The Dodo Hunt

The Truman Administration went gunning last week for game that is all but extinct: a brace of rugged individualists. Specimen No. 1 was 69-year-old Leon Clausen, a big-boned man with a face that betrays his Danish descent. Clausen beat his way from a Wisconsin farm to the presidency of J. I. Case Co., manufacturer of farm implements. His habitat is Racine, Wis., where he is distinguished by stubborn Republicanism, civic philanthropies and firm opinions, openly expressed. It was not unusual to see him last week in a curbstone argument over the British loan (which he deplores) with Case workers who happened to be there, picketing his plant.

His company has been shut since Dec. 26 in the nation's longest strike.

Specimen No. 2 was 52-year-old Walter Geist, a big-boned man with a plowlike face. Geist started life as an errand boy at Allis-Chalmers, also a manufacturer of farm implements; 33 years later he became its president. His habitat is Milwaukee.

His company's two biggest plants, employing 29,000, have been shut for a month.

In the Brush. Terrain over which the Truman Administration hunted them was thick with underbrush. Clausen's Case Co. has had plenty of labor strife. The nub of the present trouble is a letter written by union leaders in 1937 which recognized: 1) the right of any employe to join a union of his choosing, 2) the right of non-union workers to deal individually with the company. Triumphantly Clausen declared that the letter guaranteed that Case could remain an open shop. Union leaders declared the letter obsolete, and negotiations promptly broke down.

Geist's Allis-Chalmers also had a long record of labor disputes. In the early days of the war, its plants were shut for over three months while the Army waited in vain for millions of dollars of turbines and gun parts. For the past four months, 60,000 employes in seven Allis-Chalmers plants have been in & out. The present dispute, which has shut the plants at West Allis and La Crosse, involves no wage issue. The issues: seniority, employment practices, union security, etc.

The Administration took an anxious look at the country's wornout farm implements. Old strikes at other farm implement companies (International Harvester, Caterpillar Tractor, John Deere, Oliver Farm Equipment) had already set farm production back. Labor Secretary Schwellenbach looked down his gun. He told Clausen and Geist to make "a real effort" to settle things--or the U.S. would move in.

Early this week Geist's Allis-Chalmers resumed negotiations with the C.I.O. But Leon Clausen only growled and glowered from the brush. The U.S., which has seized a mail-order house, oil fields, meat packers, coal mines and railroads got ready to seize Clausen's Case.

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