"A Christian Gentleman"

In 1904, a wiry, sandy-haired 18-year-old came up out of a coal mine in western Pennsylvania and swung on the company weighman for cheating. Next morning young Philip Murray was fired for "engaging in a brawl on company property." To his surprise, the 600 miners in town walked out on strike in his defense, then elected him president of their United Mine Workers local. The strike was broken, and a sheriff's squad put Phil Murray on a train for Pittsburgh and told him not to come back. "I've never had a doubt in my mind since then of what I wanted to do with my life," said Murray 45 years later, when he was president of the United Steelworkers and of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Last week Murray stopped off in San Francisco on his way to the C.I.O.'s annual convention in Los Angeles. He had dinner with 600 Western Steelworkers and their wives, reminisced in his soft Scottish burr, then departed, with a "Good night and God bless you." At 11:30, he and Mrs. Murray retired to their room at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, leaving a call for 6:30 next morning. At 6:30, the switchboard rang and rang, but got no answer. A bellboy knocked, then opened the door with a pass key. Mrs. Murray (who is hard of hearing) was still asleep. Phil Murray lay crumpled on the floor between the twin beds, dead of a heart attack. He was 66.

A Man with Understanding. The size and character of the C.I.O., its wage rates and pensions, and the political influence of organized labor are all a testament to Phil Murray's dedicated life. But Phil Murray was more than a fighter for labor. He was a man with a keen understanding of the individual's relationship to the world he lives in. Impersonally--as a union boss--Murray was tough and hard, demanding discipline and loyalty, determined and stubborn at the bargaining table. Personally he was emotional and softhearted, endowed with a twinkly-eyed kindliness and an honest humility.

Phil was bundled off to his first strike meeting when he was six, by his father, an Irish-born coal miner and unionist in Lanarkshire, Scotland. In 1902, William Murray brought his family (ten children) to the U.S., settled them in Pennsylvania's Westmoreland County coal fields. When Phil was fired for his fight with the weighman, he went to work for the United Mine Workers in Pittsburgh. In 1920, Phil Murray at 34 became vice president to the U.M.W.'s new president, John L. Lewis.

Through the years that Lewis and Murray ran the U.M.W., industry was perfecting and extending the techniques of mass production. For years, A.F.L. leaders had recognized in principle the need for vertical unions in mass-production industries. But when it came to putting the principle into effect, the A.F.L., dominated by craft unions, found that the craft psychology was very strong among its members and leaders.

The U.M.W. was one of the few A.F.L. unions organized on the industrial principle. Lewis in 1935 forced the creation of the A.F.L.'s Committee for Industrial Organization. Phil Murray was delegated to organize the steel industry, the key to the struggle. In two hectic and memorable years, Murray achieved essential success in steel. The inevitable conflict with the craft unions grew sharper, and in 1938 the A.F.L. expelled the industrial unions. The new grouping changed its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations, named as its president John L. Lewis, as its vice president Phil Murray.

After betting his job on a Willkie victory in the presidential election, Lewis resigned in 1940, picking Murray as his successor. Called a Lewis stooge, Murray issued a memorable statement: "I think I am a man," he said. "I have a soul, a heart and a mind. And, with the exception of my soul, they all belong to me."

Three-Front War. Before and after Lewis' departure, the C.I.O. was in a three-front war: with the craft unions, with industry management and with the Communists. Lee Pressman became general counsel for the C.I.O., and other Communists rose to positions of great power. For a while, Communists and anti-Communists each thought they were using the other. Phil Murray at length decided to get rid of his Reds, but he was not fully successful until the Taft-Hartley Act (which he hated) came to his aid.

Meanwhile, C.I.O. and A.F.L. grew so fast that bitterness between them was softened by prosperity. Management learned to accept the fact of Big Labor and to respect, in particular, Phil Murray.

In politics, Murray was more successful than Lewis. Roosevelt often called Murray over to the White House for a quick nip and an evening's bull session (but he could never get Murray into evening clothes for a formal dinner). Murray was not as close to Truman (whom he called "the little governor") but eventually got an embarrassing avalanche of help from the Truman Administration, which culminated in Truman's impetuous seizure of Big Steel (TiME, April 21).

Soon after the strike that followed the seizure, Murray made plans to tour the steel plants with Ben Fairless, president of U.S. Steel, in a mutual effort to bring peace to the steel industry.

Leading contender for the C.I.O. presidency is Allen S. Haywood, 64, C.I.O. executive vice president, who came out of the U.M.W. with Murray and has been a close associate ever since. Haywood may be the rallying point for all those who oppose the C.I.O.'s United Auto Workers' Walter Reuther, 45, well-hated by Phil Murray's Steelworkers.

Neither Haywood, Reuther nor anyone else in sight has the stature or wisdom of Phil Murray. By coincidence, both Harry Truman and Ben Fairless used the same term in eulogizing Murray this week. They called him a "Christian Gentleman," a hard term to earn in the vortex of a social storm.

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