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Obviously he wants a bigger and stronger miners' union, because that is the platform on which he parades. But he has very little association with mining these days, except when he stands in his pine-paneled office under his chandelier: a cogwheel hanging from mining augers, decorated with mining shovels and a sledge, supporting a ring of miners' lamps. The country's welfare is the miners', and for the country's welfare he has shown little regard.
John Lewis' one objective may be a very simple one: just to be in the limelight. Throughout the years, like a potbellied moth, he has courted the flame of publicity. History, while recording his contributions—his gains for his miners; his great exposition of the idea of industrial unionization, his usually peerless strategy—may also record that he was one of U.S. labor's greatest charlatans.
The Hon. John. At week's end John L. stopped pacing. He knew exactly what his next move was to be. He recognized his cues. The Senate had voted overwhelmingly to take up the anti-labor Case bill. The Senators were in a mood to legislate something even stronger than the Smith-Connally act. Lewis did not want that.
His strike had approached the proportions of the British general strike of 1926, which had boomeranged on labor. He would not wanf that. There was a point beyond which he did not care—or dare—to go, which he had carefully calculated. He fed on discontent but he had no stomach for disruption.
He waited. He thought he had stirred up just the right amount of public indignation to force the President to intercede. He liked dealing on the top level.
Then the message came; Harry Truman summoned him—buf not a moment too soon. In the excitement someone at the White House typed the announcement that the President would confer that afternoon with "Mr." Charles O'Neill (head of the northern mine operators) and the "Hon." John Lewis. Triumphantly, the Hon. John Lewis acted. As he had once ruined Franklin Roosevelt's show by proclaiming the end of a strike 15 minutes before Roosevelt went on the air to castigate him, he now spoiled Harry Truman's show. Three hours before he was due at the White House, he ordered his miners back to work—not permanently, but for a truce of twelve days.
It was his "contribution," he said magnanimously, "to our nation's economy, which is being imperiled by the stupidity and selfish greed of the coal operators and associated financial interests and by demagogues who have tried to lash the public mind into a state of hysteria."
He walked triumphantly into the White House. Forty minutes later he emerged with Mr. O'Neill, a onetime miner himself.
Wage adjustments would be retroactive.
The welfare fund was settled in principle; all "that remained was to write the ticket, which the Hon. John Lewis and Mr. O'Neill would proceed to do. The President wanted the contract written in not more than 'five days. Did Lewis think that was possible?
"That depends entirely on Mr. O'Neill and his associates," said Lewis.
"And on Mr. Lewis and his associates," O'Neill said bravely.