In the land now called Germany there appeared some six centuries ago a curious and fearsome phenomenon. Suddenly and inexplicably large crowds began to dance in the streets with furious abandon, screaming, writhing, foaming at the mouth. The mania spread from city to city, new victims being inspired by sight of wandering sufferers, until most of Central and Northern Europe was a howling, leaping pandemonium. Uncontrollable, the dancers heeded no barriers, dashed out their brains against stone walls, pranced off bridges. Those caught in time were turned over to priests for lifting of curses, casting out of demons.
Appointment of a parson and a rabbi to help Rev. Frederic Siedenberg. executive dean of the Jesuit University of Detroit, mediate Detroit's pandemonium of sit-down strikes was not the only thing which reminded observers of the medieval dance mania last week as they watched the U. S. Sit-Down epidemic of 1937 spread out across the land. From Salem witchcraft persecution to Ku Klux Klan, from Gold Rush of 1849 to Bull Market of 1929, the U. S. has shown itself no less subject than its sister nations to seizures of mass hysteria. The Sit-Down last week remained primarily a new and powerful weapon in the hands of Organized Labor. But the 600 cigar-factory girls who sat down for extra pay in Newark, N. J. had no union, did not want one. The seven Negro wet nurses who sat down for 10¢ per oz. in Chicago (see cut p. 12) had never heard of John L. Lewis, replied to questioners: "Y'all must mean Joe Louis." In Ionia, demanding back pay, members of the Michigan National Guard who had policed Flint during the General Motors Sit-Down, planted themselves on their armory steps, refused to budge until their captain handed them each a $5 bill from the troop's athletic fund. When his 40 employes sat down, President Louis N. Kapp of Chicago's Comet Model Airplane Co. got out his fiddle, made it a party. In many cases the Sit-Down was a craze like marathon dancing or miniature golf. But it was also a grim and growing Problem, which Congress last week found itself unable longer to ignore.
Senators 6 Shadows, Uprising in the Senate for one of the briefest speeches of his loquacious career, California's venerable Hiram Johnson cried: ''The most ominous thing in our national economic life today is the Sit-Down strike. It is bad for the Government and in the long run it is worse for Labor. If the Sit-Down strike is carried on with the connivance or the sympathy of the public authorities, then warning signals are out, and down that road lurks DICTATORSHIP."
Peering down the Johnson road, James Hamilton Lewis of Illinois discerned the same lurking bogey. Solemnly he recalled that seizure of factories and industrial unrest had preceded the rise of Fascist and Nazi dictators. "Hear your humble servant!'' warned courtly Senator "Jim Ham." "In every hour and condition such as now surrounds this our Government there awaits another Hitler and there lurks in the shadows another Mussolini."