STRIKE THREAT IN U.S.A.

Southland Times, Issue 24597, 20 November 1941, Page 5

STRIKE THREAT IN U.S.A.

MR ROOSEVELT MEETS RAILWAY LEADERS MINING DISPUTE EXTENDS (Rec. 8.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, November 18. President Roosevelt, seeking to avert the threatened railway strike, invited the leaders of both management and labour, also Government executives, to a White House conference. The meeting adjourned without reaching conclusions. Mr Roosevelt told the Press he had nothing to say about the coal strike, except that he considered Mr John L. Lewis’s argument that failure to obtain a “union shop” contract with the “captive” mines would jeopardise the “union shop” agreements already concluded with the rest of the mines was invalid.

The Carnegie (Illinois) Steel Company announced in Pittsburgh that it expected to be forced to cease operations at six blast furnaces on Thursday because of lack of coal. The strike is extending to commercial mines in Pennsylvania. VIOLENCE ON COAL-FIELDS

Violence broke out again today in the Pennsylvania and West Virginia coalfields when the United Mine Workers’ pickets attempted to persuade recalcit-

rant members not to work. At Gary two negro miners, members of an independent union, were shot and wounded while attempting to pierce the picket line. Sympathy strikes have spread to some “-open market” coal-mines and the picket lines at the captive mines were swelled by these sympathizers. About 53,000 coal-miners from the mines concerned and 14,500 other miners are remaining idle. The State police moved into the Gary mine to preserve order. In New York, Mr 'Wendell L. Willkie, in a speech accepting the Churchman Award “for the promotion of goodwill and better understanding among all peoples,” urged labour to delay the fight for the “closed shop,” but said Mr Roosevelt was mostly to blame for the labour crisis because he had failed to enunciate a clear and open policy.

Mr Willkie urged Labour to clean its own house by throwing out racketeering leaders. He said Labour should be represented directly in “the very marrow of our Government —-in the small group on which is placed responsibility for winning this war. ’