International: Problems of Plush

In Chicago, another peace conference foreshadowed hardships for U.N. The participants: representatives of the Upholsterers’ International Union of North America, A.F.L., and of the Kroehler Manufacturing Co. (Naperville, 111.).

From the Kroehler Co. the U.N. had ordered 1,858 plush “theater-type chairs,” for its General Assembly. Last week the upholsterers struck. The peace conference failed to win them back to work. It looked as if 1,858 U.N. delegates and auditors would have to sit unplushed.

Plush chairs caused trouble in Paris too. The reason: fleas. Thousands of the active insects, charmed out of the Luxembourg Palace’s aging red plush chairs by the human warmth of some 1,200 delegates, kept the peacemakers busy scratching. A U.S. correspondent offered to write a ballad entitled: “I’ve Got That Luxembourg Itch.”