Miners Meet

The 33rd biennial convention of the United Mine Workers of America at Indianapolis came to an end last week in an atmosphere thick with New Deal harmony and goodwill. For the first time in the history of the world's largest labor union, an employers' representative, Secretary Carroll Benton Huntress of the National Coal Association, had addressed the gathering. Never before had the union boasted so many members (360,000), never before had so many delegates (1,700) attended a U. M. W. convention. There was a whole sea of new faces, delegates from areas hitherto un-unionized before the NRA coal code took effect. President Roosevelt, whose recovery program had raised every miner's pay check from 20% to 300%, was God-blessed as the greatest humanitarian since Lincoln.

Bushy-maned President John Llewellyn Lewis made a graceful bow to the "partnership" between Labor, Capital and Government. He told his men that, although he would ask for a 30-hour week (coal code maximum: 40 hr.) and higher pay when new labor contracts are discussed with bituminous operators in Washington Feb. 12, the miners would be "in a mood of cooperation, conciliation and constructive contribution."

During their nine-day session in Tomlinson Hall, delegates in their freshly-brushed Sunday suits:

P: Cried "More power to you. Miss Perkins! God bless you! Long may you live, Miss Perkins!" when the Secretary of Labor told the convention that NRA was "not ideal, but it has made honest progress toward an ideal."

P: Approved a proposal that a study be made of establishing more industrial (vertical) unions, like U. M. W., within the A. F. of L. The A. F. of L., based on a craft (horizontal) union system, soft-pedaled this vital labor issue at its last convention (TIME, Oct 23).

P: Urged that NRA be made permanent.

P: Denounced Adolf Hitler.

P: Voted to move U. M. W.'s headquarters, after 40 years, from Indianapolis to Washington, where the miners will have their next meeting in 1936.

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