LABOR: Disunited Miners

The capitals of Indiana and Illinois were last week more than 185 miles apart when simultaneously in each city met a rival faction of the United Mine Workers of America. Rarely before has U. S. Labor exhibited such a bitter intra-Union schism. In Indianapolis gathered a thousand “regular” delegates under big, hard-faced John Llewellyn Lewis, U. M. W. international president. At Springfield assembled 455 “rank-and-file” delegates bent on taking possession of U. M. W. and reorganizing it.

Steady disintegration of the mine Union under President Lewis is what prompted the Springfield meeting. Organized some

40 years ago, the U. M. W. grew to be the largest single unit in the American Federation of Labor. Coal operators bowed to its will, accepted its working and wage contracts. It negotiated the famed Jacksonville agreement (1924) for high wages in the bituminous fields. When it so much as threatened a strike, people shivered at the prospect of a coal shortage. At the peak of his power President Lewis, on a $12,000 per year salary, ruled some 500,000 Union miners.

Then coal mining fell upon evil days. The industry was economically depressed. Two miners tried to divide the work of one. When the Jacksonville agreement lapsed and the operators refused to renew it, President Lewis opposed any wage reduction, kept Union miners out of work. Strikes were called only to fail in human misery and destitution (TIME, Nov. 28, 1927 et seq.). Members quit the U. M. W. to find work in non-Union fields. “Yellow dog” contracts replaced Union agreements. Once 308,000 Union miners worked in bituminous fields, outside of Illinois. Now there are a scant 26,000. Union membership in Ohio has dwindled from 42,000 to a bare 1,000. Union districts in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee have melted away. U. M. W. has shriveled to some 100,000 members.

At Springfield gathered disgruntled delegates from eleven of the 20 U. M. W. districts. They came in third-hand automobiles, on freight-car rods, by hitchhiking. Theirs was a vindictive mood. Leaders who had summoned them—John H. Walker, Illinois Federation of Labor president; Harry Fishwick, president of Illinois U. M. W.; Frank Farrington, past president of Illinois U. M. W.; Alexander Howatt, president of the Kansas U. M. W. —they treated with rowdy distrust. Suspicious of “steam roller” methods, they insisted that the most trivial proceedings be openly transacted on the floor before them. A tremendous uproar occurred when the secretary passed a note to the temporary chairman.

An obscure technicality gave the Springfield rumpsters a chance to claim the U. M. W. organization. The Union’s constitution expired March 31, 1929. The Lewis faction failed last year to call a meeting to vote its renewal. Anti-Lewis leaders insisted the Union was defunct. The Springfield delegates adopted a new constitution, identical with the old one, just 40 minutes before the regular delegates meeting at Indianapolis did the same thing. They kept the Union’s regular name, voted Lewis out simply by declaring all national offices vacant. Official salaries were cut in half, a five-day week and six-hour day were approved. Communists, ‘leggers and Ku Klux Klansmen were banned from the U. M. W.

The Springfield delegates were particularly suspicious of Frank Farrington, more responsible than any other man for the anti-Lewis meeting. Long a Union leader, he had been expelled as a traitor from U. M. W. when in 1926 he accepted a position at $25,000 per year with Peabody Coal Co. For three years he had seen the coal industry from the other side of the fence. Now he was back in the Union. His critics, booing and hissing, predicted the new U. M. W. was doomed if he were seated as a delegate. Deftly he defended himself with the explanation that he had withdrawn from Union affairs on the stipulation that President Lewis would modify his opposition to a wage scale below the Jacksonville agreement, thus permit Union miners to return to work, even at less pay, rather than hold out and starve. A majority of delegates finally voted to seat Farrington, provided he “shut his mouth and didn’t try to be boss.”

Bitterly flayed by Springfield speakers was President Lewis who was accused of trying to wreck the Union with che support of railroads and public utility companies. He was kept in office, it was charged, only because his agents voted “graveyard locals” which no longer existed.

At Indianapolis the regular Union held its 31st meeting. President Lewis was in autocratic command. The new constitution was ratified. With insurgency concentrated at Springfield, the Indianapolis meeting was by contrast serene, uneventful. Coal operators were flayed for “pauperizing” the industry, the U. S. Government was asked to lend a helping hand. The Springfield delegates were declared outlaws, their claims belittled and mocked.

The contest for control of U. M. W. seemed likely to move out of the Springfield and Indianapolis convention halls and into the courts for final settlement. Until it got there, President Lewis had two great advantages over his rivals: 1) $900,000 cash in the Union treasury; 2) the support of William Green, A. F. of L. president, who accepted an invitation to address the Indianapolis delegates, refused to recognize the Springfield rumpsters.