(2 of 3)
Within a year, Mailly & Co. had one-third of the miners. Today they have half, and a new brick union hall. Says Brown: "They needed a few francs for a mimeograph machine and a full-time organizer. But most of all they needed to feel they were not alone." By December 1947, there was enough free union momentum in France to form Force Ouvrière, and old Mailly was on hand when it was born.
Reds on the Run. The fight for the Communist-dominated Marseille docks was probably the toughest. The Soviets had issued orders to keep U.S. arms from being unloaded at French ports. They planned to use the French Communist example for an all-out world campaign.
The offensive against the Reds was led by a rugged, fiery Corsican, Pierre Ferri-Pisani, now 50. He and Brown had met in-Marseille, become friends. With Brown's help, Ferri-Pisani found "men brave enough," went to Communist headquarters in Marseille and delivered an ultimatum: "If there is any trouble on the docks, we will not bother with the men you send to cause it. No, within 48 hours we will ask you to pay personally." Red bosses ran for police protection. The first Communist who tried to fire Ferri-Pisani's men was chucked into the harbor.
The Communist campaign boomeranged completely. U.S. arms were unloaded at European ports. Says Ferri-Pisani: "Brown was decisive. He was the only one to back us before we even had a union."
Last December, he was in Helsinki to see the Finnish metalworkers vote to quit the W.F.T.U., as top Soviet union officials looked on. The night before the vote, Koushkin, the head of the Soviet Metalworkers Union, had a drink with Brown, suggested they bury the hatchet. "O.K.." snapped Brown. "You make your revolution against Vishinsky, and I'll make one against Acheson." Koushkin walked away, drink unfinished.
Brown runs his far-flung operation from a seven-room, $100-a-month house in Brussels, where he lives with his Berlin-born wife Lillie, a Hunter College graduate, and their nine-year-old son. Brown talks to perhaps 75 callers in his 14-hour day, including Russian exiles, contacts inside Communist Parties, European politicians and American MSA officials. He earns $8,750 a year, runs his operation on less than $2,000 a month, has carefully doled out more than $500.000 of A.F.L. money. His staff consists of only two secretaries and a young assistant.
Partly thanks to Brown, Europe's Communist unions are currently in serious difficulties. The new Communist line of a "popular front" with the Socialists has failed. The French Communist-run C.G.T. has lost 2,000,000 members since 1949. But the free unions have not taken advantage of the Red slump. Force Ouvrière has not picked up the ex-C.G.T. members.
"The tragedy," Brown adds, "is that American labor does not move as a united force." The A.F.L. and C.I.O. are battling each other as bitterly in Europe as they are in the U.S.