LABOR: Thirty-Day Truce

• Share

While big John Lewis and the soft-coal operators jousted in a cloud of cigar smoke, the nation's soft-coal miners went to the polls. They voted, under the Smith-Connally Act, on what John Lewis disdainfully called a trick question: "Do you wish to permit an interruption of war production in wartime as a result of this dispute?" Their answer: yes, 208,797; no, 25,158. John Lewis could now legally shut down the mines.

Then in stepped Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins as a mediator. In a new black grosgrain hat, a long black coat, a mink neckpiece and with a new sparkle in her eye, she appeared before the perspiring negotiators, suggested a compromise settlement. She almost got it. John Lewis accepted; the operators' spokesman, Charles O'Neill, balked.

After one session, photographers lined up Miss Perkins, O'Neill and Lewis, asked them to look pleasantly at one another. Lewis sternly .gazed away from the other two, intoning: "Gentlemen, there will be no acting in this picture."

But at week's end there was no strike either. Although the old contract had expired and Lewis and the operators were hopelessly deadlocked, a shutdown was averted at the last minute. Both sides agreed to a War Labor Board order to continue under the old contract, with Lewis insisting on a 30-day limitation. The burly U.M.W. boss piously told WLB that, "conscious of the imperative necessity of continuing the production of coal for war," he would accept the order.