Fizzle

After two and a half months of futile picketing, squabbling with police and bickering with the heads of the International Seamen's Union, the "outlaw" seamen's strike in New York Harbor (TIME, May 25) last week fizzled out in complete defeat for the strikers. Offered a settlement by the Union heads which promised nothing except "no discrimination," the insurgents reluctantly agreed to return to work, give up their demands for a higher wage scale, overtime pay, control of their hiring halls. Most admitted defeat. To save his face, Strikeleader Joseph Curran announced :

"We wanted to show the public that the marine unions were rotten at their top and that working conditions on American ships were so unfair as to repel good Americans who might want to go to sea. . . . We have made our case clear. . . . The idea now will be to organize our men on ships. They are going back fighting mad and with a job of education to per form among their fellows. When the Pacific Coast wage agreement comes up for renewal in September ... if the ship lines then hold out against our demands, the Atlantic Coast will be pulled with the Pacific in a general strike that will mean something."

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