Blum's Debut

Deputies bustled into the Palais-Bour-bon last week for what was sure to be a wild scene, reception by the Chamber of new Premier Leon Blum, a prosperous and infirm old Socialist whose spidery limbs and thin beaked nose give him the air of a flamingo. Flapping gestures complete the illusion and Premier Blum last week was also bird-like in his air of being exquisitely preened and valeted. Spotless were his pearl-grey spats. Faint was his aroma of eau de Cologne. He had just set up one of the very largest Cabinets ever formed in France, a ministry in which so many Radical Socialists and Socialists had found places (along with a self-styled "Dissident Communist") that the Cabinet had to be officially divided into seven sections, an unprecedented step.

For the first time France had a Cabinet including women, of which for good measure cultured, bookish, music-loving Premier Blum had included three: Madame the Undersecretary for Scientific Research Irene Curie-Joliot, daughter of the discoverers of radium; Madame the Undersecretary for National Education Cecile Kahn Brunschwig, longtime French feminist; and Madame the Undersecretary for Child Welfare Suzanne Lacore, a onetime village librarian who of late has been outstanding in French child welfare leagues. Under French law these ladies have no vote and, should one have occasion to sign a check while in office, her husband must countersign it to make it legal.

Irrepressibly Parisiennes declared that "The best men in the Blum cabinet are Irene, Cecile and Suzanne." Great & famed Irene was at the time of her appointment by Premier Blum just leaving for London last week to lecture medical savants on her most recent work in evolving synthetic radioactive drugs which, because of their light atomic weight, can be injected and tolerated by the human body while they do their cancer-killing work. Radium's great Irene then flew from London to Paris, prepared to consecrate herself to Politics.

Bigwig Socialists and Radical Socialists who received the Cabinet's best plums were mostly Frenchmen who have made their mark as faithful party wheelhorses. Some idea of the calibre of these men could be had from the fact that France's longtime League of Nations Delegate Joseph Paul-Boncour, who for years has been willing to serve with almost any Cabinet, was understood to have rebuffed overtures from Premier Blum, declaring, "I will not serve with such nonentities!"

Strikes, Strikes, Strikes-- Shrewdly all over France the country's well-read and canny working class sensed that with Leon Blum & Friends warming the seats of power, proletarians need fear no interference from police if they chose to strike and make demands on their employers. Simultaneous but individual strikes had already begun on a large scale fortnight ago and many French employers were already knuckling down to their workers by granting 10% and 15% pay increases (TIME, June 8), but last week strikes spread and grew until Jean Frenchman, some 1,000,000 strong, was telling his employer not to go to Hades but simply to ameliorate working conditions.

Such large words French proletarians bandy handily in their cafes. Last week they paralyzed the automotive, aircraft, textile, metallurgical, munitions and mining industries of France, but with great circumspection. Practically nothing was smashed. There was no throwing of monkey wrenches or the traditional sabot into costly and useful machines. As the workers shut machines down they oiled and smeared with grease parts likely to rust. Women strikers were segregated from men on different floors "for reasons of propriety." Getting out their dominoes and dog-eared playing cards, local strike leaders hitched up chairs to packing-box tables, lit cheap cigarets and called the whole thing a "folded arm strike."

Under French law this bland occupation of premises not owned by the occupiers was a clear-cut legal offense. To arrest law-breakers is the business of policemen and in France police are not under local authority but directly at the orders of Minister of Interior Roger Salengro. In guessing that he would not dare molest them last week the strikers had guessed right.

This meant that France is in the grip of tremendous change. Previous Ministers of Interior, even the late soft-hearted and somewhat burbling Aristide Briand, famed "Peace Man," have traditionally acted with energy in ordering police to enforce French law as it stands.

Last week there were no strikes in France's so-called "essential public services": the railways, post office, telegraphs and telephones. Potatoes generally rose by a third in price. When deeper gouging was tried, patrons blacked the eyes of greedy grocers. At least one extortionate gasoline station was assaulted by furious taxi drivers. With crowbars they stove holes in the tanks. Everywhere French individualism was rampant. Cabled New York Herald Tribune's able John Elliott: ."These strikes have been spontaneous and were instigated neither by Communist leaders nor the regular trade unions." The old-guard French unions, terrified at losing all prestige because their leaders were not in control of the strikes, hastily patched up differences which split the unions some years ago and united last week under worried, longtime French Labor Executive Leon Jouhaux, whose pointed goatee waggled impotently as he vapored, expostulated.

Before the new Premier faced the Chamber, M. Blum radiorated to France begging for calm and deprecating strikes, though he deprecated even more any undue truculence by employers. Even as loudspeakers carried Leon Blum's cultured voice, shopgirls in Paris' great department stores, such as Au Printemps and Les Galeries Lafayette, combined to shove shrilly protesting and gesticulating patrons out the doors which were then locked in a "clerks' folded arms strike."

