Lewis' Last Leap

Once more John L. Lewis has proved himself God's gift to the professional labor-baiter. West-brook Pegler can now re-fill his fountain pen and Carl Vinson re-wag his Senatorial tongue, for the President of the United Mine Workers has chosen to defeat Hitler by leading his 2,800 members out of the CIO.

This move is more insidious than Mr. Lewis' pre-Pearl Harbor decision to become an anti-New Deal isolationist. It is more harmful than his too-recent attempt to throw a strike wrench into WLB's Little Steel decision. This is the last desperate attempt of an embittered man to regain his former power, even at the cost of shattering Labor's delicately constructed moves toward cooperation, inside and outside of the ranks.

The history of this heavy-browed tycoon and his United Mine Workers is as dramatic as it is paradoxical. Not ten years ago, Lewis put Labor on the map. It was he who conceived the ideal of industrial organization, and led his courageous group of miners from the musty fold of the A F of L. It was he who built up the ranks during the depression years, and made them a strong political factor in the elections of 1932 and 1936. Strongfisted and crusading, John L. was the biggest frog in a growing pond of industrial unionism up until 1940.

But by 1940, the highly personalized leadership of Mr. Lewis was losing its divine shine and taking on the destructive five of the Machine Boss. In rapid succession, he turned against the New Deal, found himself facing opposition in the organization he had created, and resorted to a back-to-the-wall fight against both President Philip Murray of the CIO and President Franklin Roosevelt of the U. S. A.

Before December 7, 1941, this country was seared by a Lewis-Murray split within the CIO, a CIO-AF of L fight within the general ranks, and a Labor-Management struggle within the nation as a whole. Since Pearl Harbor, two of those splits have undergone a healing process. The government has taken control over all negotiations of wage contracts. Both Mr. Murray and Mr. Green have sworn off jurisdictional disputes. And right now a series of meetings is being conducted in Washington by the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, NAM, CIO and AF of L "to explore ways and means by which management and labor can . . . arrive at a basis for joint action for the solution of their problems with a minimum of government intervention."

But John L. Lewis, starving for personal power at a time when group cooperation is vital, still lives in the thirties. Crying that "the CIO is trying to destroy your entire organization by criticizing UMW officers," he has taken the miners who first followed him out of the AF of L, and led them, with very different purpose, into a new camp. This time he is not merely bucking a Roosevelt or a Murray. He is bucking the combined will of American Labor to unite and cooperate in time of emergency. Under the force of that will, he shall be crushed.