John L. Lewis
AT the present time, two men dominate the American political scene in such a way that all others beside them appear as playing minor parts. The first one is President Roosevelt, the second is John L. Lewis, President of the Committee for Industrial Organization.
Both are endowed with a magnetic personality and a capacity for appealing to the imagination of the millions who believe in them or hate them. In the daily thoughts of every American they occupy a very large place. It is impossible to forget that they exist and that their ideas, their words, and their actions influence the thoughts and the lives of millions of men of to-day and of to-morrow.
They are profoundly different from one another. The aristocratic gentleman who has been elevated from the elegant privacy of the Hyde Park manor to the democratic and public home life of the White House has kept about him an air of the eighteenth century, the philosophical daring of those noblemen who flirted with the French Revolution before it started, and, when it did, promptly lost their powdered wigs, and with them their heads.
John Llewellyn Lewis is one hundred years younger. He looms up out of Zola, on a background of factory smoke and surging black mobs of nineteenthcentury industrial slaves. He has come out ‘from the bowels of the earth,’ still blinking in the sunlight, to lead the oppressed workers, in the name of Justice, to the attack of a tyrannical Society of selfish rulers.
Still both these men are essentially of to-day; they are imbued with the spirit of these times. Each of them pushes forward relentlessly, leading his respective crusade toward aims which are not clear but which inspire his followers with unlimited hope and courage.
Are they allies or enemies? Will they meet in the Promised Land? Or are they headed for a clash which will spell disunion in this country through factional conflicts and class warfare?
We do not know, and they do not know themselves, because in spite of the power they wield they are not alone. Behind them are millions of men and women, economic and political forces, clashes of interests and clashes of ideas, an infinitely complex world in which they are but accidental agents designated by fate to shape an unknown future.
I
John L. Lewis has no publicity agent that I know of, but fame has been kind to him. The obscure son of a Welsh miner has, at the age of fifty-seven, attained as much renown as Shirley Temple at eight. This, by itself, is an extraordinary achievement.
The rise has been slow and difficult. John Lewis meant little to the average American two years ago. He was seldom photographed and practically never quoted. It was known that he was the head of the United Mine Workers, which includes 400,000 men, but except among those who follow closely the problems of Labor his name was mentioned much less often than that of William Green.
At the time of the NRA he made a brief appearance in connection with the famous Section 7A, but the NRA died and the problems of Labor were not interesting, except as a factor in the fight against the depression — that is, under the general aspect of unemployment and relief. The past history of John Lewis was not sufficiently startling to attract the attention of a public that likes the ups and downs of fortune, the thrills of a battle to win money or recognition, sudden miracles like the fantastic ascension of Father Coughlin or the Robin Hood pranks of Huey Long.
John L. Lewis was just a Labor leader, a trades-union official, which means in the eyes of the public something between a political boss and a selfappointed foreman. Even to-day it is difficult to dramatize his early life except for those who find in the intestine wars of the Labor organizations the same epic element as in the Iliad. But those are rare. Most people find more romance and poetry in the love affairs of a king or of a movie star. The most interesting incident in John Lewis’s life, from the ordinary point of view, is the fact that when he was young, and a mule driver in the West, a personal feud developed between him and his mule. The mule tried to corner him and kick him to death, but John Lewis, who is endowed with great, muscular strength, brained the mule with a pickaxe. This is good material for a future legend, but it cannot compare with Hercules strangling two snakes in his cradle. And besides, there is no other trait of the same kind to report, except the knocking out of an obstreperous rival in a meeting, and a few idiosyncrasies such as the habit of climbing on a chair ‘with astounding agility for a man of his size ’ in the midst of a conversation, in order to relax his muscles.
Nevertheless John L. Lewis has by now imposed himself on the public with such success that it is the dream of every photographer to get a good picture of him, and the moral duty of every public writer to try his hand at the description of his appearance and character.
The reasons for this rather abrupt stepping into fame of an Iowa coal miner are of course mainly circumstantial. If he had not split with the A. F. of L. to launch his C. I. O. movement in a spectacular way; if he had not imported the sit-down strikes into America; if he had not managed to take in his own hands the whole problem of the relations between Labor and Capital, he would still be a very unimportant figure in a world badly overcrowded with turbulent personalities. But besides these circumstances there remains the fact that John Lewis, as a man, cannot leave anybody indifferent, because he is thoroughly and triumphantly conspicuous. He cannot be easily classified in any category. He resembles nobody but himself.
