rifles.

When the New Deal came into office his friends boosted him for the job of Secretary of Labor, even addressed him as "Mr. Secretary." But Franklin Roosevelt insisted on Miss Perkins, whom the A. F. of L. opposed. Jim Farley asked Miss Perkins to take Mr. McGrady as Assistant Secretary, but she declined. So he was made Deputy NRAdministrator in charge of Labor. His frank, outspoken manner, which makes him popular with newshawks, endeared him to General Hugh Johnson who is one of his stanchest admirers.*

Immediately after he spectacularly settled the coal strike of 1933, Madam Secretary Perkins met Postmaster General Farley at a Cabinet meeting and said, "I was mistaken about that Mr. McGrady," and he promptly became her aide. In Washington he lives quietly with one of his married daughters. His two sons are dead and his wife, a large Irishwoman, lives mostly in Boston with another married daughter. In private life he is an unusually pious Catholic, carries a rosary, also a crucifix blessed for a Happy Death, and on which, if ill or unable to get to church, he may gain a plenary indulgence by saying the Stations of the Cross, reciting 14 Our-Fathers, Hail-Marys, Glorias and praying for the intention of the Holy Father.

For his ability in handling men, several corporations are supposed to have made him handsome offers to become personnel director, but he insists: "I will work for Frank Roosevelt in any capacity he wants me to, from office boy up, as long as he wants me to."

Porridge Cooking. If the A. F. of L. chooses a middle course at Tampa and fails to expel outright the industrial unions there will still be two conflicting labor sects, still a breach between the old and new leaders of labor.

"Welcome A. F. of L." said the posters which were ordered for display in Tampa this week, and underneath they were supposed to bear the seal of the Federation, two clasped hands. But when the posters were distributed a square of white paper was pasted over the seal. Those who peered closely at the paper could discern through it the outlines of some jokester's prank. The posters had been printed not with two clasped hands but with two clenched fists shaking at each other.

One of those fists was symbolic of the angry old leaders who were drawing up resolutions in Tampa. The other was symbolic of a different kind of fist-shaking undertaken by the C. I. O. leaders in Washington. There John L. Lewis had around him some of the shrewdest of Labor's brains. Among them is Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. Among them also is David Dubinsky, whose enthusiasm for the C. I. O. fist is dampened somewhat by the fact that it is popularly identified more with the arm of Lewis than that of Dubinsky. But no internal difference of the C. I. O. hampers their concerted action on practical points. Their drive to organize Steel is estimated to have added already some 100,000 new members to their steel union.

In the Great Lakes district they claim 84,000 members, new and old, among 200,000 steel workers. While steel firms were combatting their organization drive by granting wage increases, C. I. O. won an unexpected victory when one of their supporters, Elmer J. Maloy of Duquesne, Pa. was elected head of a company union council of Carnegie-Illinois Corp., big subsidiary of U. S. Steel.

As in Steel, so in Motors is C. I. O. pressing its unionization drive. While Philip Murray, Secretary & Treasurer of United Mine Workers, was speaking last week for the union at motor plants near Detroit, the Chrysler, General Motors and Packard companies all gave wage boosts or bonuses to their workers.

Topping these C. I. O. activities, John L. Lewis continued on his way to an ultimate aim beyond unionism, the creation of a Labor Party. Last week in Washington he, Sidney Hillman and Major George L. Berry held a council of war about the future of their Labor's Non-Partisan League which this year supported Roosevelt, which in 1940 hopes to go its own way. In the back of many a Labor man's head is the perfectly serious question whether John L. Lewis may not some day be President of the U. S.

Not to stand in the path of Mr. Lewis, but to put out the incidental conflagrations on his route is Ed McGrady's job. For the ship strike, his present chore, would be a trifle compared to a major tie-up of Motors or Steel. In the struggle between the old and new leaders of Labor, the ultimate measures of success will be which can recruit the greatest number of supporters. Organizing new unions nearly always breeds serious strikes. Furthermore strikes are themselves the best means of recruiting union members. Ultimately, if the struggle goes on, jurisdictional strikes, apt to be the most obstinately incurable of all, must occur between industrial and craft unions. Then the man in Ed McGrady's shoes will be the most important U. S. umpire there is.

*John L. Lewis is supposed to have jested: "Why shouldn't he belong to the musicians' union? Didn't Nero fiddle while Rome burned?"

*Month ago, when McGrady sat on the platform to dress up a meeting of the Good Neighbor League at which Madam Perkins spoke, General Johnson columnized: "He is a man. He belongs among men and not as a starched and sweating Exhibit X in a boiled shirt in any Stanley High Ladies' night."

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