Ramadier's Fate

In the half-light of early morning, Train No. 4034, bound for Paris, swung round the long bend outside the rail junction of Trappes, near Versailles. From the signal control box, high above the furrowed crisscross of rails that gleamed dully in the light of a swinging lantern, Signalman Andre Robert saw fire belching from the locomotive as it ground to a halt. Said he: "You see that man watering the engine--I happen to know he gets 6,000 francs a month. His board and lodging costs him 5,100 a month. He is ashamed to tell his colleagues that he has sent his wife to live with her mother in the country because he can't afford to keep her; he prefers to let his friends think he is getting a divorce."

Another--the one with the lamp below --was named Louis Philippe. He was 38. He earned 4,772 francs a month. Said he: "I'm not afraid of work. On my days off I eat with my parents--at my age! It's a shame we have to get angry just to be able to live. But truly, patience has its limits."

Louis Philippe's anger was a big part of the reason why France's railworkers were on strike last week. There was no doubt that the Communists, carefully trying to dislodge Premier Paul Ramadier's Redless Government, were abetting the strike. But not only Communists supported the workers. Many leaders within Ramadier's own Socialist Party were for them, as was a large section of France's Catholic labor organizations.

Boasted Marcel Tournemaine, flabby Communist secretary-general of the Railroad Workers Federation: "No Government has ever held out against a rail strike; either it gives way or it resigns."*

The Communists were ready to spring one strike after the other. Ramadier's fate--and France's--hung on whether he could water down the flaming disunity that had its origin in hunger.

* He was wrong. Socialist Premier Aristide Briand held out in 1910, when he mobilized the striking railroad workers into the Army.

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