His shaggy mane is as memorable as the parted hair of Mrs. Simpson, his eyebrows as remarkable as Hitler’s moustache and much thicker. His frown is less banal than the Napoleonic mimicry of Mussolini, and quite as impressive. His voice has a booming quality which can be overpowering, but it can also fade out suddenly into a mumbling which sounds like the buzzing of a big bumblebee.
To a European who is often distressed by the monotonous pattern of American faces, John Lewis’s head is as striking as that of Lloyd George, Balzac, or Beethoven. He is powerfully built, but not on the classic lines of the athlete. There is nothing smooth about him, nothing crisp, nothing collegiate. As Louis Adamic wrote, he is ‘ vaguely tremendous.’ But those who dislike him say that he looks like a Shakespearean ham actor, and it is true that his head gives the impression of having been made up with various attributes not belonging to the same character. This head itself is too big. The eyes are too unflinching and too luminous for the general coarseness of the face. The nose is too small, the upper lip too long and too bare, which makes the mouth appear as if it were out of place.
He gives the impression of a man entirely absorbed by one aspect of life — not the genial one. He is sombre, and the paleness of the face intensifies the sensation of blackness that one feels about him. He can be majestic and impersonal to the point of discomfort when he stares straight in front of him with his blue eyes; but then he will change suddenly, bend forward, put his hand on your knee and become intense, direct, and appealing. His expression at times is that of a Chinese war mask, and at others that of a country doctor who believes more in the effect of words than in medicine.
II
The first time I saw John L. Lewis was at a dinner given just before the elections in honor of Miss Frances Perkins. John Lewis sat at the speakers’ tabic, and although his mere aspect would have been enough, it was more his attitude of total detachment verging on solemn boredom that attracted attention. In the optimistic and radiant atmosphere that prevailed at this banquet, during which the conditions of the laboring classes were described as constantly improving under the benevolent care of the New Deal, John Lewis struck a note of silent pessimism which was positively ominous. He was singular and menacing, like a thundercloud rising on the horizon at the end of a perfect day.
The next time I saw him was quite recently, to interview him for my paper, and this time, frankly, I liked him.
I discovered that beyond this bituminous and overdramatic appearance of his there was a quality of humaneness and simplicity which made the conversation effortless and perfectly pleasant. The word ‘charm’ does not seem to fit, and yet I can think of no other: John Lewis has charm, and plenty of it.
I did not have to ask him many questions. He talked willingly and, I believe, with utter frankness, for the simple reason that within the scope of his present action he is too engrossed by the tremendous task he has undertaken to bother much about the interpretation that may be given to his words.
Before I met him, and since, the most frequent remark I have heard is that John Lewis is not sincere, that he is merely furthering his own ambition, that the so-called organization of the industrial workers is just another racket.
This question of the sincerity of the motives of any man who happens to be in the political limelight is one that can be endlessly discussed and seldom solved. The truth is that in most cases, and with very few exceptions, leaders have a natural tendency to identify themselves with their movement in such a way that their personal interests become those of the cause they are fighting for. This is true of John Lewis. That the success of his crusade will also mean his own glorification is obvious, and he seems quite prepared to expand personally just as far as that crusade will carry him. The weight of his present and future responsibilities is light on his shoulders. Someone very close to him told me a few days later, as we were discussing this point, ‘You can be sure that if he became President of the United States he would not change, He would be just the same man he is now and always has been.’
During the whole conversation I had with him, John Lewis seldom said ‘I.’ He spoke of ‘we,’ or ‘the movement.’ Other people tell me that he is not always so humble, but I had no unusual impression of boastfulness while he spoke. He has none of the histrionic spirit which made Huey Long such a colorful figure. Nor does he seem to have the vanity of authorship which most leaders of movements display.
It appears that among his followers, especially among the coal miners, he is venerated with fanaticism. Young babies have been given his name, and someone who attended a meeting at which he spoke last year tells me that he was hailed as the Savior of Humanity and compared to Jesus Christ.
For the occasional visitor who, like myself, does not come to him in a state of blind devotion, there is no reflection of such worship. Nevertheless John Lewis gives the distinct impression of being the whole of his movement. The idea of it, its mystic content, its dynamic quality, are his. He is the living symbol of the crusade he has started.
