National Affairs: Alarums & Excursions

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"It may be necessary for me to go to Detroit," said Madam Secretary Perkins, looking anxiously down her nose. Cause of her anxiety was an all-night fracas between police and strikers in the General Motors strike at Flint, Mich, which had sent a score of casualties to the hospital (TIME, Jan. 18). Not anxious but indignant was Strike Leader Homer Martin who had flown to Washington. Said he: "The blood-spilling in Flint by hired Hessians of General Motors is a demonstration of what Mr. Alfred Sloan means by collective bargaining." Newshawks on the scene, however, confirmed General Motors' contention that none of its company guards nor any hired strikebreakers had any part in the violence, that the riot was entirely between strikers and the Flint police.

Soon Madam Perkins learned, however, that her anxiety was needless. In the small hours of the morning Governor Frank Murphy had arrived in Flint. "This is not going to be a brawl," he announced, and issued a call to the National Guard. Soon 2,300 Guardsmen were in Flint, most of them camping on the grounds and in the building of Flint's abandoned junior high school. Among the guardsmen called to the colors was one Verl Lahs, a sit-down striker in the Cadillac plant in Detroit. His fellow strikers voted to excuse him from sit-down duty because of their "great respect for law and order and the Michigan National Guard." The Guardsmen spent their time at the high school scrubbing floors and standing by, for the violence had subsided.

Three evenings after the riot in Flint, General Motors' Executive Vice President William S. Knudsen and the Union's President Martin were seated at a table in Lansing with Governor Murphy. Governor Murphy was sitting politically pretty. Not having intervened to oust the sit-downers, he was still considered their friend. Law & order-minded citizens likewise applauded him for his declaration: "Whatever else may happen, there is going to be law and order in Michigan. The public interest and the public safety are paramount. The public authority in Michigan is stronger than either of the parties in the present controversy. Neither of them by recourse to force or violence will be permitted to add public terror to the existing economic demoralization."

About 3 a. m. he emerged from a 16-hour conference and announced not peace but at least truce. Terms: the union agreed to General Motors' demand for the evacuation of sit-downers from five plants, two in Flint, two in Detroit, one in Anderson, Ind. General Motors agreed to the union's demand that it would not resume operations in these plants nor remove dies, tools, machines or materials (except for the export trade) during peace negotiations, which should meanwhile begin.