Work or Fight

When construction workers walked out on a job at the Army's Brookley Field near Mobile last week, it was the last straw for Alabama's draft director, Brigadier General Ben M. Smith.

Ordering Mobile County boards to reclassify the strikers, he said: "I am sick & tired of this strike business. . . . When the worker strikes, he has lost his preferred status, if he stays out as long as 24 hours."

A new national ruling empowers General Smith to carry out his threat: local boards may now "consider anew the classification" of a registrant who "is not supporting or is adversely affecting the war effort." But like most phases of the draft, its use to enforce work-or-fight rulings is surrounded by confusion. Major General Lewis B. Hershey, national Selective Service director, said last week that he was opposed to .using the draft as a weapon against strikes "at present"--but he did not interfere in Mobile and he suggested using the draft to keep farm hands on the job. Local boards, he said, will have to solve "99% of their own problems."

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