LABOR: Strikebreaker Struck

Around dingy Manhattan street corners, saloons, flophouses, charity employment agencies one September day last year went the word: “Bergoff is hiring.” The toughs and bums who heard it promptly made their way to a shabby office on Columbus Circle where they were given jobs at $5 per day, told to “go out in the park until tomorrow morning.” Each day the rest of that week the growing army got the same order. Then they were told to report to the Pennsylvania Station.

That night some 1,000 big, shabby, tough-muscled, fearless “gorillas” tramped into the terminal. Bergoff lieutenants sifted out 150 of the toughest, had them sign contracts freeing Bergoff of responsibility if they were injured, packed them into day coaches. At Porterdale, Ga. next day the men raised their right hands, were sworn in en masse as deputy sheriffs. Then they were armed with revolvers, sawed-off shotguns, tear-gas bombs and clubs from Bergoff’s private arsenal, marched off to settle the trouble which last autumn’s nationwide textile strike had brought to Bibb Manufacturing Co.

Thus in routine fashion did Pearl Louis Bergoff go about the job which Bibb’s President William Dickson Anderson had hired him to do. Pearl Bergoff (named by a mother disappointed by his sex) is a stocky, square-faced, violent, profane, efficient man of 50 who makes no bones about the business of which he is undisputed king: professional strikebreaking. In that business, which is permitted to exist nowhere except in the U. S., Bergoff got his start 28 years ago by employing a band of Negroes to break a strike of municipal garbage collectors for New York City. Thereafter his reputation and profits grew as U. S. employers learned to call in his thuggish crews to solve their labor problems. In 1916 he took 4,000 men to Cuba to break streetcar strikes, last winter vainly urged President Mendieta to let him furnish 10,000 men to break Cuba’s general strike. His biggest job was for Erie R. R. in 1920, when he supplied between 6,000 and 7,000 men to break a switchmen’s strike. Bergoff, a grandiose talker, says Erie paid him $2,000,000 for that job.

Bergoff offers to do a job for a flat daily sum, stands ready to recruit, transport, feed, bed and finance a private army of as many as 10,000 men on a moment’s notice. He disciplines his men in military fashion, calls his steady employes “captains” and “lieutenants.” Bergoff’s brochure offers employers five different but interlocking services. Most in demand is the Open Shop Department, which supplies workmen with at least enough skill to keep wheels turning until strikers grow discouraged. Next most popular is the Protection Department, for bloody, strong-arm work. A Prevention Department offers men & women “of intelligence, courage and great persuasive powers” to thwart incipient strikes by persuasion and intimidation. Finally there are an Investigation Department, practically dormant, and an Undercover Department to spy out strike plans, furnish Bergoff agents with advance sales arguments. Bergoff says plenty of union men are glad to betray their fellows for a price.

Bergoff’s business has been hit hard by Depression. Therefore the Bibb job, though small, was welcome. But it turned out badly. Georgia’s Governor Talmadge declared martial law, drove the strike breakers out of the State after only two days’ work. Bergoff failed to collect full pay from Bibb. Then eight strikebreakers complained to New York State’s Bureau of Labor Welfare that Bergoff had not paid them in full.

New York’s Industrial Commissioner Elmer F. Andrews, uneasy at Bergoff’s system of industrial anarchy, jumped at the chance to strike him a stiff blow. Only license which Bergoff possesses is for private detective work. During hearings on his employes’ complaints last spring the State charged that Bergoff Detective Service, Inc. was simply a blind for unlicensed Bergoff Service Bureau, its sole purpose being to give the impression that Bergoff’s strikebreaking activities were carried on with the State’s sanction. On those grounds last week Bergoff’s detective license was revoked.

Nothing but Federal legislation could put Bergoff out of business. But a combination of growing industrial enlightenment, Governmental disfavor and the New Deal’s labor mediation services made it seem probable last week that the lushest profits of the Bergoff system were behind it.