Fishermen Bayoneted

New Bedford, Mass., is a city of some 120,000 inhabitants. Ordinarily, it is a pleasant and prosperous city to live in. Dominating its industrial life, chief support of its storekeepers and its landlords, are, of course, its famed cotton textile mills. And since the War, New Bedford mills have done exceedingly well, declaring cash dividends of over $32,000,000, stock dividends of about half that sum. They employ 35,000 operatives. They produce a high grade of cloth, so high that they are virtually free from the competition of Southern mills.

Only one thing has troubled the serenity of New Bedford. Wages of the textile operatives, averaging $19 a week, were undeniably low. And when the mill owners announced, early last April, that wages were to be cut by 10%, reducing the average wage to $17 a week, the workers were stirred to serious and active protest. Out of 27 mills walked some 27,000 operatives, spinners and weavers, loom fixers, slasher tenders. They left 3,000,000 spindles idle, and 50,000 looms.

Last week, the 16th of the dogged strike, New Bedford industry remained at a standstill, rents remained unpaid, stores were without customers, national guardsmen cleaned their rifles. In the greatest labor protest in the history of the textile city, strikers had lost some $9,600,000 in wages, at the staggering rate of $600,000 a week. Mill securities had fallen to purely nominal values, a few dollars a share. Both owners and strikers had rejected arbitration, had agreed without hope to allow the State Board of Arbitration and Conciliation to '"investigate." So far as New Bedford could see, the strike might last until winter. If the strikers could find fuel, it might last until another summer, indefinitely.

Surprisingly, the once-prosperous city takes its financial troubles cheerfully.

Back of the strikers are a united press and a supporting clergy. Landlords accept the total loss of rents without grumbling. In spite of hard times, merchants keep on extending credit, postponing payments on instalments. Riots and unemployment are the bugaboos of most fire and police departments, but New Bedford firemen and policemen contribute to the strikers' funds from their own pockets.

And in this idyllic era of goodwill, the strikers themselves have played model parts. Not a single crime, major or minor, has marred the dignity of their protest. Many a spinner, wearying of charity, has reverted to the occupation of New Bedford's colonial days. Borrowing or building a boat, he has gone fishing, bringing in a catch he could market in the city. Gravely, the strikers' womenfolk gather in the streets to discuss the day's events in a babel of tongues. Never has the U. S. seen such a rebellion.

Both groups, striker and citizen, recognize the danger which hangs over the city. Last week, it loomed menacingly. To New Bedford had come a strike leader of a new type, with different and dangerous ideas. To the history of textile troubles in Passaic, N. J., Albert Weisbord* has contributed many a stormy chapter. And when he advanced on New Bedford to form the Textile Mills Committee, the heads of the old unions were disturbed. Weisbord's ideas were of violence and force, parades and riots. Public sympathy, most surprisingly with the strikers, might well be destroyed by violent methods.

The test came last week. Armed with a court decision, police dispersed picket lines at three mills (Whitman, Nonquit, Nashawena). By afternoon of the same day, radicals had defied the order against mass picketing, dared police to make arrests. Chief of Police McLeod took the dare, commandeered patrol wagons, moving carts, one ludicrous piano van. He packed 256 picketeers off to headquarters. Citizens noted that 237 of the 256 belonged to the Weisbord element.

New Bedford tasted its first grave disorder. Picketeers banged the walls of their cells, shrieked foreign curses, sang ribald songs. Outside headquarters a mob of 10,000 seemed to spring out of the pavement, hooting and jeering. Police summoned guardsmen. Strikers retreated, their faces turned aside from bayonets. New Bedford rested in an electric calm.

In the courts, whither the battle has been at least temporarily removed, strikers planned appeals to vindicate the right of mass picketing. Five radicals, charged with assaulting policemen, were sentenced to seven months in the House of Correction. Radical leaders have piled sentence on sentence until some are faced with total terms of over two years.

But New Bedford sympathy stood the shock of Weisbord violence, still supports the orderly unions. Almost overshadowing the contest between owners and operatives is the war upon the radicals. And it is on the issue of this war that the immediate future of New Bedford depends.

* Communist candidate for U.S. Senator from New Jersey.