INVESTIGATIONS: The Ungentle Art

"We expect," growled Arkansas' Democratic Senator McClellan, "to develop in these hearings what may be a classic example of the use of force and violence in labor-management relation." John McClellan was as good as his word: last week his labor-investigating Senate committee heard testimony as fascinating as it was ugly about the ungentle art of teamster and building trades' union organizing in the industrial city of Scranton (pop. 127,600), hard by the Pennsylvania anthracite coal mines.

Some of the Scranton union tactics were as simple as a tooth-busting fist. Others were more ingenious; e.g., threatening to douse the milk, eggs and butter of a nonunion dairy truck with kerosene, and pouring sugar into the gasoline tank of a steam roller on a highway construction job. (One of the goons gave his left-over sugar to a girl friend for household use.) Soft-spoken William E. Cochran, a construction foreman for a nonunion firm, told how the threats of union goons drove him to the Scranton city solicitor. James McNulty, for protection. McNulty, it turned out, was also lawyer for the building trades' unions. Cochran said he was warned that if union members committed any crime, such as pushing over a wall of Cochran's new house, City Solicitor McNulty would defend the unionists. And in fact, several days later, the wall was damaged.

A Nervous Type. But the Scranton unions' bullyboy art was at its ugliest in two other cases, one of dynamiting and one of stink-bombing.

Witness Edward Pozusek, 50, a nonunion Wilkes-Barre contractor, told of landing deep in trouble with the unions while building a house in Scranton. He was approached on the job by officials of the laborers', carpenters' and electrical workers' unions. Asked one: "Who the hell allowed you to come here to Scranton to build?" Replied Pozusek: "Mister, it so happens I am American-born, and I am allowed to earn a living in any part of this country as long as I earn it legally." Said the union official: "You will just pick up your tools and get the hell back to Wilkes-Barre, where you belong." Snapped Pozusek: "Look, mister, I am not looking for trouble. I don't pretend to be smart or tough, and I am only going to tell you one thing—that I am a nervous type, and don't come here and start trouble for me, because somebody is going to get hurt." Said the unionist: "Trouble? You don't know the first damn thing about trouble. Why, we'll give you so much trouble here that you'll get ulcers." Answered Pozusek: "Ulcers? That don't worry me, because I am getting the damn things for the last 15 years."