The Riot Act

The strike at Philadelphia's two-block-long General Electric Co. plant had been conducted much like the strikes at G.E. plants in Oakland, Calif.; Pittsfield, Mass.; Bridgeport, Conn. There had been quiet, orderly picketing. In Philadelphia there had not been a single arrest. G.E.'s 5,000 Philadelphia strikers knew as well as their leaders that the strike was not going to be settled there but in New York City, at United Electrical. Radio and Machine Workers Union headquarters.

The Philadelphia plant had made-no effort to get some 1,000 nonunion, nonstriking employes through the picket lines. The union had permitted daily passage of maintenance workers. The company had asked and obtained an injunction against mass picketing. Lawful picketing went on as it had before.

Then some 50 members of Local 155, which is not even directly involved in the strike, appeared before the plant. The local's business agent, David Davis, is an avowed Communist.

Decision & Reaction. Next day, the striking local held a meeting, decided that it liked the Davis tactic of mass picketing --and the courts be damned. Next morning more than 1,400 pickets formed a solid wall around the plant. Acting Sheriff William J. Morrow talked with union leaders, asked them not to force his hand.

After two days, Philadelphia's authorities decided to act. Before dawn about 1,000 police, in cars and motorcycles, on horses and on foot, were deployed around the plant and in the neighborhood.

A few blocks away, 800 strikers and sympathizers gathered in a park. At about 8 o'clock they marched to the plant. A union loudspeaker blared the national anthem. The demonstrators passed the plant--once, as Morrow had agreed.

At 8:17 o'clock it happened. The marching column got an order: "About face!" The parade, in Sheriff Morrow's eye, ceased to be lawful. Mounted police turned their horses toward the marchers. Out of a police loudspeaker boomed Morrow's voice. He was reading Pennsylvania's 95-year-old Riot Act--"Disperse yourselves and peaceably depart."

Clubs & Spears. There was a struggle. A mounted cop wrested a U.S. flag from a marcher. Strikers tried to pull policemen off their horses. Police sticks whacked at heads and bodies. Result: one striker in a hospital; seven men arrested.

Next morning men & women strikers, about 3,500 strong, started another march along streets leading to the G.E. plant. Awaiting them were about 600 police.

Small groups of police tried to stop the marchers along the route. They were brushed aside. Police motorcycles charged into the lines, scattering the demonstrators. Again the Riot Act was read. The unionists taunted the cops: "Gestapo . . . Nazis . . . Cossacks." They threw stones as well as taunts. At a bridge leading to the plant, it happened all over again--a charge of mounties and foot police, with clubs swinging. Four men went to the hospital; at least 20 were less seriously hurt; 17 were arrested.

Sympathizers & Friend. Philadelphia had experienced a Communist technique of creating turmoil. Thousands of union men & women and their sympathizers had been goaded to rebel against constituted authority, in legal robes and in blue uniforms. The police, when the violence had come, had added to it by eagerly swinging their clubs (see cut). An orderly strike had suddenly been turned into a bitter battle.

Labor's good friend in Philadelphia, J. David Stern's New Dealish Record, addressed an "emergency call" to C.I.O.'s anti-Communist Boss Phil Murray. Said the Record: Philadelphia's electrical workers "have been so misled that they are flatly defying our courts and all constituted authority. . . . Constituted Government has only one answer to that. We've tried to tell this to the C.I.O. leaders. No go. Maybe they will listen to you. We hope so. For the sake of the C.I.O., and the future of the labor movement in America."

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