The Winter Is Now Gone

Along with the robin horde, the capital's surest harbinger of spring appeared last week in Washington: John Lewis, pallid as a mushroom, clothed like a mortician, was on the job. "The winter is now gone," he said. He had arrived to talk about a coal strike.

He had served notice of a "dispute" on Feb. 2. Thus he could legally clap the mines shut on the miners' strike day, April 1. Last year he had won a 10-c--a-ton royalty for an old-age and welfare fund (now swollen into a $29.5 million kitty). But not a nickel of the fund "had been distributed. John and the operators had not been able to agree on how to distribute it. That was one of this year's beefs.

To the newsmen whom he had summoned to his office, John said: "Your ears will soon be assailed by [the operators'] outcries and wails of anguish. To relieve themselves, they need only to comply with the provisions of the agreement." He had alerted his 400,000 soft-coal miners.

His aide, K. C. Adams, worked over his chewing tobacco and spat copiously into a spittoon as Lewis waved a copy of last year's contract. "We have the bond," John thundered. "Do we get the ducats?" This week, a little ahead of time, his miners began to walk out.

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