Word: strikes
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...solved his problem in opportunistic fashion by swinging still further Right. Because of the international crisis, Parliament twice granted him temporary power to rule by decree. He appeased the Right by doing away with the 40-hour week-by stages both before and after Munich. There were many small strikes and one big attempt at a general strike, all defeated. The nation wanted unity and strength and was willing to back him. The extreme Left felt betrayed but the Right (except for a few strong-headed nationalists) forgave him all. Even so, he had many narrow escapes from being overthrown...
Russia has no strike troubles (workers who strike have a way of disappearing the same night), but the Russian peasant is the Kremlin's chronic headache. His food is needed to feed the proletariat, his sons are needed for the Red Army. Even collective farms have failed to turn the mulish muzhik into a village Bolshevik. Wily as any Communist, the peasants long ago wrung from the Kremlin permission to till personal plots on collective farms, sell their produce in the open market...
Bulls had, last week, two isolated spurts in production to argue for their optimism: 1) in the third week of May automobile production increased from 72,000 to 80,000 cars; they hoped that after the strike at Briggs Manufacturing Co. last week, production would resume its higher trend; 2 ) reports that large steel orders had been placed during May's steel price flurry (TIME, May 22) and a recovery in the steel rate...
...hard facts were that Detroit expected a virtual shutdown this week, strike or no strike, Decoration Day or no Decoration Day (the same week in 1937 car production was 131,000), that the steel business placed during the May price cuts was mostly options, not orders, some of them merely verbal, and few even specified the size and composition of the steel wanted; therefore the present increase in production is mainly going into inventory...
Longest and liveliest part of the story tells of Glenn's shattering experiences as a Red trade-union organizer in a Southern coal strike (resembling that of Harlan County in 1931). When two deputies are shot, mass arrests hit both the Red union and its rival. Glenn, who is nearly killed by vigilantes, urges a united-front defense. But Comrade Silverstone, of Manhattan, sneers: "There's too much of the artist in you, Sandy." Silverstone says they will take care of their own comrades, let the others, who are "politically undeveloped," take care of themselves. Their own comrades...