Evening Star Newspaper, June 1, 1937, Page 25

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THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, The Story of John L. Lewis BY IRA WOLFERT. N 1922, when skirts and stocks were beginning their spectacular climb and “Abie’s Irish’ Rose” was sidling shyly into a Broadway theater, when flappers and cake- eaters were clattering down the Na- tion’s sidewalks and the Ohio gang was rapping softly on the back door of the White House, the world the miners lived in began its slow and terrible death There was & gaudy razoo going on in those days—France edging toward the Ruhr, Ireland becoming free, Mus- solini tossing along the road to Rome, Trotzky waving a red flag before the bulls of world finance, speakeasies, mah jong, Harry Greb leathering the | tar out of that United States Marine, Gene Tunney—and no one seemed to realize what was happening to coal. But Lewis realized. He told a miners’ convention somewhat sadly: “Every one has retired from office (president of the United Mine Work- ers) in a melancholy state of mind because a certain element of our peo- ple condemned him. It will not be different with me.” There were shouts of “No! No!” and Lewis stared stonily at the shouters. Elected Officials Ousted. Two years later Lewis's empire was | ripped down the back and his was a | throne without a kingdom. The “Lewis | must go!” movement was starting to | snow ball its way down the valley of coal. In Kansas, Tennessee, Nova | Scotia and, finally, Illinois, Verdun of mine unionism, he blew the U. M. W.’s elected officials out of office with a bellow and sledge-hammer sleight-of- hand He revoked charters, became the country’s No. 1 red baiter, gave a twist to the word “Communist” that | made it touch a new high in invec- | tive, bucked such progressives as John Brophy and Powers Hapgood (who are now his most trusted lieutenants in the C. 1. O. movement) right out of the union. Wherever he went, the | fires of revolt leaped angrily at him | and Lewis fought back with stunning barrack-room metaphor, withering | physical aggressiveness, and every | below-the-belt trick in the astute par- | liamentarian’s black book. Lewis, who | has never been able to distinguish | between the two, was fighting for his | union and his job. In Indianapolis, he gave a delegate who had been found to possess a Communist circular a two-minute | start on the itching-fisted pack that | was baying for his scalp. When a convention floor stormed for a reccunt on a roll call that had | narrowly defeated an attempt to take from Lewis the power to appoint or- ganizers, field workers and local ex- ecutives, Lewis surveyed the tumult stolidly for a solid hour before pulling all the stops on his huge voice to roar: “May the chair state that you may shout until you meet each other in hell and he won't change the rule.” The next day, when the rumblings started again, he singled out a ring- leader, pointed his gavel at him, scowled ferociously down its length and shouted: “If therc are any dele- | gates who feel inclined to insult the | the gall of death. chairman, let them step up here on the platform off the floor and try {t.”” No one did. Today, of 31 mine union districts, the leaders of more than half get their jobs not from the men they represent, but from Lewis. Shouted Down Hapgood. When rebels sought the floor, he introduced them—in one case—as “industrial buzzards,” added, “I want to warn you against those carrion birds,” and concluded, “I now ask that you remove your carcasses with- out the door.” When his currently good friend, Hapgood, tried to speak in 1927, Lewis shouted him down with “If I hear another word from you, you will be ejected.” And that night, Hapgood was taken to a hotel room and beaten into a state by Lewis par- tisans. In 1932, with the Illinois miners in open revolt against the wage scale set by the U. M. W., Lewis began his speech with, “These young men of foreign extraction are spreading dis- sension along the highways and by- ways of Illinois, and I have come, with my pit boots on, to put a stop to it.” But the speech did not go so well that day. A miners’ referendum defeated the wage scale by 5 to 2. Lewis over= ruled the vote. The second ballots were stolen miraculously, and, under | the cry of “emergency,” Lewis thump- ed the wage scale into effect with the head of his gavel. And that was how Illinois finally tore loose from him, and even his home local, flounced away from his standard. But these verbal apoplexies were only minor symptoms of a disease that was soaking the industry’s heart in The major symp- toms were the strikes. Eleven con- secutive years of them, none of them gay, some of them—as in Herrin, I, wh re miner turned against miner and strikers dragged scabs from the pit to hang them before their hysterical womenfolk—murderous. The disease itself was overcapacity. The mines were equipped to yield a billion tons of coal a year. The mar- ket, shrinking naturally in a post- war world and shrinking unnaturally under the impact of more efficlent use | It's Cool ... . For Dancing To Santmyer's Music At Wardman Park Hotel Dancing from 10 Minimum One Dollar Buy Now—Before a Price Advance Is Made /D Al/sica/ Culture WHITE SHOES for women NOwW To go through a cool, glamorous Summer in style and comfort wear Physical Culture Shoes—so light and shapely—so sturdy, too. Buy a second pair in black, blue or brown at $6.50 and save money before the price goes up! FAMILY SH OE STORE 312 Seventh St. N.W. Free X-Ray Fitting Service enATU R E.' R Open Saturday Evenings ook ymmg,bé ynimg, STAY YOUNG Ever notice a man beside a baby’s crib? Notice how his eyes light up and sparkle? Notice how he pokes a gnarled forefinger into the baby's cheek and then mumbles, “Gosh, ain’t he smooth skin he has!” cute! And what a soft, Make you a bit envious? It shouldn’t. You, too, can have a skin as soft, smooth and young as a babe’s. Roban C-24, a glorious new cleansing cream, follows nature’s way of revitalizing faded skin tissues. your skin is clean, clean, CLEAN! Then In 240 hours (ten short days), you'll