Nation: The Sudden Rising of the Hardhats

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The note of hardhat solidarity with the nation's rulers was sounded often. WE SUPPORT NIXON AND AGNEW, One sign read; GOD BLESS THE ESTABLISHMENT. The strange bedfellowship was not lost on Peter Brennan. head of Greater New York's Building and Construction Trades Council. "We're supporting the President and the country," said Brennan, "not because he's for labor, because he isn't, but because he's our President, and we're hoping that he's right." A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany drew a similar distinction: he backed Nixon on Cambodia, but attacked the President's management of the economy. New York's Brennan argued that the U.S. "must have an honorable peace, not walk out like Chamberlain did."

Last week's counter-protesters in New York showed an almost mystical respect for the flag: decals bedecked the helmets of construction workers: one skyscraper going up on Broadway sprouted flags by the dozens on its steelwork, including an immense Old Glory lit up at night. Said John D'Anella, 57, an RCA technician: "Maybe the students are smarter than we are, but they have no right to burn down buildings. We love our flag. We love our country. If they destroy the flag, they are destroying our way of life." Across the generation gap, Tom Woods, a 19-year-old elevator construction worker, agreed. "The flag—it's like a priest or the pledge of allegiance," said Woods. "It's like the flag is the roof, and under it are all the rooms."

Dropped Curtain. Patriotism aside, as these men see it, the students are throwing away educational opportunities that the hardhats never had themselves and may not even be able to offer their children. While paychecks have risen to the point where construction men are the best paid in U.S. labor, inflation has left them little better off in relative economic status, and unemployment is a nagging threat. Unlike the liberally led automobile workers, the hardhats dig in deep when threatened: last year they protested, sometimes violently, at efforts to increase the number of blacks in the building trades at Pittsburgh and Chicago.

They are not an utterly united front. One black carpenter, a World War II veteran, denounced his parading brethren as "make-believe patriots and cowards." Another construction worker called the marchers "storm troopers," and asserted that one contractor had offered his men cash bonuses to take part in the Wall Street head-busting.

The hardhats were not alone in their hostility to the specter of anarchy raised by rioting in the ghettos and on the campuses. So far, the right certainly has been less violent than the left, but the fact that citizens are bashing citizens augurs ill. Actress Shelley Winters found that after making a couple of short curtain speeches against the Kent State killings, stagehands surrounded her and threatened to drop the curtain on her head if she did it again. "They were not kidding," Shelley said.