John L. Lewis was back in character.
He had stepped out of it long enough to butter up his old enemy, the A.F.L.’s President William Green as “the able Mr. Green,” and to propose that Green and Lewis chip in $2,500,000 a week for the striking steelworkers (Green’s A.F.L. was to put up nine-tenths of the money). Last week after he had gotten his answer (a curt no thanks), the mineworkers’ president got off another letter to Bill Green.
“You have justified my judgment,” Lewis wrote. “I did not think you would do anything. You didn’t. You rarely do. Unfortunately, you follow invariably your well-known policy of anxious inertia . . .
“I note that you are going to Europe . . . While there, doubtless you will adjust the European situation. When you adjust it satisfactorily and return to your own country, I may write you again.”
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