Feud-in-Waiting

When C. I. O.'s Philip Murray, Sidney Hillman and two score sub-lieutenants went to Cleveland last fortnight to minister to the feud-fuddled United Automobile Workers of America, they hoped to apply not a cure but a poultice. To that end they had the delegates elect conservative, cooperative Roland Jay Thomas to the presidency and abolish the jobs of four quarrelsome vice presidents (TIME, April 10). Last week, to the dismay of Physicians Murray & Hillman, the delegates in winding up their convention wound the poultice into a knot.

To the new U. A. W. executive board (which collectively outranks President Thomas) the delegates elected Vice President Richard Frankensteen and a majority composed of other men who may be expected to buck C. I. O. direction. Places for Vice Presidents Wyndham Mortimer on the board and Ed Hall at national headquarters were also arranged. Thus the feudists who all but gutted the union are still within fighting distance of each other.

Two other events sharpened the lesson that C. I. O.'s U. A. W. has got to quit fussing or die: 1) Seceding President Homer Martin announced that he would confer this week with William Green on A. F. of L. affiliation for his minority. 2) General Motors Corp. announced that in plants where both C. I. O.'s and Homer Martin's U. A. W. claim bargaining rights, big G. M. will bargain with neither. In the circumstances C. I. O.'s renewed plans to organize Ford Motor Co. were more of an exercise in optimism than a threat to Henry Ford.

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