LABOR: Just Being Peaceful

The C.I.O.’s purge of Communist-line union bosses was beginning to get rough. President Phil Murray had ordered the huge United Auto Workers to swallow up the little, leftist Farm Equipment Workers. Last week in East Moline, Ill., the first bite proved pretty indigestible.

As equipment workers began streaming out of International Harvester’s big plant, some 70 U.A.W. members were waiting at the gates with organizing leaflets. Local F.E.W. bosses pulled their workers back inside; when they came out again, they came out swinging—crowbars, steel hinges, and slabs of scrap iron.

Outnumbered three to one, the visitors fought back with fists, brass knuckles and jeering taunts: “Go back to Moscow!” By the time police arrived, 22 rioters were injured, 13 of them hospitalized.

Afterward F.E.W.’s local vice president protested: “Our boys just started coming out innocently, swinging their dinner pails, and these goons got sore when we didn’t lap up their pamphlets.” Countered U.A.W.’s Regional Director Pat Great-house: “We were just being peaceful. Would we pick a fight in our overcoats? We ain’t scared and we’re coming back.”