Working the Waterfront: The Ups and Downs of a Rebel Longshoreman 9780292747951

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WORKING THE WATERFRONT

WORKI NG THE WATER FRONT The Ups and Downs of a Rebel Longshoreman

By Gilbert Mers With an Introduction by George N. Green and an Appreciation by Eugene Nelson

~ UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

AUSTIN

Copyright© 1988 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 1988 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press Box 7819 Austin, Texas 78713-7819 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mers, Gilbert, 1908Working the waterfront. Includes index. 1. Trade-unions-Stevedores-Texas-History-20th century. 2. Stevedores-Texas-History-20th century. I. Title. HD6515.L8M47 1988 331.88'11387544'09764 88-2168 ISBN 0-292-72254-0

TO PEOPLE

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. -RICHARD RUMBOLD, 1685

CONTENTS

Introduction by George N. Green Gilbert Mers: An Appreciation by Eugene Nelson Preface Acknowledgments 1. The Docks of Corpus Christi, 1929 2. Si Borison and Union Politics 3. Rising Militancy 4. The Great Longshoremen's Strike, 1935 5. Dissenters Organize: The Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast 6. Turmoil among the Seamen 7. Organizing Days in the South and West 8. The War Years and Union Growth 9. Labor on the Defensive Afterword Index Photo section following page 192

1x xix xxi xxm 1 31 60 88 114 150 177 209 229 260 263

INTRODUCTION by George N. Green

L

ITTLE IS known about the lives of men who first took up longshoring in America, but their work was vital to the earliest settlements in the New World. Commerce was too infrequent for longshoring to be a permanent occupation. Upon the arrival of a slow sailing vessel with its cargo of manufactured necessities, criers walked the streets and called for "Men along the shore!" Various men, abandoning their regular occupations, hurried to the docks to earn a bit of rare hard money. Professional stevedoring developed in colonial times, but dockside workers were thought of as a dubious class from the beginning. Long hours of idle waiting near the piers, the hiring and paying of longshoremen at dockside taverns, the generally unsavory neighborhoods around the docks, and the fluctuating income of the workers contributed to their negative reputation. For most Americans, longshoring was a forgotten occupation, out of sight and out of mind. There was a tradition among longshoremen in the nineteenth century that they had been the first Americans to strike for higher wages. While that belief was undoubtedly false, stevedores were certainly among the first American workers to recognize the poverty of their lives and the ruthlessness of the unstable industry that employed them. They were among the first to organize unions to attempt to force improvement in wages, hours, and working conditions. In New York, Philadelphia, and Boston there were attempts at collective bargaining and strikes in the very early 1800s, but not until 1836 were the facts of a work stoppage actually printed. On that occasion New York dockers, riggers, and other waterfront laborers "hit the bricks" when the shipowners refused to negotiate an increase in wages or a reduction of hours. The shipowners promptly recruited strikebreakers at waterfront taverns. Protesting workers urged the newly hired men to quit the docks and join the strike. When persuasion failed, the angry stevedores resorted to threats, but the strikebreakers were soon protected by city militia. The long-

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shoremen were eventually compelled to return to their jobs without gaining any concessions. Though much of the history of dock workers is unknown, this incident seemed to typify for many decades the relations between ship owners and their employees. In some ports in the late nineteenth century hordes of longshoremen clamored for jobs on the piers; most were turned back by hoses. Just as brutal were the brass work checks tossed into crowds of men at shape-ups, triggering small riots as desperate dock workers fought to snare the admission disks that would give them a day's work. The men who had successfully "shaped" for a job were usually expected to provide kickbacks or other favors to the foremen. The shape-up hiring system prevailed until well into the twentieth century. A small longshore local was established in Chicago, in 1877, by an energetic tugboat worker, Dan Keefe. Keefe organized ten other Great Lakes ports, called a convention in Detroit in 1892, and formed the union that became the International Longshoremen's Association. In 1902 they affiliated with the nascent American Federation of Labor under Sam Gompers. Stevedores on the lakes were hired in outdoor shape-ups and often worked thirty-six or forty consecutive hours, as all dockers did, but the ILA began changing these conditions on the Great Lakes. By 1905 the ILA had 100,000 members, half on the Great Lakes. The ILA occasionally recruited seamen too and disputed some cargo handling with the sailors. The longshoremen seemed to be undermining the fractious Seamen's Union, but the ILA was forced to back down (in various agreements between 1905 and 1913) upon pain of expulsion from the AFL. Gompers was suspicious that the ILA was bent on becoming an industrial union of all marine workers, a concept that violated AFL notions of craft unionism. This early clash between longshoremen and seamen was an omen of things to come. Keefe and his successor in 1908, T. V. O'Connor, knew that the history of stevedore strikes had been an unrelieved record of defeat and disappointment. Early ILA leaders consequently stressed the importance of maintaining good working relationships with shipping lines and the other companies they worked for. They frequently softened their demands in order to avoid a strike. Joseph Ryan, a young ILA official in New York in the 1910s, was one of those who learned this lesson well. The leadership also believed that Communism and radicalism in general, burning issues in the 1910s, would bring on a union's destruction by the government or by the pressure of public opinion. Ninety percent of the leadership, except on the Gulf, were

