Progress in Michigan

The air in Detroit was ominous as last week began. The United Automobile Workers, 6,000 of whose brawniest were sitting down in nine Chrysler plants, asked for a permit to hold a mass meeting of strike sympathizers. The place: Cadillac Square in the heart of Detroit. The hour: 4:30 p. m., as the evening rush hour began.

The City Council voted not to permit the meeting. Strike leaders, bitter at city authorities because police had been used to break up smaller sitdowns, threatened to hold the meeting without a permit. Homer Martin, head of the union, said he would call a general strike. He said the union would secure the recall of Mayor Frank Couzens (son of the late Senator James Couzens). Mayor Couzens yielded, got the union to defer the mass meeting till 5:45, advised firms in the office buildings on Cadillac Square to dismiss their workers early. Save for groups of strikers trooping to their rendezvous, the heart of Detroit was almost deserted at rush hour.

Then on the broad pavement of Cadillac Square, hedged round with modern office buildings and old fashioned three-and-four-story shops, a human mass began to accumulate. It grew slowly at first, but soon swelled bigger than the normal rush hour crowd, bigger than an election crowd, big as a world series crowd. When it was full-grown, newshawks, fond of round numbers, called it 100,000. It was 60,000 at the least. There were some women, a few children, but for the most part only men, able-bodied men in their working years--more than one might find by rounding up the entire adult male population of Bridgeport, Conn., or Nashville, Tenn., or Long Beach. Calif., or the whole State of Nevada. If it was a mob then Detroit was seeing the biggest industrial mob scene* in modern U. S. history. The crowd milled quietly but listened too as, in a hoarse droning roar from the loudspeakers, Homer Martin breathed defiance in all directions:

"You downtown merchants, the working conditions of the automobile workers of this city is a national scandal. . . . Mr. Mayor, you see to it that the law is properly enforced. . . . Give us our rights and we'll quit sitting down. You'll find out we're at least as smart as a jackass. We know even a mule has sense enough to sit down when he's overworked. . . . Henry Ford, you can't stop your workers from joining the union. . . . The best thing for you to do, Henry, is to get ready to do business with your organized workers. . . . We know that nine old men have been on a sit-down for the last six years. . . . I'm squarely behind the President. The Supreme Court of the U. S. is the greatest threat to democracy in America, outside of police fascism. . . . And we say to the police that we're determined to get what is justly ours and we're not going to stop till we get it."

The shout of 60,000 men punctuated the words of Orator Martin, who was followed by other union speakers. At last it was over and with a final roar, the crowd began to drift away. Soon only the sound of trolleys and of automobile horns disturbed Cadillac Square, and Detroit breathed easier. But the crisis was not passed. It was moving on in other places and other ways. A telegram from Governor Murphy had sped that day to Walter Chrysler in Manhattan and John L. Lewis in Washington. The Governor called attention to the fact that the courts had ordered the Chrysler plants evacuated, asked them both to come to see him in Lansing at once.

Answering telegrams sped back. From John L. Lewis two sentences: "Your message suggests that I confer under duress. Nevertheless and notwithstanding, I agree to be present." From Walter Chrysler came 700 words making two chief points: "The Chrysler Corporation cannot enter into any arrangement which will have the effect of forcing any of its employes against their will into any organization of labor. . . . With respect to ... the execution of the order of the Wayne County Court requiring the vacating of our seized plants ... we will not enter into any trade to get the men out of the plants. ... I shall expect the discussion of this aspect of the situation to lie between you and Mr. Lewis. The duty of enforcing the law does not rest upon the Chrysler Corporation. . . . You may expect to see. me tomorrow."

Next morning as Messrs. Chrysler and Lewis entered Governor Murphy's office they saw the heads of the Michigan National Guard and the State Police waiting in the outer office. The slender Governor sat down with his two guests, one., formerly a coal miner, the other formerly a machinist, both now masters of men with the lines of years and success in their faces, their husky bodies now encased not in overalls but in powder blue suits of almost identical shades. The Governor chatted a few minutes, then got up and left the two protagonists of the strike together.

"Your name's Clyde Beatty" [the lion & tiger man], said Chrysler Vice President B. E. Hutchinson as the Governor told what he had done.

