LABOR: Strikes-of-the-Week

As sure a sign of Recovery as circus openings are of spring were the strikes popping and smoldering across the land last week.

¶ Confronted with a "sitdown" for more pay by his 133 employes, President Everett A. Wilsher of Detroit's Gordon Baking Co. crawled into his plant through a window, sued for peace. Failing, he sent 20 constables armed with warrants, charging illegal possession. The constables tossed tear gas; the strikers returned loaves of bread. A Federal conciliator brought about a truce, persuaded the sit-downers to leave the plant pending negotiation.

¶ In eastern Michigan, some 200 bus drivers struck for a raise from 55¢ to 75¢ per hour, left thousands of commuters stranded on street corners in Flint, Pontiac, Mount Clemens, Wyandotte, Trenton, Detroit.

¶ Pennsylvania's Governor Earle refused to close Reading's Berkshire Knitting Mills, world's largest hosiery manufacturers, where a strike against "sweatshop" conditions had been in progress since Oct. 1 (TIME, Dec. 7 & 14). Scattered through jails of four adjoining counties were 148 striking picketers who had been arrested for "blocking the sidewalk" after lying down in slush and snow outside the Berkshire plant. In Berks County Prison 13 picketers were given bread & water in solitary confinement after they had refused to weave carpets because that was not union labor. This week a battle between strikers and strikebreakers damaged 14 humans, six automobiles.

¶ In Park City, Utah, 400 striking silver miners, cheered on by wives and sweethearts, repulsed 17 automobile loads of would-be strikebreakers with fists and boots. One combatant was seriously in- jured when a woman bystander heaved a rock.

¶ Out to capture the automobile industry, John L. Lewis' Committee for Industrial Organization continued to pursue its masterful strategy of skirmishing with parts makers, seriously embarrassing the industry without risking a head-on conflict. The two attacking C. I. O. unions, United Automobile Workers and Federation of Flat Glass Workers, formed a council for joint action. A victory was won when employes of Detroit's Midland Steel Products Co. (Ford, Chrysler and other automobile frames) went back to work after a seven-day sit-down which won them more pay, abolition of piece work, union recognition. A sit-down of 5,000 employes in Detroit's Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co. (wheels for Ford, General Motors and other motor car makers) was halted by a promise of more pay, resumed this week when the company turned down U. A. W.'s other demands. Also in Detroit, a United Automobile Workers strike for higher pay spread throughout Aluminum Co. of America plants, by week's end involved nearly 1,000 employes.

In Racine, Wis., where U. A. W. unionists have kept the J. I. Case Co. plant closed since Oct. 27, Circuit Judge M. M. Davison asserted his injunction limiting picketing had been violated with the complicity of the mayor and sheriff, declared a state of anarchy, asked Governor LaFollette to send militia.

In Pittsburgh, representatives of management and union met in the first joint conference of the seven-week-old strike of 7,000 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. workers.