Though it stands in Berlin's U.S. sector, the big red brick building that houses Berlin's railway administration is occupied by Russians. One night last week small groups of striking transport workers sidled up to the building. At the entrance they disarmed two guards, rushed inside. While some strikers brandished guns at a door (see cut) behind which Russians were barricaded, 200 other strikers stampeded through the building, tore pictures of Lenin and Stalin from the walls. Only when four Russian officers, enraged by this desecration, screamed " 'Raus, 'raus!" (Out, out) and beat down on strikers with their fists, did the mob retreat.
Neither under the Czars nor under the Commissars have the Russians had much experience at settling strikes. Last week the commandants of the three Western powers pitched in to help the Russians get an agreement. The strikers are demanding all of their pay in West marks because most of them live and work in the Western sectors. The Russians, who control the entire city rail transit system, have offered 60% of the workers' pay in West marks. Last week Ernst Reuter, Socialist Mayor of (West) Berlin, appeared at a strike meeting and offered to add 15% from city funds to the Russian offer. He told the strikers that the U.S., British and French commandants wanted them to accept the settlement. "I would not recommend that you accept this agreement, unless I had to," said Reuter. The strikers voiced their unwillingness to take any part of their pay in East marks. Cried one: "What shall we do with the other 25%—buy schnapps or ride on merry-go-rounds?"
Mayor Reuter said the Western commandants would back a Russian promise that there would be no reprisals against returning strikers. Said Reuter: "The Western powers are not small children who don't keep their promises." An angry striker yelled back: "It's too late. We know the Russians. The Western powers will take care of us—after we've disappeared."
In spite of these fears and the continued Russian refusal to recognize the non-Communist union, the strike meeting agreed to submit the proposed settlement to a ballot.
The majority of Berliners still supported the strike, but some were beginning to express impatience at crowded buses and long walks from home to work. More were beginning to fear that unless the strike ended, Berlin would not build up a stockpile of fuel for the winter.
Trouble for a Troubleshooter
Bombs soared into the air and burst a thousand feet above the harbor into terrible yellow blossom. Shrapnel peppered the brick walls of the warehouses, plowed the planks off the pier, and rained down upon the hissing waters. Shells shot hither & thither, exploding under the touch of the terrific heat and shooting their missiles at random. Some of the shrapnel shells fell even in Manhattan. On the pier arose a white glare as of a million mercury-vapor lights.
That was how the New York Sun described the Black Tom explosion of July 30, 1916. The Literary Digest scoffed at reports that German saboteurs had blown up the Black Tom pier to prevent munitions shipments to the Allies; it said that such rumors "died of sheer inanition almost as soon as born."