Early in the evening the first news came to the embattled strikers in the Chrysler plants in Detroit. Men came running to the gates from nearby saloons where radios were playing. Governor Murphy had announced that John L. Lewis agreed toy evacuate the plants. Soon newsboys appeared with extras. The strikers looked at the sheets, angry and incredulous. It was true: John Lewis promised to evacuate all Chrysler plants at once and Walter Chrysler promised that no attempt would be made to resume operations until negotiations were over. "We might just as well not have sat down at all," said an angry striker. "We've been sold out."

Homer Martin and Richard Frankensteen, C. I. O.'s chief Detroit organizer, started from Lansing over icy midnight roads with an escort of State troopers to call the men out. And that was no easy task. John Lewis' word was by no means law to these thousands of raw recruits in his labor movement. It took Martin & Frankensteen twelve hours of driving, explaining, arguing, but finally, with bands playing and flags flying, out they all marched from the Dodge, De Soto and seven other Chrysler plants. And in marched State troopers to guard Chrysler Corp.'s property until the truce should produce a treaty.

Thursday evening Messrs. Chrysler & Lewis met again to try for a treaty. Columnist Hugh Johnson wrote that the evacuation agreement had been made nearly three weeks earlier by Messrs. Chrysler & Lewis, that it fell through because Mr. Lewis could not reach his lieutenants in Detroit within the time agreed on and because "lawyers and other industrialists" put pressure on Mr. Chrysler to make Governor Murphy oust the sit-downers. Of the post-evacuation negotiations, Hugh Johnson said:

"Men know when they begin these negotiations how far they eventually can and will go. They usually could clear up the real issues in a couple of hours, but it has gotten to be a habit to talk for days and sometimes weeks. ... I may be wrong, but it's a good bet that nothing like that will attend the meetings of Walter Chrysler and John Lewis. They are too much alike in plain barnyard common sense."

Hugh Johnson was quite right that neither man was the kind to get himself bogged down in words. John Lewis' middle name is Lewellyn but he is the man who in some of the toughest years in one the toughest industries--Coal--put together the biggest single union in the U. S. Walter Chrysler's middle name is Percy but he is the man who as a young railroad machinist made his first mark by repairing a broken cylinder head on a locomotive in two hours to meet an emergency, who bought his first automobile just to take it completely apart and put it together again with his own hands, who now has put together with those same hands the third biggest automobile company in the U. S. These two practical gentlemen were balked by the simplicity of the issue between them.

John Lewis' one demand was sole recognition and sole recognition was the one thing Walter Chrysler was determined to refuse.

Easter night Mr. Lewis had to leave for Manhattan to negotiate with coal operators for his United Mine Workers, whose wage contract expires this week. Walter Chrysler continued in session with Mr. Lewis' aides, but sessions were abbreviated so that Governor Murphy could give his attention to other strikes.

Dwindling Mania. For the great Sit-Down Mania, though dwindling, had not yet exhausted itself. In Michigan, strikes in Reo and Hudson plants were still going strong. At Aurora. Ill., a sit-downer orchestra struck up Here Comes the Bride while a justice of the peace married two strikers. In Detroit, Checker Cab Co., which operates three-fourths of the city's taxis, had a drivers' strike, but many of the company's 600 cabs (which belong mostly in ones and twos to 400 individual capitalists) were operated by their owners.

More serious was the outbreak of many "spontaneous" sit-downs, unsponsored by responsible labor leaders. The big Chevrolet plant at Flint has had no less than 42 brief sit-downs, unauthorized by the union, since the General Motors strike was settled a month ago. In the midst of the negotiations with Walter Chrysler, Homer Martin had to break off to telephone to Bay City, Mich, to put a stop to an unauthorized sit-down in a General Motors plant there. There was more than one report that John L. Lewis considered Homer Martin himself not sufficiently coolheaded. At the settlement of the General Motors strike Homer Martin was not even on the scene and there were predictions last week that someone whom Leader Lewis considered more reliable would eventually head the automobile union. Union leaders, like industrialists, were hoping that a little quinine of common sense would abate the strike fever.

*Biggest nonindustrial U. S. mob scene last week was the gathering of 53,000 eggrollers on the White House lawn.

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