Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt First Lady's Last Word "Fair or not fair, I cannot cross a picket line."

[Omaha Steve]

While reading the post from today about Governor Richardson (OBAMA JABS AT CLINTON; APPEALS TO SEIU), I remembered that in Mrs. Brown's high school history class I learned about the first lady of labor. So I looked it up. (FDR did cross picket lines to keep war materials rolling off the production line.)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,766291,00.html

Monday, Jan. 19, 1942

Full of the eager anticipation which all playgoers (except dramatic critics) share, Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt taxied up to New York's Mansfield Theater. With her were her secretary, Malvina ("Tommy") Thompson and a onetime youth leader, pinko Joe Lash. The play they had come to see: In Time to Come. As Mrs. Roosevelt stepped out of her cab, to her horror she came face to face with a picket line.

The President's wife would no more cross a picket line than Queen Victoria would have painted her fingernails.* She marched to the box office, turned in her tickets and got her money back. To protests that the pickets were unfair, Mrs. Roosevelt answered firmly: "Fair or not fair, I cannot cross a picket line." Pausing to point out to Band Leader Meyer Davis (who also arrived full of anticipation) that the play was being picketed, she skittered across the street to a musical, show, trailing Thompson & Lash. Mr. Davis, who has occasionally played at the White House, got his money back, too.

The picket line which about-faced Mrs. Roosevelt belonged to the A.F. of L. musician's union, of which James Caesar ("Mussolini") Petrillo (see p. 42) is boss. Because In Time to Come has two minutes of off-stage band music played on a phonograph, the musician's union demanded that four musicians be hired, to sit in the wings. Pay of the four do-nothing musicians would have cost Producer Otto L. Preminger $337.50 a week. Mr. Preminger tried to settle for one musician, at $112.50 a week, but the union would not agree.

The cast, all members of the A.F. of L., petitioned Mrs. Roosevelt to come back and see their play, pointed out that the wrangle had been going on for ten days and that the picket line had materialized only a few minutes before she was due to appear. The producer offered to give a "command performance" in Washington or at her home in New York. Mrs. Roosevelt replied that she was "counting on" seeing his play, later. But she made it clear that she also counted on not having to cross a picket line.

* Not so her husband—as the irreverent New York Daily News pointed out: "Mrs. Roosevelt's eminent husband has crossed picket lines. He crossed them with soldiers in the North American Aviation strike in California last June, to keep the warplanes rolling out. He crossed picket lines with sailors of the Navy last August to end the Kearney, NJ. shipyard strike which was holding up ship production."