CONTROL BY UNION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24890, 14 April 1942, Page 5

CONTROL BY UNION

AMERICAN FARMERS MR JOHN L. LEWIS’S AIM (Rec. 0.45 am.) NEW YORK. Apl. 13. The New York Times states that it is feared that the current campaign of the American Labour leader, Mr John L. Lewis, to organise the nation's dairy farmers under his union will create civil war in New York State and elsewhere. Very powerful farm organisations in New York. New Jersey. Pennsylvania, and Vermont have formed a coalition to fight the effort on the part of Mr Lewis and safeguard their members against any financial loss that might be suffered through the burning of barns, poisoning of cows, and similar forms of vandalism by agents of the Congress of Industrial Organisations. The anti-Lewis offensive is being carried on through the medium of a nonprofit membership corporation called the Free Farmers’, Incorporated. The group proceeds on the theory that Mr Lewis is seeking to obtain control of the nation's food supply as a means of elevating himself to dictatorial power, and pledges its members to fight to the end against all attempts to bring farmers or the marketing of farm products under his domination. Union leaders ridiculed the whole movement as a deliberate effort to create a bogey for the purpose of discrediting the union and concealing the inability of the old farm groups to do anything constructive for their members. The opposition among the established agricultural groups to the efforts of Mr Lewis is so widespread that a committee representing such organisations as the National Grange and the National Council of Farmer Co-operatives will meet at Washington to-morrow in order to formulate a programme of action for a counter-attack on a national scale. The ultimate goal of Mr Lewis’s drive is reported to be the enrolment of 3,000,000 dairy farmers.