National Affairs: Ghost Town

A postcard mailed in Washington to “New Ghost Town, Pa.” last week, did not make the postmen think twice. It was promptly delivered in Pittsburgh. In the fourth week of George L. Mueller’s power strike (TIME, Oct. 7), the nation’s tenth city was not exactly ghostly. It was just ghastly.

Pittsburgh’s downtown “Golden Triangle” was festooned with big, smoke-gushing boilers, supplying heat to office buildings. Motors chugged in the streets to turn power generators for lights. Railroad locomotives fed steam into three large, trackside buildings. Hundreds of businesses were still closed; about 50,000 people were still out of work.

Pittsburghers hitchhiked to work, waited in line for elevators or skipped up & down stairs, brought their lunch (few restaurants were open), shivered through a shortened work day, then bummed a ride home.

Nobody, it seems, could do business with George—whose striking, independent power union had started it all. George had defied the city, the courts, and the public. He did not keep appointments; U.S. conciliators who had waited three hours for him finally found him drinking with cronies.

But at week’s end some of George’s strength began to wane. Leaders of the A.F.L. trolley union, who had respected his picket lines for 18 days, sent their men back to the streetcars and buses. The coal truckers said to hell with George—and 384 of the Triangle’s buildings got a full head of steam again.

Then George had a rebellion in his own union. Some 500 members voted to submit their 20% wage increase demand to arbitration, which had long been offered by the power company and steadfastly rejected by George. Labor Secretary Lew Schwellenbach told him bluntly to accept arbitration—in a hurry.

After that, George caved in. His men voted 1,197 to 797 to go back to work. Pittsburgh’s nightmare was over, but awful memories lingered. Statisticians guessed that bullheaded George’s strike had cost about $400,000,000 in wages and lost business.