Evening star., 1941-04-10
BY q CHARLES G. ROSS.

side the grounds of the mammouth
Rouge plant of the Ford Motors
Co, at Dearborn, the pickets shuttle
endlessly. At times the number has
dwindled to around a thousand; at
other times more than 5000 men
have marched. They work in four
hour shifts, six shifts to the day.
All II gates into the 1,200-acre in
closure are guarded. At the less
used gates are groups of 20 to so
men, milling about in circle. Gate
on Miller road, where the head
cracking battle marked the be-
ginning of the strike a week ago
yesterday, is the scene of the great
est activity. Here there are gen.
orally thousand men, on both sides
of the road, moving slowly back
and forth.
State troopers, well-set-up, young
stand about. They look extremely
competent. They are men-some
$50 of them-who took over from
handful of Dearborn police soon
after the beginning of the strike.
Since the removal of the strikers
barricades at the end of the first
day, they have had little to do.
Just inside gate 4, the main en-
trance, are watchful men of the
| Ford service department-called by
the strikers, the companys GeStapo.
Pickets Eat While Marching.
Sound trucks from various locals
of the union cruise about, giving
groups about the gates the Amer
lean flag is carried. Food prepared
in central kitchen by Woman'S
auxiliary of the union is served reg
ularly TO the picketS. Those on duty
at mealtime eat as they march. The
food is excellent and there is plenty
of it. One menu which this writer
was invited to sample consisted of
spaghetti, sauerkraut, sandwiches.
boiled potatoes, doughnuts, milk and
coffee
In first five days of the strike,
according to an estimate by its or
ganiZing committee, the pickets
consumed, among other things. IA
900 loaves of bread 10000 dough-
nuts, 1000 gallons of milk, one ton
of coffee. one ton of beef stew,
two and half tons of spareribs,
three quarters of ton of saurkraut,
besides an uneStimated quantity of
potatoes, soup and vegetables.
The figures are in keeping with
! he LOT lAL
to describe the Rouge Strike-the
biggest facility in the world, a
forthcoming Labor Board election
that will be the largest ever held,
strike front that has probably
attracted more spectators than any
other in the history of industrial
warfare. State police estimate that
more than 100000 motor cars of
visitors were on the scene last Sun
| day On Miller road in the after
/ noon cars could be seen four abreast
as far as the eye could reach.
| War Underlies Situation.
The gala atmosphere is deceptive
Even at its most peaceful, mass
| picketing is grim. 1t is a form of
war. Leave out all the violence
like that of the first day when 200
Negroes from inside the plant
| charged across an overpass and
attacked the strikers at gate with
metal rods and bars-leave out the
actual physical clashes and mass
picketing is still war.
1t offers difficult problem, alike
| for the courts and the citizen
! Peaceful picketing has been upheld
! by the Supreme Court as the work
ingman's means of communication. ="
| but the court has also held, in
a recent opinion by Justice Frank
| furter, that ''utterance in con-
text of violence can lose its signif1-
canoe as an appeal to reason and
| become part of an instrument of
| force Such utterance was not
meant to be sheltered by the Con-
Stitution.'
Area picketing, and especially
mass picketing, is by its very nature
kind of intimidation. That is
what it is meant to be. Is intimida-
! tion an "utterance in a context of
violence? The answer must be
left TO the courts.
But whatever the courts might
say, the practical problem of how
to deal with industrial warfare
would remain. Industrial warfare
takes no account of the niceties of
life or the fine shadings of court
decisions. On neither side is it
likely to be thus restrained How
hard is the job of the umpire on
the firing line is well illustrated by
statement here Tuesday of Capt.
Laurence A. Lyon of the Michigan
State police. He was testifying at
Federal court hearing on the
Ford companys petition for an