Again, Umbrella Mike

Sharp at 8 p. m. in Chicago one evening last week, 450 of the 800 city-employed electrical workers pulled their switches, walked out on strike. Out blinked all 94.558 municipal street lights. Off went all traffic lights in the Loop. Along the Chicago River, which slices through the city's midsection, 38 of the 55 drawbridges rose up to stay. Honking automobiles, clanging streetcars, cursing pedestrians piled up at the open bridgeheads, turned to fight their way back. Policemen shouted into dead telephones; their inter-communicating system was useless. State Street was bright with its private lighting system, and elsewhere in the Loop store lights and advertising signs glowed through the gloom, but most of the Second City's outlying streets were doused in country darkness. "It's the city's funeral, not ours," said Michael J. ("Umbrella Mike") Boyle, the bold boss who had called the strike. Long-time business agent for a Chicago local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, "Umbrella Mike" Boyle is said to have earned his nickname by his method of collecting donations from electrical contractors and other citizens who sought his favors. Boss Boyle would hang his umbrella on the bar of Johnson's saloon, absent himself while the graftee plunked the agreed sum into it, then return and innocently walk off with the umbrella. In eight years, on a union salary of $35 per week, he saved $350,000. "It was with great thrift," he has explained. As early as 1915 "Umbrella Mike" was indicted for a racketeering conspiracy in restraint of trade, jailed after a five-year legal battle. One item of evidence showed that he had extorted $20,000 from Chicago Telephone Co. for permission to erect a building without strikes. After two months of his one-year sentence President Wilson pardoned him, despite a U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that the evidence in his trial proclaimed him "a blackmailer, a highwayman, a betrayer of labor and a leech on commerce." He was promptly re-elected to his union job. Last week Boss Boyle's only ostensible reason for darkening Chicago was to get back for his unionists the 39 days per year pay which the economizing city docked its employes in 1932. He conferred with Mayor Kelly, who publicly stormed that the city could not afford the pay restoration. At 10:40 p.m., "Umbrella Mike" was persuaded to call off his strike until this week, and Chicago moved again.

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