The Waterbury Democrat., 1946-11-20
Merry-Go-ROund

EDrroWs NoTEl ThA ls .hs tAlva q Drew
 PeAFnonh columns on hmeFseAN meSg powetful
 labor leAder--tohn L LsWls)
 WARRINGTON, Nov. ne=BotA h hlsh.up uovs srnment circles and As every OFossFeaa ef America, people have been asking "Ilow can we avoid having John b Lewis put pistol to our head every sm monthsS Why should one man be permitted the pow. or eo decide whether the rannDads run, the steel mills bank their fires, and American homes De heat. ede"
 The answer b difficult For those who know John L Lewis know he k not afraid Of jail He hos been indicted heeore-during the Wilson admlnlstFa. ton He could be prosecuted today under the smith. connally act But he would almost immediately Dc. come the hero Of American labor-even including ms labor enemies, of which there are many,
 Actually there s Just one thing Lewis h gen. timely afraid of-competlton, The last thing ne wants k the competition of gas and OH which would would put many coal mines out of business, lower union dues, and cut the ground out from under his srangle hold on Eastern Industry,
 Yet, though he dreads lt, that ls exactly what Lewis b slowly heading toward Already long rows vanla anthracite field filled with barley anthracite now elut on the market, for just one reason-fac. tories that have converted to oil because Of continued boosts in the price Of coal This conversion to OIL win increase according to how much the price of coal goes up The process Is too slow however, to be the real answer to the coal strike
 Wneu John l.. Lewis however, the U. Government has the best in the world right in lts own hands. It Is the two war-bu big inch and little inch pipelines constructed to carry oil from Texas to the East Coast during the submarine peril. and now lying Idle for two long years.
 Several private companies have bid for these pipelines, proposing to bring the millions of cubic feet of natural gas going to waste in Texas to the factories and homes of the industrial East The pipelines could be converted In 90 days-possiby less And they constitute the only real weapon the nation has against Lewis. It is the only thing that makes him lose sleep at night He knows that natural gas brought to the industrial East would knock his fat flow of union dues approximately in half Even more important, he knows that the next time he tried to paralyze the nation only one-haH could De paralyzed. The rest would thrive on natural gas
 Yet the pipelines remain idle
 Only once n his long years of swaggering across the American stage has John L. Lewis faered in his stride That was during the Hoover depression short y before Franklin Roosevets pro-abor laws picked Lewis up, refilled his treasury and made him the lfe-and- death dispenser of the black-bood of the industrial East
 Incidentally, Lewis at first was dead opposed to the pro-labor Roosevelt and 1t took lot of persuad- ing to hoist him aboard the New Deal bandwagon Apparently he didn't recognize what bonanza he was in for At that time also, Lewis himself had sole Herbert Hoover a phony economic theory which was partly the reason for the coal miners undong. He proposed that the mine operators pay stand ard wage of S750 per day to all union miners-a wage at that time so high thas uneconomic mines could not afford to operate. Lewis however, arguea