Singing in the Streets

When the members of San Francisco's Association of Distributors last month began locking out union warehousemen who refused to handle a "hot" freight car loaded in a struck Woolworth warehouse, they started something. All told, 121 warehouses were closed, 3,000 of Harry Bridges' 8,000 warehousemen were out of work. More important, the Distributors Association had given a demonstration of employer solidarity more convincing than any that turbulent San Francisco had seen since the 1934 General Strike. So bucked up was Roger Dearborn Lapham, board chairman of American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. and new chairman of the employers' strike-born Committee of 43, that he began organizing a permanent employers' federation to undertake collective bargaining and fight the collective labor battle of bosses on as wide a front as C.I.O. or A. F. of L. can cover for labor.

The "hot" Woolworth car, having finished its travels and peacefully retired to a siding, the Association of Distributors offered the Warehousemen's Union a "master contract" to end the lockout. Main feature of the contract, designed to replace the union's existing or expired contracts with individual warehousemen: compulsory arbitration, no strikes or lockouts until 1940, to prevent quickie stoppages during the Golden Gate International Exposition next year. This offer the warehousemen refused, on the ground that having all the contracts expire at once would precipitate another general crisis in 1940.

But when the "hot" car rolled across San Francisco's labor scene, it also aroused other employers. The Retailers' Council, which had been negotiating a new contract with A. F. of L.'s Retail Department Store Employes Union to cover 35 stores, flatly balked at the union's three big demands: 35-hour week, store-wide (instead of departmental) seniority for promotions, closed shop. The union withdrew the first demand altogether, said it would compromise on a preferential shop. The Council stood firm and out marched 5,000 (out of 8,000) store employes, mostly girls, to start an ominous carnival in San Francisco's shopping district.

All the stores stayed open. To show that Labor can learn new tricks as quickly as Capital, the clerks warned pickets not to use even linguistic violence (words like "scab" or "fink") in attempting to keep non-strikers and customers out of the stores. Before leading department stores--the Emporium, the City of Paris, the White House--pickets sang Solidarity and It's Not Cricket to Picket (from the hit labor revue Pins & Needles). Pickets played mannequin in new fashions, glistening coiffures. J. C. Penney Co. supplied its pickets with comfortable, low-heeled shoes. But by week's end, the new style strike had produced a crop of arrests, some old-style violence. Most notable: Picket Lulu Darling, somewhat mauled in a scuffle in front of Hale Bros., complained to police about the store owner's athletic young nephew, Prentis Cobb Hale, Jr., who swore in turn he had not hit the lady.

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