A DISTORTED PORTRAIT OF JOHN L. LEWIS

...But it is a bad newspaper...

...Jimmy Wechsler, "a man of better than average ability," in this book on Lewis shows what the pressures of a childishly hysterical editorial policy back in the shop can do to a good man in the field...

...The intelligent readers of PM who were led by striking promotion work at its inception to believe that here at last would be the ideal newspaper free from advertising dictation, genuinely liberal and progressive in its attitude, are loud in their expression of disappointment over the end product...

...But when will Jimmy Wechsler graduate from the nursery school of journalism that is PM1...

...it is intemperate, hysterical, shrill, and easily as sensational on a high level as the Graphic ever was on a lower one...

...Reviewed by McAlister Coleman IT IS IMPORTANT to keep in mind that this "portrait of John L. Lewis" is painted by one of our first-rate labor reporters who at the same time is labor editor of the newspaper PM...

...The great majority of newspapermen agree with this estimate...

...It proceeds on the principle, that a man is guilty until proved innocent, and usually it dares anyone it has once convicted to try to be or do good...

...In writing in the August Atlantic Monthly of this amazing sheet, Arthur Ber/ion Tourtellot, an experienced newspaperman, says: "It (PM) has on its staff many men of better than average ability...

...This, of course, is the view taken by every reactionary rag in the United States...

...It is the author's and PM's thesis that John L. Lewis, due to his overweening hate for the President and his lack of any patriotism,"'conspired to louse up the war effort long before Pearl Harbor and has been at the conspiracy ever since...

...It editorializes all the news it prints: it omits a huge amount of news altogether...

...its sense of proportion in make-up is a total mystery to its most faithful readers...

...Lewis' yen for power, his manner of living, his attitude towards arming merchantmen and Lend-Lease —these have nothing to do with the fact that at a time when all independent trade union action in this country was threatened with being taken over by a power-hungry bureaucracy, spearheaded by the War Labor Board's bull-headed insistence on applying the Little Steel formula to the egregious case of the miners, John L. Lewis stood out there and fought the smarty pants to a finish* If he had not made that fight, in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, American trade unionism today would be the sort of appendage to the Democratic Party that such pliant persons as Sidney Hillman and his fantastic fellow-travelers are working to make it...

...He leaves us with a picture of Lewis "almost pathetically alone" (that is with the exception of half a million loyal coaldiggers and only Heaven knows how many other millions of the rank and file in both the CIO and the AFL) plotting some sort of "rightist reaction" in the company of Bill Hutcheson of the carpenters and other offensive characters...

...WECHSLER has a refreshingly lively style and a blessed sense of humor, two qualities so sadly lacking in most books on labor, but time and again he lets his conviction of Lewis' guilt so distort the simple facts of a situation that he leaves the reader completely confused as to what manner of man this Lewis is...

...To be sure, the raw materials are all here, as well as the oft-told anecdotes about John L. which still make festive reading...

...To make the conspiracy charges good, one must, of course, assert and reassert the fundamental Tightness of the Administration during the coal stoppages of last year and picture the half million coaldiggers of the country as a subversive group bent on bringing the republic to its knees in the midst of the greatest crisis in its history...

...If this would seem to be more an estimate of James A. Wechsler's attitude than a review of his book on Lewis, it is because that attitude colors every page so that the final portrait which emerges has about as much relation to its flesh and blood subject as the models of the old Cubist painters had to their pictures...

...It so happened that Wechsler was out amongst the coal camps of Pennsylvania talking to rank and file diggers in the Spring of 1943 and he knew and wrote for his paper how just their grievances were and how shod-dily they were being kicked around for the purposes of White House revenge on Lewis...

...He proceeds on the principle that John L. Lewis is guilty of something— just what is never made plain—and that having been convicted by Wechslir and PM, the head of the miners can do no good...

...When the full story of the coal controversy is finally written, the maneuver-ings of the palace guard, aided and abetted by the coal operators, against the good and welfare of the most neglected labor group in this country will not make a happy addition to the Hyde Park archives...

...This last, Wechsler's integrity prevents him from doing, though many of the editorials in his paper written during the four stoppages came mighty close to doing it...

...Which is to say that Lewis will probably support Tom Dewey in this coming election...