More Skull than Brains

"Wipe all cabs off the streets," was the imperious order. "Not a wheel will roll," was the chesty prediction. Mighty John L. Lewis and the grabbag District 50 of the United Mine Workers had gone to the big city: they were going to take over New York City's 36,000 hackies and mechanics, and force union recognition from the taxi owners. They might even get more money for the men.

Old John L. was a hotshot around the coal tipples, but on the sidewalks of New York he turned out to be strictly a stiff with a bum pitch. Last week, after eight days of trying, Lewis' flugelmen were badly beaten and muttering that they'd try again. They didn't say when.

From the first, District 50's tactics were highhanded. They would not go into an election to find out whether the U.M.W. represented anybody at all. They counted not so much on their actual strength as the fear they could stir up. New Yorkers well remembered the 1934 cab strike, when 5,000 enraged hackies ran wild through midtown Manhattan, overturning and busting up cabs, fighting cops and stoning non-strikers.

This time Mayor Bill O'Dwyer put on a special detail of 3,250 cops, made the whole force carry their two-foot nightsticks during the day, set up 55 heavily patrolled routes over which nonstriking hackies could drive and be protected. The union bragged on the first day that it had kept 97% of the city's 11,814 cabs in the garage. Manhattan streets were free of honking cabs and their aggressive jockeys; it was almost possible to cross a street without danger to life & limb.

Then the cabs started to roll. Denny Lewis, John L.'s little brother and boss of District 50, told the boys to hold fast, that U.M.W.'s $14 million treasury was behind them, but the strikers found out they couldn't get a dime for a cuppa cawfee.

Denny blamed most of his troubles on the mayor. In a pale lavender imitation of brother John's purple prose style, he called Mayor O'Dwyer a doublecrossing participant in "one of the most vicious strikebreaking cabals in the labor history of this great city." But the next day it was all over and Denny had left town. Bill O'Dwyer had the last word. Said he: "Denny Lewis came to town pretending he was half-horse and half-bear. Like every small-town bully, he was skull & bones, mostly skull. He came a month too soon. He should have come with the circus."

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