In the sweltering noonday heat, 62,000 United Automobile Workers streamed out of the gates of the Ford Motor Co.'s sprawling River Rouge and Lincoln plants and onto the picket lines. C.I.O. loudspeaker trucks rolled into place. Square white placards carried the message: FORD IS ON STRIKE. It was the first mass walkout at Ford since 1941, when a bitter, ten-day strike forced stubborn old Henry Ford to recognize the union. This time U.A.W. had been painfully rallied by an old, three-alarm cry: "Speed-up!"
In a private dining room of Detroit's uptown Rackham building, U.A.W.'s scrappy, redheaded President Walter Reuther, his...
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