SMALL BOY STUFF
Coleman, Mcalister
Small Boy Stuff JOHN L. LEWIS, by Saul Alin-sky. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 364 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by McAlister Coleman MUCH OF the unfavorable criticism leveled at this book by both liberal and...
...said to newsmen, in regard to his position on the strike, "A plague o' both your houses...
...Alinsky went to John L. and persuaded Lewis to visit the President...
...The only contribution which Alinsky's book makes to the oft-told Lewis story is the account of the feud between John L. and F.D.R...
...From then on there was a growing coolness between Lewis and the White House...
...Lewis then backed Willkie for the Presidency, promising to resign from the C.I.O...
...Since when has it been necessary to get the authorization of so public a character as the mine chief before one can write a book about him...
...After the Memorial Day massacre of the strikers at Chicago, F.D.R...
...Just why all this "You're a liar," "You're another," small boy stuff should now be disinterred, this reviewer sayeth not...
...Reviewed by McAlister Coleman MUCH OF the unfavorable criticism leveled at this book by both liberal and conservative labor-ites is due, I believe, to the author's naively inept choice of a subtitle, namely, "An Unauthorized Biography...
...Alinsky may, and they have treated it according to the way they feel about Lewis...
...Skeptics, of course, leap to the conclusion that this well-nigh adulatory work did have the imprimatur of John L., deny it as Mr...
...F.D.R...
...Lewis, deeply resenting this, made his radio speech beginning, "It ill becomes one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace...
...Lewis said he started to walk out of the President's bedroom where the interview was held but that he was called back, and after a casual conversation the interview ended...
...which began with the strike in Little Steel in 1937...
...There have been several biographies of Lewis, both friendly and hostile...
...said the wire tapping charge was "a damn lie...
...In 1940, Alinsky, a social settlement worker in the Chicago stockyards, and Catholic Bishop Bernard J. Shtel of Chicago undertook to patch things up...
...Again according to the Lewis-Alinsky version...
...You know the rest from the books you have read...
...if F.D.R...
...According to Lewis as quoted by Alinsky, the UMW leader accused the F.B.I, of tapping his (Lewis') telephone wires...
...were elected...
Vol. 14 • April 1950 • No. 4
