Pekin General

The nation's first general strike paralyzed Seattle for five days in February 1919. In the summer of 1934 a million citizens felt the cold edge of panic when trade unionists crippled commercial activity in the San Francisco area for three days. Following a city-wide walkout last July, Terre Haute was under martial law for six and a half months. And last week the fourth general strike in U. S. history was called at Pekin, Ill. It lasted only 22 hours, affected less than 3,000 workers. Yet Strike Leader Frank S. Mahoney's conduct of this small slice of industrial war was sufficiently effective to cow 17,000 Pekinese for a day & a night.

Pekin sits on the Illinois River ten miles below Peoria in the heart of the corn belt. Corn Products Refining Co. uses the corn to make Karo Syrup. The American Distilling Co. uses it to make Old Colony Gin. The American Distilling Co. employes are organized into a company union and an American Federation of Labor union. Last August an A. F. of L. man, employed as an engineer, was discharged for letting a vat of mash boil over. Fellow unionists protested. The man was rehired to haul ashes. This pretext led to a union v. union strike, which in turn led to a shutdown at the distillery last month. Strikers promptly threw a line of pickets around the plant. The campaign was getting along nicely, in spite of zero weather, when a busload of scabs suddenly broke through the picket line under a tear-gas barrage laid down by Police Chief Harry C. Donahue. Thereupon, Leader Mahoney took an ultimatum to Mayor William E. Schurman: unless the distillery agreed to cease "discriminating" against A. F. of L. unionists, and unless the city council ousted Police Chief Donahue, Mahoney and his men would "tie up Pekin as tight as a drum." The city answered by calling for militia.

By 3 p. m. next afternoon, when the general strike began, not a brewer, baker, barber, barkeep or beautician was operating in all Pekin. In freezing cold union delegates had informed all merchants that if their shops were not locked up by the strike's deadline, their windows would be smashed. Not a shop in Pekin was open after 3 p.m. Six hundred allied workers at Corn Products Refining Co. then voted to walk out. Other workers promised to quit in sympathy.

Gunplay punctuated Pekin's trouble.* A .45 bullet whistled through the front window of the house where the female secretary of the company union at the distillery lived, missed her mother, dug into the dining room wall. Mayor Schurman showed reporters rifles resting in six corners of his living room and dining room, said that they belonged to as many guards. "This is a hell of a way to live," complained he. And after his men had picked up two gunmen lurking in front of the Sheriff's office, Chief Donahue growled: "What this town needs is a vigilante committee of about a hundred tough citizens."

Next day, after State, Federal and A. F. of L. conciliators brought both sides together in Peoria, Leader Mahoney agreed to call off the strike. As usual, neither side came off a clear winner. The Mayor kept Chief Donahue, because "he epitomizes law & order." The distillery people agreed to guarantee A. F. of L. unionists equal rights and representation with company unionists. Total loss of business to Pekin: $500,000. Total loss in wages to Leader Mahoney's strikers: $50,000.

* Evening before the general strike, Clarence Rupp, whose taxi service had been running food through to the distillery strikebreakers, was shot in the chest while entering his home. All suspicion that the strikers might have had a hand in the shooting vanished five days later when Mr. Rupp was shot again, this time fatally, with a gun of the same calibre by his brother-in-law, who promptly confessed to the killing, claiming that Rupp had threatened his wife with violence.

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