LABOR: Wars to Lose, Peace to Win

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Standing in the ballroom of Atlantic City’s Hotel Chelsea, Sidney Hillman last week cried: “You know the history of labor is division, and every time there is division it destroys everything we have built.”

As he spoke the house of Labor was divided and subdivided. The convention of C. I. 0 which he addressed was divided by 1,400 miles and a world of bitterness from the convention of the A. F. of L. in New Orleans. C. I. O. was itself divided in a fight over Communist leaders, A. F.of L. similarly split in a fight over racketeers. And the words were hardly out of Sidney Hillman’s mouth when members of Congress, irked by the still unsettled strike at the Vultee Aircraft plant (TIME, Nov. 25), began to denounce “strikes against the Government,” to suggest bills to prevent the organizing of workers in defense plants. A little more division and it was possible that destruction of Labor’s legislative gains would be attempted.

But for Sidney Hillman, Labor’s division last week might have been worse. On his shoulders rested a double responsibility. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins vaguely denied a circumstantial report by the New York Times that she had finally pinned on her hat and resigned. But Sidney Hillman had already overshadowed her. As Labor Man on the National Defense Advisory Commission, the split between A. F. of L. and C. I. 0. was his burden. As a leader of C. I. O. the split within that body was his burden too.

“Peace, It Is Wonderful!” C. I. O. met to hear its President John Lewis make good his promise to resign. Six hundred delegates heard him. He wept. He resigned. He advised the convention not to “consume your time in criticism and slander and vilification,” and hurled insults at “silly old Bill Green,” president of A. F. of L. He declared: “The labor movement cannot exist or function without confidence on the part of its members, each with the other, confidence that they will associate themselves together. . . .” The next day, jut-jawed, broad face pale, he delivered a bilious soliloquy, kindled bitterness on all sides.

In his bitterness at Green, Lewis assaulted Hillman. He sneered at a resolution that C. I. 0. “explore” the possibilities of reunion with A. F. of L.—a resolution backed by Mr. Hillman’s Amalgamated Clothing Workers, eager to see the Labor schism healed.

Cried Lewis: “Explore the mind of Bill Green? . . . I give you my word there is nothing there. . . . Explore Matthew Woll’s mind? I did. It is the mind of an insurance agent.”* He turned his attack on David Dubinsky, who took his garment workers out of C. I. 0. and back to A. F. of L., and demanded: “Where, oh where is Dubinsky today? . . . He is crying out now and his voice laments like that of Rachel in the wilderness, against the racketeers and the panderers and the crooks in that organization. . . . And now above all the clamor comes the piercing wail and the laments of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. And they say, ‘Peace, it is wonderful.’ ” He invited them and their president to follow Dubinsky into the fold of A. F. of L.

Many another orator followed: teacherish Thomas Kennedy; earnest Philip Murray; tough-minded Van A. Bittner; Sidney Hillman. Had Hillman chosen to reply to Lewis with equal bitterness, the fat might have been in the fire. Instead he spoke earnestly and reasonably for unity. Only grudgingly did Lewis shake Hillman’s proffered hand after that generous speech.

The most applause was reserved for Lewis. His C. I. O. men had refused to follow him over to the camp of Wendell Willkie. They accepted his resignation. But they cheered him because of the leader he had been, because he was still Labor’s most effective orator, and because, last week, he expressed both their determination and their fear, fear that in any union with A. F. of L. their young aggressive ideas would bring them only dismemberment at the hands of A. F. of L.’s old and crusty hierarchy.

“Not Weary.” On the last day of C. I. O.’s convention John Lewis nominated his successor: 54-year-old Philip Murray, who began his career at the age of ten working in a Scottish coal mine, still has a miner’s shoulders and a Scotsman’s burr. Sidney Hillman seconded Murray’s nomination, for Murray’s election was the brightest hope for harmony in C. I. 0. When Murray won, Lewis shook his hand far more cordially than he had shaken Hillman’s, gave him an ivory gavel, “symbol” of C. I. 0. leadership.

There appeared little likelihood that Lewis would dominate Murray and run the show from backstage. Phil Murray had his chief over a barrel all week. Be fore he would agree to take the job, he demanded a resolution condemning Naziism, Fascism and Communism, one of the issues of the convention, a resolution that anti-Communist Hillman was eager for. Lewis squirmed, thundered that those who say Communists influenced C. I. 0. “lie in their beard and lie in their bowels.” But finally he gave in. The resolution was passed.

One other compromise Murray and Hillman won. Lewis wanted Harry Bridges, West Coast longshoremen leader often suspected of being a Red, as vice-president. In the end they agreed on big, windy, swaggering Joe Curran of the National Maritime Union.

In Murray, a quiet man who works in a quiet way, Hillman got a man he could work with in C. I. O., a man opposed to Communist union control, who would not let bitterness alone prevent healing the breach between C. I. 0. and A. F. of L. This was considerable, despite Murray’s first words as president (“I protest the use of Government pressure to force a shotgun agreement between the C. I. 0. and the A. F. of L.”), despite his announcing that his first job was an immediate organizing drive in “Little Steel” and Ford. The show over, John L. Lewis clapped on his grey sombrero, lit one of his endless cigars, and lumbered home to read Shakespeare, satisfied that he was victor in his latest convention battle. Busy Sidney hurried back to his defense job. He had not exactly won the war, but he had a good chance to win the peace.

“Harmony and Tranquillity.” Opening the 60th annual convention of A. F. of L. in New Orleans, last week, President William Green crowed: “There is harmony and tranquillity here. . . . Behold the contrast as we look this morning to a city beside the sea, where a rebel group is meeting.”

