The Man from Hardscrabble Hill

(See Cover)

One of the things William Green likes best about being president of the American Federation of Labor is the opportunity it gives him to ride on trains. Mild, deaf, ministerial Bill Green travels 20,000 miles a year on them, but he never tires of the cushioned delights of Pullman bedrooms, is never bored by the sight of flying landscapes. To Bill Green, an old and often lonely man, the railroad ticket is a badge of success, a heart-warming reminder that he is in demand as a speaker, has a salary of $20,000 a year (plus expenses) and a place in the ranks of Prominent Citizens.

In San Francisco this week 2,883 enjoyable miles from his bare and fusty Washington office, he was engaged in the most stirring of his official privileges--presiding over the annual convention of the A.F.L. Standing on the stage of San Francisco's echoing Civic Center auditorium, he could look out at and appraise the great men of U.S. labor's oldest clan--the hard-eyed and corpulent satraps in serge suits and blucher shoes, the sleek attorneys, the jovial bully boys, and all the delegates, great & small, from all the temples and parishes of craft unionism.

To a man who had sweated in a coal mine for 23 of his 77 years, and who could remember when organized labor led an almost furtive existence, it was a thrilling sight. In October 1947, the A.F.L. had 7,600,000 members--45,000 of them gained in the last twelve months. It was rich and powerful and often spoke to the public in the rich basso of full-page newspaper advertisements.

"Slave Law." As the convention began all this wealth, power and ballyhoo was committed to relentless war on the Taft-Hartley Act.

To the average citizen, labor's fury and consternation over the Taft-Hartley Act was a cause for mild astonishment. It had long seemed inevitable that the Wagner Act would be replaced by a more conservative measure. Labor excesses and labor's stupidity--its irresponsible use of strikes, its scorn of public opinion, its tolerance of gangsters in its ranks--had hastened the advent of such a law.

But the new law had not denied labor the right to bargain collectively, had not broken its big sword, the strike, and had not deprived it of minimum wages. The A.F.L.'s expensive attempt to brand it a "slave labor law" had fallen dismally flat. The average citizen simply looked at U.S. wage rates* and asked: "Where are the slaves?"

But organized labor, which is committed to the doctrine of always asking for more and of never making a retreat except under the pressure of a greater counterforce, could not and did not take such a view. Even the pinkest of labor leaders would admit, privately, that as long as the U.S. has prosperity--uneasy as it might be--the Taft-Hartley Law would work few hardships on labor. But for tactical reasons, and because it feared that the combination of the law and a depression might do them mortal harm, both the left and the right of organized labor stood solidly against the law.

Hot Words. Labor recoiled from the Act, emotionally and intellectually, in much the same way that industry had recoiled from the Wagner Act--its memories of company cops, of fights, lockouts, broken strikes and poverty were too strong to make any other reaction possible. In depriving unions of the closed shop, the Act had taken away the choicest tool for maintenance of membership. In outlawing secondary boycotts (the refusal to handle "hot goods"), it had denied unions a formidable economic weapon. In legalizing injunctions against unions (virtually outlawed for 15 years by the Norris-LaGuardia Act), it had made unions vulnerable to court action.

It was thus probable that the 1947 convention of the A.F.L. would be the most momentous--and uproarious--since eight unions threatened to secede in 1935 to form the C.I.O. High, hot words would be spoken in San Francisco.

The Evangelist. One of the more curious manifestations of the Taft-Hartley Act was that it had worked a transformation in Bill Green. For the past several months, labor leaders have rubbed their eyes in disbelief as Bill Green has barnstormed the country, inveighing against the Act with the fervor of a backwoods evangelist. This was something new to see in the man of whom John Lewis had once said: "I have done a lot of exploring of Bill Green's mind and I give you my word there is nothing there." Bill Green had even said that he would call, in effect, a nationwide general strike on election day, 1948, so that all of labor could go to the polls and vote against those who voted for the Taft-Hartley Act.

In the months to come, Bill Green would continue to be the mouthpiece of the A.F.L. The A.F.L.'s real course would be charted, as always, by the stiff-necked and jealously autonomous chieftains of the big A.F.L. unions--Big Bill Hutcheson of the Carpenters, Dan Tobin of the Teamsters, Dave Dubinsky of the Ladies' Garment Workers, and that savage opportunist, John L. Lewis. They would fight the real battles and make the tactical decisions.

Bill Green was not a man to grasp for more than the meager power which was his under the A.F.L. constitution, nor to resent the fact that he was often more whipping boy than leader. But the grey little man, who wielded the gavel as the big chiefs rumbled and fulminated, was an oddly accurate symbol of the A.F.L.--its stubbornness, its conservatism, its ancient instinct for penny-pinching, its slowly dying distrust of politics and politicians, its belief that salvation could be summed up in one word: wages.

