Labor Trouble

Wally Windsor was never a queen, but she managed a faint Marie Antoinettish echo on her return (temporary) to Britain last week. Asked about her wardrobe by a reporter who had just seen three army trucks and two jeeps dump about two tons of baggage, the Duchess said: "We hardly brought anything. Things are fantastic in Paris now. No one will be able to buy clothes there any more if they keep putting the prices up." The conversation turned naturally from clothes to parties. Would the Duchess do much entertaining? "I am here," she said, "in a very unofficial capacity."

Her royal husband, who reached the height of his popularity, if not of his prestige, in the Coolidge era, discussed the wage-price problem with Coolidgesque balance. Asked to comment on a strike of cooks, waiters and bus boys at the West End's swankiest hotels, the Duke said: "If they had been better paid they would not be striking. However, the spiral of pay and costs cannot continue indefinitely."

The strikers were demanding not higher pay, as the Duke thought, but union recognition ot their Union of General and Municipal Workers. Recalling the recent triumph of organized labor at Buckingham Palace (TIME, June 3), one banner in the Savoy Hotel's picket line proclaimed: "What's good enough for the royal household should be good enough for the Savoy."

The strike was orderly and well-mannered. The greatest hardship wrought was that on screen star Mary Martin. Stopping at the Savoy with her husband, pert Mary had to cook their dinner (canned chicken and coffee) on an electric plate. Said she: "We only blew out one tiny little fuse."

At a cocktail party an exactress cooed: 'But why, if they don't like the conditions in the hotels, don't they find some other job? My Gawd, I'd be willing to pay two pounds a week for a charwoman."

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