Evening star., 1934-10-30
4. & p. Makes Coercion Charge;
Tells of Destroying Bread
President Hartford
Makes Statement in
AnSiUer to Strike.
Says Company Has No
Intention of Returning
to Cleveland.

BY the Associated Press.
NEW YORK, October 3o.-Joivl l..
Hartford, president, was quoted last
night by the Herald-Tribune as say
ing the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea
Co. never will return to Cleveland.
Hartford was described as expressing
great sympathy for the 1900 Employees
made joblesS by the companys dec
sion to cease doing business in that
city last Saturday, but insisted tlsat
the concern could take no other course
in view of the demands and tactics
of labor leaders.
Sees Country-W Wide Good.
He indicated a belief that the ulti-
mate effect of the company'S decision
would be for the good of the country,
although it is going to cost Cleveland
a pay roll of 100000 a week, an in
crease IN costs of poor relief and the
departure of a business with an in
vestment there of s2,500,000.
This is going to help a lot" Hart
ford said. We've paid the price, but
it's going to make lot of these peo-
pie do some real thinking"
THE teamsters were the key to the
situation" he said. What they did
to us they could do to any depart
ment store in Cleveland, or here, for
that matter, unless there was adequate
police protection"
When he went to Cleveland last
week, he said, on information that the
stores were in difficulty there, and
learned how serious situation con-
fronted them, he telegraphed in vain
for help to President Roosevelt, Miss
Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor;
Donald R. Richberg and S. Clay Will
liams, chairman of the new National
Industrial Recovery Board. He got no
help from anybody, he said.
rs this the New Deal?" he asked.
How can a business man have any
courage to 60 ahead. Business men
don't know what to do. They're afraid
of the future
Denies Coercion.
"They said we were coercing our
employees" he remarked. I'VE never
coerced anybody. We have had union
employees in our bakeries and our
printing shops In the stores we have
had for 20 years the Managers Bene-
fit Association, company union. The
managers and the clerks get free in
surance, sick benefits and vacations
with pay.
How can manager belong to the
A. F. of L.? He's representative of
the management. He handles the
cash. There were only five of our
managers in Cleveland that joined
the union. They attended a strike
meeting, but nobody else there was
an employe of the company. All the
trouble came as a result of the failure
of the Federation of Labor to make
any headway in getting our employees
into a union for retail store clerks
and managers. So they started
picketing the warehouses, preventing
the movement of foodstuffs to the
stores.
I'VE contracted for our teaming,
and the men who had the contracts
also had contracts with the union.
Contracts Declared Broken.
"The unions broke their contracts.
They were just scraps of paper. How
are you going to do business with
people like that? They picketed in
mobs around the warehouses, and we
even had to get their permission to
let one Salvation Army truck into
the bakery to get bread for the poor
We had 10000 pounds of bread baked
that they wouldn't let us move to our
stores. So outside of that one truck
load to the Salvation Army, we had
to burn the rest. Think of that, with
people hungry"
Violence around the warehouses,
Hartford said, was followed by intimi-
dation at the stores.
They sent gangs around to the
stores, and they'd go up to the man
ager and say: You're a pretty nice
looking fellow and you've got nice
store here. You'd better get out be-
fore we throw you out
when the managers called up to
ask what to do, we told them to get