United Automobile Worker

AN OPEN LETTER
TO JOHN L. LEWIS
Page
5
How, UAW-CIO Members Feel About Current Conduct of One-Time
Leader of CIO; Isolationism, Attitude toward F D R, Internal Democ-
racy, the Issues; Raiding of UAW Locals Is Resented.
An Open Letter to John L. Lewis
An Earnest Word of Warning and a Plea for Sanity

John L. Lewis, President
United Mine Workers of America. CIO
Washington, D. C.

Dear Sir and Brother:

The auto workers are worried about your present course. We are worried, not for our own sakes—nothing can ever again divide the UAW-CIO: persons or groups who attempt to divide us will receive a short and effective answer.

Our union today is united as never before, united inside the CIO under the leadership of its great, elected president, Philip Murray. Our union will stay that way. So that is not why we are writing you.

We Are CIO Americans

The UAW-CIO has other responsibilities. We are American unionists, and we are responsible therefore to our country and its elected leaders. We are members of the CIO, proud and responsible members; and we are determined to let nothing weaken the CIO.

We are concerned that in your present mood you do not share these responsibilities. Therefore we think it best, before you take any serious, thoughtless step, to let you know how the more than 530,000 members of the UAW-CIO feel. Perhaps you will heed our words. We hope so, because we mean them. You know the auto workers are fighters, and you should never forget it.

A Debt Acknowledged

The auto workers will ever remember the great role you played in helping build our union. We have always freely, generously, acknowledged that debt to you. We acknowledge it now.

The lesson you and Philip Murray and the other leaders of the CIO taught us in 1936 and 1937 and 1938 tell us now that the course you are today pursuing is a wrong one, and a dangerous one. Specifically, here are some of the things the auto workers object to in your conduct of recent years:

Lip Service Not Enough

1—We do not like your pre-war isolationism; and we don't like the lukewarm, lip-service way you are supporting the war now.

In 1940 and 1941 you took a stand beside the appeasers. You opposed aiding the democracies abroad, when such aid to them might have kept war away from our shores. You opposed preparing our armed forces and our industries for war, although it was obvious that Hitler's mad dreams were aimed at our nation as well as at the others.

You gave aid and comfort and support to America First by permitting a member of your family publicly to sign some of its isolation appeals, and to become a member of its national committee. We know she would not have done that unless you approved.

We would have forgiven and forgotten that if Pearl Harbor had meant a sincere change in your attitude.

Sulks While Workers Die

We know you have issued a statement supporting the war effort; we know that you have bought defense bonds with the United Mine Workers money. But we believe you owe the country something more than that.

You can be a powerful leader in the war effort. You could, if you wished, help rouse the workers to the deadly seriousness of this war. You have not done that. You have sulked in silence.

You have isolated yourself from the war effort in which members of the United Mine Workers and other CIO unions are now giving their lives. That is not cooperating in the war effort.

We Support Roosevelt

2—We do not like your dictatorial attitude toward the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of our war effort.

You did not consult anybody in the CIO when you came out for Willkie in 1940. You did not consult anybody in the CIO when you went to the Republican convention of that year and praised the Hoover administration.

On the contrary, your close associates, on the eve of your Willkie speech sent word to honest men employed by the CIO demanding, even before they knew what you were going to say, that they prepare telegrams supporting your position.

Details, If Necessary

That is an unsavory story. We hope you will not force us to give the details.

We do not demand that you give blind loyalty to the President of the United States. We do not give it: he does not expect it. We can and do differ with our President on occasion, but we do not conduct an undercover campaign to destroy his leadership during a crisis when he is the chosen leader of our people.

Murray Pledged Support

3—We do not like your attempted assumption of dictatorial powers within the CIO.

When you spoke for Willkie, you said that if the workers did not elect Willkie you would step aside and let somebody who was representative of the CIO take your place.

You said the same thing at the CIO convention in 1940 which elected Philip Murray. You pledged Philip Murray your support.