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Catholic and thereby supposedly natural enemies of radical groups, which often claimed to be atheistic. O'Connor negotiated the ILA's first written agreement with New York employers in 1916, providing for a wage increase and preference of employment for union members. But neither he nor anyone else in the ILA was able to devise a system for avoiding the shape-up by limiting the labor supply and regularizing employment. O'Connor's increasing timidity was also revealed that year. The San Francisco locals seceded from the ILA and joined a barely disguised employer organization. This company front group would dominate the docks of the Bay Area and most of the Pacific Coast from 1919 until 1934. O'Connor exerted little effort to recapture the lost locals or disrupt the company union. Had he provided real leadership, the history of the longshoremen on the Pacific Coast might have been changed considerably. Even worse than the inaction and timidity in dealing with employers was the ILA leadership's increasing separation from the membership, seriously weakening the ability of the officials to represent the desires of the rank and file. In 1919 every ILA local in New York walked out when O'Connor and Ryan tried to force the men to accept a trifling nickel-an-hour increase in pay. O'Connor and Ryan refused to sanction the strike and denounced federal mediation efforts. They soon labeled the walkout a Communist plot, a completely phony charge that was to become familiar in subsequent rank and file revolts. The men shut down the port of New York for a month, but ultimately were unable to overcome the vigorous opposition of the employers, the local government, and their own union. It was another wretched omen. Like all unions, the ILA was on the defensive in the 1920s. Longshoring work was slowly mechanizing, which increased the already considerable hazards of cargo handling, but the public and the government seemed indifferent. In 1927 Congress finally passed a longshoremen's compensation bill, providing up to $25 per week to men seriously injured aboard ships, but employers quickly discovered loopholes in it. The ILA was even less successful in establishing closer working relationships with other maritime unions. The seamen wanted to remain aloof from the controversies of shoreside workers, partially because of past jurisdictional conflicts and fears of being dominated by the more numerous longshoremen. Even after the disastrous sailors' strike of 1921, the seamen still refused to consider longshoremen as maritime workers and blocked the creation of a transport workers department within the AFL. The ILA also retreated before the open shop movement of the 1920s, main-

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taining contracts only in New York and a few other Atlantic ports. The retreat was a rout on the South Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The southern docks had always been a separate domain, even more distinct than the other regions-the Pacific Coast, the North Atlantic Coast, and the Great Lakes. The general stevedoring of tobacco, rice, indigo, and cotton-the great antebellum exports from the South-was in the hands of black slave gangs. The men were considered valuable pieces of property, of course, though about the only safeguard of health that the stevedoring companies observed was the continuous search for signs of tuberculosis. Dock workers were particularly susceptible to the disease, since they often breathed miasma and worked in alternating conditions of heat and cold. Each major southern port also had a group of skilled white stevedores, the screwmen, who developed informal organizations before 1850. They worked only aboard ship, stowing cotton and tobacco with jackscrews. They soon formed strong unions, which the shippers had to respect, since the two staple crops had to be carefully packed aboard ship if their export were to be profitable. The screwmen were always paid better than the general laborers on the docks, but the presence of the screwmen was the key to the unionization of general longshoremen in the South. Labor on the wharves ceased being a black monopoly after the Civil War, since there were an excessive number of men ofboth races anxious to take whatever jobs they could find. Similarly, blacks began to pick up the screwmen's craft. Southern shipping lines attempted to exploit the men with subsistence wages and played off the races against each other, recruiting one race as strikebreakers if the other walked out. Southern black and white longshoremen, however, despite segregated work on the same dock or ship, sometimes agreed to split the work and sometimes refused to scab against each other. They worked the same piers at least as amiably as the Irish and Italian gangs in the North. Neither the screwmen's locals nor the Gulf's general longshore locals joined the ILA immediately. In 1900, for instance, Galveston had close to three thousand longshoremen who belonged to independent locals or to no unions at all. The ILA moved in that year and Local155 signed up enough members to call an organizational strike, but the ILA was forced into a bitter struggle against the Galveston Central Labor Council, which backed the independent unions, as well as against the shipping lines. The secretary of the ILA local was murdered and mutilated. The Morgan Line was particularly strong and ruthless, prompting the Galveston longshoremen to re-

