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0, it is excellent to have a giant's strength. . . .
The giant stalked around his large office in Washington last week opening telegrams, growling at awed associates and champing at cigars.
"Prosecute me—for what?" he thundered. "We are exercising our right to strike. That breaks no law. . . . Let them seize the mines. That won't produce any coal. .
John Lewis spat the shreds of his cigar halfway across the room.
His soft-coal miners, out since April 1, were solidly behind him. Nor were they particularly dismayed at being out of work. They had had a wonderful winter and they were well off—temporarily, at least. In West Frankfort, Ill., near the world's largest mine, they stood three deep around the Egypt Café bar; miners' wives paraded into Pollock's Electrical Appliance Co. to order washers and refrigerators. The West Frankfort bank was fairly bursting with miners' deposits. Telephone installations were at an all-time peak and the "42" Cab Co. was doing a record business. Illinois miners had enough money, a United Mine Workers official figured, to stay out six months. From Pennsylvania came the same kind of reports. From Welch, W.Va.: "We're behind you, John, go your full length."
"We Accuse." John had gone his full length, knowing to a hair what it would be. As he paced his 30-ft.-long office he could look back on his campaign with gleeful satisfaction. Everything had worked out as he had planned it.
They had been caught unawares. They had thought he was going to be sweetly reasonable. They had thought they could settle for at least an 18½ wage boost. They were ready to make a lot of other concessions. Then John Lewis attacked:
"We accuse by the record that the management and stockholders of the bituminous-coal industry in a period of 14 years have through mismanagement and cupidity and wanton neglect made dead 28,000 mine workers . . . shattered the bodies of 1,004,000 miners. . . . We accuse . . . we accuse . . . we accuse."
What did he want? He wanted a welfare fund, such as he had mentioned last year, to be raised by a royalty on every ton of mined coal and put at the disposal of the union. The royalty he had suggested a year ago was 10¢, which would have swelled his treasury by $60,000,000.
Day after day he had talked on, noting understandingly how the operators' "souls are tortured." He had made no specific demands. They pleaded: what was his proposition? He countered: what did they offer? At last in lofty-anger he withdrew. Contracts expired and miners stopped mining.
He had figured every angle—nothing sudden to make the nation mad; the strike, as usual, to come in April when householders would not feel the pinch; no defiant demands (yet); a cause calculated to arouse some sympathy. Everyone knew that a miner's life was a wretched one, although John Lewis had never before made a fighting issue of welfare programs.
After that he had waited for the paralysis to set in which would give him what he needed for victory.