The Wilmington morning star., 1947-08-22
AS Pegler Sees It
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

Copyright by King Features Syndicate, Inc. }
NEW YORK, Aug. 1.-When Pearl Bergoff
died quietly of a lawful illness a few days ago,
I said to myself, "Pegler,' l said. he was
a better man than John L. Lewis or Dave
Beck, of the Transfers, or a hundred others
that you could name without rea ching Cor a
book. He broke strikes for a living and he
didn't pretend to do it for humanity, he was
a good strikebreaker; one of the best"
"You crazy fool" Pegler said to me. Low
err your voice! Do you want to get arrested?
Do you want to get killed? You can't go
around saying anybody was a good strike
breaker"
But Pearl Bergoff was a wonderful strike
breaker" I said to Pegler. II knew him a
long time. He was chunky and pugnacious like
Lewis and Beck. Like Lewis and Beck he had
pink hair and if you opened your mouth to
below at Bergoff he wouldn't film n. He would
jump right down your throat. He would have
been a champion union organizer and politi-
clan like Lewis and Beck. His ethics and
morals were better and his methods were
about the same"
Well, it does seem strange to be saying that
a ma1l was a good strikebreaker, after all
these years o. union propaganda and thought
ccntroi, the very idea is almost heretical or
blasphemous. Our people have been gassed
with propaganda until most of us dumbly be
|lieve that all strikes are righteous and all
strikebreakers are satanic.
By this power of propaganda and moral
terrorism, the big unioneers actually hypno-
TIED the public. People who knew better
stupidity thought it was a social and political
sin to cross a picket line or to buy blacklisted
goods. They were afraid too. Afraid, in some
localities, OF rocks through the windows in the
dead of night. afraid of icepicks in their tires.
Merchants were afraid of the secondary pick
et-line. Mayors, governors and sheriffs, OF a
|scalaWag breed, made stump-speeches, wheel
ling for the political support of the union
bosses On the picket-lines, when they should
have read them the riot act and shot them
if they made a false move. We shoot stick-up
men, don't we? 1t is the duty of government
to protect laW-abiding citizens On lawful err
rands against murderous goons swinging clubs.
The policemen in the South Chicago riot
stood their ground that May Day early in the
C. l. O.'s civil war, and killed a dozen of them,
none of the dead or wounded were strikers.
It was just a communist C. l. o. mob, testing
the strength of the law, and, for once, at
least, in a corrupt regime, Ed Kelly, who
was Roosevelts satrap, was his own man. He
and his people had talked it all out beforehand.
They decided that this was the time to de-
termlne whether Chicago would be terrorized
by the Communist shock-troops who had con-
quered Frank Murphy's government in Michi-
gan and wrecked and looted the automobile
plants. They decided to shoot and slug and
kick the life out of the insurrection and stomp
until it couldn't even twitch, in Chicago, if
the mob crossed the deadline. They did, and
from that day, as long as Kelly reigned, ana
as long as Roosevelt lived, the Communists
knew that they couldn't get away with it in
Chicago. They never tried it again.
Pearl Bergoff was never On the communist
side. He was a law and order man. Mr.. Berg
aff's business was the importation Of strike
breakers. He had pools of them here and
there, hut he was especially strong in Phil
adelphia. In 1886, Congress forbade the inter-
state transfer of strikebreakers. 1t was a bad
law from all angles but the worse because it
did rot interfere with the interstate mass
movement or filtration Of union goons on ter
roris1ic missions. Bergoff's strikebreakers were
not all workrnen. Some were, but a lot of
then. were just buns, no good for either
working or fighting, on the other hand, when
Lewis and the likes of Beck and Harry Bridges
came along, their piclSets were not necessarily
strikers. Rergoff's men we're called finks. The
union pickets were called goons. They were
n ore dangerous than finks had been because
they were ~stiffened with Stalinist traitors and
there was a skeleton of military organization
lamocg them and Roosevelt was behind them.
They had officers and posts OF command and
intelligence and communications, but hardly
one in a hundred of them was an actual
STRIKER.
In Bergoff's time. when the finks moved IN
% a plant and barred the doors for a siege
the workmen caught inside had to stay. Inc
unioneers told some pathetic stories of wretch
ed toilers compelled to array themselves
against their fellow slaves in long beleaguer-
ment. But the same thing happened again
when Lewis was organizing MS T.. l.: =. wow
the f~aceless wretches, trapped when the goons
yelled 'sitdown strike" were forced to de-