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In vengeance he called out 53,000 mine workers in 1941 and wrecked the Mediation Board which Franklin Roosevelt had set up in an effort to keep labor peace while the country armed for war. He split labor apart. Congress was so incensed that it was ready to torpedo national policy just to sink John Lewis.
He enjoyed the effect, although he was a little flabbergasted when the Japs struck Pearl Harbor. Having followed an isolationist line, he now said lamely: "When the nation is attacked every American must rally to its defense." Overshadowed by the war, he sulked.
Man In Cartoons. But not for long. He proposed the "accouplement" of A.F.L. and C.I.O., cynically putting his old friend Phil Murray on the block. When the shocked Murray attacked him for suggesting such a deal, he put Murray on trial in the basement of the U.M.W. building (from the walls of which hundreds of Lewis cartoons glared at the white-faced Murray) and read him out of the miners' union. Then he led the miners out of Murray's C.I.O.
For a period of eight months in 1943, he harried the nation with coal strikes, split the Administration, humiliated Franklin Roosevelt, and virtually wrecked the War Labor Board, as he had wrecked the Mediation Board. In return for only the smallest of gains he brought down upon his head once more the wrath of Congress. It was a blunder. More than any other man, John Lewis was responsible for the Smith-Connally Act, the boomerang labor law which Congress passed in an effort to curb him.
Some of this history was certainly in his mind as he paced his office, gaped at by his aging courtiers. None of the small Johns and Toms had much to say; they did not even know exactly what was in the great man's mind. There was little warmth in the Lewis office, only reverence. "Some great statesman once said the heights are cold," John L. orated in 1940. "I think that is true. The poet said, 'Who ascends to the mountain's top finds the loftiest peaks encased in mist and snow.'"*
Under the Chandelier. Did the great man himself know what he had on his mind? What does John Lewis want?
He has no real desire to reform the economy. He is actually an economic classicist. From time to time he has collaborated with revolutionists ("those carrion birds"), but only because he thought he could make use of them. He also collaborated with Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.
Is he obsessed with a desire for power? Time & again he has deliberately thrown away chances to increase his power, as when he broke with Roosevelt. Time & again he has recklessly doublecrossed and reviled the very men who could help him to power.
Is his objective a strong, unified labor movement? No labor leader in U.S. history has split labor into so many parts and hacked off so many splinters. Does he really give a damn for labor? He speaks of labor in sweeping, lofty terms: "I salute the hosts of labor. ..." Labor to him was "18 million stomachs clashing against backbones." A few years later it had become "52 million shrunken bellies." Paunchy Mr. Lewis is haunted by flat stomachs.