Socialist Ten Commandments. First job of the incoming Chamber last week was to elect as its President (Speaker) huge, pipe-sucking Edouard Herriot, the perpetual Mayor of Lyons who year after year keeps reminding Frenchmen that they ought to pay their War debts to the U. S.-- Next the new Cabinet presented itself amid deafening cheers from the Radical Socialists, Socialists and Communists. Then to his one remaining foot leaped war veteran Deputy Xavier Vallat. "This is the first time," he cried, "that our old Gallo-Roman country of France will be governed by a Jew!"

At once flushed President Herriot forced Deputy Vallat to modify his words into the more parliamentary form. "For the first time France will have its Disraeli! .. . I do not forget the valor of Jewish soldiers during the War, but I want to say what many people are thinking, our French peasants would rather be governed by a man of their own sturdy race than by a great intelligence which has been nurtured on the Talmud!" Other deputies not of the Left proceeded to chime in and soon new Premier Leon Blum had become so embarrassed that he withdrew briefly from the Chamber while gentile Edouard Herriot bellowed at the top of his great voice: "There are no Jews here, no Protestants, no Catholics--but only Frenchmen!"

Since everyone knew that votes and not Jew-baiting alone counted, the Chamber settled down and ultimately voted confidence 384-to-210 in the new Cabinet. This powerful support was given Premier Blum after he had in effect handed the Deputies a sheaf of Socialist Ten Commandments. Specifically the Chamber and Senate were notified that the Blum Cabinet intends to keep them in session until they have enacted: 1) Nationalization of French war industries; 2) the 40-hour week for all French workers; 3) the right of Collective Contract for workers bargaining with their employers; 4) compulsory annual vacations with full pay; 5) creation of employment by nationwide public works; 6) extension of the French compulsory public school system; 7) creation of state boards to increase French agricultural prices, starting with wheat; 8) repeal of numerous decree laws displeasing to the Socialists and Communists which were enacted under former Premier Pierre Laval (TIME, Dec. 16); 9) political amnesty and finally, 10) reform of the statutes of the Bank of France "to guarantee the preponderance of national interests in its managements." This last meant on its face that the famed "200 Families" who have long been accused of dominating France largely through control of its central bank and immensely complicated interlocking directorates are now to be scotched. Very many of them are Jews. They seemed last week to be the least worried of any French employers, to judge from the way in which they rebuffed strikers. Almost as one man members of the ''200 Families'' who own the heavy and munitions industries of France refused to grant the 10% wage uppings other employers were widely granting. Accustomed to smash others, they seemed to be waiting for Leon Blum & Friends to try to smash them, daring the new Cabinet to try.

The Communists at week's end appeared somewhat nervous. Red newsorgans in many cases appealed for swift ending of the strikes on the ground that a France in which the munitions industry was paralyzed would be easy game for Germany, the land whose Brownshirt rulers bludgeon pinks and reds.

Abruptly Premier Blum dismissed Governor Jean Samson Tannery of the Bank of France but appointed to succeed him a person perfectly agreeable to the 200 Families, M. Emile Sosthene Labeyrie, stuffy Attorney General of the Court of Audits.

Since to carry out the Socialist Ten Commandments is going to cost hundreds of millions if not billions of francs, and since the French Treasury has for months been hard pressed for cash, everyone in Paris fiscal circles assumed last week that altering the country's money is now just around the corner. This Premier Blum did his best to avoid mentioning, said that he will resort to "a generous appeal to credit."

Socialist Blum next turned to the precise form of demagoguery for which his followers are accustomed to roast Fascist Mussolini. Appearing before 30,000 pinks and reds who had gathered in a Paris velodrome to give him their plaudits, Orator Blum had a party cheerleader fill in his pauses with such questions as, "Have you confidence in Blum?" "

Yes! Yes! Yes!" roared the new Premier's 30,000 yes-men of the evening. "Yes, we have confidence! Long live the International--Soviets everywhere!"

This imitation of the Fascist rallies at which everyone answers Mussolini's questions "Yes!" was staged between two halves of a conference of Labor & Capital which Premier Blum held at his official residence. To represent Labor came goatee-waggling Leon Jouhaux of the French trade unions, although the outstanding feature of last week's strike situation in France was that neither he nor any other national figure represented the sporadic strikers. Idea of the parley-- Premier Blum's own smart idea--was that Capital, as represented by the French employers' associations, should announce that it agreed to all the sporadic strikers' demands and that Labor, in the person of Leon Jouhaux who had never wanted the strikes anyway, should announce that they were over. This scheme was carried through about midnight and at 1:30 a. m. the government radio broadcast that everything was settled.

Everything perhaps should have been settled, since almost everyone else had caved in before the strikers and announced that they were to get what they wanted, but in fact new strikes broke out throughout the north of France and correspondents could not discover how many of the original strikes had in fact been settled. In Paris gasoline flowed again, newspaper kiosks reopened and food became easier to get but every department store and many another was still paralyzed by strikes. Gold continued in flight from France by every steamer. Premier Blum, however, was considered even by his enemies to have made a smart start. In a nearly chaotic crisis he had at least done well enough to get in many parts of the world such headlines as "FRENCH STRIKE IS BROKEN" and "BLUM ENDS STRIKE."

--Because, argues M. Herriot, an unpaid U. S. is sure not to send any soldiers to succor France the next time Germany attacks.

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