The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-03-05
John Lewis
 Eruqol Mon
nY FRRnERIcK q. OTIlAlAN


 Washington, March S,-tupD-- Lean back friends, and take it easy, The coal miners are ln session With the coal mine owners, They're meeting At the Shoreham hotei, one of the snootleSt in town, and thy re going to be there R while, Don't start worrying yet,
 You1l bc forgetting your furnace and hauling out your secrsuckcl suit before these babies decldc whether there is going to be . coal strike, As oE now they are at the name-calllng stage ln the hotels air conditioned new ballroom, where the decor is gray satin drapes and apple green upholstery.
 I don't know why 1t is that own CTS of coal mines and heads of coal mine unions, on the whole, are so hefty. Clean living, maybe. Two hundred of them puffed cigars Of varying quolity and made those splndly.legged chairs creRk whiie the orators parked Into the mlcro- phones.
 Head man of the proceedings is John l.. Lewis, whose haii To longer is black like anthracite, but gray like ashes, His eyebrows continue to be magnificent. Only other man know with brows us thick, busky and belligerent-looking is John N. Garner, lead1ig citizen of Uvade, Texas,
 The meeting on which happened to drop in found Thomas Kennedy, secretary treasurer Of the United Mine workers. doing the speech making. John l.. leaned back in with his watch chain taulu one of those gold-legged chairs, with his watch chain taut across his magnificent middle, and lis. tened, like cigar-smoking Buddha.
 This Lewis is a frugal man. He sat two seats from me and that cigar of his was ono of those six centers. It smelled like scorched rutabaga. So al fright. He was de- manding that the mine owners slip the union a royalty of 10 cents for every ton of coal mined or sea- 100000 year, This would be used to care for indigent miners and to provide insurance for those at work. The mine owners called the idea "ridiculous".
 "Ridiculous nothing" said the pink-faced Kennedy, after parking his cigar on the speakers table. We have been conciliatory and in fact conservative. CLewis grunted approval and applied n match to his twist of dried vegetable0
 Somebody referred to the Amcri- can Federation of Musicians (which collects royalty on every phono- grapth record). We didn't take this from them. We took 1t from the mine operators themselves. Down south they used to pay royalty into a fund to protect their em- ployes from the United Mine Work CTS"
 HaW-haw-haw," went half the audienceh Lewis face creased in a wide smile.
 The other half of the listeners, consisting of coal mine owners, were not amused, Particularly glum was Ezra Van Horn, the Cleveland mine operator functioning as chairman of the conference. Van Horn is q deep voiced citizen who tips tht beam at about 250 pounds. From the rear he looks like Lewis but from the front he doesn't. He hasn't much hair or eyebrows either.
 I could tell you more about the meeting, but the weathers warming up. My furnace is shut down, I've shed by vest, and my interest iil coal is nil. Only other thing I'll re- port is that Lewis likes to talk about bureaucrats. He pronounces tht word, burrocrats. He also spells il that way when he writes an edi' l torial in the Mine Workers Journal