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ee EP — wage offers,ssimilar refusals to arbitrate the union shop, similar advertisements in local newspapers all over the country. *Asking for a general $12-a-weck— roughly 25-percent—wage increase, the NFTW argued that telephone wages had lagged behind those in other indus- tries. Another kick came from the union over wage differentials. Starting rates for operators varied from $22 a week in a small Southern town to $31 in Detroit. The employees asked that vacations and pensions be liberalized. Employees with 15 years of service had been given a three-week vacation. Under the, new contract they wanted four weeks’ vaca- tion after 20 years of service. The telephone workers found the rungs from the bottom to the top of the ladder too far apart. The length of time required for a worker to go from the starting wage to the top wage for his job was eight years. The NFTW wanted it reduced to five years, except in the case of technical, workers. To most of - these grievances the AT&T offered to ~ extend existing provisions, which they considered ‘“‘fair and liberal.” — Labor Department negotiators were not aided, in seeking settlement of the conflict, by the appearance of Represen- ‘tative Fred A. Hartley Jr.’s (R, N. J.) ‘bill to authorize the Attorney General, on direction of the President, to halt a strike by obtaining an injunction. The effect, when coupled with other con- gressional moves tending toward out- lawry of the closed shop and against in- dustrywide bargaining, was to intervene in collective bargaining on the side of the AT&T. Last year a nationwide tele- phone strike was averted 25 minutes before deadline through a wage agree- ment between the union of lohg-distance operators and the AT&T, which employs long-distance workers directly, with the understanding that the wage increase would also go to other unions, This, year the AT&T had shown signs of prefer- ring a showdown fight. — Tall Price Illinois HE lives of Centralia’s 111 mine "T vicine seemed a tall price for the information that the much _ heralded government “‘seizure’’ of US coal mines Seana Sieinatanmiiininsicndiicinse eo had bordered on fiction. The investiga- tions and controversies over the calami- tous blast in the Illinois coal frelds last week bathed federal powers over mine safety in an unflattering glare. The feeble reflection of government control was in pale contrast to the noble light shed by the Supreme Court when it up- -held the contempt proceedings against the United Mine Workers and John L. Lewis. Senator Guy Cordon (R, Ore.), head of the special subcommittee which rushed to the scene of the blast, con- cluded that “if there has been one thing shown to this committee, it has been that there was gross negligence in the handling cf safety conditions.” Repre- sentative Gerald W. Landis (R, Ind.), a former miner, introduced a bill in the House “‘to put some teeth in our Federal Miné Inspection Act.’ Ordinarily, en- forcement of safety codes, as Interior Secretary J. A. Krug conceded last week, depends on “widely varying state laws,” The emergency powers acquired by the government when it “took over” the mines last year contained no specific provisions for closing down unsafe workings. Captain N. H. Collisson, US Coal Mines Administrator, had written five times to the management of Cen- tralia No. 5 to complain about viola- e ' Argentine Atom RGENTINE experiments in atomic A physics have definitely been conducted under the direction of Dr. Guido Beck, Czech-born scien- tist, according to a Buenos Aires dispatch by Virginia Prewett, corre- spondent for the Chicago San. Beck had protested that the New Re-, public linked him unjustly with the Peron government’s military pro- gram of atomic development and, in a letter to this magazine (the NR, March 31), denied any connection. Records now uncovered by Prewett show that Beck “personally sug- gested and directed” experiments in atom-splitting between 1943 and 1945. Some of the results were re- cently published in Revista Astron- onvca, Argentine science journal. NEW REPUBLIC tions disccvered by US i&spectors. His temporary power, however, to “disci- pline or replace the operating manager” had not been exarcised. -- In the absence of federal authority, the breakdown of ‘state regulation was all the more catastrophic. Robert M. Medill, director of the Hlinois Depart- ment of Mines and Minerals, took full responsibility for orders which had di- verted state inspectors tothe extra-cur- ticular task of dunning coal operators for contributions to the Republican mayoralty campaign in Chicago. Last week Medill resigned “for the good of the service.” Governor Dwight H. Green, to whom Centralia miners had addressed a plea “to please save our lives,’ weakly explained that “the let- ter arrived at a time when I was away. I never saw it.” The pathetic conditions in Illinois were no relief to the heavy drama in Washington. The Buteau of Mines sup- plied the tardy intelligence that although it had conducted 3,345 mine inspections in 1946, only two mines—worked by the Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming —had been* found free of safety viola- ticns. Secretary Krug ordered that 518 of the 2,531 government-operated mines shut down by Lewis for an Easter Week “mourning” period be kept closed until union safety committees decided they were no longer dangerous. In rebuttal Lewis requested that all mines except the pair. in Wyoming rémain empty. until approved by federal inspectors. The maneuvers to shift respensibility for declaring the nation’s mines fit to work in pitched another climax into the Krug-Lewis melodrama. Lewis, playing to the hilt, repeated the charge that Kmg was solely responsible for the Centralia disaster. Krug thrust back fig- ures to show that fatalities in the mines had dropped during the 10 months of federal operation. John L. was scornful: “This modern Hercules with the No. 12 shoes and No. 5 hat has reduced deaths from 95 a month to 85 and then he rests from his labors.” This week, as the miners’ mourning period expired, Lewis indicated a stub- born intent to keep the pits idle until the federal government assumed the full responsibilities for mine cperation and inspection,