No Sir, He's Your Baby

Harry Bridges knotted-a brown-and-yellow necktie around his matchstick neck one day and betook himself to San Francisco's federal court. "It's my homestretch tie," Harry explained. "It has never failed me in the homestretch yet."

But a tie could not save Harry Bridges' neck this time. In the gloomy cavernous courtroom where he had lounged, smiled and listened studiously through 81 days of trial a jury of eight men and four women --after 31 hours of deliberation--decided that Bridges had been a Communist and had lied when he denied it at his naturalization proceedings in 1945. For abetting the deception by serving as Bridges' naturalization witnesses, two top lieutenants in the I.L.W.U.--Vice President J. R. Robertson and German-born Henry ("The Dutchman") Schmidt--were also convicted. This week Bridges was sentenced to five years, and his companions to two years, in prison.

The jury's decision, if upheld by higher courts, would also cost Harry Bridges his U.S. citizenship. But there was a question whether his native Australia would take him back. Said a high official in Sydney: "He is America's baby, not ours--I don't think we want him."

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