Tongue v. Tongue

"We object to General Johnson hanging more dead cats on the President. Nine months of this explains why NRA has come to mean National Run Around." With this salutation a group of union leaders last week greeted the proposal General Johnson offered to settle the threatened steel strike.

Hugh S. Johnson has in the last twelve-month had many a scrap but until last week he never met adversaries who could and would match him invective for invective. As in the automobile labor fracas, he had two adversaries to beat into agreement: 1) the steelmasters headed by Eugene Grace (Bethlehem), William Archibald Irvin (U. S. Steel) and Leopold E. Block (Inland); and 2) Labormaster Michael Francis Tighe, president of Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, an A. F. of L. affiliate. The issue was simple: should the Amalgamated get control of all steel labor?

But the contestants would not define the issue in such simple terms. The steelmasters set their jaws in grim determination against closed shop. Mike Tighe demanded "recognition" for his union and vehemently denied that he was asking for closed shop. In this difference there was room for compromise--except for one material circumstance: Mr. Tighe's subchiefs were on a rampage. While the steelmasters met in Manhattan and Mr. Tighe spent much of the week in Cleveland, a Rank & File Committee, composed of the heads of local Amalgamated lodges, were in Washington making life hot for General Johnson.

By sweat and labor the NRAdministrator wrung from the steelmasters an offer to set up a board like the Automobile Labor Board; to have three members appointed by the President, one to represent employers, one labor, one the public. This board was to decide who should represent labor in collective bargaining. If Amalgamated had been promised one membership on this board, it might well have been satisfied. The steelmasters. however, had no intention of giving Amalgamated the privilege of speaking for all steel labor. They conditioned their offer with the proviso that no member of the Board should have any professional connection with either employers or employes.

The Rank & File Committee was in a belligerent mood, and soon grew more so. They said: "We'd like to see General Johnson walk up to an open-hearth furnace and get his summer pants scorched for $21.84 a week." The hard-boiled ex-cavalry officer retorted that in the saddle he had worn enough skin off his fundament to make half a dozen such critics as the Rank & Filers. Next morning he read in the papers an open letter to himself:

"We, the undersigned steel workers who have just listened to your damnable speech, denounce you! You use your government position to call us steel workers who criticize your schemes 'just so much skin off the saddle.' We are done with you and your Steel Institute."

The General thought it the better part of wisdom to let Edward F. McGrady, Madam Secretary Perkins' able assistant, try to persuade the Rank & Filers to accept the steelmasters' offer of a labor board. Chief Tighe was summoned back from Cleveland to attend the conference. In the presence of his fiery subchiefs, even that conservative old leader could find nothing good to say of the plan.

"Boo," shouted Rank & Filers while Mr. McGrady read the offer. "This is an insult to anybody's intelligence."

Next day they sent an open message to the President:

"Mr. President, the least you can do is to throw the Iron & Steel Institute's brazen company union proposition into the waste basket. And if you really mean to abide by your own recovery law, the least you can do is to summon the steel manufacturers to Washington for a genuine collective bargaining conference with the steel workers. General Johnson has discredited himself forever in the eyes of the workers of this country. It is useless for us to waste any more time in Washington in the National Run Around, rejecting traps set for us. We are returning home today to prepare for action." Said General Johnson: "I sympathize with these men. They are up against adroit legal piloting, which seems to leave them always on the wrong side of a court argument and, because they rush inadvisedly into unwarranted action, constantly find themselves frustrated."

Finally the strike issue went directly to a special convention of Amalgamated called for this week. If the union members voted to follow their young firebrands rather than moderate President Tighe, small indeed would be General Johnson's chances of averting what threatened to be the boldest and bloodiest strike of the Recovery Era.

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