Minneapolis Management

Last week, Governor Floyd Bjerstjerne Olson of Minnesota, his patience exhausted, turned up Minneapolis' skirts and spanked her because she stubbornly refused to settle her three-week-old truck drivers' strike. His authority to spank grew out of his declaration of martial law for the city a fortnight ago. The spanking took the form of an order sweeping from her streets all trucks except those bearing milk, ice, bread, fuel, newspapers, cinema films and necessities of life.

Wails and smiles greeted his order. For days the Governor had been trying to manage an unmanageable situation. Last May Minneapolis' first truck strike was "successfully" settled by a compromise. It broke out again when the union accused the truck owners of "chiseling" on the settlement, demanded the right to represent not only drivers and helpers but "inside workers" as well.

The two sides deadlocked in mutual, righteous hatred. Labor condemned the hard-boiled labor-hating Citizens Alliance of the employers, accused it of owning the Minneapolis press and city government, of inciting the police to shoot 50 strike pickets (TIME, July 30). As protection against the intention of employers to use police ruthlessly to crush the strike, Labor asked martial law and Governor Olson declared it, forbade picketing, forbade the movement of trucks except by military permit.

With equal bitterness, the employers denounced the strike leaders, particularly the three Dunne brothers, members of a family of radical labor agitators whose activities date back to the days of the I. W. W. Employers insisted that the strike was not wanted by most of their employes, that the union leaders forced a standing vote on the strike with thugs on hand to knock the head off any one who dared to vote against it, that Communists, radicals and unemployed were all made union members and turned loose as marauders against trucks. To Labor's charge that 50 pickets were shot in the back, employers retorted that only one was an actual truck driver, the rest toughs and radicals.

Managing the strike by martial law was not as easy as Governor Olson had anticipated. Despite his prohibition, pickets scooted about in cars, overturned trucks, beat drivers. Soon 150 pickets had been arrested and interned in a stockade at the State Fair Grounds. Although Governor Olson angrily denounced the Citizens Alliance, the union protested:

''Scab trucks are operating with military permits in ever-increasing numbers. Despite all his harsh words directed at the employers, Governor Olson directs all his harsh blows at the union and the strike." Governor Olson, who loves to proclaim his radicalism, found that martial law was gaining him no kudos with Labor. Finally he issued an ultimatum that unless the employers came to terms he would stop all truck movements. He kept his word. The strikers were delighted that troops should do their work of stopping truck movements. The employers bitterly demanded an injunction from the Federal District Court forbidding Governor Olson to continue martial law. The Court ordered the Governor to appear and show cause why truck owners should not be permitted "to use their own property on public streets."

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