LABOR: Orchids and Organizers

Said to be the largest unincorporated town in the U. S., Weirton, W. Va., population 16,000, lies in a fold of the hills about 40 mi. west of Pittsburgh. Its arterial main street bisects the dingy rambling mills of Weirton Steel Co. On narrower streets that wind up the steep hills, Weirton’s workers live in frame houses, built against the hillside. Two miles outside Weirton, in dramatic proximity to the inevitable squalor of U. S. industrial life, stands “The Lodge,” the comfortable, greystone mansion of Weirton’s founder, Ernest Tener Weir, its most conspicuous feature a swimming pool in the lawn. Seven miles away from Weirton stands the ivy-covered courthouse of New Cumberland, W. Va., which supplies Weirton with whatever it has in the way of municipal authority outside of uniformed Weirton Company police. Last week, both the Lodge and the courthouse made news of different sorts.

News from the Lodge concerned the marriage of Miss Margaret Manson Weir, daughter of Mrs. David Manson Weir of Steubenville, Ohio, niece of Ernest Tener Weir, to William Prescott Bonbright II, son of Mr. and Mrs. Howard Bonbright of Grosse Point, Mich. Under the trees on the front lawn E. T. Weir gave away his niece, a pretty girl gowned in white marquisette, with French orange blossoms around her waist, carrying a white prayer book and a spray of white orchids. After a reception and dinner, bride and bridegroom set off to spend their honeymoon at Uncle Weir’s Bermuda mansion.

News from New Cumberland Court House concerned National Labor Relations Board’s hearings on charges brought against Weirton Steel Co. by C. I. O.’s Steel Workers’ Organization Committee. Among the 6,479 cases which N. L. R. B. has handled, this one stood out because Weirton Steel Co. and its board chairman have long been among the stubbornest and most effective opponents of the New Deal’s labor policies. In 1933-35, Weirton Steel bluntly snubbed NRA by refusing to hold a labor board election, and was upheld by a Wilmington, Del. Federal district judge. This time Weirton was accused of flagrant violation of the 1935 Wagner Labor Relations Act, of favoring its two company unions (Employees Representation Plan and Weirton Employees Security League) to the exclusion of all others— mainly C. I. O.’s Amalgamated Iron, Steel & Tin Workers—of terrorizing, intimidating, bribing, coercing its workers.

On the bench as Labor Trial examiner was Edward Grandison Smith, for the past ten years president of University of West Virginia’s Board of Governors. Through his glasses, honest, deliberate old Mr. Smith looked down on an imposing array of Weirton attorneys headed by Clyde A. Armstrong and opposing them. N. L. R. B.’s youthful prosecutors, 27-year-old John Wolcott Porter and 32-year-old Allen Heald. Behind the lawyers sate loyal Weirton company union men with red, whit & blue badges, side by side with C. I. O. members and organizers with bright yellow C. L. O. buttons.

Hearings started last fortnight. First week’s hearings brought out the fact that Examiner Smith and Lawyer Armstrong had totally different ideas as to how the hearings should be conducted. Lawyer Armstrong voiced his objections in the first two days of which Examiner Smith upheld only 11. The prosecution had marshaled an army of about 300 witnesses. First major star came when two workers testified that Weirton maintained a “hatchet gang” for beating up organizers and chasing them out of town.

Last week’s star witness was a slender, 38-year-old steel worker named Luigi S. Williamson who substantiated the contention that Weirton had an elaborate espionage system by announcing calmly, “I was one of the spies.” Williamson’s story was that in 1933, when Amalgamated made an attempt to organize the mills, a mill manager named E. O. Burgham had not only given him permission to join the union but had urged him to go to all its meetings, report what happened there, for pay, Said Worker Williamson:

“I done that for about four weeks. After that I realized that wasn’t my job to do, so I quit that. The first two weeks, he paid me $20. The next two weeks I had $15 altogether. It was $35 I had altogether from them for spying. Then I told Mr. Burgham I don’t like that kind of work, and I turned around and I started to work for the union. . . .”

Other witnesses last week testified that last fall, Weirton officials tried to make Weirton workers wear Landon and Knox buttons, fired some for not doing so; that workers were forced into company “police” patrols; that Weirton foremen kept a “dirty list” of non-company union workers. Liveliest brush between Lawyer Armstrong and Examiner Smith came when a C. I. O. organizer testified that an intermediary for Weirton’s President Thomas E. Millsop had offered him $10 a day, a new car and a job with the company as a bribe to stop his activities. Lawyer Armstrong asked the witness to name the intermediary. When he refused, and Examiner Smith upheld him, Lawyer Armstrong exploded: “Is this hearing going to develop into a farce, where we have no rights at all?”

By last week’s end, hundreds of pages had been written into the record of hard-shelled Weirton’s second major brush with New Deal labor legislation. Preoccupied by his niece’s nuptials, Mr. Wreir of Weirton had not yet made his anticipated trip from Lodge to courthouse to get a taste of the proceedings, but there was no need for him to hurry. When the prosecution’s 300 witnesses have finished, Weirton attorneys threaten to call no less than 7,500 of their own. Said Lawyer W. T. Fahey, counsel for Weirton’s Employees Security League: “I do not see how we can complete the case this year.” Said Lawyer Armstrong: “Fahey’s estimate seems conservative.”