OPINION: Contemptible Insult

Browsing through the Washington Times-Herald one day last week, fierce old John L. Lewis came across an editorial denouncing union pension funds, with some rather unflattering references to himself. With eyebrows twitching wrathfully. Lewis wrote a letter to the Times-Herald’s editor and publisher, fierce old Colonel Robert R. McCormick, who also controls the Chicago Tribune.

“To refer to the undersigned or any other labor executive as a union boss,” wrote Union Boss Lewis, “is a sneer. In logic, it would be equally sound to refer to a public official as the boss of the citizens … To refer to the public trustee of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund [onetime Coal Mine Operator Josephine Roche], of eminent record, as a stooge of the undersigned is a contemptible insult, derogatory to the writer of your editorial. It exemplifies the innate philosophy of the Bourbon mind and the effeminate snobbishness of inbred aristocracy . . .

“Conceivably, the well-being of [the] 9,000,000 [workers with union pension funds] is not important to your editorial writer nor to the Times-Herald as such. Regardless of this fact, however, Colonel, it is my considered opinion that these 9,000,000 Americans will continue to regard their welfare plans as being important, however distasteful this may be to your newspapers or other individuals who consider themselves endowed by God with the right to make all social, economic and political decisions essential to the maintenance of the republic.”