Battle of the Citadel

Members of the New York Stock Exchange had long smugly thought that employees in the citadel of capitalism had no use for unions. One of these employees, a clerk named M. (for Merritt) David Keefe, thought differently. Too poor to finish high school, he had gone to work for the Exchange in 1928 as a $15-a-week page boy. Like many others, he hoped to get a job with a member house, and then make his fortune. But--also like many others--the 1929 crash plastered Keefe flat to the job he had. By 1941, when he was 32, Keefe was earning $28 a week. His only hope seemed to be to organize a union. He did--and the United Financial. Employees' Union won a contract from the Exchange.

With this in his pocket, Keefe figured that organizing the 20,000 brokerage-house workers would be easy. He was wrong. He did sign up the Curb Exchange before he joined the Seabees. But during his absence the union nearly fell to pieces. Back from the war, Keefe revived it, signed up the Cotton Exchange and 65 brokerage houses, finally quit his Exchange job to run his union, 5,000 strong. He ran it straight into trouble with the brokerage firm of A. M. Kidder & Co. Kidder refused to grant or arbitrate a union demand for a 20% across-the-board wage increase.

Keefe knew that a strike against Kidder would flop. Kidder could simply route its business through other brokerage firms. So Keefe decided to try to close the Curb and Stock Exchanges, thus pressure them into bringing Kidder to heel. As a starter, he took his union into the A.F.L., got its muscle behind him. Then he notified Stock Exchange President Emil Schram that the union was canceling its contract April 21, would then strike the Exchange. Schram, angered at this attempt to embroil the Exchange in a fight not of its making, showed that he could be tough too.

Last week, he laid plans for brokers to run their own errands, record transactions, etc., said he would keep the Exchange functioning. Keefe said he would use the A.F.L. Seafarers International Union to close the Exchange with a mass picket line. Said Keefe: "We're just a bunch of white-collar guys who don't know much about picket lines. We need the help of tough guys like the seamen. They'll make the picket line stick."

At week's end, some 36 hours before the strike was to begin, Keefe agreed to a postponement while conciliators tried to iron out the dispute. Whether the first strike would be called against the 155-year-old Stock Exchange was still anybody's guess. But everyone knew now that the union had come to stay.

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