The Frugal Life. Bill Green's story had an old-fashioned ring; it paralleled that of many a rising capitalist. It began one night in the grimy English coal town of Frampton-Cotterell, the night a miner named Hugh Green smoked a thoughtful pipe and decided to go to America.

The Greens, Hugh and his slender, bright-eyed Welsh bride, Jane, went to the Ohio mining and farming town of Coshocton. Their first son, William, was born in a log cabin. But by the time he could walk, the family had moved to a house on what was known as Hardscrabble Hill and had settled, with thanks to God, into the life of frugality and toil which was the lot of the U.S. miner in the 1870s.

Hugh Green, a silent little man with long white hair and beard, made $1.50 a day. By the standards of the town and the times, he cared for his family well. There was always enough to eat--the Greens kept turkeys, hogs and a cow. There were few luxuries--little Bill Green used acorns for marbles--but there was faith. Baptist Hugh Green gathered his growing family together every evening for an hour of prayer--no more, no less. Billy earned his first money, a five-dollar gold piece, for reading the whole Bible aloud to his illiterate father.

Bill Green earned money for his own clothes from the time he was ten. When he was 14, he worked as a water boy on a railroad gang. Then, one early morning when he was 15, he walked the 2 1/2 miles to Morgan Run Mine No. 3 and went down the shaft with his father. He learned fast, and became a full-fledged miner and a good one--for many years he and a fellow miner named Bill Woods drew the biggest pay at Morgan Run.

The Peacemaker. Bill Green knew only what a one-room school had taught him, and he had no more knowledge of grammar than a coal gondola. But though he murdered the language in church social debates, he had a flair for oratory. His father told him he should become a Baptist minister. Bill agreed. But though he saved his pay, he could not get the money for schooling. When he was 22, he married Jennie Mobley, a neighboring miner's daughter, and resigned himself to going on in the mine.

It was the union which led him out. Hugh Green was a union man and Bill, as a matter of course, had joined the day he went into the mine. By modern standards, Morgan Run No. 3 was a terrible place--timbering was bad, cave-ins were frequent and gas hung in its tunnels. Bill Green helped carry home the crushed bodies of more than one man. These experiences did not embitter him or turn him into a rabble-rouser; he grew up to be a calm and methodical man and the best Baptist Sunday School teacher for miles around. But he made it his resolve to strengthen the union.

He was completely unspectacular. But he was a persistent and effective peacemaker. He was elected secretary of the union; he could also keep good notes. Because he was a good negotiator, counseled the middle of the road and soothed hotheads, his influence grew. By 1900, he was president of the United Mine Workers' Subdistrict No. 6, by 1906 state president of the union. He was elected to the Ohio state senate.

He left the mine when he was 38, was elected secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers when he was 43. No bookmaker in his right mind would have taken a dime at 1,000 to 1 that Bill Green would ever go any farther. U.S. labor hardly knew his name. But when Samuel Gompers, the founding genius of the A.F.L., died in 1924, fate presented Bill Green with a dazzling gift.

Utopian Ideal. Gompers had hoped to be succeeded by dapper Matthew Woll, then head of the tight little Photo-Engravers Union. But John L. Lewis opposed Woll. Lewis was also scheming to become Calvin Coolidge's Secretary of Labor. He wanted a quiet and friendly man as president of the federation. The big bloc of votes from the U.M.W., and the votes of other chieftains who wanted no interference with their own ambitions and intrigues, elected Green president of the A.F.L. Four days later, he enjoyed one of the big moments of his life--Coshocton welcomed him home with red flares, whistles and a parade led by the Civic Concert and Salvation Army bands.

Bill Green became president as hard times were falling on the A.F.L. Labor had been roundly defeated in the strikes after World War I, and the gay '20s were far from gay in the nation's labor temples. Membership was dwindling--by the depression year of 1933, it descended to a low of 2,126,796. Green, the man of peace, innocently set out to solve his problems by attempting to establish a liaison with industry, to sell organized labor as a sort of super employment agency which would do away with strikes and friction.

He pleaded for a Utopian ideal. "Capital," he said in 1926, "must yield in its hostility toward unions." At the same time, he denounced the British general strike of 1926 as a breach of inviolable contract. In friendly tones, he asked the automobile industry to hold still and let itself be organized. The answer came from Henry Ford: "I guess I can run my business without Bill Green's help."

No Risks. The hard facts beat home--neither the times nor the conciliatory approach were right for labor organizing. As the depression deepened, Green spoke hopefully of better times, said he believed that legalization of beer would bring them. He added: "Millions of bottles would be required to distribute the product and would give employment to a great number of glass blowers."

Green's thinking reflected that of the federation. The A.F.L. had survived and grown in an unsympathetic world by a hardheaded conservatism. Under Samuel Gompers it shunned politics. It had only one real objective--wages, and more wages. It preferred to take what it could get without many risks. It hoarded its money against hard times and sought to organize only the well-paid, highly skilled workman.

