Against Boundless Audacity

Federal Judge T. Alan Goldsborough, who is getting to be an old hand at dealing with John L. Lewis, tried hard last week to avoid having to slap him down again. The "national tragedy" of another coal strike, said Judge Goldsborough, would rouse the country and Congress against Lewis, perhaps against both labor & management. Said he: "The people are not going to stand for having society disintegrated by movements of this kind." He invited John L.'s lawyers and those of the Southern Coal Producers Association, with whom Lewis has stubbornly refused to negotiate, to sit down in his chambers and "fuss in good faith." Nothing came of it.

Although Lewis was not in court, Judge Goldsborough let John know what he thought of him. "There is no such thing as a benevolent despot," he said. "It's your boundless audacity, O Catiline."* Then he ordered Lewis, under the Taft-Hartley law, to bargain with all the coal operators before the June 30 contract deadline.

Four hours later, John Lewis, who has always used the divide & conquer strategy by dealing separately with northern and southern operators, sent word to the judge that he would abide by the injunction. This week, he began his contract-fussing with all the operators.

The major fussing, John L. soon made clear, was again going to be over welfare funds. With the 1947 fund blocked by court action, his miners' union was spending its 1946 purse at a rate which would exhaust it by July 1. Payments from the $26 million kitty had averaged about $2,000,000 a month; now the U.M.W. was pouring out the remaining $4,500,000 in one month. Thus John L. could cry: "If this desperately needed assistance . . . stops, as it will at the end of June unless the 1947 fund is unfrozen, it will cause a major convulsion . . . and will enflame the mining population with white anger." As a starter, John L. was on fire.

* Judge Goldsborough squashed and slightly bent the opening lines of Cicero's First Oration Against Catiline (roughly translated) : "How much longer, Mr. Catiline, do you think you're going to get away with it? If you think we'll take your rough japery forever, you're crazy. Just keep up that bodacious swaggering a little longer, and you're going to be told where to head in."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.