U.S. At War: With a Capital L

At the end of last week the American Federation of Labor was the biggest labor empire in U.S. history. Comfortably atop 6,500,000 able leaders, fantastic phonies, criminal racketeers and hard-working dues payers sat apple-colored President William Green, bumbling master of all he surveyed and now indisputably the peer of C.I.O.'s Phil Murray. The newly prodigious membership gave the Federation vast political power and an annual income exceeding $3,735,000. The record-breaking total was reached at the 63rd annual convention, in Boston, when the International Association of Machinists came back into the fold.

Soon another 600,000 members of John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers may be back too. Chief obstacle to the readmission of the Miners has been Lewis' grab-bag District 50, which has raided all kinds of A.F. of L. unions. But the Executive Council received a letter from John Lewis last week cooing his willingness to dissolve District 50 into the appropriate A.F of L. unions. The Executive Councilmen, thinking of 600,000 dues-paying members, prepared to gulp down their old hatred. Labor Expert Louis Stark predicted flatly: the U.M.W. will be readmitted soon.

In Washington, John L. Lewis, who despises William Green almost as much as he hates Franklin Roosevelt, grinned sardonically as he followed the convention's dull familiar pomp. Said he: "Did you ever see me in a movement that stayed dead long?"