Calibre Tests

Nothing so tests the calibre of a Governor as a serious labor dispute in his State. How different Governors deal with different labor troubles was illustrated last week by the following incidents:

Dixie Bee. It was midnight on the Wabash. Eight miles inland from the Indiana bank, 64 haggard non-union miners and one woman held the Dixie Bee coal mine, besieged by an invisible swarm of union pickets. For a day and a night and a day their rifles and revolvers had stood off hundreds, possibly thousands, of John L. Lewis' men, squatting in a cornfield, crouching behind a railroad embankment, sniping from a patch of woods. The barricaded tipple house was pockmarked with bullets. One sharpshooting picket had been drilled dead. Within the mine on burlap sacks lay four defenders, blood oozing from their undressed wounds. The wife of the mule barn boss had crawled to safety in the cold boiler. The besieged had had no food for two days; they sipped dirty water from the boiler pipes. At any second they expected to be rushed from their stronghold by a massed attack of unionists, long enraged at their "scab" operation of the Dixie Bee pending negotiation of a new wage scale.

Suddenly in the darkness a bugle sang out "Cease Firing!" feet tramped in martial unison up the road, over the slag heap. Governor Leslie, declaring martial law, had called out guardsmen to lift the siege of the Dixie Bee. From Terre Haute, twelve miles north, 820 infantrymen had arrived by bus. Out of the fan house, the office, the boiler room, streamed an exhausted, grimy band of workers, overjoyed at their rescue.

When day broke over the Wabash. the Dixie Bee bristled with guardsmen's machine guns. The pickets had melted away like mist. The mine ceased operation temporarily while its owners sought permanent protecting injunctions.

High Point. Without troops, without police, unarmed and unattended. North Carolina's Governor Oliver Max Gardner fortnight ago settled a nasty strike among High Point's hosiery workers. During July roving bands of strikers caused a hundred textile plants in the State's northern Piedmont section to shut down, forced some 12,000 employes out of work. In 24 High Point, mills the dispute was over a $2.25 base wage demanded by 6,000 strikers and $2 offered by employers.

Though North Carolina has no arbitration law, Governor Gardner went to High Point to settle the strike in person. Striding calmly, boldly among the strikers he declared: "I come here disinterested, with no knowledge of the facts but for North Carolina's welfare. A strike like this is war and war is insanity. You may be right. On the other hand the manufacturers may be right. I don't know. Somewhere between you and the manufacturers is the right thing to do. I want this strike settled today."

Within two hours after his arrival, he persuaded both sides to appoint three members to an arbitration board which he headed with the right to vote. Each faction agreed to abide by the board's findings. The board retired to the Hotel Sheraton. Four hours later it emerged with its decision--$2.10. The strike was over.

"Let's get closer together." exclaimed Governor Gardner as he was being photographed with the erstwhile strike leaders.

Seagirt. On the parade ground before the Little White House at Seagirt, summer home of New Jersey's Governor, appeared 200 guardsmen masquerading in blue dungarees as riotous strikers. To quell their mock disturbance a platoon of State infantry in gas masks marched against them, hurled tear bombs for practice. A soft breeze blew the white fumes back into the Little White House. Governor & Mrs. Arthur Harry Moore wept.

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