Evening star., 1937-04-01


underpaid miners refused to leave the
mines, announcing that relatively
quick death by starvation underground
was preferable to slow starvation with
the or 3 cents day they received
as wages.
Even in their own countries, where
pay is notoriously' poor, there was
great indignation when such condi-
tions were forced so dramatically, on
the attention of the public. A group
of men in mine is in relatively
impregnable position. They might be
gaSsed, flooded out, or allowed to
starve to death--if the owners dared.
They didn't--in view of the rather
threatening public temper. One after
another they capitulated to the starv-
ing miners, raised wages and granted
bonuses.
These mine strikes are about the
earliest real precedents for their own
technique that the college-t trained
historians of the United Automobile
Workers of America have been able
to find. The movement spread west
ward and to, other industries. Welsh
coal miners introduced a new wrinkle
when they occupied mine and held
prayer meetings for a week. The
owners we're completely checkmated.
It's pretty difficult to use violence
against prayer meeting. All the
churches are likely to swing into
action.
Drew Attention in U. S.
At first these were combined hunger
sit-doWn strikes. The Welsh miners
substituted praying for hunger as an
emotional appeal. Their families
passed them down tea and sandwiches,
and apparently nobody dared do any,
thing about it. By this time labor
leaders the world over-especially in
France and the United States-were
casting envious eyes at the new
technique worked out by rank anna
teurs
In France they waited their chance
TO apply it on wholesale scale. This
came in the Spring of 1886, when
Leon Blum's Popular Front govern
ment came into power. Such was
It's political makeup that it could
be depended upon to be reasonably
eympathetic-at least not to use
troops, except as last resort.
The French labor leaders had laid
their plans wisely. There was no real
profit for labor as whole, they saw,
in spasmodic strikes, however sue
cessful they might be in individual
instances. What happened was
strike wave" a regular progression
of sit-dWon strikes hitting industry
otter industry in wave-like fashion
and spreading all over France and the
French possessions.
Premier Blum refused to evict
strikers by force, at least before their
alleged grievances had been thoroughly
considered. According to the U. A.
w. A. historians, French labor on the
whole profited enormously from the
conferences which resulted. Industry
had to make concessions, but it was
somewhat Modified by the fact that
Its property had not been damaged.
There had been hardly a trace of
sabotage from one end of France to
the other-a striking contrast to mass
labor demonstrations in the past.
Up to this point the Shutdown strike,
as such, hardly had been heard of in
America, although the U. A. w. A.
historians believe that it played some
part in the great Akron rubber strike
last Winter. This ended up however,
as an old-fashioned picketing strike
Chrysler Strike Success Seen.
All this time the bright young men
who head the auto workers union
had been studying the technique,
assessing its weak points, and perfect
ing organization methods. Right after
election they were ready to strike,
picking the powerful General Motors
Corp. as their first objective They
certainly caused General Motors a
lot of trouble. How far they actually
succeeded in reaching their obiectives
depends apparently upon the point
Of view. The union itself, at least, Is
jubilant and looks forward to a Sue
cessful elimination of the Chrysler
strike.
However this may be, the officers
OF the automobile workers are now
the acknowledged authorities on sit
down strike technique. Together with
the history of the movement they have