How About a Peace Production Board?
How About a Peace Production Board? During the p»lt week, victories of American corporations in Washington have followed one another as fast as conquests on the European fronts. With plenty ef...
...The goon, stopped, apologized and said it was a case of mistaken identity...
...The Murray man had been badly beaten in the Hotel Ambassador lobby while a crowd of UMW of officials looked on...
...Bricker is well known...
...Since the start of the New Deal the idea or every worker's right to job haa been accepted...
...And in a few months workers will be turned oat—then the fighters will come home...
...Roosevelt and thus proved that the miners (who voted 93 percent for the President in 1940) had no use for their leader's political advice...
...Krug may well have been speaking for all his colleagues in his statement: "Our private economy has to carry the ball on reconversion...
...than $20 for as long as 26 weeks...
...A«*«Ue City's brasses m.v long Mow tot the odor of that talk wfflf nefer dTaappea...
...He was looking for Jimmy Wechsler, the crusading and bitterly anti-Lewis national affairs editor of I'M...
...Another reporter, Paul Tobenkin, of the Herald Tribune, ran into the group, grabbed the goon's hand and shouted: "Hey Ray, that's Vic Riesel of New York, take it easy...
...And because Mr...
...Lewis' sluggers beat the Edmundson men and forced him to flee the hall he rented in preparation for i his fight for autonomy...
...He has failed to build a democratic union through the years...
...The government can help, but the government cannot do the job...
...Congress went on a sitdown strike with regard to this whole matter...
...John Oweha, introducing Lewis, compared "the old man" with Christ, Joan of Arc, and Abraham Lincoln...
...Dewey and the labor-hating Gov...
...There ia no provision for possible operatiea under government authorities for public purposes...
...If they find no buyers, their workin will be Jeft dangling—with nothing but a kindly promise of the Manpower Commission to think about their needs...
...It is fortunate for the nation that release from war production will be staggered...
...There we have it...
...There isn't any mincing, lace-panty gigolo going to dethrone John L. Lewis...
...He failed in his efforts to fa control the farmers and chemical workers, brickfcyers and lumbermen...
...He is still the great timer, the dramatist, the moat daring taker of chances in the labor movement...
...But that far pitifully inadequate provision has been made for unemployment lnwaa«a...
...It isn't the responsibility of the War Production Board to make work, but if is our retponaibility to remove every obstacle that might prewat American bu»ine$» from going boldly ahead...
...He failed to grasp the full significance of the menace ef Germany to civilization...
...This whole situation has not been unforeseen...
...The governfcwnt-owned plants weie designed specifically for war ' aajqattiai They may—or (may not—be purchased by private investors...
...Except for'supporting Agricultural prices and giving every boost it can to 'Private corporations, the people's government is supPosed to furnish nothing more than a sort of Red Cross service to industrial production...
...referring to Edmundson, Lewis roared...
...He later appointed the goon who did the mauling to an important executive position in the UMW's District 60...
...Lewis, for years, has been looking loftily the other way as his goons go into action...
...Onr fighting men have been promised jobs as a part of their reward...
...That may mean the release ef some 1,900,000 nam and women from war plants, tin privately-owned plants will be converted to civilian atvductioa as rapidly as possible...
...These are the highlights of Mr...
...He failed when he tried to build a third labor movement, out of the Communists, le failed when his friends had prepared his path back Into the American Federation of Labor—failed because he stubbornly insisted on dictating his own conditions...
...He also denounced all demands for union democracy, demanding instead blind loyalty to himself as dictator of the UMW...
...He did this last Monday when his men broke up a pre-convention caucus called by Ray Edmundson, former head of the miners' Illinois District...
...But his hatred for Mr...
...Bo became involved fa Mtrieu U shipments to Germany...
...WhAT has made Lewis the international figure he is...
...We planned war production, but we refuse to plan peace production...
...Lerner Echoes Stalin's Slander of Bullitt William Henry Chamberlin Thorny Passes Through the Oaks David J. Dallin John L. Is a Good Hater Stephen Hill GOP Gets Off to a Bad Start ----WILUAkl I. BOHH Paris Never Surrendered.......................to*o* Nazis Provide For Their Future...............uon mnmin London Under Robot Terror...............mmm > homo* "Smash Co-ops/' Big Business Demands...
...On neither side does there seem to be a realisation of the fact that this is big order, that to fill it, a poaitive program ia required...
...His contempt for Gov...
...He sent his daughter into the Am rica First Committee...
...In his report to the President, Director •f War Mobilisation Byrnes utters the pious hope that "Congress will reconsider its action in rejecting the plan suggested by me that the . . . maximum benefit •bould be not lesa...
...It is ¦oaething to think about...
...Verbal violence he gave them aplenty...
