Word: johnstown
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Meantime Pennsylvania's Governor Earle was discontinuing the martial law by which he had closed Bethlehem's great Cambria plant in Johnstown. When it became apparent that the strike would not be settled by mediation. Governor Earle decided his enforced shut-down was no longer warranted. Having decided to permit the Bethlehem plant to reopen, having determined to prevent bloodshed by keeping State troopers on the scene, the Governor had only one course open: protect non-strikers from violence. Since law & order is seldom compatible with an effective strike, this "Labor Governor" too found himself in Labor...
Just before Governor Earle withdrew martial law, a Johnstown "Citizens' Committee" & a "Steel Workers Committee" inserted in some 40 newspapers a full-page advertisement captioned WE PROTEST. Relating that the closing of the Bethlehem plant was costing the community $500,000 in weekly payrolls, the advertisement thundered: "It is no part of the functions of American Government to force-or to permit anyone else to force-the individual worker into surrendering his Constitutional rights. . . . If this can happen in Johnstown it can happen anywhere else...
...Johnstown, Pa. was the week's new and major trouble focus. Events here loomed large because they brought into the Steel struggle another big company, another type of local reaction to the national unrest, another glimpse of John L. Lewis' juggernaut intentions and power, and another Governor capable of positive action...
Meantime John L. Lewis personally called off his 40,000 coal miners, Colonel Janeway disarmed Mayor Shields's vigilantes and Johnstown settled down to its first taste of martial law since the 1889 flood. C.I.O. picket lines, now unnecessary, were withdrawn. Despite Mayor Shields's cry of "usurpation," Colonel Janeway took over full police powers where they touched on the strike, sending the local police back to their beats or traffic posts. Otherwise the civil authority was not disturbed...
...Chaplin, who put his Ethiopian war observations into a book called Blood and Ink and who learned about sit-down strikes in France last year, is covering the Labor front for Hearst's Universal Service. His itinerary since January: Flint, Detroit, Lansing, Pontiac, Oshawa (Canada), Pittsburgh, South Chicago, Johnstown, Youngstown. He, like many another 1937 Labor newshawk, rarely has time to use anything except airplanes. Universal's Labor specialist in Washington is handsome Eugene Kelly who turned reporter after studying for the priesthood at the North American College in Rome and for the law in Philadelphia and Washington...