Looking up briskly from his trial schedule in New Haven last fortnight, Federal District Judge Carroll C. Hincks announced: "United States v. Bergoff & Rand." The small courtroom in the Post Office Building, jampacked for the first time in years, hummed with suppressed excitement. Seated side by side but never exchanging a word were James H. Rand Jr., hulking president of Remington Rand, Inc., and Pearl Bergoff, self-styled "king of strike breakers." Both were charged with transporting strike breakers across State lines to "interfere with peaceful picketing," a Federal crime under the Byrnes Act punishable by $5,000 fine or two years in jail or both. And Pearl Bergoff, who in better days made millions renting plugugly strike breakers in carload lots to U. S. employers, had observed, according to a G-Man witness: "If I am guilty, Mr. Rand is equally guilty."
Specifically Messrs. Rand & Bergoff were charged with using 57 Manhattan hooligans to break a strike in the Remington Rand plant in Middletown, Conn, in June 1936. It was the Government's first indictment under the Byrnes Act. Mr. Bergoff had been accommodating Mr. Rand in various other Remington Rand plants, receiving $25,850 for his services, during a year-long strike that resulted in the most damning opinion of a U. S. employer ever written by the National Labor Relations Board (TIME, March 22). The Middletown expedition, however, occurred just after the Byrnes Act was passed, and involved, according to last week's testimony, the transportation of Mr. Bergoff's thugs in a special car from Manhattan's Grand Central Station across a State line to New Haven, whence they were bussed to Middletown. It was the defense's contention that Mr. Bergoff's men were "mill-wrights," hired to dismantle the Middletown plant, a bluff directed at the strikers but never carried out. A Bergoff man testified that Mr. Rand had boarded the car at Stamford, hearing with satisfaction from Mr. Bergoff that he had "some pretty tough boys here." The witness added: "Frankly, dat hurt me."
Mr. Bergoff's stable was well represented at the trial. Subpoenaed as Government witnesses, these black-hatted characters with flat-padded shoulders and tight-waisted overcoats filled the corridors, answering to such names as "Phoney" Lou Cohen, Harry "The Mush" Gordon, "Kid Libby", "Two Gun" Reegan and one known simply as "The Dodger." A witness returning from the witness stand, cackled: "You should a seen de look on de mug when I says, 'I don't remember.' " Another about to take the stand: "Watch me give him de needles."
Once when a thick-skulled Bergoff "millwright" stared so long at the ceiling trying to think of an answer that a defense lawyer started to object, dry-witted Judge Hincks raised a restraining hand, warning: "You may interrupt his train of thought." The courtroom roared.
During their brief stay in Middletown the millwrights had a warm time. A score had to take refuge in the Middletown jail. Asked if he pushed or molested pickets, one millwright replied: "There was 500 of them there. I wasn't crazy. If I wanna commit suicide I'll take gas."