When the White House nominated Utah Geologist Tom Lyon to be director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, trouble rumbled right behind the announcement. United Mine Workers Boss John L. Lewis opposed Lyon because he had no coal-mining experience, and 88% of U.S. miners are coal miners. But no one was prepared for the explosion that blew the nomination to bits last week.
Tom Lyon lit the fuse himself. A craggy-faced individualist, he sat down before the Senate Interior Committee determined to tell the unvarnished truth. He had worked for the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. and its subsidiaries for 34 years. The Truman Administration had brought him to Washington in late 1951 as minerals chief in the Defense Materials Procurement Agency. Lyon added that he draws a $5,000-a-year pension from Anaconda and that the pension is revocable at the will of the company. At that bit of information, Senators' eyebrows shot up. Washington's Democratic Senator Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson said the fact that Anaconda could revoke the pension would put Lyon "at the mercy" of Anaconda, one of the biggest companies he would have to deal with.
Then Lyon volunteered some damaging opinion to top the damaging facts. He was solidly against the new federal mine safety regulations passed by Congress last year—a law he would have to administer. He believed that the bureau, which has 270 mine inspectors, would need several thousand to enforce the new law. The law was "just that much more federal control" of the mining industry; individual states should have chief responsibility for mine safety; the Bureau of Mines "was never meant to be a policeman." Besides, said Lyon, 99% of mine accidents are caused by miners themselves. Mining companies take every precaution to prevent accidents, "because they cost . . . so much."
"Doesn't a human life come before a material matter?" asked Senator Jackson. Replied Lyon: "You'd think so, but life appears to be becoming very cheap on the globe."
Within 24 hours, Utah's Republican Senator Arthur V. Watkins, Lyon's sponsor, withdrew his support. Then Lyon himself, realizing that the committee would not confirm him, withdrew his name. Director John J. Forbes, a coal mine safety specialist who has worked in the bureau 38 years, will stay on until someone else is appointed. The main responsibility for proposing so vulnerable a nominee as Lyon rested on one man: Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay, who had insisted that Lyon was the man for the job.
The most interested spectator at the explosion was John L. Lewis, who had been scheduled to testify the day after Lyon appeared. Asked to say something about the victory he had won, the U.M.W.'s Lewis smiled all the way out from under his brows and said: "There is no sense in putting a cap on an empty bottle."