LABOR: Head of the House

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On a bleak November day in 1952, twelve men dressed in somber suits gathered in a waiting room in Coshocton, Ohio. They were members of the executive council of the American Federation of Labor, and they had just attended the funeral of 82-year-old William Green, their longtime chief. As the labor leaders waited for the train, Green's successor, George Meany, bluntly announced that he had chosen William Schnitzler, of the Bakery Workers Union, to be secretary-treasurer of the federation. Old Dan Tobin, president emeritus of the Teamsters Union, objected angrily. But Meany was unshaken; the election of Schnitzler, he said, would be held the next day in Washington.

The labor elders were flabbergasted. Never before, in all the 28 years of Bill Green, had they seen such rank insubordination on the part of the man they tolerated as their president. Meany had his way, and the following day Schnitzler was elected by a vote of 7-6. From that day on there was no doubt about it; Meany was boss as well as president of the A.F.L. He did not seek power for its own sake; he had some aims in view.

Today Meany is within sight of his first goal; barring unlikely accidents, the 10 million A.F.L. members and the 5,000,000 C.I.O. members will unite next fall, under Meany's leadership, in the greatest free labor organization the world has ever seen.

In his first official act as president, Meany revived the dormant Labor Unity Committee, and for two years he worked ceaselessly toward a merger. This year at Miami he knew that the time was ripe. Meeting in February with five other top leaders, Meany told them it was then or—as far as he was concerned—never. C.I.O. and A.F.L. negotiators quickly ironed out their differences, signed the agreement to merge.

What this huge combined force will mean to the U.S. future can be glimpsed by looking at the circumstances and the men (George Meany in particular) responsible for labor's reunion.

A Better Connection. Under the leadership of the miners' John L. Lewis and the garment workers' Sidney Hillman and David Dubinsky, the C.I.O. was formed in 1935 with two slogans: 1) "organizing the unorganized" and 2) doing it by setting up unions of industrial (as opposed to craft) scope. The C.I.O. took with it a high proportion of the brains and drive of the A.F.L. and about one-third of the membership. The C.I.O.'s great achievements: organization of the automobile workers and the steelworkers. Its great failure: the heavy infiltration of Communists into some of its unions and its own high councils.

Dubinsky and his International Ladies' Garment Workers went back to the A.F.L. in 1940, Lewis went back (temporarily) in 1946, Hillman died the same year. Lewis' able lieutenant, Philip Murray, held the C.I.O. together by the cohesive pull of his own shining integrity. It took him years to clean out the Communists, an effort that sapped much of the C.I.O.'s energy. When Murray and his bitter rival William Green (both began as coal miners) died within two weeks of each other, it became possible for new men to make a new and serious try at labor unity.