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quest that the ILA send organizers to New York to unionize the Morgan piers there and thus pressure the company from both ends. The ILA, on this occasion, did attempt to oblige, but its failure was another omen for the future in the relations between Gulf and New York stevedores. The port of Galveston was organized anyway, the first big ILA victory on the Gulf, but the city's screwmen did not affiliate until1914. The Gulf Coast District of the ILA was organized in 1911, and the district headquarters was established in Galveston. By that time the city's ILA local had around a thousand members and was one of the largest longshore locals in the nation. Every Gulf port except Pensacola had an ILA branch. The district was so well organized that ILA members in the Gulf, part of the nation's most impoverished area, earned 12 to 20 percent more than Boston longshoremen. The number ofblack longshoremen so exceeded the number of whites in southern ports, however, that the white workers got steadier and better work. One colorful, passionate reformer produced by the ILA in the Gulf was James Murray. Hailing from Galveston, Murray often represented the Gulf at ILA conventions and the Texas State Federation of Labor at national AFL conventions. A leftist gadfly, Murray left his stamp on many a convention with vitriolic denunciations of monopolistic business practices on docks and terminals as well as profit gougers, sweatshops, financiers, and exploiters of child labor in general. In 1910 the ILA actually voted for government ownership of all wharves, docks, and terminals, and Murray demanded that Congress withhold all appropriations for harbors until the owners were compelled to mend their ways and improve their properties. American society was being transformed somewhat, from about the turn of the century until World War I. Progressive changes, such as child labor laws and regulation of trusts, were promoted by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and by various interest groups, such as organized labor. But improvements in race relations were not on the progressive agenda, and neither the government nor the AFL made any effort to curb racism in the nation or the work force. American racism was most deeply entrenched in the South, of course, so it is perhaps somewhat surprising that Gulf Coast longshoremen in the early twentieth century were determined to organize black dock workers. Clearly the various instances of racial cooperation on the docks in the late nineteenth century had taught Gulf Coast longshoremen an indelible lesson. Also, the abundance of black labor in southern ports by the time of World War I insured that the white unions would make agreements with black

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ones. Reflecting the spirit of cooperation was the agreement in Houston. Around 1915, after the Port of Houston was opened, the city's only ILA local-the black one-welcomed the formation of a white local and entered into a ninety-nine-year compact with them to divide all work evenly. Black ILA locals were organized in Galveston, New Orleans, and several smaller ports as well as the Bayou City and worked as peers with the white branches in the District Council. There were no racial problems about equality of pay, working conditions, or local union rights. On the Gulf, both black and white locals seemed to reach their zenith during World War I, strengthened by the federal government's temporary control of the docks. The open shop movement of the 1920s, part of a corporate backlash against the progressive era and the growing strength of unions, demonstrated the transiency of the ILA's accomplishments in the Gulf. The ILA was goaded into calling a series of strikes in the early 1920s, all of which were disasters. The Galveston, Gulfport, and Mobile locals were destroyed by 1923. The Houston locals were forced to work only in segregated gangs on board the ships. Strikes in New Orleans were quickly broken and the locals' power declined markedly. The situation there was complicated by the left-wing Industrial Workers of the World, who attempted to organize longshoremen on the basis of solidarity between black and white workers. This effort was unsuccessful because the ILA retained the allegiance of all the hands. By the late 1920s dock workers' wages in the Gulf and South Atlantic had to be supplemented by part-time work if they wanted to maintain a minimal health-and-decency standard ofliving. The ILA was in continual retreat in the South. After the Great Depression smashed American commerce, the port of New Orleans was lost to the ILA and ILA longshoremen operated continuously only in four Texas ports. The southern district dwindled to three thousand members. In some parts of the South, stevedores earned as little as seventeen cents per hour and had no minimum guarantee; a worker could wait all day for a posting, work fifteen minutes, and be paid for fifteen minutes. The absence of an adequate retirement program continued to be a dire shortcoming of longshore work. Meanwhile, in the late 1920s two events occurred that concern the reader. Big, breezy Joseph P. Ryan became president of the ILA, and talkative Gilbert Mers began working as a longshoreman on the Texas docks. Ryan, as already noted, was steeped in caution in his dealings with employers, but, as the reader will see, was quite energetic in exercising control over the ILA. During Ryan's early tenure gangsters acquired control over the ILA's leading port, New York

