LABOR: Wars to Lose, Peace to Win

• Share

(See Cover)

Standing in the ballroom of Atlantic City's Hotel Chelsea, Sidney Hillman last week cried: "You know the history of labor is division, and every time there is division it destroys everything we have built."

As he spoke the house of Labor was divided and subdivided. The convention of C. I. 0 which he addressed was divided by 1,400 miles and a world of bitterness from the convention of the A. F. of L. in New Orleans. C. I. O. was itself divided in a fight over Communist leaders, A. F.of L. similarly split in a fight over racketeers. And the words were hardly out of Sidney Hillman's mouth when members of Congress, irked by the still unsettled strike at the Vultee Aircraft plant (TIME, Nov. 25), began to denounce "strikes against the Government," to suggest bills to prevent the organizing of workers in defense plants. A little more division and it was possible that destruction of Labor's legislative gains would be attempted.

But for Sidney Hillman, Labor's division last week might have been worse. On his shoulders rested a double responsibility. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins vaguely denied a circumstantial report by the New York Times that she had finally pinned on her hat and resigned. But Sidney Hillman had already overshadowed her. As Labor Man on the National Defense Advisory Commission, the split between A. F. of L. and C. I. 0. was his burden. As a leader of C. I. O. the split within that body was his burden too.

"Peace, It Is Wonderful!" C. I. O. met to hear its President John Lewis make good his promise to resign. Six hundred delegates heard him. He wept. He resigned. He advised the convention not to "consume your time in criticism and slander and vilification," and hurled insults at "silly old Bill Green," president of A. F. of L. He declared: "The labor movement cannot exist or function without confidence on the part of its members, each with the other, confidence that they will associate themselves together. . . ." The next day, jut-jawed, broad face pale, he delivered a bilious soliloquy, kindled bitterness on all sides.

In his bitterness at Green, Lewis assaulted Hillman. He sneered at a resolution that C. I. 0. "explore" the possibilities of reunion with A. F. of L.—a resolution backed by Mr. Hillman's Amalgamated Clothing Workers, eager to see the Labor schism healed.

Cried Lewis: "Explore the mind of Bill Green? . . . I give you my word there is nothing there. . . . Explore Matthew Woll's mind? I did. It is the mind of an insurance agent."* He turned his attack on David Dubinsky, who took his garment workers out of C. I. 0. and back to A. F. of L., and demanded: "Where, oh where is Dubinsky today? . . . He is crying out now and his voice laments like that of Rachel in the wilderness, against the racketeers and the panderers and the crooks in that organization. . . . And now above all the clamor comes the piercing wail and the laments of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. And they say, 'Peace, it is wonderful.' " He invited them and their president to follow Dubinsky into the fold of A. F. of L.