Up the Rebels

One evening last week Labor's Non-Partisan League held a meeting in Washington's Willard Hotel to support the President's proposal to reform the Federal judiciary. Just beforehand Willard employes staged a sit-down strike and put pickets around the building.

Though his friend Major George L. Berry carried on the meeting--denouncing the strike as an A. F. of L. plot to embarrass him--John L. Lewis refused to cross the picket line, even declined an offer to cross if the pickets were temporarily withdrawn.* Four days later in Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel, while he was in the midst of a wage conference with coal operators, an emissary interrupted him with the disturbing news that two pickets of the A. F. of L.'s Exterminators & Fumigators' Union were parading before the street entrance below. Dismayed Mr. Lewis sent friends to see whether this labor dispute could not be settled. It was impossible. The pickets were protesting because the firm to which the swanky Biltmore lets out its cockroach killing employs non-union labor. Again John L. Lewis had no choice. He packed up his papers, asked to have the conference adjourned to the Engineers' Club.

Thus did John L. Lewis twice last week obey the instinct of years, refuse to violate that unionist taboo which forbids a union man to compromise himself even in the smallest way where a strike is concerned. In his larger relations with rival A. F. of L., however, last week Labor's Lewis smashed tradition in a big, ruthless way.

Back in Washington his Committee for Industrial Organization adopted a one sentence resolution. It said simply: "The Executive Officers of the Committee for Industrial Organization are authorized to issue certificates of affiliation to national, international, state, regional, city central bodies and local groups whenever it is deemed such action is advisable." By that simple authorization the C.I.O. formally set itself up as a rival federation of labor to the American Federation of Labor. Last year when A. F. of L. leaders suspended C.I.O. unions, they charged that C.I.O. was an attempt to set up a "dual organization," a charge that was indignantly denied. Last week when the news reached the Federation's President William Green, he looked sick and said I-told-you-so: "It was clearly evident from the beginning that this objective would be finally reached, that the C.I.O. would move on to the point where they would decide to function as a rival organization to the A. F. of L."

Before the week was out Mr. Green admitted that he was considering calling a special convention (as authorized by a resolution adopted at the Federation's last meeting) to expel once and for all the rebel unions which had at last risen frankly to destroy him.

Few men believed, however, that the dual authority could endure, that more than one national labor organization could permanently survive. So last week both sides prepared for the task of destroying each other. The A. F. of L. sent out orders that all C.I.O. sympathizers in A. F. of L. unions should be expelled. The A. F. of L.'s Structural Iron Workers Association was authorized to organize steel fabricating plants in competition with the C.I.O.'s steel drive. Plans were announced for A. F. of L. membership drives in the cement, aluminum, food and filling station businesses, in at least two of which (aluminum and filling stations) there will be a collision with C.I.O. The C.I.O. countered by setting up committees to organize the 1,250,000 U. S. textile workers (only 85,000 of whom now belong to the United Textile Workers) and the petroleum industry. While William Green was sending out 50 fresh organizers, the C.I.O. laid plans for sending out 400 in the textile industry alone. More significant was the disparity between the two in dollars. Blithely C.I.O. appropriated $500,000 for its textile drive, announced it had a war chest of $3,000,000. Observers believed A. F. of L. unions would soon have to raise dues to make up for revenues lost by C.I.O. defections. U. S. organized Labor's mortal combat, anticipated for two years (TIME, Oct. 28, 1935, et seg.), was on.

*Another who refused to cross was Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward F. McGrady.

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