"We Do Our Own Cooking"

Through years of constant practice, irascible old (70) John L. Lewis has developed a fiendish skill at lobbing verbal harpoons into the A. F. of L.'s fussy, proper old (77) President William Green. Lewis once denied that the A. F. of L. had any head at all; its neck, he said, "just haired over." Last week he let headless Bill Green have it again. The cause of his ire: Green's public promise that "Labor" would sign a no-strike pledge whenever the President asked for one.

"You know, Bill, I am ever distressed when I have to disturb the calm placidity of your ordered existence," wrote the mighty John. "Yet . . . the rights of American workers . . . should not be bartered to appease your innate craving for orthodox respectability. Any mess you cook up with the C.I.O., if you can cook up any mess with the C.I.O., will . . . have to be eaten by you . . . alone. We do our own cooking.

"You have stipulated the Mineworkers out of representation on the select Star Chamber labor committee which you designated to please Symington.* We gently advise that we will not be bound by your deliberations or commitments conducted or made in our absence. We do our own committing.

"The press chronicles you as plodding about the country seeking someone to whom you can give a 'no-strike pledge.' I am sure that you will pardon me when I suggest that the Mineworkers are not yet ready for you to sell them down the river. Restrict your pledges to your own outfit. We do our own no-striking."

*Translation: no mineworker was picked to advise the Government on war mobilization.

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