Confusion Confounded

Into the Moose Temple at Detroit one day last week surged some 350 strangely assorted visitors. Conspicuous on many a lapel was the button-of-the-week:

"UAW CIO"

"I'm for Homer Martin"

The wearers of this puckish slogan were delegates to the convention called by

Homer Martin to reorganize and purify the United Automobile Workers of America. Inasmuch as Mr. Martin had publicly quit C. I. O. (TIME, Jan. 30), and all delegates to his convention had just been read out of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the buttons had a touch of whimsey.

Homer Martin refused to regard it as such. He proposed somehow to detach C. I. 0. from John Llewellyn Lewis and denounce the man without denouncing the body. He cried:

"There has been a deliberate and diabolical scheming . . . for making our union subservient to . . . a partnership between the dictatorship of John L. Lewis and the Communist dictatorship of the proletariat. We must win the rank and file of honest membership. . . ."

Whatever effect this had on the honest membership, it achieved a Labor paradox. A so-called C. I. O. audience booed & hissed every mention of the name of John Lewis.

Thus disorganization was crowned with confusion. Having kicked out U. A. W.'s five vice presidents and all but nine of its 24 executive board members, Mr. Martin had just been deserted by five more boardmen and so many local officers that everybody lost count. The deserters, of course, went over to Acting President Roland Jay

Thomas of U. A. W.'s other wing, whose reorganization convention in Cleveland March 27 has the blessings of Mr. Lewis.

No one knew where this left Homer Martin. That it left him somewhere in the minority, only Homer Martin questioned. C. I. O.'s Thomas claimed the support of locals representing 315,236 of U. A. W.'s 380,000. Homer Martin, finding it wise to deal in round numbers, said he had about 200,000. Delegates on hand at the weekend demonstrably represented 64,300.

More important is what he intends to do with his minority. One way might be to take it back into A. F. of L. While Mr. Martin's delegates wore C. I. 0. buttons his convention publicity was handled by Chester M. Wright, onetime A. F. of L. publicist, now the Washington representative of professional Press Agent Carl

Byoir. Hovering near Homer Martin all week was A. F. of L.'s Detroit representative, Joseph Cummings.

Yet another clue to Mr. Martin's varied connections was afforded last week by his former Secretary-Treasurer, Loren I. Houser. Having gone over to C. I. O., Mr. Houser declared that Mr. Martin recently received from Manhattan two checks totaling $25,000. In Manhattan is Mr. Martin's friend David Dubinsky, whose rich International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union is also out of both C. I. 0. and A. F. of L. and might well welcome company as a Labor independent.

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