The Nome Nugget

STRIKE IN
12TH DAY

Undated Maritime Strike-Sept. 16. -(AP)-The twelfth day of the nationwide maritime strike found New York City's waterfront tense today with threats of clashes between thousands of picketing CIO seamen and AFL longshoremen under instructions not to "respect any commie picket line."

CIO National Maritime Union leaders hauled out their most formidable weapon-the massed picket line with marchers so closely linked it is virtually impossible to squeeze through-as negotiations to end the walk-out collapsed.

CIO leaders said last night there might be trouble if the AFL longshoremen attempt to break the picket lines as they did Saturday to help unload the SS George Washington.

Fourteen liners with more than 6,000 passengers-half of them army or navy personnel-were due in New York port during the day.

Many of the longshoremen were on the job along the waterfront but they had not passed picket lines to get there. Some men, anxious to return to work after 11 days of idleness, reported for work early, before the CIO pickets were dispatched for duty.

Joseph P. Ryan, president of the AFL Longshoremen, was covering the waterfront this morning urging his men to go to work where steam was up and winches could be worked.

"We don't respect any commie picket lines," he said. "If the AFL seamen will give us steam, we'll work."

There was no indication that AFL seamen, who had the support of CIO seamen in the early days of the strike, would return to work until members of the rival union, too, had won a pay raise.