Hot Car Cooled

On the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle early this month appeared an insulting blob of black type. In it Executive Editor Paul C. Smith announced imperatively that he was fed up with a dispute between San Francisco warehouse operators and C. I. O. warehousemen--the negotiators were bungling, and the C. I. O. members should return to work until the "hot" car that caused the dispute cooled off. The International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union dared him to take a hand. He accepted.

The "hot" car (loaded by non-union workers) of Woolworth 5-&-10-c- school supplies, whose visits closed 137 of 180 warehouses in the San Francisco Bay area (TIME, Sept. 5), was the device used by the Association of San Francisco Distributors to show what an employers' union could do against a labor union. The hot car forced the employers' issue: their demand that the union should give them a master contract covering all warehouses until 1940. To I. L. W. U. the master contract looked like a device to write off concessions previously won from individual employers and strait-jacket the union.

This was the clash of wills which Editor Smith had to reconcile. Last week he announced success: Longshoreman Harry Bridges and colleagues accepted a city-wide agreement; the employers accepted a classification system to protect the union's present status in each warehouse.

Meantime, a rival A. F. of L. union had won a local toe hold by signing a contract with a smaller association of warehouse operators. No. 1 provision: no strikes, no lockouts for five years.

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