Washington v. Detroit

John L. Lewis' crude presentation of his campaign I. O. U. to Franklin Roosevelt last fortnight, his demand that the President now repay his political debt to Mr. Lewis by joining him in his war on General Motors (TIME, Feb. 1), put the New Deal in a highly uncomfortable position. By forcing the President to hand the C. I. O. chieftain a veiled but unmistakable rebuke, it left the New Deal appearing to side, against 3,500,000 friends, with those onetime pillars of the Liberty League, Alfred P. Sloan Jr. and the du Ponts.

This strained and unnatural situation was resolved last week when G. M. President Sloan capped Leader Lewis' blunder with one of his own. After winning much public sympathy by his reasonableness throughout the strike, Mr. Sloan decided to get tough, flatly rejected Secretary of Labor Perkins' summons to a further Washington peace parley. As if they were playing a game of "Going to Jerusalem," a second principal in the deadly serious Automobile War of 1937 lost his seat in the New Deal's favor.

Summoned to the White House for talks on "labor legislation" were three groups headed respectively by Mr. Lewis, President Harper Sibley of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, President William Green of the American Federation of Labor. The Lewis group went first, stayed longest. At a press conference the President of the U. S. voiced his extreme displeasure with the president of General Motors. Waiving his usual ban on direct quotation, as he had done in squelching Mr. Lewis, the President struck out, this time not with a mild generality but with blunt specification. Rapped he: "I told them [the conferees] I was not only disappointed in the refusal of Mr. Sloan to come to Wash ington but I regarded it as a very unfortunate decision on his part."

When a newshawk reminded him that Mr. Sloan had offered to go to Washing ton if the President himself requested it, Franklin Roosevelt snapped: "A representative of the President did ask him to come down."

A woman scorned, Madam Secretary Perkins met newshawks with tight lips, think," flushed face, burst she, "that pencil-tapping General fingers. Motors "I have made a great mistake, perhaps the greatest mistake in their lives."

President Sloan's reason--the "unlawful seizure" of G. M. plants by sit-down strikers--Madam Perkins brushed aside as "legalistic." "The real reason the workers would not take their men out of the plants," asserted she, "was that they felt they couldn't trust General Motors. An episode like this must explain to the American people and make it clear why the workers can't trust General Motors."

Awed by such candid fury, a newshawk inquired : "Does the President know you're giving General Motors hell like this?"

"I'm not giving General Motors hell," replied Madam Perkins. "But the President doesn't know anything about what I'm saying."

Impulsively the Secretary of Labor produced a letter which she said she had written to Mr. Sloan after returning from church, but had not mailed. As she rattled it off too fast for note-taking, newshawks caught such Biblical injunctions as: Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him. . . . Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. . . . He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone. . . .

Next day Secretary Perkins sent Speaker Bankhead and Majority Leader Robinson letters requesting Congress to enact "with utmost haste" a law enabling the Secretary of Labor to compel labor disputants, by subpoena, to appear in Washington for fact-finding conferences.

Soon, however, Mr. Sloan did go to Washington for a secret conference with Madam Secretary. The Press got wind of it and called Miss Perkins that night. "He ran out on me," she cried. "I had his word when he left here this afternoon that he would consent to enter the negotiations. I was at dinner when his call came from New York. He had hardly had time to reach there when he called to say he felt he could not go through with the agreement. . . . Really, it was not what one would expect from a man in his position."

Next morning Mr. Sloan, abed in Manhattan with a bad cold, issued a statement: "I told the Secretary that I would take [her proposal to renew negotiations] under advisement and give her an answer not later than 10 o'clock this morning. . . . How the Secretary could have understood that any agreement had been reached with her when it was distinctly understood that I was to telephone my answer to her proposal, is beyond my comprehension."

"It seems that all my work has gone to waste," said Madam Perkins, almost in tears.

All this left Mr. Sloan both out of favor with the Administration and fed up with Madam Perkins. It left John L. Lewis just where he was a week before, fuming at the Administration for failing to come full steam to his rescue, bogged down in an automobile strike with only minority support among the workers and no sure way of getting out successfully before his coal union locks with the coal operators to negotiate a new wage contract in place of that expiring March 31. "Conditions on the battle front," he snapped angrily, "are eminently satisfactory."

Battle Front conditions, however pleasing they might seem to John Lewis, were actually growing uglier every day. Some 40,000 of G. M.'s nonstriking employes went back to part-time work last week without violence. But in strike-bound Flint, the anti-strike Flint Alliance turned out 8.000 citizens for a mass meeting at which John Lewis and other strike leaders were truculently abused. Leaders of the Alliance were in turn roundly rebuked by Governor Murphy for their "interference." In Detroit, five picketers were injured in a scuffle with police when some officials tried to enter the closed Cadillac plant. In Saginaw, where anti-strike temper was described as "simply murderous," a gang ran six strike organizers out of town. As four of the organizers were proceeding to Flint under police escort, an automobile swerved into their path, forced their speeding taxicab off the road into a telephone pole, seriously injuring all four. In Anderson. Ind. some 2.000 mobsters broke up a United Automobile Workers meeting with rotten eggs, moved on to wreck the union headquarters.

These flare-ups were reported as signs of rising non-union resentment against the strike. Another explanation of them was last week being explored in Anderson by three government agencies. Secretary Perkins dispatched an investigator after a U. A. W. vice president swore that G. M. superintendents and foremen had led the Anderson mob, were doing all they could to intimidate strikers, stir up violence against them.

As further evidence of G. M.'s concern for its employes, President Sloan announced that the annual distribution of stock & cash proceeds of the Corporation's employe savings plan, this year totaling $10,700,000, would be rushed. With even greater magnanimity, Vice President

Knudsen promised that G. M. would keep up payments on the group insurance policies of both non-strikers and strikers. Still grimly determined to evict sit-downers, however, G. M. renewed the court proceedings which it allowed to lapse when the Flint judge who had granted it an injunction was revealed to be the owner of $219,900 worth of G. M. stock (TIME, Jan. 18).

In Flint at week's end, violence broke out at Chevrolet's plant No. 9 when a group of unionists approached the plant manager, demanded recognition. Company guards leaped to the manager's defense, fists flew, shots were fired, 15 were injured. A crowd of men forced their way into plant No. 4 and "sat down," subsequently engaging in a fire-hose battle with non-union workmen. Thereupon, under orders from Governor Murphy, 1,200 troops of the Michigan National Guard moved into the zone, cleared the area around the plants, tore down pickets' shanties, hauled away a union sound truck, had four agitators jailed. Since the troops allowed no one into the zone without a military pass the sit-downers' food-supply was cut off. They patronized candy and peanut slot machines inside the plants, yawped hungrily from the windows. Cigarettes were at a premium. As every National Guard unit in Michigan was ordered mobilized for possible duty, John L. Lewis sped to the scene from Washington.

This week more violence was in prospect when Circuit Judge Paul V. Gadola granted General Motors' request for an injunction ordering evacuation of two Fisher plants.

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