LABOR: War

• Share

In the paneled palace where John Lewis has his Washington headquarters, the heads of 43 C. I. O. unions assembled last week to appraise their past, plan their future.

One of the first to arrive for the first meeting of the recently established C. I. O. executive board was President Lewis himself, looking hot and tired in summer whites. "Hi, Jim, how are you, boy?" he greeted boyish, diffident James Barton Carey, secretary of C. I. 0. and president of its electrical union. Vice President Philip Murray was gravely on his dignity, as becomes a crown prince. Bronzed with a Florida tan, recovered from pneumonia, Vice President Sidney Hillman backslapped one & all. Mooning about like a bitter rabbit was little Alien Harry Bridges, whose services to C. I. O. on the West Coast may be terminated by deportation proceedings next week.

C. I. O. in 1940 is an imponderable which Mr. Lewis declines to define so long as an implied third-party threat may be useful in swaying the big parties his way.

That any Democratic candidate (including Franklin Roosevelt) would automatically qualify for C. I. O. support, regardless of what the President does or allows to be done to Labor meanwhile, John Lewis has significantly failed to say. Last week he said: ". . . The nation is still in crisis.

Economically we now stand little ahead of where we stood four years ago. ... I do not think the people will ... be content with timid solutions offered by government, solutions fearfully withdrawn before they can be really tested. Unless the nation is led unhesitatingly and courageously forward ... we stand in danger of ...

despair . . . black reaction . . . Fascism."

If the recent upsurge of anti-union legislation in California, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan taught John Lewis anything, it was that Labor was not uniformly popular in all sections of the country even with vote-hungry politicians, and that Labor had better bestir itself politically. Leader Lewis now talked of forming "articulate groups of workers to declare themselves on social, political and economic affairs," and belligerently proclaimed: "Progressive Labor is not retreating." On his recommendation, his board proceeded to woo Youth and Farmers, tease the Aged by recommending $60-a-month Federal pensions for single oldsters over 60, $90 a month for married couples.

Impossible Peace. John Lewis has never agreed with Franklin Roosevelt that C. I. O.-A. F. of L. reunion per se is a good & necessary thing for Labor. He had his tongue firmly in cheek when he was pushed into renewing peace talks last February, stuck it in further when he noted in Franklin Roosevelt's "invitation" a scarcely veiled threat to impose peace if none could be found by negotiation. Four weeks after the negotiations bogged down, John Lewis last week announced: "Peace, as such, is a secondary consideration to the organization [of non-union workers] . . . The A. F. of L. is still in control of a small group of leaders firmly entrenched, reactionary in their attitude on public affairs, tolerant of many evils in the A. F. of L. . . . The C. I. O. board is unanimously convinced that the A. F. of L. is following a 'rule or ruin' policy. . . ."

A reporter asked: "Is peace impossible?"