National Affairs: Helicopter & Forbidden Fruit

Steel and coal made the big news. But across the nation's labor fronts three other costly, protracted strikes tugged at the economic lifelines.

In New York, after 16 weeks of sporadic violence, half of the Bell Aircraft Corps.'s 3,000 workers were still holding out for a 15¢-an-hour wage hike, $100-a-month noncontributory pensions and other benefits which the company estimated at an overall 62½¢-an-hour increase. Trying out a new tactic, striking members of the United Auto Workers Local 501 observed Ladies' Day on the picket lines. Helmeted, club-swinging strikers' wives attacked three Bell engineers...