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Homer Martin and Richard Frankensteen, C. I. O.'s chief Detroit organizer, started from Lansing over icy midnight roads with an escort of State troopers to call the men out. And that was no easy task. John Lewis' word was by no means law to these thousands of raw recruits in his labor movement. It took Martin & Frankensteen twelve hours of driving, explaining, arguing, but finally, with bands playing and flags flying, out they all marched from the Dodge, De Soto and seven other Chrysler plants. And in marched State troopers to guard Chrysler Corp.'s property until the truce should produce a treaty.
Thursday evening Messrs. Chrysler & Lewis met again to try for a treaty. Columnist Hugh Johnson wrote that the evacuation agreement had been made nearly three weeks earlier by Messrs. Chrysler & Lewis, that it fell through because Mr. Lewis could not reach his lieutenants in Detroit within the time agreed on and because "lawyers and other industrialists" put pressure on Mr. Chrysler to make Governor Murphy oust the sit-downers. Of the post-evacuation negotiations, Hugh Johnson said:
"Men know when they begin these negotiations how far they eventually can and will go. They usually could clear up the real issues in a couple of hours, but it has gotten to be a habit to talk for days and sometimes weeks. ... I may be wrong, but it's a good bet that nothing like that will attend the meetings of Walter Chrysler and John Lewis. They are too much alike in plain barnyard common sense."
Hugh Johnson was quite right that neither man was the kind to get himself bogged down in words. John Lewis' middle name is Lewellyn but he is the man who in some of the toughest years in one the toughest industries—Coal—put together the biggest single union in the U. S. Walter Chrysler's middle name is Percy but he is the man who as a young railroad machinist made his first mark by repairing a broken cylinder head on a locomotive in two hours to meet an emergency, who bought his first automobile just to take it completely apart and put it together again with his own hands, who now has put together with those same hands the third biggest automobile company in the U. S. These two practical gentlemen were balked by the simplicity of the issue between them.
John Lewis' one demand was sole recognition and sole recognition was the one thing Walter Chrysler was determined to refuse.
Easter night Mr. Lewis had to leave for Manhattan to negotiate with coal operators for his United Mine Workers, whose wage contract expires this week. Walter Chrysler continued in session with Mr. Lewis' aides, but sessions were abbreviated so that Governor Murphy could give his attention to other strikes.
Dwindling Mania. For the great Sit-Down Mania, though dwindling, had not yet exhausted itself. In Michigan, strikes in Reo and Hudson plants were still going strong. At Aurora. Ill., a sit-downer orchestra struck up Here Comes the Bride while a justice of the peace married two strikers. In Detroit, Checker Cab Co., which operates three-fourths of the city's taxis, had a drivers' strike, but many of the company's 600 cabs (which belong mostly in ones and twos to 400 individual capitalists) were operated by their owners.