Perkins: UMW anthracite leader throws support to Dewey
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania –
What Jonn Kmetz has to say is important when you’re trying to learn how this section of the coal country is going to vote next Tuesday.
Although there are some new manufacturing industries here coal mining is still the predominant way of the great mass of wage-earners in this district to make a living.
And John Kmetz is the International representative of the councils of the United Mine Workers from one of the anthracite districts, and he is also president of the United Mine Workers District 50 – its catchall department.
Longtime miner
Mr. Kmetz is a big and personable man who was born in Czechoslovakia and was brought to this country as a child. He went to work as a mine breaker boy when he was seven, went into underground work at 11, and spent 20 years at it until he became an aboveground official of the miners’ union. Mr. Kmetz got his education by night work.
He was chairman in 1936 of the Newer Nationalities Committee which had a part in producing a pro-Roosevelt gathering estimated at more than 100,000 persons. Mr. Roosevelt addressed the throng, under the sponsoring of John L. Lewis.
Works for Dewey now
But now, says Mr. Kmetz:
I ask all my friends – Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Slovaks – to vote for Thomas E. Dewey. The New Deal is favoring our union opponents.
How many of his friends Mr. Kmetz may take with him into the Dewey camp is, of course, problematical.
Thomas Kennedy, International secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, and thus a sidekick of John L. Lewis, has been silent in this campaign. His office at nearby Hazleton said today he contemplated making no statement. Mr. Kennedy is a former Democratic lieutenant governor of this state.
Mr. Kennedy, although closely connected with Mr. Lewis in administration of the United Mine Workers, did not appear in last night’s Dewey meetings in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.