National Affairs: Rip Tide

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One day last week the Rules Committee's hard-boiled chairman. John J. O'Connor of New York, lunched off a Presidential tray. "The President did not mention Sit-Downs to me," said Chairman O'Connor when he left the White House. A few hours later his Committee astounded Washington by reporting out the Dies resolution for prompt House action. "I don't predict what action the House may take," said Speaker Bankhead, "but admittedly there is strong opposition to Sit-Down strikes on the part of the membership." That sentiment, if unchecked, promised the incredible spectacle of John L. Lewis following the path of bankers, stockbrokers and utilities magnates to a Congressional witness chair, there to have his inmost secrets exposed to public view.

The Motor Front

In Detroit last week Harry H. Bennett, one of Ford Motor Co.'s top executives, reluctantly confirmed a story which had leaked into the press after a full week of secrecy. As personnel director and chief of Ford's super-efficient plant police, tough Mr. Bennett is the man who has done the nation's most famed job of nipping unionism in the bud. One day last fortnight he was motoring to his office at the Ford Administration Building at Dearborn when he passed a parked car, recognized its five occupants as men who had been trying to see him about Ford labor problems. One of them yelled "Stop!" Mr. Bennett did not stop until the men had given chase, rammed their car into the side of his. Then they stopped too, but fled when the uninjured Ford chief waved his revolver. Last week Mr. Bennett pooh-poohed reports that the "boys" were trying to kill him, said he had no intention of pressing charges against them.

Harry Bennett, a wiry, dynamic ex-sailor and pugilist, was last in the news when a flying brick felled him during the riot of unemployed outside Ford's River Rouge plant five years ago (TIME. March 14, 1932). That he may soon make news again appeared last week when militant United Automobile Workers, who have been roaring FORD NEXT! throughout their General Motors and Chrysler imbroglios, staged the first Ford sit-down in an assembly plant at Kansas City. Grievance was a regular seasonal layoff of some 300 workers in which unionists claimed that long-employed union men were being dismissed while newer non-unionists stayed on. The sit-down lasted only 25 hours. Down from Detroit flew a U. A. W. vice president and several Ford officials, quickly negotiated a settlement restoring all jobs and guaranteeing seniority rights, got the men out of the plant. Plainly the union was not yet ready to start its big push against Ford. Its leaders were already having all the trouble, they could handle with Chrysler and their own turbulent followers.