Old Faithful

On each of the stiff-backed chairs in Cincinnati's old Music Hall was a foot-square poster labeled "The Champ." It was a picture of a fierce-eyed John L. Lewis, a cigar cocked in his mouth. The 3,000 delegates to the United Mine Workers Convention smiled in anticipation. John always gave them a roaring, rousing performance, and they knew who would catch it this year: the President of the U.S.

The old geyser did not fail them. He began with the charge that Harry Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act was a piece of hypocrisy. "He did not try to have his veto sustained . . . because he preferred to have the bill enacted, so that in this campaign he could ask for support on the ground that he had vetoed [it]."

John scorned Harry Truman as "too cowardly to send me to jail" and excoriated him as a persecutor "of a group of citizens against whom he has a malignant personal hatred."

Double Dose. "You have a chance," he cried, "to help decide whether or not Harry Truman is going to be the future President of the United States. He is a man totally unfitted for the position. His principles are elastic and he is careless with the truth. He has no special knowledge on any subject and he is a malignant, scheming sort of an individual who is dangerous not only to the United Mine Workers, but dangerous to the United States of America."

Twice before, John L. had tried to steer his miners' votes. Not many had followed his wrathful advice to vote against Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944. After his tirade against Harry Truman, newsmen polled many of the delegates, found that about half would vote for Truman.* Next day a rumble of opposition broke out on the convention floor over a resolution which indirectly endorsed Tom Dewey (it said that Governor Dewey had never said anything bad about the U.M.W.). The resolution passed, but the mild resentment caused the geyser to erupt again. Lewis steamily trumpeted: "If there is any man who wants to trade me off for a Truman, let him trade and be damned to him."

Double Dues. With that off his chest, the Champ turned to union politics. Some delegates had the temerity to demand the right to choose their district officials by a vote of the membership. John L. swiftly squelched that move (21 of his union's 31 districts are ruled by Lewis appointees). It was just a waste of time, said the Great Man, to talk about such things; he could be relied upon to choose competent officials and, if any of them "failed to do the right thing," he would send them back to digging coal.

From there on, the delegates tried to outdo each other in expressions of fealty. They decided that his birthday, Feb. 12, should be a holiday/- in the soft-coal fields. They learned that John L. had not paid his $30,000 contempt fines out of his own pocket but out of the union's till, and voted retroactive approval of that. John had merely to suggest that the U.M.W.'s $13 million bankroll ought to be bolstered so that he could have more "available funds in a crisis." With audible grumbles, the delegates voted to boost their dues from an average $2 to $4 a month. But gratefully, they raised the Champ's salary from $25,000 to $50,000 a year.

* Candidate Truman had an odd reaction to the Lewis punch. Said he: "Remember the statement Lewis once made about John Nance Garner ['labor-baiting, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing, evil old man']? That made Garner a great man."

/- Celebrated by other U.S. citizens as the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

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