Strike Town

Last week the small southern Ontario mill town of Paris was rounding out its second month of a bitter labor conflict. Back in November the United Textile Workers of America (A.F.L.) had called a strike meeting. Of the 4,637 people in Paris, 650 were employed in the Penman's, Ltd. textile mills, the town's No. 1 industry. At the strike meeting, only 51 people cast ballots, 27 in favor of a strike, 24 against it. The company granted a 5-c--an-hour increase, but union leaders, seeking 15-c-, used their three-vote majority to call the first strike in Paris in 42 years.

Trouble began when half the Penman's employees showed up for work. On the first day there was a scuffle at the mill gates. Ailing Mrs. Charles Cardy, 45, a Penman's worker for 20 years, collapsed in the snow, later died in the hospital. Although the coroner ruled that Mrs. Cardy's death was not caused by strike violence, the Town Council was taking no chances. They called in the Ontario provincial police to help halt the daily mix-up between strikers and nonstrikers. The provincials seized a blackjack from one worker. Two policemen were stabbed with women's hatpins. Children on the sidelines threw stone-filled snowballs.

Families & Friends. From the mill gates, the strike's acid corrosion spread all over town. Fiery Val Bjarnason, U.T.W.'s Ontario director, organized a march on the home of Mayor William England to demand the removal of the provincial police. The mayor, whose own daughter had marched in the strikers' picket line, went to the hospital to rest his shattered nerves.

Other families were ripped apart. Mrs. William Mann and one of her daughters were among the Penman's employees who stayed on the job. Her son, Harold, and another daughter sided with the pickets, who jeered at old friends and relatives at the plant gates.

Charges & Shrugs. Last week a group of harassed neutrals formed the Paris Citizens' League and signed up 1,200 members determined to get to the root of the trouble. The League disavowed any intention of strikebreaking, but its sponsor, the Board of Trade, bought a full page in the Paris weekly Star (circ. 1,700) to attack the union leadership as Communist. The League recalled that Kent Rowley, Canadian boss of the United Textile Workers, was interned under the defense-of-Canada regulations in 1940 and released in 1942. Although the Paris local's bylaws called for a two-thirds vote before a strike could be called, Rowley's office had authorized the Paris strike on the slim three-vote majority eked out at the first strike meeting.

Union leaders merely shrugged off the attack. With more than 100 Penman's employees still holding out, they said they were prepared to continue the strike indefinitely.

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