Showdown at Ford

Last week, for the first time in history, Henry Ford's main plant at Dearborn was shut by a strike. One by one, subsidiary and assembly plants throughout the nation, which feed into the main plant or feed from it, were forced to close. The whole production flow of Ford was dammed.

The strike threat which had hung over Ford since C.I.O. determined to organize his plant had become a reality. One day last week, in the rolling mill at the main River Rouge plant, eight union men were fired. Promptly other union workers laid down their tools, ran through the mill shouting: "Strike!" Work stopped. About midnight, after leaders of C.I.O.'s United Auto Workers had asked to go into the plant to try to make peace, and Ford officials had said No, the union officially called a plantwide strike. Union men marched out through the gates, formed picket lines in the streets and drew up barricades of automobiles.

They were there at dawn when workers arrived for the morning shift. Some non-union men broke through. Pickets jeered. But there was no serious violence until 200 nonstriking Negroes, who had remained inside the beleaguered plant, made a sortie through Gate 4 armed with iron pipes, steel bars, bolts, razors, knives, and charged the pickets. Hot & heavy was the battle until the attackers withdrew, fled back inside.

Federal Conciliator James Dewey rushed to Detroit, earnestly conferred with Michigan's Governor Murray D. Van Wagoner, company men and union leaders, trying to find some formula for a truce before riot ran rampant at Rouge. Finally the company agreed to close the plant and negotiate tentatively, the union agreed to remove the barricades and send maintenance men into the plant to bank fires, keep them going.

Ford rearmament projects include contracts for 1,500 Army bantam combat cars ("Blitz buggies") and, far more important, for 4,200 Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engines. The Blitz buggies had already begun to roll off the assembly line, but the new $22,000,000 plant to house production of the aircraft engines was still abuilding. Work on it ceased when A.F. of L. construction workers refused to venture past the C.I.O. picket lines.

Week's end continued the truce, but brought no peace to Ford. Charges flew thick & fast. Ford's Harry Bennett accused leaders of the United Automobile Workers of Communism. Company officials charged that dies and tools needed in aircraft production had been destroyed. To the company charge that defense work was being delayed, the union replied that it was willing to supply men to keep defense work going, but that maintenance men sent inside were manhandled.