Upheaval in Utopia

Tears coursing down his wrinkled cheeks, 79-year-old Milton Snavely Hershey stood on the steps of his new office building in Hershey, Pa. one day last week and watched the violent vanguard of the times come swirling into his candy Utopia. Thirty-four years ago there was nothing but a cornfield where he stood. Now the sickish-sweet smell of the world's biggest chocolate factory lay heavy on the surrounding countryside. Ever since the factory had begun to make big money, abstemious Founder Hershey had poured it out to make his people happy. Besides giving most of his corporation's common stock to endow a great orphan's school, he has built a neat, clean, grassy model town, provided it with model schools, stores, theatres, sporting grounds, community centre.

The serpent which came to Mr. Hershey's garden some two months ago was John L. Lewis' C. I. O., proffering not knowledge but independence. Within a few weeks most of Hershey's 2,600 employes were enrolled in a United Chocolate Workers' Union, and the company had signed a union agreement. But when the summer slack in the chocolate business began to set in last fortnight, the union charged that the company was violating its agreement to respect seniority, discriminating against unionists in layoffs. One day about half the workers stopped the factory with a Sit-Down. When negotiations began next day, they walked out. When negotiations broke off last week, some 600 of them went back to resume sitting.

When Alfred P. Sloan Jr. estimated last fortnight that the great General Motors sit-down had cost the "national economy" hundreds of millions of dollars, the average citizen shrugged and went on about his business. But the Hershey Sit-Downers were sitting squarely on the pocketbooks of neighboring farmers who sell the chocolate company some $14,000 worth of milk per day. Stung to action, the deprived dairymen last week made a milestone in the history of the Sit-Down.

All one morning automobiles and buggies poured into Hershey bringing outraged countryfolk, including many a bearded and bonneted Mennonite, to a mass meeting in the Hershey stadium. After speakers had whipped the crowd into a fury, making good use of the C. I. O. banner which strikers had raised above the U. S. flag over the factory, somebody began to boom through a loudspeaker: "Let's go to the factory!" With a roar some 3,000 farmers and non-union workers seized clubs, whips knives, and banners labeled DOWN WITH THE C. I. O., swarmed down Chocolate Avenue past weeping Mr. Hershey, smashed in the factory doors, pounced on the Sit-Downers. Men pounded, pummeled, jabbed. Sit-Downers were soon trotting out with arms upraised, to run a walloping, stone-pelting gantlet. Just as the fight was ending, State police appeared, drove back the mob, began cleaning up the casualties--some 50 with bruises, cuts and black eyes, one man stabbed in the belly with an icepick.

At week's end, with a group of self-styled "loyalists" clamoring for an application of the freshly-proven Wagner Act, the company signed a new agreement with the C.I.O. group outlawing strikes for six months, providing for a vote to determine whether the United Chocolate Workers Union or the Loyal Workers Club shall represent the workers. Both claim approximately two-thirds of all employes. Left unchanged by the agreement: wages & hours; Hershey's discharge & disciplinary powers.

While Sit-Down critics throughout the land observed with ill-concealed satisfaction that lawlessness breeds lawlessness, Pennsylvania's New Dealing Governor Earle started an investigation, cried: "The bloodshed at the Hershey plant was a disgrace to the Commonwealth. The blame lies directly on the sheriff of the county. . . . The State police will not be used to suppress union labor."

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