The same person who told me that he would remain unchanged if he ever came to dwell in the White House also admitted that if he died suddenly the whole movement would suffer a tremendous setback, and I believe that to be true. The long struggle of Labor began before Lewis was born. It will go on after his death; but for the moment, and in America, he personifies it, because he is more powerful, more dramatic, and probably cleverer than any of his potential rivals.
III
To define the objectives of John Lewis happens to be simple, and the difficulty begins only beyond the formulation of the programme.
‘The aim of our movement,’ John Lewis told me, ‘ is to organize the workers in order that they may obtain a larger participation in the benefits of modern industry. They have a legal right to organize, but this right has remained academic. We intend to enforce the recognition of this right on the employers who still deny it.’
This is the primary aim and the immediate object of the present struggle.
‘But,’ adds John Lewis, ‘I am not blind to the fact that such a movement has other consequences. Its byproduct is political, in the sense that through their organization the workers of America will acquire a greater participation in the government of this country. What we want is to create an Industrial Democracy. . . .’
Thus the President of the C. I. O., departing frankly from the traditional attitude of other American Labor leaders, asserts that the vast army which he seeks to discipline will become a much more powerful political factor than it has ever been. However, and according to John Lewis, the political complexion of this organized mass is not to be predetermined. He told me that he was strictly neutral in this matter. Whether the unionized workers are Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Communists, Trotskyists, or anything else they choose, is of no concern to him. But the industrial unions will develop political thinking in the working classes and enable them to exert more freely their political rights. This, in the eyes of John Lewis, is of paramount importance.
It is indeed. Judged by European precedents, the C. I. O. movement represents the first effective attempt to organize a Labor movement in America which may ultimately find political expression in a Labor Party.
The parallels with similar developments elsewhere are numerous, but can it happen here? Is John Lewis the man around whom such a party can be formed, or is the two-party system so strong that he will have to content himself with an encroaching alliance with one of them? The writer admits readily that he is not competent to answer these questions, but certain observations and comparisons with similar situations in Europe can be made.
To begin with, there is the important fact that John Lewis is as American as a buffalo. This means that like all successful leaders of movements in America, whether their object be the prevention of drinking, the furtherance of an old-age pension plan, or the protection of bird life, he believes and knows that he cannot get a large following in this country if he can be suspected of affiliation with any established doctrine not indigenous to America. He has an instinctive dislike for all ‘isms,’ and although the movement which he directs may follow certain foreign patterns and borrow foreign methods, such as the sit-down strike weapon, the spirit must remain American. The vagueness of the ultimate aim, the pragmatic quality of the C. I. O. crusade, are characteristic.
Miss Dorothy Thompson, who has a vast experience of European conditions, was quick to point out this aspect of John Lewis’s action. ‘“Organize the workers” is fine,’ she said in substance, ‘but organize them for what? What does Mr. Lewis mean by Industrial Democracy, and what medium does he envisage through which Labor may act politically?’
To which the only possible answer seems to be, at the moment, that the great impulse to go somewhere, followed by as many people as can be found who want to move along with you, is not peculiar to John Lewis. Outside the Trotskyists with their dialectics, the Fascists with their straitjacket discipline, or Mr. Henry Ford who thinks he must be right because he has been successful, nobody works on a blueprint to-day, and those who, like John Lewis, try to integrate themselves in the present order of things without wishing to upset it completely are, of necessity, opportunists.
This is difficult for the liberal thinkers to accept. But then, the whole world of to-day is an uncomfortable place for them, because, although they believe it is their duty and their raison d’être to think reasonably in an unreasonable world, they find that Liberalism is not a system or a school of thought any more. It is merely a personal inclination to take upon oneself all the unsolved problems of the outside world. The liberal is a living Gordian knot dangerously exposed to the casual methods of too many Alexanders.
IV
When I told some of my friends that I had seen John Lewis they jumped as if I had announced that I had interviewed the Devil himself. To them the President of the United Mine Workers is not the same kind of human being as themselves. They firmly believe that his real purpose is to sabotage everything which is good, sound, and worth living for in America, and that when he says he is working for the welfare of the laboring classes he is either deceiving them or himself or both.
