LABOR: Paradise Lost

A freight engine hauled a carload of coal into Kohler, Wis. one day last week. Little did the engineer at the throttle realize how much fuel he was bringing to flames which were to change an industrial paradise into an industrial hell.

Fortnight ago strikers at the plumbing plant of Kohler of Kohler had agreed to let a carload of coal pass their picket lines into the plant every two or three days. If they had not, Kohler Co. would have had to shut down its steam pumping plant and the model village which Walter Jodok Kohler built for his workmen would have been left without a drop of water. But last week, in spite of the agreement, strike pickets halted the engine, forced it to chuff back to Sheboygan with its car of coal.

Village President Anton Brotz of Kohler village promptly swore in 75 special deputies, had the engine return with the coal car. His deputies forced a way through the picket lines, escorted the coal into the Kohler plant. Three hundred more deputies were sworn in. Mad clean through, the strikers summoned reinforcements from Sheboygan and neighboring towns.

When the strikers, accompanied by women and children, returned to the plant someone threw a stone. Smash went a window. From the pottery building the crowd moved steadily around to the Administration Building, breaking every window on the way. At that point the deputies sallied forth to break up the mob. Women and children fled before a wave of tear gas but the men returned to the attack. Again the deputies sallied forth. Rocks, bombs, clubs, shouts, curses made up the fray. Some deputies armed with shotguns fired on their attackers. After a two-hour struggle the strikers were driven from the village. Two pickets lay dying, nearly 50 wounded.

Next morning 600 Wisconsin guardsmen marched in, bivouacked on the broad lawns of the model village. But martial law was not declared and peaceful picketing was permitted.

“The two deaths were nothing less than murder,” cried the president of the Wisconsin Federation of Labor.

“The union places the responsibility . . . squarely on the shoulders of Walter J. Kohler,” cried the strikers’ attorney.

Said Walter Kohler: “The blame for the actions of the mob is on the leaders and other outside agitators who provoked them to violence.”

Notable was the fact that most of the Kohler employes who live in the company’s model village openly sympathized with Mr. Kohler. He had agreed to bargain with the A. F. of L. union but only so far as it represented his workers. The two men killed, along with most of the strikers, belonged to that portion of the plant’s workers who live in nearby Sheboygan. Last week Kohler employes in Kohler presented their village president with a petition declaring that they wanted to go back to work on the old terms, objected to outsiders’ organized violence in their onetime paradise.