TROUBLE AHEAD FOR THE VICTORIOUS MINERS

...It is commendable enough for labor leaders to demand that their followers be represented at the making of an enduring peace...

...such forces of reaction as even the miners, "the shock troops of American labor," have never before encountered...

...The hatred for the miners that has been so liberally spread among our servicemen by press, radio, and governmental agencies such as the OWI will be capitalized by every labor-baiter, and this includes, I regret to say, a lot of so-called "liberals," who want to drive our coal-diggers back to their $35 a week status...

...Even before negotiations were started for the signing of a new contract in the bituminous fields, the Nsw York City Communist-controlled branch of the CIO issued a vicious attack upon the UMW, calling upon the Government to take drastic steps against their fr'Iow-workers...

...There has been no attempt, for example, for some years, to' present to the membership a well-rounded educational and recreational program...

...As Josh Billings had it, and as John L. Lewis knows very well: "The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease...

...The attitude of the said rank and file is indicated clearly enough by a recent gathering of members at which the leaders were begged to pay a little attention to their own backyards...

...To hold this salient, to maintain this prestige, will now require all the patience, fore.'iirht...

...And again: "Arrival of the Ukranian and Byelorussian delegates has helped to show how distinctive are the characteristics of these 2 major nationalities of the Soviet Union and how misleading it is to use the word 'Russian' for a union of many quite . . . distinct nations, of which the Russians are only one...

...But to get back to the mines...

...As I said at the beginning, the miners will have to take the first shock of the anti-labor drive which will be launched as soon as Japan is safely in the bag...

...Murray took the editor of the CIO News along with him to write this about Molotov: "Molotov is brisk, energetic, and businesslike, to the surprise of those who thought of Russians as stolid as well as solid...

...Communists joined with self-proclaimed "labor sympathizers" to break the UMW...

...With this as a nucleus, there will be an attempt to revive the Open Shop movement which followed th& last war, using the servicemen's organizations, as the Open Shoppers used the American Legion...

...The Ukranians are particularly distinctive in language, culture, and appearance, tending to be darker, more bright-eyed and more vivacious than the Russians...

...The United Mine Workers, through its recent stubborn and successful stand for independent collective bargaining and the democratic fundamentals of trade unionism, is now in the enviable position of giving militant leadership to an otherwise bemused and tame-cat labor movement...

...Platitudes But No Results It is no thanks to the self-professed "liberals" that the coal-diggers can now approximate wages which they should have been getting years a^-o...

...Lewis was not lathered up about getting this country into a global war, and further cannot see the Soviet system as ideally applicable to the United State?, fortunately will not go down with the rank and file of the CIO...

...Ideologically, however...

...Platitudinous pronunciamentos by some labor leaders concerning the course of international events fill up some space in the Tory press on a dull Monday, but they don't fill the bellies of the workers...

...For the moment that Japan is finally crushed, there will be hurled against the United Mine Worker...

...No one who has ever been in a coal-mine believes that the new contracts, favorable as they are, sufficiently reward the workers in our most hazardous, back-breaking, nerve-wracking industry, but they are so much better than any that the miners have ever received as to mark a definite upward turn in the fortunes of the United Mine Workers of America, an all-important salient won, the taking of which gives the miners' union, in my judgment, undisputed leadership in the world of American labor...

...There is time before the next bitter struggle to give the youngsters in the union more participation in their great organization's affairs, more idea of its long and honorable history, more of that "sense of kind" which originally made it great...

...The feeble alibi for such an amusing breach of fundamental labor decency, namely that Mr...

...A Serious Lag Financially, the UMW is better prepared than most unions to absorb the first attacks...

...As a result of his militant stand against odds such as few labor leaders in the history of the movement have had to face, the men who mine our soft coal and our hard are now receiving the highest pay and working under the best conditions since coal was first brought to the surface in this country...

...the mine union lags far behind...

...The fact is that with all its kow-towing and yessing, the newly formed World Federation of Trade Unions had no more real representation at the San Francisco conference of the United Nations than did the doorman at the San Francisco Hotel, and that until some of the CIO boys stop playing footy with every Democratic ward-heeler from Mayor Hague's mobsters in Jersey City to the lowest placeman in Washington, they wont get much action...

...It was inevitable that in these years of in-fighting there should be centralization of command, but it is distressing to any real friend of the union to find an organization of close to half a million men so dependent upon the decisions of one...

...Younger men must be trained to carry on the good work of the old-timers...

...and courage of which labor statesmanship is capable...

...Molotov being brisk and businesslike, and "flashing a ready smile," the Ukranians being "bright-eyed and vivacious," with the Byelorussians presumably hopping gayly about on Nob Hill—all this may make fascinating reading for a pooped-out steel worker coming home from the furnace with the Formula flying ahead, but you can't blame him for casting a wistful eye over the news from the mine fields...

...Lewis is 65 years old and the men around him are no chickens...

...But when these leaders simply parrot the words of the brass-hat wearers and the brief-case toters, what in the hell is gained thereby ? Labor At San Francisco Why was it necessary for Phil Murray to rush to the Pacific Coast as a "labor consultant" to the United States delegation to the San Francisco pow-wow in order to get off such a statement as this: "The lasting peace for which the people of the world now yearn will not be realized unless such unity" [unity of the United Nations] "continues, based upon the military power and political solidarity of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union...