National Affairs: The Lion Relents

Leonine John Lewis, still king in the jungle of U.S. collieries, made a regal gesture toward the nation. Although he had once disclaimed all responsibility for the soft coal strike (TIME, Oct. 22), at another time had called it a “lockout,” the wave of his imperious paw somehow brought it to an end.

The gesture, which sent some 210,000 miners back to work after four weeks of idleness and a 13,000,000-ton loss of coal production, was made with a fitting air of preoccupied charity. He simply told his United Mine Workers that demands for recognition of their foremen’s union—basis of the strike—would be postponed to “a later, more appropriate date.” The public was informed, not by Lewis, but by a “spokesman,” who explained with a straight face that the action was “obviously . . . taken in the public interest.”

Labor Secretary Lew Schwellenbach, who had made a frantic, futile effort to bring Lewis and the coal operators together, got the news from the White House ticker, was charmed into commenting: “Greatly gratified. . . . I hope that other striking elements in industry will follow the footsteps. . . .” President Truman got the news from Lew Schwellenbach, said that he was “very happy,” too.

Actually John Lewis, having shown again that he can threaten the nation with cold homes and idle blast furnaces by a casual shake of his shaggy mane, was merely content to rest on his laurels for a while. The public interest coincided with his own because:

¶ The National Labor Relations Board, in a decision involving the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., will rule on recognition of the foremen’s union, may well give Lewis as much by edict as he could gain by strike.

¶ The strike was not too popular with U.M.W. rank-&-file, who are more interested now in pay than in organizing foremen.

¶ Lewis had heard that President Truman was prepared to denounce him publicly for the strike, had decided to beat the White House to the draw.

All that the strike and its sudden end proved—at considerable cost to miners’ pay envelopes and the public patience— was that the old lion was still a little too nimble for anybody who had yet set out to tame him.