He Never Got It

You have never kept any of those promises. Even though repudiated, you did not step aside. Even though you promised Philip Murray support, you never gave it to him.

You went over the head of Philip Murray and the executive board of the CIO a few months ago when you wrote the AFL proposing unity. You acted as though you were the boss of the CIO, and Philip Murray an office boy. The auto workers resent that. They did not, and do not, stand for it.

Character Assassination

4—We do not like the fact that your closest associates are conducting a filthy, personal character assassination campaign against Philip Murray, R. J. Thomas and other CIO leaders who will not bow to you and thus betray their oaths of office.

You know that your controlled organs are now engaged in calling R. J. Thomas and others in the UAW-CIO "Fascists."

Coming from you, that is hypocrisy. Thomas was in favor of aid to the democracies in their war against Fascism, while you vigorously opposed such aid.

Encouraged by Lewis

You know how Ora Gassway and your brother Denny Lewis and others like them spend hours mouthing vicious, sometimes foolish, lies about other CIO leaders.

We believe you encourage that sort of thing.

Yet you pretend righteousness, and direct your subordinates to write pious letters of protest when some of the natural resentment against such tactics boils over and gets into public circulation.

You like to quote the scriptures. Here is one for you: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considereth not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Raiding and Wrecking

5—We do not like your organizations raiding organizations of the UAW-CIO and other CIO unions.

Your district 50, United Mine Workers and your Construction Workers Organizing Committee are catch-alls for anything you can get, outside or inside of the existing unions. You are now attempting to take over UAW-CIO local unions in Denver and Illinois.

That is raiding. That is wrecking. You will not get by with it.

We know, as you read these lines, that you will rear up and shout that the patriotism and the loyalty of the members of the United Mine Workers are being impugned. That is so much nonsense.

We Stand by the Miners

We have no quarrel with the members of the UMW, and never will have. We will always be their friends, and we will respond to their calls for support no matter who tries to lead them toward the precipice of dictatorship and factionalism.

The miners helped us; we will help them wherever they need us.

We know you are a great showman. Many times your sense of the dramatic has helped us. We appreciate that. But we will not appreciate any expression of egoism that will serve to divide and confuse the ranks of labor.

You Can't Dishonor Murray

There is talk that you will try, by a mechanical procedure, to expel President Murray from the UMW; there is talk that you may, by a mechanical step, pull the miners out of the CIO.

If that is what you are thinking of, we beg you—for your own sake—as well as for others who are involved, to forget it.

You can never dishonor Philip Murray; you will only dishonor yourself in the effort. You can never sever and divide the ranks of the CIO; you will only isolate yourself from those ranks.

Do not attempt to make us believe that the conflict you have been brewing is a personal fight between you and Philip Murray. The auto workers will not swallow that.

Your Fight Is With the CIO

Philip Murray is president of the CIO; he has conducted himself that way, never giving a moment to personal considerations, even when his work and the terrible strain you forced on him brought him near the door of death. Your fight is not with Philip Murray: your fight, if you choose to continue it, will be with the millions of the CIO.

This is the first extended space the United Automobile Worker has given to the situation you have created. We held off, hoping you would not persist in your suicidal course. We have kept silent even though your few papers for months have heaped abuse on our chosen leaders.

Dictators Not Wanted

Before it is too late for you to change your dangerous course, we urge you now to reconsider. Take your place as a loyal American and a loyal CIO leader in the ranks of the nation and the labor movement. We are now in a war against dictators abroad; our people are sweating and dying to get rid of those dictators.

Don't think for a minute that we are going to tolerate would-be dictators at home.

Fraternally,
THE UNITED AUTOMOBILE WORKER.

One-Man Dog?

The cartoon above was circulated in the daily press right after John L. Lewis made his famous pro-Willkie, anti-Roosevelt speech in October, 1940. The results of the national election showed that the CIO was not John L. Lewis' dog, nor anybody else's docile hound.

That is still true of the CIO.