Backwoods War

Labor's good friend, Franklin Roosevelt, has a good Arkansas friend, Utilities Tycoon Harvey Couch, who owns an 863-mi. backwoods railroad line, the Louisiana & Arkansas. Last September some 400 of its engineers, firemen, brakemen and conductors walked out on strike. Demanding restoration of a wage agreement abrogated in 1933, they wanted the company to bargain jointly with their five union brotherhoods. President Peter Couch, the owner's brother, once an L. & A. fireman himself, insisted on dealing with them separately. He hired strikebreakers to keep in operation the railroad's service between Dallas, Tex., Hope, Ark. and New Orleans.

Picketing was peaceful for three weeks. Then trouble popped. A train ran through an open switch, killing two of the crew. Three bridges burned. The strikers' womenfolk got hungry. At Minden, La. 200 of them swarmed on a train, stripped and beat the fireman, made the engineer telegraph his resignation to President Peter Couch.

Near Colfax last fortnight an L. & A. freight was wrecked, five cars derailed. Outside Alexandria a shower of bullets spattered the Shreveport-New Orleans Hustler, smashed a Pullman window, narrowly missed a passenger. At Winnfield birthplace of Huey Long, a howling pistolwaving, rock-throwing mob besieged a tramload of Louisiana State University football rooters returning to Baton Rouge after a game with the University of Arkansas at Shreveport. Train guards ordered all lights out. The passengers were forced to lie on the aisle floors for hours, keep up their courage by sucking at flasks until local police drove off the mob.

As the Hustler rolled down the tracks near Winnfield one midnight last week shotguns flashed in a bordering wood, ten loads of buckshot poured into the tram, killed a guard, wounded the engineer and fireman. Unintimidated President Couch set guards and inspectors patrolling the line from Shreveport to New Orleans, posted $5,000 reward for the murderers. While rumors crackled the Federal Government might take a hand because of interference with the mails, the National Mediation Board proclaimed its hands tied because of President Couch's refusal to arbitrate. Hopefully Louisiana's rotund Governor Leche called a peace conference for this week.

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