Alarums & Excursions

"It may be necessary for me to go to Detroit," said Madam Secretary Perkins, looking anxiously down her nose. Cause of her anxiety was an all-night fracas between police and strikers in the General Motors strike at Flint, Mich, which had sent a score of casualties to the hospital (TIME, Jan. 18). Not anxious but indignant was Strike Leader Homer Martin who had flown to Washington. Said he: "The blood-spilling in Flint by hired Hessians of General Motors is a demonstration of what Mr. Alfred Sloan means by collective bargaining." Newshawks on the scene, however, confirmed General Motors' contention that none of its company guards nor any hired strikebreakers had any part in the violence, that the riot was entirely between strikers and the Flint police.

Soon Madam Perkins learned, however, that her anxiety was needless. In the small hours of the morning Governor Frank Murphy had arrived in Flint. "This is not going to be a brawl," he announced, and issued a call to the National Guard. Soon 2,300 Guardsmen were in Flint, most of them camping on the grounds and in the building of Flint's abandoned junior high school. Among the guardsmen called to the colors was one Verl Lahs, a sit-down striker in the Cadillac plant in Detroit. His fellow strikers voted to excuse him from sit-down duty because of their "great respect for law and order and the Michigan National Guard." The Guardsmen spent their time at the high school scrubbing floors and standing by, for the violence had subsided.

Three evenings after the riot in Flint, General Motors' Executive Vice President William S. Knudsen and the Union's President Martin were seated at a table in Lansing with Governor Murphy. Governor Murphy was sitting politically pretty. Not having intervened to oust the sit-downers, he was still considered their friend. Law & order-minded citizens likewise applauded him for his declaration: "Whatever else may happen, there is going to be law and order in Michigan. The public interest and the public safety are paramount. The public authority in Michigan is stronger than either of the parties in the present controversy. Neither of them by recourse to force or violence will be permitted to add public terror to the existing economic demoralization."

About 3 a. m. he emerged from a 16-hour conference and announced not peace but at least truce. Terms: the union agreed to General Motors' demand for the evacuation of sit-downers from five plants, two in Flint, two in Detroit, one in Anderson, Ind. General Motors agreed to the union's demand that it would not resume operations in these plants nor remove dies, tools, machines or materials (except for the export trade) during peace negotiations, which should meanwhile begin.

Peace seemed to be just around the corner, but wiseacres in the motor industry doubted it. They believed that General Motors was expecting the strike to last at least a couple of months and they were skeptical of whether John L. Lewis, boss of the Committee for Industrial Organization, felt that a settlement at this time would add enough prestige to his unionizing drive. In Washington Mr. Lewis was still making loud war talk, demanding that Congress investigate General Motors to determine whether its stock had been watered, whether its stockholders were being cheated by excessive salaries and bonuses to its officials, whether foreign stockholders were dictating its treatment of U. S. labor, and other things having nothing to do with the case. He was still beating his tom-tom to have the striking United Automobile Workers recognized as the sole bargaining agency of all General Motors workers.

This demand was the crux of the situation. Not only was General Motors determined not to grant it, but non-partisan observers generally agreed that U. A. W. had enrolled only a minority of its workers, in some plants a very small minority, and the majority had little sympathy with the union. In the Pontiac plant five workers who tried to start a sit-down were picked up by fellow workers and given the bum's rush out of the plant. In Detroit 9,000, in Saginaw 2,500 G. M. workers held mass meetings protesting being thrown out of work by the union's sitdown.

Such things were set down by the union as "company inspired" and so was the action of the Flint Alliance headed by George E. Boysen, former mayor of Flint and a former G. M. paymaster. He not only held a mass meeting of Flint's burghers and nonstriking workers, but the day after Governor Murphy secured the truce he telegraphed General Motors' Vice President Knudsen:

"By far the greatest majority of the employes in General Motors plants in Flint will not be represented at the conference with United Automobile Workers Union officials. . . .

"This great majority of workers is expecting an assurance from you that their position will not be overlooked in your dealings with the representatives of this small group."

Mr. Knudsen replied:

"You may assure your people that General Motors will look after the interests of Flint now as it always has and that no man's right to be represented by whomsoever he chooses will be denied. General Motors will never tolerate domination of its employes by a small minority."

Mr. Boysen then asked that he be permitted to bring a delegation "to discuss collective bargaining as it affects the great majority of your employes." Mr. Knudsen answered: "We stand ready always to discuss with your group or any group of our employes any question without prejudice to anyone."

That put the fat in the fire. Strike Leader Martin had got the sit-downers to evacuate two General Motors plants in Detroit and one at Anderson, Ind. Before starting to Flint to evacuate the two remaining plants, Mr. Martin became outraged. He made a speech to a union rally in Detroit not only repeating previous charges that Mr. Boysen was a too of General Motors but denouncing the Flint Alliance as a collection of house wives and members of the Black Legion Then he went to Flint, harangued a meeting and it was voted not to evacuate the Flint plants because General Motors had "double-crossed" the union in promising to bargain with non-union workers. To this were added other allegations of bad faith: that the company planned to reopen the evacuated Cadillac plant in De troit, to prevent picketing of its evacuated plant at Anderson, Ind. Mr. Martin telegraphed Senator La Follette demanding a Senate investigation of the Flint Alliance.

Instead of peace negotiations General Motors and the union returned to recriminations, and Madam Secretary Perkins mused aloud in Washington: "I have faith and hope."

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