Passaic

The textile strike which for 12 weeks had been enlivening the annals of New Jersey with accounts of strikers dispersed with clubs, tear bombs, riot acts and jail sentences, spent its 13th week in a futile research for a peace settlement.

Emerging from the obscurity of the state capital, Governor Arthur Harry Moore, sometimes dubbed "Silk Hat Harry," announced first that he did not have power to remove local officials accused of abusing the strikers:

"The Governor has power to do just one thing and that is to invade the strike zone with the armed forces of the state and, obviously, this should only be done where the disorder amounts to rioting and bloodshed and the local authorities are unable to maintain law and order. Such action would, of course, mean the end of the strike, and as far as the strikers are concerned the loss of their cause.

"As Governor, I shall be glad to cooperate in every way within my power to bring about a settlement of the strike. But I will not be coerced or cajoled into sending the armed forces of the state into the strike zone except as a last resort, and that only when I am convinced that such action is necessary to preserve law and order.

"I may say that no such need exists at this time."

On second thought he appointed a committee to mediate in the strike--a committee of which he was a member, as also two generals of the state militia, his Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of the New Jersey State Federation of Labor (the strikers are not affiliated with the Federation of Labor). Later the two military men were removed on the strikers' protest.

The committee called on the mill owners to send representatives, and through Albert Weisbord, the young Harvard law school graduate who is leading the strike, invited a committee of the workers to appear. When the meeting came, Mr. Weisbord turned up at the head of the workers' delegation. The Governor frowned on Mr. Weisbord. He was not a worker, and the committee had specified workers. The Governor declared that Mr. Weisbord had been accused of Communism and would have nothing to do with the strikeleader. So the negotiations were broken off before they began. The strikers then held a mass meeting and refused to displace Weisbord.

Meanwhile Samuel Untermyer had been engaged on behalf of the strikers to present their case to the more sympathetic ears of Senators Borah, LaFollette and others in Washington.