"Brethren, Follow John L."

At 64, John L. Lewis still packs a wallop. His luxurious mane is streaked with grey; he is still saddened by the death two years ago of his wife Myrta; he has given up smoking, and now just chews cigars down to two-inch butts. But his vocabulary is still full of sound & fury, his anger still as righteous as Jere miah's, his hold on the United Mine Workers still complete.

To prove it, he led the U.M.W. convention through the hoops in Cincinnati last week. Appropriately, the meeting began with a fist fight.

This time John L. found his authority challenged by one Ray Edmundson, 42, of Springfield, Ill. For nine years husky Ray Edmundson had been the Lewis-appointed president of U.M.W.'s tough, bloody Illinois district, at $8,000 a year. Five months ago he threw up this sinecure, went back to the mines, and began fighting John L. on the issue of union autonomy, i.e., the right of districts to elect their own officers. (Of U.M.W.'s 31 districts, 21 are ruled by Lewis-appointed men, giving John L. near-perfect dictatorial control.)

The Edmundson revolters held a pre-convention caucus. For 90 minutes, there was talk of "union democracy." Then a scuffle broke out in the rear, and the chocking sound of fist meeting jaw. Lewisites swarmed over chairs, mounted the rostrum, demanded--and took--the floor. Edmundson left, forgetting his coat.

"Thugs" v. "Gigolo." To newsmen, Edmundson denounced the Lewismen as "payrollers, sluggers, drunks, alley thugs. . . ."

Next day, in Cincinnati's gabled, turreted old Music Hall, John L. counterattacked Edmundson. To the cheering delegates he growled: "There isn't any mincing, lackadaisical, lace-pantied gigolo going to dethrone John L. in his own convention."

To John L., the Edmundson rebellion was clearly a plot by Franklin Roosevelt, Sidney Hillman and Earl Browder to embarrass him. He shouted: "Don't Browder and Hillman and Roosevelt know that for 25 years I have met every champion of American finance and industry that American politics has produced?"

John L. then moved on to denounce the favorite figure in his gallery of ingrates: Franklin Roosevelt. In the disastrous coal strike of 1943, said John L., Franklin Roosevelt "publicly kicked every coal miner in this country in the face." And, if he is reelected, he would do it again next April when the miners' contract comes up again, shouted John L. From the hall rose cries of "Pour it on."

U.M.W. v. New Deal. John L. poured. Three days later he appeared before the convention with a 1,600-word resolution: 1,000 words denouncing the New Deal, 200 praising Governor Thomas E. Dewey. The New Deal, said the resolution, was the first administration "to abolish collective bargaining ... to bind men to their jobs like indentured servants." It passed the "Smith-Connally-Harness Slave

Act." And Franklin Roosevelt, in his 1943 mine-strike speech, gave "an outrageous exhibition of personal malice and dangerous bad temper." But Tom Dewey, said the resolution, is a "firm believer in equal justice, fearless, courageous and capable."

For half an hour, delegates debated; five members rose to praise Franklin Roosevelt. John L., never a patient man, grew impatient. After all, said he, why all the talk? There was nothing to debate. Up rose Negro Delegate S. B. Lawrence of Alabama: "Brethren, let us follow the leadership of John L. Lewis." The brethren did. (Campaigning in Idaho, Tom Dewey hastily pointed out that the resolution did not specifically endorse him.)

At week's end John L. got down to the good old-fashioned business of attacking the mine owners. (Ray Edmundson had fled town, unable even to gain a seat.) The operators heard that, at next spring's contract negotiations, U.M.W. would want the same pay for a 35-hour week which it is now getting for 40 hours--with portal-to-portal time included at regular rates.

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