But all was not peace. A. F. of L.faced a fight over racketeers within its ranks. In an attack on racketeering, David Dubinsky raised the lament in the wilder ness heard by John Lewis in Atlantic City. Dubinsky and his fellow delegates from the International Ladies’ Garment Work ers Union proposed a resolution giving the Executive Council of the Federation summary power to oust union officials guilty of corrupt practices or “moral turpitude.” President Green throttled the idea, contending it would destroy the autonomy of unions. Dubinsky threatened to carry his resolution to the floor for a fight.

Night before Thanksgiving, Dubinsky dropped into the bar of the Hotel Roosevelt. Joseph Fay, who once was shot by a policeman, rose to become boss of building trade unions in New Jersey, was there before him. It was after midnight. Fay, according to witnesses and his later acknowledgment, had been drinking since 5 in the afternoon. Others in the bar included George E. Browne, president of the stage hands’ union, 12th vice president of A. F. of L. Once charged with being the “front” for the Capone mob, Browne boasted among officials of his union Willie Bioff, convicted panderer, Nick Circella, Chicago mobster.

Fay strode up to Dubinsky and began denouncing the anti-racketeer resolution as “the dirtiest, lousiest resolution” he had ever seen. A friend of Dubinsky started to argue. Fay swung at him. Fay friends charged, fists flew. A Dubinskyite and Fayster clinched and rolled on the floor. Dubinsky’s daughter was thrown to her knees. It was minutes before the battlers were pulled apart. Browne had tactfully vanished at the start of the fray.

Nursing hurt feelings, Dubinsky next day announced that no official in A. F. of L. had called to ask about his condition, but that Philip Murray and Sidney Hill man had made solicitous inquiries from Atlantic City. Asked whether the brawl would be made a matter for official consideration, President Green said lightly: “That’s just personal. It has nothing to do with us.”

At week’s end the hierarchy readied a resolution to keep Dubinsky quiet, not to embarrass some members too much, and the convention settled back relieved.

“Momentous Convention.” Early last summer, while Hillman was bedded with grippe in Manhattan, his telephone rang. He took a thermometer out of his mouth to answer. “Sidney,” said the voice of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “I’ve got a big job I’d like you to do.” It was a job on the Defense Commission. Hillman’s tempera ture rose from 101 to 103°. When he recovered he went to work in Washington.

Sidney Hillman was born in Zagare, Lithuania, then part of Russia, second of seven children of a Jewish merchant. He studied to be a rabbi, got too close to a workers’ movement, spent ten months in jail, finally fled Russia for England. From there he migrated to Chicago, worked for 18 months as a clerk, got a job as an apprentice cutter with Hart Schaffner & Marx which paid, after three years, $11 a week. A strike at the plant plunged him into labor struggles. In 1914 he became first president of an infant Amalgamated Clothing Workers, has been president ever since. He was one of the insurgents, with John Lewis and Phil Murray, who broke with A. F. of L., and as such one of the founders of C. I. O. This fact Hillman recalled to the convention last week when he addressed them following Lewis’ invitation to him to step out. Until last week he was one of C. I. O.’s six vice presidents. He resigned because of his Defense Commission job.

As Labor’s representative on the Defense Commission, the onetime cutter for Hart Schaffner & Marx had his job cut out for him. In the beginning Management distrusted him instinctively because he was a Labor leader. A. F. of L. distrusted him because he belonged to C. I. 0. The left wing of C. I. O. distrusted him because he was for peace and moderation. On June 12, Hillman took office.

Since then his staff has taken up 209 labor disputes directly or indirectly affecting national defense and has settled 186 of them with scarcely any work stoppage. In the case of the Vultee Aircraft strike he had no warning that a walkout was imminent. He dropped the hint that public opinion might be aroused if both parties to the wrangle did not make up. Both parties have plunged into conference. At week’s end the only other important strikes unsettled were a two-week-old fight in the Northwest, where a dispute between A. F. of L. sawmill workers and mill owners tied up delivery of lumber needed for defense construction, and a walkout last week of C. I. O. workers in Aluminum Co.’s plant in New Kensington, Pa.

A man of Labor, Hillman knew how to talk Labor’s language to workers. He enlisted fellow Commissioner William Knudsen and Knudsen’s staff of industrialists to talk their own language to Management. Shrewd, tactful, he squeezed from both ends.

He has applied himself and his staff to the relocation of labor, the rehabilitation of ghost towns, vocational training, a youth program. At the C. I. 0. convention he vowed that by next year the U. S. will have licked unemployment. To Labor, angry at seeing defense contracts go to industries which have allegedly violated the Wagner Act, he pleaded for patience: “My God! . . . Those things have gone on for years. . . . Give us a chance.”

To do his job Hillman drives himself recklessly. His salary, $12,500, is paid to him as A. C. W. president. He gets nothing from the Government. His clothing workers, proud of their chief’s national prominence, also pay $375 a month rent for a sumptuous ten-room apartment in which he lives with his staff and his daughter Philoine. The elegance of his hotel suite amuses him. His time there he spends working, usually until after midnight. He gets to his unadorned office on the second floor of the Federal Reserve Building at 9 in the morning, stays until dinnertime. His wife lives in New York, drops down to Washington for frequent visits.

Last spring, Hillman’s clothing workers paraded up and down the aisles at their convention chanting, “We want peace. . . . We want unity.” Now in the No Man’s Land between Industry and Labor, between C. I. 0. and A. F. of L., Hillman’s cry is the same. With no great following among Labor leaders, little Sidney Hillman might be on the point of becoming a greater figure than those whom Labor has called great in the past.

*Next day an insurance agent delegate rose to object, declared he had nothing in common with A. F. of L. Vice President Woll.