Carry Your Piccolo?

James Caesar Petrillo, tough, grey little boss of the powerful, closed-shop American Federation of Musicians, has long been accustomed to tell employers what's what.

Last week in Manhattan. Boss Petrillo for once got some of his own medicine.

The Manhattan local of the musicians' union was asked, by the Manhattan local of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to create a little employment--to force "name bands," playing in theaters, to hire teamsters to carry musicians' instruments. Under this arrangement a band, arriving in automobiles or taxicabs, would pay teamsters $10 per man by the day, $20 by night, to tote piccolos and bull fiddles across the sidewalk into the theater.

The teamsters' demand was as reasonable as Boss Petrillo's "standby" system by which radio stations and theaters using canned music must hire union men to stand by and do nothing. But Boss Petrillo would not take the medicine. The Manhattan local brushed off the teamsters' local. Thereupon teamsters picketed theaters with "Unfair" signs, announced that they would move no scenery until the dispute was settled.

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