Scuffling In the Temple

It would take a bold undertaker to deny that Los Angeles is today the queen or pearl of the funeral parlor, crematorium and graveyard world. Where else have American mass-production methods been so ingeniously utilized in delivering the defunct citizen to terminal rest? Where else are rites so cheap and splendid, the morticians so tanned and jolly? Where else does sunshine and music so fully flood the funeral home?

It is hard to say which has had most to do with establishing this pre-eminence--the Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, with its statue-strewn fairyland for the hallowed loved ones, or Pierce Brothers Mortuaries, proud custodians of the West's biggest funeral business.

Pickets in Ascot Ties. Pierce Brothers claimed to be the first in the U.S. to advertise low-price funerals, first to send motorcycle escorts with the casket coach (nobody any longer calls them hearses in the profession) and first (outside New York itself) to embalm 6,000 remains in a year. In 50 peppy years of growth, it has dedicated a main mortuary with 20 "reposing rooms" (all named for famous authors) and 13 cheerful branch plants to the uplifting or happy funeral. But last week, gloom, finally came to Pierce Brothers, and moved to Forest Lawn, too.

The cause: the happy morticians' own employees. First they joined a union (for reasons best known to themselves, a branch of the A.F.L. International Brotherhood of Firemen and Oilers). Then--Pierce Brothers complained--they mischievously switched the routing tag on a casket and sent a loved one to the wrong service. And on top of that, 19 of them (simply because they had been fired) began picketing Pierce funerals in Ascot ties and morning coats--apparel which contrasted nicely with their strikers' signs.

One toiler in the mortuary complained that he got less than $45 a week for doing "cosmetics and hairdressing" and had to work day & night. An embalmer at Forest Lawn (where four union members were fired) cried that he not only had to "prepare remains" but wash windows, sweep floors and roll up gauze and excelsior pads for the "cases'" elbows.

Sentiment v. Unionism. The employers, however, took the attitude that the dissidents had been privileged to serve and had betrayed a trust. Pierce Brothers declared that the strikers were about to ruin one of the greatest privileges of life in Los Angeles--a $560 funeral (at New York rates) for only $320. Ugene Blalock, attorney for Forest Lawn, put it more ringingly. Cried he, after calling the cemetery's employees to a meeting in the new Hall of the Crucifixion (TIME, April 2):

"It all comes down to this: Can you have unionism in religion? A mortuary service is religious. Can you have unionism in sentiment? A funeral is sentimental. Can you have unionism in the heart and soul and spirit of a man?"

It looked as though nobody could answer him but a labor board.

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