John Lewis Wins Again

John L. Lewis had outmaneuvered everyone, including himself. He had tied up the mines for 45 days at the cost of 90,000,000 tons of coal, had forced the Government to seize them and thus negotiate with him--and had gotten little or nothing the operators had not offered him in the first place. But he had seldom quoted as fiercely and gloomily from Shakespeare, had seldom endured criticism with more martyr-like fortitude. When it was all over he stood up before the news cameras as though he heard a surf-like thunder of applause.

The whole exhausting shutdown had stemmed from his demand for complete control of a miner's health and welfare fund. The mine owners had agreed almost at the start to pay royalties into it. They had even mentioned the 5-c--a-ton figure which was ultimately agreed upon. They had balked at giving John L. complete control and he had refused to negotiate further. But he had happily accepted joint control from the Government.

He had wangled a good contract. He got control of an established medical and hospital insurance fund, levied ori payrolls, and previously controlled by the operators. But they had offered that to him, too. He got the fashionable 18 1/2-c--an-hour pay rise. The mine owners had been willing to go a cent higher. He had gotten $100 vacation pay. The operators had offered him the same figure.

The Little One. The Government turned him down on many a request. It refused him three paid holidays, a 9 1/2-c- shift differential, discounts for miners at company stores. He wanted the operators to pay for miners' explosives; he wanted 15 minutes more for miners' lunch periods.

He was turned down. But if he remembered the speech he made against government controls at the Labor Management Conference (TIME, Nov. 19, 1945), he did not repeat it. Now he did not roar for "free collective bargaining" without Government intervention. He beamed and shook hands with the President.

By luck and his last minute capitulation he had worked his way out of the sump-hole of unpopularity in which he had been sloshing triumphantly for so long. The railroad strike had screened his undignified scramble for the bank. But if he remembered jumping into it in the first place he gave no sign.

As the soft coal strike ended, the hard coal strike began. As usual, there were no picket lines; the strikers loafed, gardened, or drank up available beer in taverns. Would the whole pattern be repeated again? There was one consolation. The soft coal strike was the big strike. The hard coal strike was the little one.

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