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292 Jes y Mr. DeMille DeMille and the other 3,000 members received a letter from the Los Angeles local of the American Federation of Radio Artists. It asked for $1 to help finance the union's campaign to fight a proposed state amendment called Proposition 12. If the voters approved Proposition 12 in the coming election, the open shop would go into effect in California, and thereafter membership in a union would no longer be a requisite of employment. AFRA, therefore, was bending every effort toward its defeat. The letter requested "immediate payment of the assessment," warning that "failure to pay will result in suspension/' It was not a good time for a letter couched in strong terms. For months there had been conflict among movie unions over jurisdictional issues, leading to violence in the streets. Not far from the bungalow, around the corner at the big RKO lot, pickets carrying bludgeons had clashed with workers. DeMille took the Union letter to a few close associates. He told them how he felt; he favored Proposition 12 and did not want to contribute his money—not a dollar or a cent—toward its defeat. It was the sort of talk studio executives liked to hear at the time; they were weary of the warring locals at their gates, and viewed the prospect of making motion pictures without multicraft complications with a pleasure almost too great to bear* The success of Proposition 12 held the promise of great reward. Y. Frank Freeman, studio boss, was known not to have sym- pathetic leanings toward the present brand of union leadership. DeMille also sought the counsel of the late Bill Jeffers. Once a rail worker, Jeffers' rise to the presidency of the Union Pacific had in it all the elements of a Horatio Alger plot, of the sort calculated to produce extravagantly pro-union sentiments. In this instance it visibly did not. Both Jeffers and Freeman urged DeMille to make a stand for individual freedom and, in De- Mille's words, "every man's right to oppose political coercion in any form."