...Only once—in the launching of the CIO—did he succeed, throughout hia entire career...
...Campaign oratora on both side* promise . f«H employment...
...Lewis' ability to run a Shakespearean phrase up into the greatest raah of front page headlines any union leader has yet received...
...But he ia still labor's most colorful and literate per songlity...
...That's not quite accurate...
...He did nothing...
...Some 40 per cent of war production will stop...
...So, he is calling mine strikes, organising his people quietly in Panatylvania and other mine states—just to embarrass and beat • man he dislikes although he knows that the defeat of the Roosevelt Administration will mean the aatiea-wide sweep of Republican anti-labor laws...
...Roosevelt is more impelling...
...The GOP already is supporting bills in many states providing for the outlawing of the cloaed shop and picketing...
...During the ' paa* year he has permitted his shrill publicity man, g. C Adams, to fill the UMW Journal with America first editorials about "international bankers"—all of waoss happen to hare Jewish names...
...The goon was on the hunt for Wechsler because he had vividly described in his morning edition the gorilla's assault on a supporter of Phil Murray the night before...
...The present Congress shows little disposition to respond to this pathetic appeal...
...He failed in his attempts fa control the Communists...
...The mine winkers' czar claimed that the UMW "is in better shape than ever," but didn't admit that this is true of all unions, thanks to a president sympathetic to labor...
...TMfl straage quirk of Mr...
...f»w reporters and CIO delegates will forget Lewis' a>jil | "Hillman-Dubinsky-ZartUky" speech at the So jJPlHtilR...
...Lewis' hatreds...
...He has given his miners no health program, no summer resorts, no educational facilities...
...Lewis knew...
...He also declared that Roosevelt "has kicked every coal digger in the face by ordering them back to work" Edmundson has been hired, Lewis declared, by "Browder, Hillman and Roosevelt to dethrone the old man...
...And today Us hatred has led him to endorse the Republican ticket...
...President Roosevelt saved that union in ItU when it was bankrupt and down to its last 100,000 members...
...He made straight for Victor Riesel, energetic little labor editor of the liberal New York Pott, grabbed him by the necktie and was all aet to pummel him into pulp...
...He worked closely with the Communists' American Peace Mobilisatioa...
...p%eug> all this, there were anti-Semitic overtones...
...Fewer than half the war workers will be thrown upon the civilian labor market at once...
...However, when the final balance sheet is struck on John L. Lewis it will be discovered that the only difference between the miners' boss and the duller labor barons such as Jimmy Petrillo and Joe Moreshei and Big Bill Hutcheson—who operate more successful labor unions—is Mr...
...The whole precipitate process will start the moment victory m Europe is declared...
...Roosevelt stood for world cooperation and aid to the British, Lewis turned isolationist...
...With plenty ef justification the NAM Newt, organ of the National Association of Manufacturers, spread the headline: Industry to Hati Vmtuallt Fan Hand in Switch back TO PEACtTIMI pbodugtion...
...It is what Congress and the administration — or, at least, most of its administrators—have willed...
...Ha roared against war...
...Some one had described Wechsler as a short, brown haired chap with an easy smile—the descrip^n fitted Riesel...
...We may have then, within a few months, up to 8,000,000 unemployed workers in our midst with practically no unemployment insurance to fall back upon...
...And he has driven from him virtually every personal friend be ever had...
...And it will happen before the demobilisation «f the soldiers and sailors...
...MtfwVM RUSSIU PMSM John L. Is a Good Hater By Stephen Hill WASHINGTON, D. C—During the climactic days in 1042, when John L. Lewis was coolly ousting Philip Murray from the United Mine Workers, a handful of reporters, standing idly in the UMW Building lobby, saw one of the union's goons rush in...
...But at best that Jimam jrUl take from 4 to 0 months...
...But^his was not surprising...
...On Tuesday, when the UMW convention opened, Lewis intimated that his opponents might meet with physical violence if they don't shut up...
...The supposition is that whatever plants private corporations do not want will be left to decay...
...He failed to build the UMW...
...Be failed to stop Mr...
...When in 1939 President Roosevelt refused to deliver to I,owis (in exchange for a 1930 contribution of $500,000) the"Democratic vice-presidential nomination, Lewis told his convention that should Mr...
...The provision of jobs is not the responsibility of the War Production Board or of anyone else in the government...
...He is still the man the cartoonists love to draw...
...The details of his life and frustrations had better be left to competent biographers such as James Wechsler, whose Labor Baron, A Portrait of John L. Lewit (William Morrow « Co., N. Y.) is an excellent job...
...Millions of unemployed will have to look forward to the dismal doles provided V the states...
...Roosevelt be nominated by the Democratic Party, the President would go down "to ignominious defeat...
...Lewis has hung on...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 38
