Biography
Harry Van Arsdale Jr. was business manager of New York City electrical workers’ Local 3. He was arrested after the September 1940 Triangle Conduit Cable strike confrontation in Queens and convicted of riot under a rarely used statute. The court imposed a one-to-two-year Sing Sing sentence, but he remained free on a certificate of reasonable doubt while appealing. The Appellate Division upheld the conviction in June 1942; the reviewed record does not establish that he ever entered prison or served the sentence.
Page 2’s opposition-union correspondent alleges he was out of Sing Sing on $16,000 bond following a shooting accusation involving two opposition members. This is an attributed 1934 report, distinct from the existing 1940 Triangle Conduit strike riot prosecution. Because the item is an adversarial account of an intra-union shooting with no clear political-detention basis, it is retained as contextual evidence without inventing or conflating a political-prison case.
