Sent to the Cleaners

Since the days of Bartholomew Fair, and before, professional carnivals have been held up as examples of ungodliness. In 1922 Variety launched a scorching drive against carnival evils. Of 240 carnivals in the U.S., it found only 20 entirely free from such vices as crooked gambling and lewd sideshows. In one year, Variety kept 26 "black" carnivals from getting bookings, to this day will accept no carnival advertising.

Variety gradually came home from its crusade, but fortnight ago the American Federation of Actors, setting out to unionize the 312 carnivals in the U. S., took up Variety's dusty cudgels. A.F.A.'s aim: to clean up carnivals first, sign them up second, get rid of such entertainment as:

P: ''Lay-down wheels"--gambling devices crookedly controlled by a gimmick.

P: Sideshows purporting to show how marijuana cigarets are smoked.

P: ''Estelle in the Well'' acts, which exhibit an almost naked girl lying at the bottom of a very shallow well and for an extra 25-c- allow patrons to touch her.

Unlike most labor organizations, A.F.A. did not regard willingness to join as a recommendation for membership; repentance before baptism was its motto. It planned to make carnivals respectable or break them. This was clever salesmanship on the part of A.F.A. Bulletins sent to State and county fair officials, mayors, sheriffs, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc., made it quite clear that if a carnival could not display A.F.A. and A.F. of L. insignia it was because "it permits gambling, indecency, immorality . . . or is unfair to organized labor." Consequently, instead of resisting unionization, carnivaleers were anxious to get the good-conduct badge that A.F.A. membership carried, and the union found itself in the dreamlike position of being able to pick and choose which shows it would deign to organize.

Last week when a representative of Hennies Brothers, one of carnival's Big Five, went to Chicago prepared to sign a closed shop contract with A.F.A., he was turned down, told that Hennies Brothers could not sign until an A.F.A. representative passed on its morals.

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