When I was a child in Paris, some twenty-five years ago, law-abiding citizens lived for a long while in a state of chronic terror because a fellow named Pataud, who was the leader of the electricians’ union, used to cut off the current every so often as a means of intimidating the Compagnie Générale d’Électricité. Suddenly, in the middle of dinner, the lights would go out and there would be a great rush for candles and oil lamps. Personally I enjoyed these accidents thoroughly, but I remember well how my family got excited and jittery about it. They saw in Pataud the forerunner of an imminent revolution; it was currently said that he should be put in jail and perhaps shot.
Of course they were right in a certain sense: the harmless vexations of Pataud were followed by more severe conflicts and by general strikes which had to be curbed by force. It all led to the Russian Revolution and then to the Italian and the German reactions, and again back to France to the sit-down strikes of last June, and now to the sit-down strikes in Michigan and elsewhere. But all this has taken twenty-five years, and there has been a war in between for good measure. The point I wish to make is that the conflict between Capital and Labor — or, to put it more broadly, between the static elements of the population and those whom Auguste Comte described as being ‘camped in the midst of Society’ — this conflict is not new and nowhere near being solved. It is fundamental and universal, but in America it is rendered even more acute than elsewhere by the fact that, in spite of everything said to the contrary, there exists a hierarchy between different groups of American citizens based on the age of their Americanization and on their racial origin. Those who have immigrated two or three and more generations ago and those who are of AngloSaxon or Northern European stock enjoy a spiritual preference over others.
Now it so happens that a large percentage of the industrial workers do not belong to these privileged groups. In the popular mind they are not imbued with the same spirit of pure Americanism as the farmers, for instance. That this point of view is unjust and prejudiced does not change the fact that it exists, and no foreign observer living here for some time can fail to notice it. Speaking of the strikers in Detroit, an American confrère of mine told me with complete conviction, ‘Those fellows ought to be shot down with machine guns. No real American would behave like these rascals.’
The dread of John Lewis as leader of Labor is based more or less openly on such sentiments. In spite of all his personal magnetism, of the fact that he has the reputation of never breaking his word, in spite of his reading Shakespeare and being liked by many of the big industrialists (and their wives), he represents in the eyes of the non-laboring classes something un-American; and it does him no good at all to have a $12,000 job, to ride in a Cadillac, and to stop in a suite at the St. Regis when he is in New York.
Were he a chief executive in a big corporation instead of being at the head of a vast holding of Labor unions, such a way of living would be considered quite normal, but from the point of view of those who usually stop at the St. Regis, and have a chauffeur, John Lewis is not the ‘boy who made good.’ He brings unpleasant associations of ideas with other revolutions in which the leaders of the mob — be they sansculottes or bolsheviks — always begin (and end) by occupying the palaces of the rich and enjoying a luxurious life.
To those who hated Roosevelt during the election campaign, and who still cannot bring themselves to like him, John Lewis gives ample proof of the accuracy of their predictions. They knew that if President Roosevelt was reelected the terrible things which we are now witnessing would happen and that the President would condone them, either because he is afraid of John Lewis, to whom he is tied by secret pledges, or because it does not matter to him whether sit-down strikes are illegal or justified provided they annoy the ‘economic royalists.’
In France, when M. Léon Blum refused to enforce the law in a similar situation last June, the reactions were identical. To occupy the Renault factories in Billancourt was just as unlawful as to occupy the plants of General Motors in Flint. Then, too, the government refused to use force against the strikers and preferred to negotiate very much in the same way as Governor Murphy has done in Michigan. The main difference was that, France being completely centralized, the results of these negotiations were immediately translated into national legislation.
There was another difference, due to the fact that Léon Jouhaux, the head of the Confédération Générale du Travail (equivalent of the A. F. of L.), is, under the Popular Front formula, in a much more powerful position than either William Green or John Lewis. He is consulted in all matters of importance, even when they do not concern Labor directly. He has a seat on the Board of Direction of the Bank of France. In fact, through his control over all the trades-unions, he exerts tremendous political power, and it is contended by many Frenchmen that the real government of France is not in the hands of Léon Blum but in those of Léon Jouhaux.
Now when John Lewis speaks of increasing the participation of Labor in the government of the United States, one may wonder if he envisages himself in a similar position. This would mean that, as head of the C. I. O., he would be able to represent all the unionized workers of America and give or refuse his support to the government in a much more effective way, even, than he has done during the last elections.
