National Affairs: Peace Over Toledo

“This is my first and possibly last job of this kind,” said Charles Phelps Taft II last week. For a first job the son of the 27th President of the U. S. had got such quick results for Madam Secretary Perkins that she might well ask him to do another. He had arrived in Toledo to find that city embattled and bloodstained, strikers of Electric Auto-Lite Co. rioting daily with the National Guard (TIME, June 4). To add to his difficulty the Electrical Workers Union in the Toledo Edison Co. (Cities Service-owned) voted to strike, and all of Toledo’s 103 labor unions threatened a sympathetic strike with the Auto-Lite workers.

Step by step “Charley” Taft set about pacifying Toledo. First Governor White of Ohio was persuaded to call off the guardsmen. The electrical strike threat was disposed of with an agreement whereby: 1) electrical workers regained two 10% wage cuts made in 1932; 2) the union was recognized and 3) union members were given preference for employment.

Day later busy Mr. Taft cracked his harder nut, the Auto-Lite strike. The Auto-Lite Company took a thorough licking. The chief terms:

1) A 5% wage increase.

2) The company will rehire first those who did not strike, then the strikers, then men employed prior to the strike, last (and probably not at all) the strikebreakers.

3) Workers will be represented by officials of the striking union, thereby practically killing off the company union.

After the agreement was reached 20,000 union men held a victory march through the peaceful city. Two busloads of young radicals who arrived from the Socialist Convention in Detroit were not permitted by the unions to march with them but tagged along at the end of the procession.