The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-05-09
Lewis Drops AFL Return Hits New Deal
By RAYMOND LAIR


 United Press Staff Correspondent
 Washington, May 9.-CUP)-John L. Lewis and his United Mine Work CTS, it appeared today, must play a lone hand in national and labor politics for the 1914 campaign year.
 Few observers doubted that Lewis will throw his strength this year against the New Deal which he de- nounced along with the American Federation of Labor last night in withdrawing the UNIV application to rejoin the AFL. They added that he could not hope for organized support from the two rival branches of the labor movement
 By withdrawing the miners ap- plication, Lewis acknowledged de- feat for the second labor unity move which he has led since he broke with President Roosevelt in 1940 and withdrew from the Congress of Industrial organizations. For both defeats, he blamed the New Deal.
 Two years ago, he proposed mer- ger of the AFL, CIO and UNIV into 8 single organization, but failed to win support. He sought read mission to the AFL 12 months ago and apparently expected speedy ac- ceptance.
 But since then, the AFL executive council, at four sessions, and the AFL convention has refused to re- admit the miners on Lewis terms He had asked that the UNIV be &C., cepted "as is" with a later settle ment of jurisdiction questions-in- yolving the "catch-all" UNIV dis trict 50 in general and its chemical worker members in particular. The AFL insisted that jurisdictional is sues be settled first.
 Lewis scoffed at those objections in his letter to AFL President Will liam Green withdrawing the miners application. He said the council members had lacked the courage to vote "Yes" or mo" and instead had constantly muttered and num- bled and indulged in fearsome in- cantations over the fallacious and hoary question of jurisdictional rights"
 Tt is an amazing exhibition of base hypocrisy approximating moral turpitude," he said.
 Lewis charged the council with "servility" to the administration by it's action last Friday reaffirmlng that the UNIV could return only with the jurisdiction it had when 1t bolted eight years ago.
 Imperative Instructions
 He told Green that it was known publicly that some council members had received imperative instruc- tions' to block the UNIV from New Deal politicians who are opposed, for political reasons, to unity in the ranks of labor. He said the same opposition came from the New Deal to his 1942 unity proposal.
 Every well-informed person in Washington knows the identity ot the New Deal executives and mem bers of its palace guard, as well as the identity of the individual mem bers of the executive council, who from time to time during the last year have clandestinely counselled together to insure the consumma- ton of their shameful plans to be- tray the interests of the men and women of labor, Lewis said.
 "The members of the executive council by their dishonorable in- trigue have permitted the Ameri- can Federation of Labor to become the puppet of a political organiza- ton and, in fact. to achieve the status of a political company union"
 He concluded by asking that the UNIV application and the $6O,OOO check, presented to pay the annual per capita tax for the miners, be returned without further procras- tination or hypocrisy" At Phila- delphia, Green agreed to the re- quest but reiterated that the AFL wanted the miners back if jurisSic- tional questions could be settled satisfactorily. Green denied that any members of the executive eoun- ell were "New Deal influenced"