In other words, this would mean the transposition to America of a Popular Front formula, the basis of which is a compromise between the static or bourgeois elements and the encamped groups. This has worked not too badly in France up to now, because it so happens that the Government of M. Blum has complied generally with the wishes of the C. G. T., and the C. G. T., on the other hand, has helped M. Blum by maintaining a good deal of discipline among its member unions. The equilibrium which the Popular Front represents will work just as long as the leaders of organized Labor and the Government agree; but what would happen if M. Blum were succeeded by a Premier not to the taste of M. Jouhaux is anybody’s guess, and many French observers believe that the only other alternative is, at the present juncture, some sort of Fascist rule.
The situation in America is far from being as advanced as this, but is this the goal toward which Mr. Lewis is headed, consciously or not? There are many obstacles in the way which do not exist in France. The A. F. of L. still prevents the total unification of the American Labor movement under one leader. Besides, and by his own admission, John Lewis has a great educational task cut out for him before he can say that his troops are really well disciplined. There are also sectional complications: this is not really a country, but a vast empire with the most diversified conditions. Still, it would seem that if Mr. Lewis is going anywhere, it is in some such direction.
V
It may interest the conservative readers to know that this probable development is viewed with many misgivings by the really radical elements in this country.
It would take too long to describe the fantastic bickerings, schisms, shufflings and reshufflings, which are going on in these groups here and elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the Communists do not consider that the present situation offers any ground for a revolution. As a matter of fact, what the Communists really want to do next is very much of a puzzle. Still in the obedience of Moscow, they find that Moscow is now more interested in furthering the national aims of Russia than in blowing up the whole capitalistic world. Stalin, having made up his mind that for the moment, at least, it is expedient to be on friendly terms with the democracies, has no intention of throwing a monkey wrench that might break up the delicate International Popular (or Democratic) Front which is being built up against Fascism and Naziism.
The Socialists, on the other hand, are not following the same programme in America and in France. In France they are considered by the true Marxians to have sold out to Capitalism by becoming nationalists and bourgeois. The American Socialists, unlike the Communists, played no Popular Front tactics at the last elections. They did not support Roosevelt and they did not expel the Trotskyists from their ranks, as did the French Socialists. They maintained their independence and their Marxian virginity.
From this sketchy account it is easy to see that the radical elements in this country have varying opinions on what John Lewis is doing. By and large, the real revolutionaries distrust him completely, and for the same reasons as many conservatives and liberals. They think that his position is unsound because he has not thought out the political consequences of his movement. They think a Labor leader should not receive a salary of $12,000 a year. They think that John Lewis is building up a machine which will be run dictatorially and not in the interests of the workers. They fear that by the time John Lewis has organized Labor, and obtained recognition in the form of national legislation and agreements, there will be nothing left of the Labor movement but a huge bureaucracy manœuvred from the top by powerful bosses entirely subservient to the Washington Government, which is equivalent, from the point of view of Marxian logic, to being subservient to Capitalism.
A very radical friend of mine told me that he could not understand why the conservatives were afraid of John Lewis, because what he was doing in fact was to block revolutionary thought among the workers. ‘Although he may not realize it,’ this friend said, ‘John Lewis is completely imbued with petty bourgeois ideology, and therefore unable to think in any other terms than the immediate present and his immediate surroundings.‘
Thus there are more ways than one of judging John L. Lewis.
In the meanwhile Mr. Lewis, trusting himself and his followers, like a Biblical prophet marches forward. ‘If I did not believe in the intelligence of the American workers,’he said to me with convincing earnestness, ‘I would cease to believe in Democracy.‘
And so it would appear that John Lewis’s conception of Democracy, like that of President Roosevelt, is that of the crusader and founded on an optimistic outlook toward human perfectibility. To survive, it must be kept in motion toward a goal which, like the Promised Land, will only be mapped out when one gets there. This is distinctly unpleasant to those who believe that the Promised Land is a Paradise Lost, and disturbing to those whose duty it is to survey the road and look ahead — that is, the thinkers and the intellectuals.
The only consolation is that John Lewis, who is a powerful dynamic force to-day, may become static to-morrow. It will then be much easier to define his place in the world. For the moment, however, Mr. Lewis is not prepared to sit down on his job.
‘Your lament,’he once wrote to William Green, ‘is that I will not join you in a policy of anxious inertia. Candidly, I am temperamentally incapable of sitting down with you in sackcloth and ashes, endlessly intoning: 0 tempora, 0 mores!’