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"Hip and Thigh," No one relishes a good scrap more than John Llewellyn Lewis. He has been scrapping almost from the day he was born 57 years ago in Lucas, Iowa, the red-thatched son of an immigrant Welsh miner. In the years when young John was knocking around in the Midwest his brawn and wit became a miner's legend. After he married Myrta Edith Bell, a country schoolteacher, and settled down in 1908 to professional unionism, he learned to fight in another fashion. Soon the Panama, Ill. local was known as the personal property of the Lewis brothers. Six of the eleven short years it took him to rise to U. M. W. presidency were spent as a crack A. F. of L. organizer. His 19 years in office have not been precisely peaceful. Of one turbulent period he recalls with gusto: "They smote me hip and thigh and right merrily did I return their blows."
Bossing a miners' union is no job for a man with a queasy stomach. The early years of the Lewis rule were one long series of revolts and ruthless suppression. In the eyes of liberals today the Lion of Labor is generally regarded as something akin to Progressiveness incarnate. But up to five years ago John Lewis was often looked upon as just another A. F. of L. stand-patter with a reputation for strong-arm methods and unscrupulous dictation.
Even today opposition within the United Mine Workers goes down before the mighty Lewis steamroller. No less than 218 locals introduced resolutions last week in behalf of district autonomy—an old union sore spot. Nearly every advocate of autonomy was loudly booed. When a Negro delegate from West Virginia named Hyden Smith rose to speak, Acting Chairman Van A. Bittner asked whether it was true that he had been a deputy sheriff when his field was nonunion. As the Negro tried to explain, delegates yelled, other Negro miners poured out execrations. He was given the bum's rush. The question was promptly put and passed in precisely the form John Lewis wanted—autonomy with his consent.
By & large, however, his miners showed themselves satisfied. Up to the stage they filed and he greeted them one by one like a politician glad-handing his constituents. With a long tradition of fighting unionism behind them, the miners were ready to support with hard cash the lofty Lewis ambitions for C. I. O.
They had no criticism of his standing answer to Bill Green: that organizing the steel industry was worth $2,000,000 to the miners; no criticism of $550,000 spent to buy and remodel the old University Club as their Washington headquarters. The six-story opulence without a single spittoon in sight, its great marble staircase, its private office (a huge Il Duce affair) for John L. Lewis, its top floor suite (still incomplete) with lounge, library, dining room and kitchen for John L. Lewis' hours of privacy, all are symbols of the United Mine Workers' pride and power. So is his 16-cylinder Cadillac with chauffeur. Although in 1936 he refused to accept more than half his $25,000 salary, the delegates last week voted it again, urged him to take his back pay.