Tenants' Revolution

The swank side of Manhattan's Central Park is Fifth Avenue on the east, where expensive apartments house Al Smith, many another who can pay for the privilege of looking out on some of the city's few trees. But the west side of the park, which has a similar view, is no slum. It, too, has fine buildings in which the annual rent of an apartment is as much as the cost of building a modest home. Such a building is the San Remo, whose services employes struck three months ago.

Two of the San Remo's tenants are Mr. and Mrs. Harry Bijur, who pay $5,000 a year for nine rooms. Mrs. Bijur, thirtyish and blonde, is a great-granddaughter of the William Mooney (no relation to California's Tom Mooney) who founded Manhattan's Tammany Hall. Lawyer Bijur's late father was Nathan Bijur, a justice of New York's Supreme Court, and his first cousin is Adman George Bijur. The Harry Bijurs have three servants, a Packard, an active interest in Catholic charities, no leanings toward parlor pinkery. They might well tire of having strikers picket their expensive doorstep.

Instead, every day from the Bijur kitchen ten to 15 Ibs. of meat, seven to ten Ibs. of butter, 18 to 20 loaves of bread have gone to nourish the strikers. The servants do most of the labor, Mrs. Bijur sometimes helps (see cut). To protest the banking department's failure to rehire the strikers, the Bijurs last month refused to pay rent until served with a dispossess notice. Mrs. Bijur trudged up & down four flights of stairs rather than use the elevator and condone the presence of strike breakers, some of whom have joined an A. F. of L. union. She said "the scabs" had called her bad names, she had even been told she might have her "puss mashed in with a sledge hammer." Recently she paid hospital bills for three pregnant wives of strikers. In a little over two months the Bijurs have spent over $3,000 supporting the strike.

Said Mrs. Bijur last week: "I just know these people, and even though they are poor they are right. I am helping to avert a revolution in this country by feeding them. What we need to end labor strife is more religion, more charity and a greater obedience to the will of God. ... Six more of the strikers' wives are pregnant, and it looks as if I will have quite a hospital bill by summer."

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