not only look younger, but feel younger. Stay that way, with nature’s greatest aid to you(th). Roban C-24 .. . for Cleansing the skin__$1.00 and $2.75 Roban N-36 ... for Nourishing the skin__________$1.50 P Panama, | of coal, hydroelectric power and fuel oil, could handle only about half of that output. No Police for Economic Law. As a cure, economic law was pre- scribing a starvation diet for the coal operators and for the men who de- pended on them for a living. The least fit must go, but there never has been a time when men took to starva- tion peacefully, and, under economic law, there are no police to tell the doomed to come along quietly. In the modern world, “fitness” is a complex thing. Marginal producers ducked the phlebotomy of the times by throwing up barbed wire against the union, cutting wages, taking ad- vantage of the freight differentials to pour coal into the Northern markets when strikes in the union fields sent coal prices rocketing to $16 and $17 a ton. And Lewis lost 200,000 men in three years, 150,000 more in the next year. Lewis’ whole political philosophy, the philosophy whose eruptions in 100 different industries make such lively reading on today's front pages, dates Dainty 17- from these tragic days. In the be- ginning he and the operators still took their text from the uncompli- cated Hanna sermon: Let the union police the industry. But that ended with the famous Jacksonville agree- ment of 1924. That three-year agreement—to keep the wage rate at the 1919 $7.50 a day level—emerged from a private dinner in the Hotel Ambassador in New York, arranged by George Moore, a capitalist prominent in Middle West- ern public utilities, who was with “enlightened” capital in looking with horror upon the costly anarchy that was pushing the coal industry back into the jungle. Around the table sat Melville E. Stone, one of the founders and general manager of the Associated Press; Judge Richard K. Campbell, George Barr Baker, the New York financier; Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, and Lewis. Lewis’ Ability Discovered. With the $7.50 rate the operators and the union hoped to close 2,500 | of the country’s 11,622 mines and force 200,000 miners out of the in- dustry and into other trades. Hoover called the agreement “a necessary surgical operation” and discovered from across the dinner table that “Lewis is more than a successful bat- tle leader. He has a sound conception WORTHY OF * THE HONOR ORIENTAL AND DOMESTIC RUG CLEANING NA. 5346 For Better Cleaning, Repairing and Storing MARK KESHISHIAN “Washington’s Most Beautiful Rug Gallery” 1214 CONN. AVE. (Cor. 18th St. N.W.) NA. 5346 SERVING WASHINGTON OVER HALF A CENTURY Summer Furniture For Porch, Lawn or Sun Parlor at HEeNDERSON’S HERE you will find a most interesting display of Rattan Furniture of the better kind. Rattan Chaise Lounge, sectional cushion reversible _ water-proof $23 Others up to $61 A COOL and most inviting setting can be obtained by the use of proper pieces in har- monious color combinations. Come in Tomorrow and Make Y our Selection James B. HEeNDErsoN 1108 G Street N.W, FINE FURNITURE INTERIOR DECORATING of statesmanship, of the long-view interest of the people and the industry he serves.” And. President Coolidge, deeply im- pressed, offered to take Lewis into his cabinet as Secretary of Labor. Lewis declined, he says, because he did not (and does not now) care for plumes in his hat, and because he knew— perhaps dimly at that time—that he would be hamstrung in a Government that was stubborn in the tradition of keeping out of business. But the agreement was doomed to | failure. The miners were compeiled by brutal fact to believe that $2 in cash worked more magic at the butcher’s than a promise of $7.36 from a barred mine. The large op- erators of the North (eighit compan- ies did 75 per cent of the Nation's coal business) did not resist the temptation to close their high-cost union mines and open mines in the non-union field. (Andrew Mellon’s Pittsburgh Coal Co. closed 54 union mines in the first year of the Jack- Charge Accounts Invited , D. C, TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 19317. * B—5 sonville agreement and bought an extra 125,00 gun-shielded acres in the non-union South.) Federal Control Demanded. The temper of those days is indi- cated by the fact that even the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers refuse to sign a union contract for its $3,000,000 worth of bituminous mines in the Kanawka fleld in West Virginia. Railroad-owned mines, mine- owned railroads, mine-owned dis- tributors and distributor - owned mines, billfon-dollar operations in Fiel to open-shop United States Steel, a frantic hodge-podge of freight differentials, manipulated car shortages—Lewis looked at the tangle and started howling for Federal con- trol. The police job was too tough for his union. In the great anthracite strike of 11926 Lewls asked “both sides to join |In a request to Congress to enact | legislation providing for completing regulation of the entire industry— regulation of profits and the selling by Hartmann Cleverly arranged wardrobe that every woman wants. Packs four to eight dresses case on hangers, and there’s room for all the other things. Orders Filled 1314 F STREET N.W, G : le:wfls T nityFJair Stmmer Foundations! 1214-1220 ¢ STREET price of coal as well as every other phase of the industry.” The operators blasted his proposal as “unconsti- tutional.” But the depression lay ahead and | with it the end of $17 coal. The op- | erators came to fight side by side with | 414 jndustry is the series o meeti Lewis for the unconstitutional N. R.| being held throughout Ruseia by e A, the unconstitutional Guffey act| preakers to discuss the invitation. In and, finally, the new Gufey-Vinson | Moscow alone 500 criminals have been act, which has yet to be tested. listed for jobs. The prosecutor has ICoDynnvu, 1937 by the North American been deluged with letters from peni- NewspararAllixiicol Ine.) tent offenders offering to surrender. Criminals Convene. 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