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Such large words French proletarians bandy handily in their cafes. Last week they paralyzed the automotive, aircraft, textile, metallurgical, munitions and mining industries of France, but with great circumspection. Practically nothing was smashed. There was no throwing of monkey wrenches or the traditional sabot into costly and useful machines. As the workers shut machines down they oiled and smeared with grease parts likely to rust. Women strikers were segregated from men on different floors "for reasons of propriety." Getting out their dominoes and dog-eared playing cards, local strike leaders hitched up chairs to packing-box tables, lit cheap cigarets and called the whole thing a "folded arm strike."
Under French law this bland occupation of premises not owned by the occupiers was a clear-cut legal offense. To arrest law-breakers is the business of policemen and in France police are not under local authority but directly at the orders of Minister of Interior Roger Salengro. In guessing that he would not dare molest them last week the strikers had guessed right.
This meant that France is in the grip of tremendous change. Previous Ministers of Interior, even the late soft-hearted and somewhat burbling Aristide Briand, famed "Peace Man," have traditionally acted with energy in ordering police to enforce French law as it stands.
Last week there were no strikes in France's so-called "essential public services": the railways, post office, telegraphs and telephones. Potatoes generally rose by a third in price. When deeper gouging was tried, patrons blacked the eyes of greedy grocers. At least one extortionate gasoline station was assaulted by furious taxi drivers. With crowbars they stove holes in the tanks. Everywhere French individualism was rampant. Cabled New York Herald Tribune's able John Elliott: ."These strikes have been spontaneous and were instigated neither by Communist leaders nor the regular trade unions." The old-guard French unions, terrified at losing all prestige because their leaders were not in control of the strikes, hastily patched up differences which split the unions some years ago and united last week under worried, longtime French Labor Executive Leon Jouhaux, whose pointed goatee waggled impotently as he vapored, expostulated.
Before the new Premier faced the Chamber, M. Blum radiorated to France begging for calm and deprecating strikes, though he deprecated even more any undue truculence by employers. Even as loudspeakers carried Leon Blum's cultured voice, shopgirls in Paris' great department stores, such as Au Printemps and Les Galeries Lafayette, combined to shove shrilly protesting and gesticulating patrons out the doors which were then locked in a "clerks' folded arms strike."