Word: l
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Connecticut. In a Republican year in a normally Republican state, a Republican governor should have little trouble getting reelected. The news from Connecticut was that Governor James C. Shannon, who succeeded to the office last March on the death of Governor James L. McConaughy, was getting a run for his money. The man who was doing it was ex-OPAdministrator Chester Bowles, who was crisscrossing the state, dropping in at the county fairs (sometimes joining in the softball games), and appearing three times a week on a radio program on which he invited voters to send him all their personal...
...each of the stiff-backed chairs in Cincinnati's old Music Hall was a foot-square poster labeled "The Champ." It was a picture of a fierce-eyed John L. Lewis, a cigar cocked in his mouth. The 3,000 delegates to the United Mine Workers Convention smiled in anticipation. John always gave them a roaring, rousing performance, and they knew who would catch it this year: the President...
Twice before, John L. had tried to steer his miners' votes. Not many had followed his wrathful advice to vote against Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944. After his tirade against Harry Truman, newsmen polled many of the delegates, found that about half would vote for Truman.* Next day a rumble of opposition broke out on the convention floor over a resolution which indirectly endorsed Tom Dewey (it said that Governor Dewey had never said anything bad about the U.M.W.). The resolution passed, but the mild resentment caused the geyser to erupt again. Lewis steamily trumpeted: "If there...
Double Dues. With that off his chest, the Champ turned to union politics. Some delegates had the temerity to demand the right to choose their district officials by a vote of the membership. John L. swiftly squelched that move (21 of his union's 31 districts are ruled by Lewis appointees). It was just a waste of time, said the Great Man, to talk about such things; he could be relied upon to choose competent officials and, if any of them "failed to do the right thing," he would send them back to digging coal...
From there on, the delegates tried to outdo each other in expressions of fealty. They decided that his birthday, Feb. 12, should be a holiday† in the soft-coal fields. They learned that John L. had not paid his $30,000 contempt fines out of his own pocket but out of the union's till, and voted retroactive approval of that. John had merely to suggest that the U.M.W.'s $13 million bankroll ought to be bolstered so that he could have more "available funds in a crisis." With audible grumbles, the delegates voted to boost their...