National Affairs: Steel Workers' First

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With the arrival of John L. Lewis the Islam Grotto auditorium began to look like a national political convention. Mr. Lewis when he arrived by train in Pittsburgh ducked into a barbershop for a shave. There photographers snapped him in the chair with his leonine locks be-turbaned in hot towels. His huge bulk leaped from the chair with a mighty roar but the photographers got away. Within an hour, however, it was reported that Mr. Lewis had managed to get the pictures suppressed. As the C. I. O. boss prepared to address his most successful new union, the convention went wild. For 25 minutes the delegates yelled, clapped, stamped, blew horns & whistles and marched about the floor with their regional placards and huge banners crying WELCOME TO OUR LEADER. At the top of their lungs the delegates sang their favorite song: "We'll hang Tom Girdler to a sour apple tree."

In his speech the Leader frequently paid his respects to Mr. Girdler, observing once that the "name Girdler will always be synonymous with that terrible word 'murder.' " Leader Lewis went on to declare that his peace offer to A. F. of L. was that all 4,000,000 present C. I. O. members, not merely the 1,000,000 members of the unions suspended from the A. F. of L. after the C. I. O. started, be taken into the A. F. of L. fold. Mr. Lewis remarked: "We said before and we say again that they will digest all of us or none. I know personally Mr. Green's digestion very well. And as a matter of fact 4,000,000 is a little too much to expect him to digest. His stomach in that respect is a good deal like his mind. It is a little weak."

Having thus disposed of Mr. Green—and presumably the outcome of the peace negotiations to be resumed this coming week in Washington—Mr. Lewis turned deadly serious, warning that far from being stopped by Recession, Labor would apparently have to assume responsibility for the nation's salvation. Said he: "The time has come when labor must exercise its rights to organize. If labor is content to let things drift, we will drift to a crash—to an economic and financial crash that will involve the political government of America and bring to America a destruction of that form of government which you and I know and revere, and bring to America the same sort of fascist control that you can look about you and see flourishing in the world today, a government to suppress liberty and trample on the rights of minorities. That is the form of government that many of our great financial and industrial leaders secretly hope Will be brought about."

Shortly after the convention broke up Pittsburgh police ordered four S. W. O. C. delegates held for questioning on the death of a 30-year-old divorcee, whose nude body was found in a room of the Fort Pitt Hotel after an all-night drinking bout.