Ladies! Ladies!

The late John Barrymore believed there was only one weapon with which a man could successfully fight a woman--his hat. "Grab it," the Great Profile advised, "and run." Last week, confronted by a spreading strike of telephone switchboard operators, the U.S. knew just what he was talking about. For seven days the nation waited to see if the war's most puzzling domestic problem could be settled that simply. The strike's potentialities were paralyzing. But the women who were picketing the telephone companies were the Good Girls of U.S. industry--the heroines who had stuck by their switchboards during decades of forest fires, floods and earthquakes.

As the strike began at Dayton and spread with powder-train swiftness across Ohio's great industrial areas, the bewildered U.S. public wondered what had come over their Nell. The affairs of the Ohio Federation of Telephone Workers, affiliated with neither C.I.O. nor A.F. of L., had been so calm that millions did not know the union existed. But the Dayton local, like many others, had been quietly tapping its foot for months over an "emergency"' company practice. To lure operators to war-production centers, the company had offered an $18.25-a-week expense bonus to any transferring from smaller Ohio towns.

The Revolt. To the seething union the case was obvious--the company was maintaining womanpower in Dayton's war-tight labor market without raising its basic wage rates. Finally the foot-tapping ceased. With abrupt, feminine exasperation, the operators went on strike.

The U.S. press commented, but with caution. Between the lines the editorial writer almost took visible shape--a middle-aged man with a green eyeshade and cigar, making soothing motions and muttering, "Ladies! Ladies!"

It was the politest dispute on record. All over the East and Midwest, motherly, well-dressed women emerged as labor leaders. The pickets outside telephone buildings sang the latest swing tunes instead of old trade-union chestnuts like Solidarity Forever.

The Return. There was little disruption of service on big city dial systems, but calls through small-town manual switchboards virtually ceased. Everywhere essential calls went through. WLB condemned the walkouts as threats to the war effort, ordered the strikers back to work. But the strikes went on.

By the morning of Thanksgiving Day a note of genuine alarm had crept into the newspaper accounts. Doom-voiced radio announcers rushed to their microphones as the strike spread to Detroit and Washington, as it threatened to engulf New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. And then, just as the nation rose from its Thanksgiving dinners, the strike ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Promptly, WLB set up machinery for immediate hearing of the strikers' grievances--a step it had refused to take as long as the strike lasted. And the U.S., settling back with a sigh of relief, reflected that the Good Girl had had a good case and got mad about it. Now she was temporarily mollified--but she might get mad again.

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