It took the ego, the imagination and the opportunism of John L. Lewis to prove that the social and economic climate of the New Deal made almost anything possible, that spending union funds on industrial organization was not a gamble. Green was appalled by the defection of his friend John Lewis to the C.I.O. and by the uproar which attended it. When Lewis bloodied Bill Hutcheson's face during the tense 1935 convention, Green reprimanded him from the platform.

Lewis rose majestically and rumbled: "He called me a foul name."

Said Green: "Oh, I didn't know that."

The Old Folks' Home. But if Green was not born to be a hero, the A.F.L. was satisfied with him. He was eternally troubled by the brass knuckles which labor displayed to the world in years of bitter organizational and inter-union wars. And he tolerated and refused to interfere with the machinations of thugs like Willy Bioff, George Browne, George Scalise, James Bove, et al. Nine months before Scalise, the gangster king of the Building Service Union, was convicted of stealing members' dues, Green blandly asked Franklin Roosevelt to wipe out an earlier conviction for white-slaving so Scalise could apply for citizenship.

Bill Green loves his job. He is not a man to seek or savor pomp. His offices in the A.F.L.'s old building on Washington's Ninth Street--where three elderly female secretaries fuss over him with a proprietary air--are faintly reminiscent of an old folks' home. He lives in a two-room suite at the Hamilton Hotel, often eats unrecognized at Stewarts Grill, a basement restaurant near his office.

But on his monthly visits to tree-shaded Coshocton, where his wife and his unmarried daughter Clara still live in a green-shuttered, red-brick house, Bill Green enjoys the aura which is the reward of famous men.

He is known throughout central Ohio as a soft touch for bums and loafers. They keep daughter Clara under strict surveillance, follow when she goes to the station to meet her father. As Bill Green steps down from his Pullman they gather round to greet him. The exchange of conversation is always the same. Green says: "It was awfully nice of you fellows to come down to meet me." There is a moment of shuffling and a spokesman for the bums and loafers says something about times being hard, Billy. Green acts surprised and helps out with dollar bills. Everyone goes away happy.

Christmas is Bill Green's biggest day. His six children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren move in. The happy president of the A.F.L., who buys toys all year for the occasion, is the lord of all he surveys. He decorates the tree, hands out candy and nuts to the hordes of old friends, miners, businessmen, who call to see him.

Coshocton likes and admires Bill Green. It is one spot in the U.S. where the citizenry thinks he is a bigger man than John Lewis. Coshocton has had a grudge against John L. ever since he came through town and told reporters: "I thought I saw Bill Green, but it was just a baggage man leaning against a post."

Explosive Issue. But if Bill Green could forget Lewis in his home town, neither he nor other A.F.L. leaders would forget him in San Francisco this week. As the convention opened, Lewis was still steadfastly refusing to sign the non-Communist affidavit required by the Taft-Hartley Act.

It was an explosive issue. Under a ruling by Robert Denham, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, no union of either the A.F.L. or the C.I.O. could use the NLRB unless all of its top officers signed affidavits. Lewis explained his refusal boldly: the way to beat the Taft-Hartley Act was to ignore it completely, even to boycotting the NLRB. Other hot-eyed labor leaders had a different interpretation--Lewis, whose miners seldom used the board, was attempting to use the Taft-Hartley Act as an instrument to dominate all of labor.

If, as seemed possible last week, the board overruled the Denham interpretation of the Act, the clash of wills would subside. If not, the issue might even split the federation. Eyeing Lewis, the Teamsters' Dan Tobin had already threatened to pull his union out.

How serious a threat to labor was the Taft-Hartley Act, which had set off this confusion and protest?

Overpowering. Organized labor was a far different force in 1947 than it had been in 1929--or even during the best years of the New Deal. It was not only rich, powerful and bigger than before, but it had become a permanent, if sometimes overpowering, part of U.S. life.

It was this very bigness, this acceptance of its permanence, which had helped bring about the Act. The congressional lawmakers, backed by public opinion, felt that Big Labor, like Big Business, must be responsible and must not have the power to upset the entire economy at the whim of a few men.

Now organized labor was embarked on an attempt to wreck the Act. Cried Bill Green at San Francisco: "It is certain we will not remain quiet and passive. . . . I can warn those men--the reactionaries of America--against destroying the free enterprise system through destruction of the labor movement." But the Allentown election, in which labor had lost ground (TIME, Sept. 22), had shown that it would take more than demagoguery to beat the Taft-Hartley Act. If it was sound, nothing that Bill Green said would damage it.

* The Department of Labor computed last week that the earnings of U.S. factory workers had risen 107% (average weekly earnings rose from $23.77 to $49.03) in the last eight years, as compared with a 61% rise in cost-of-living essentials.

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