Trouble in Philadelphia

The great city of Philadelphia, the nation's No. 2 center of war production, lay half-paralyzed last week, its transit-nerves cut by the worst U.S. transportation strike in World War II. Its 900,000 war workers (who make everything from hub caps to vital radar equipment) hitch hiked, trudged miles on 'sweltering side walks--or stayed home. At least 500,000 man-hours of war production were lost, Army & Navy officials estimated. Philadelphia's taverns and liquor stores were shut by police; department stores lost thousands of dollars of trade. All this was bad enough. But there was something worse: the City of Brotherly Love had been split open by its first serious out break of race trouble.

Mock Sickness. In predawn darkness, hundreds of Philadelphia's streetcar, subway and bus operators clumped into the sprawling, grimy carbarns as usual at 4 a.m. one morning last week. But as they checked in, one after another of them begged off work. They had an agreed excuse: "I'm sick -- sick to my stomach." The cause of their mock sickness: eight Negro employes, who had been upgraded to motormen, were scheduled to make their first trial run that morning.

Hardly a street car or subway train left the barn. Flying squads in automobiles chased after the few that were already in operation. By noon every one of the city's 1,900 street cars, 632 buses and 541 subway and elevated cars were idle.

Strikers set up headquarters in the city's largest carbarn (without audible protest from the company). Up on a toolbox jumped burly, bull-voiced James Henry McMenamin, 43, to take command. He shouted: "It's white against black!" He well knew that the company's 600 Negro employes had hitherto worked peacefully (in menial jobs) beside other workers. But now, he pointed out, as motormen, they could sit on the same benches as whites. Cried McMenamin: "The colored people have bedbugs!"

Husky James McMenamin was no union official. He belonged to a union which is the smallest of four among the Transit Workers. But he was shrewdly assisted by tobacco-chewing, 200-lb. Frank Carney, president of a potent independent union. And the militant young C.I.O Transport Workers Union, which has a plant majority and endorses the promotion of Negroes, was unable to keep its members at work. Together McMenamin and Carney were powerful enough to tie up Philadelphia's entire transportation system, keep 6,000 transit employes idle and defy for five days the U.S. Government, including two generals and 8,000 troops.

Placid Surface. Philadelphians general ly accepted the discomforts and irritations of the tie-up with Quakerlike placidity--and even with some good humor. Ration boards stayed open until late at night, issuing emergency gasoline rations to any A-card holder who promised to carry a earful with him. The Army & Navy pressed hundreds of jeeps and trucks into service to keep production going at the Army Ordnance Depot and the Navy Yard. But the Philadelphia transit system regularly carries 1,150,000 persons a day. Thousands had to walk, on days when the thermometer shot to 97 degrees. At the huge General Electric, Westinghouse and Budd plants, production slumped more than 10%.

Beneath "the surface placidity Philadelphians knew that the possibility of real race trouble was present as never before. Philadelphia has 270,000 Negroes, but it has no Harlem: the Negro sections are small, scattered pockets throughout the city. On the first night of the strike, in half-a-dozen sections of Philadelphia, teen-age Negro hoodlums hurled milk bottles through windshields, smashed win dows in stores. Policemen, carrying night sticks for the first time in 18 years and aided by hundreds of civilian-defense volunteers, arrested 300 persons, most of them Negroes.

Next day a Negro war worker, whose brother is in the Army, walked into Philadelphia's famed Independence Hall and hurled a one-pound paper weight at the Liberty Bell. As the deep note resounded he yelled: "Liberty Bell, oh Liberty Bell --liberty, that's a lot of bunk!" Police led him off to a hospital to have his head examined.

There were no more outbreaks. The citizens of Philadelphia, white & black alike, held their tempers well. (Negro preachers from other cities, who hurried to Philadelphia to beg their people to be calm, found their advice unneeded.)

First a Plea. On the strike's third day the Army moved in. Under a Presidential order, Major General Philip Hayes took control of the city's transit system. He broadcast instructions to the strikers to return to work at the next 5:30 a.m. shift and sent two soldiers to raise an American flag over the carbarn where the strikers made their headquarters. As the flag flapped up to the top of the pole one of the strikers began to sing the Star Spangled Banner. About 2,000 shirt-sleeved, sweaty strikers joined in. Even James McMenamin seemed affected. He jumped up, shouting in a voice hoarsened by three days of strike exhortations:

"I urge you all to go to work at 5:30."

A striker called out: "But what if the Army takes back the Negroes?"

The men turned on McMenamin, drowning out his answer with their jeers. Next morning McMenamin had changed his mind again: he would not go back to work if the Negroes stayed on.

Then Action. General Hayes let the strike continue two more days before he cracked down. Then McMenamin, Carney and two others were arrested for violation of the Smith-Connally Act. A Federal grand jury convened to question 35 strikers. Eight thousand Army troops, equipped with rifles, machine guns and small cannon rolled into the city. General Hayes gave the strikers their choice: go back to work or lose their right to certificates of availability for any other job for the duration. And all who were 18 to 37 would have their draft deferments canceled. General Hayes also made it plain that the Negroes would keep their jobs.

Long before General Hayes's deadline, motormen--flanked by two soldier guards to each car--began traveling their routes once more. As the first car swung down one street, smiling passengers climbed aboard. Some handed out cigars and dollar bills to the soldiers.

The strike was over. The production hours that had been lost were lost forever. And though Philadelphia had providentially survived its first major crisis in racial relations without the loss of a single life, dangerous seeds had been planted.

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