Introduction

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City, and his middle and later years at the helm were scarred by financial irregularities. Ryan thought the union existed for his benefit. Mers, on the other hand, was a throwback to James Murray, and took his place as another colorful, vitriolic, left-wing, Gulf Coast agitator. Mers was also totally, painfully honest and was not zealously interested in perpetuating a career as an officeholder or in controlling other people. Mers thought the union existed for the benefit of the members. When Mers joined the ILA in 1929 it appeared to have some strength in the Texas ports, but the appearance was deceptive and certainly could not survive the Depression. In the autumn of 1931 the ILA in the West Gulf struck against a wage cut from eighty to seventy cents per hour and from eighteen to thirteen cents a bale for cotton work. The companies had no trouble importing strikebreakers, so the Texas longshoremen were forced to return at the lower rates. Ryan's administration of the ILA was disastrous. In 1931,just when his salary was raised from $6,000 to $8,000, Ryan recommended that local union funds should henceforth not be used to pay death benefits. Such payments were a traditional practice in most AFL unions and had certainly been an important factor in attracting members to the hazardous longshoring trade. Ryan accepted thousands of dollars in under-the-table "contributions" from employers, deposited in his personal bank account, for the alleged purpose of fighting Communism on the waterfront. He was eventually sent to prison for looting the union treasury. Ryan defended the shape-up and other dockside inequities to the end, but the bitterness of maritime workers over the deterioration of their wages and working conditions-along with the rebirth of the union movement under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal-triggered militant, leftist rank and file rebellions. Ryan's autocratic rule of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts was threatened, while he managed to lose the Pacific Coast for the ILA. It is a tangled tale-to sort out the struggles of unionism among sailors and longshoremen and their leaders on the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts in the 1930s. As a journalist put it on one occasion: "The shipping strike has become so complicated that nobody can make head or tail of it .... Everybody is at sea except the seamen." The following notes may provide a backdrop for Gilbert Mers' reminiscences of the 1930s, but what he is writing about-the day-to-day experiences of men on the docks-is the vital social history that has been missing from so many historical accounts of waterfront unions. It is undoubtedly more important to have these accounts now than to have any more histories about the leadership.

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In 1934 ILA locals and seamen on the Pacific Coast were engaged in a coastwide strike to obtain control of hiring and a coastwide agreement. Ryan flew to San Francisco in the midst of the strike and quickly announced a settlement. Not only did his plan fail to include the primary objectives of the longshoremen, but also he signed it without referring it to the membership. The men flatly rejected his efforts and Ryan, blaming his failure on Communists, left for the East, reluctantly allowing Harry Bridges' star to rise in the West. The West Coast stevedores and seamen remained on strike and eventually secured most of their demands. Three years later most Pacific Coast ILA members withdrew and joined Bridges' newly formed International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, CIO. In October 1935, in an effort to organize the eastern Gulf and equalize wages throughout the Gulf, the ILA called a walkout of all Gulf ports. Some 7,500 workers from Corpus Christi to Pensacola were involved. It was a vital situation for all parties concerned and resulted in much bloodshed. Some companies reopened with strikebreakers. Ryan came to Texas and, after some hesitation, threatened a general boycott of all cargo handled by strikebreakers and independents on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts if the strike were not settled. The threat achieved federal mediation. The ultimate result was a number of ILA contracts. There was no coastwide agreement nor were wages equalized, but the ILA had a strong beachhead on the Gulf again. In the spring of 1935 Harry Bridges, then president of the San Francisco ILA local, attempted to form a permanent organization of all the West Coast maritime unions, the Maritime Federation of the Pacific. Harry Lundeberg, at that time an official of the Seattle local of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, was elected president of the organization. That same year John L. Lewis and his supporters founded the CIO on the principle of industrial unionism, and the American labor movement began to split over the issue of craft unions versus industrial unions. Bridges and his group viewed the MFP as the first step toward establishing industrial unionism in the maritime industry, among all the offshore and longshore crafts, but opposition by craft unionists within the ILA and the uneasy relationship between the longshoremen and the sailors doomed the MFP. The longshoremen wanted to vest all bargaining power and strike authority in the MFP, but the SUP and the other seamen's unions insisted on autonomy for their various craft units and pledged only to consult with the MFP before acting. Also, Lundeberg, who soon left the MFP to head the SUP, had difficulty playing second fiddle to Bridges. The MFP conducted innumerable job actions and quickie local strikes. In

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1936, when employers tried to resume control of hiring halls, the MFP pulled off a massive strike, but the SUP was the first union to break rank and sign a separate agreement. By 1938, with the ILWU in the CIO and the SUP in the AFL, the Maritime Federation of the Pacific was effectively finished. On the East Coast and the Gulf, late in 1935, the International Seamen's Union agreed with the shippers' association to extend their agreement for another year without change. Since Atlantic and Gulf wages were still five dollars below those in the Pacific offshore trades and the ISU agreement was inferior on other conditions, such as overtime, rank and file sailors were provoked into rebellion. An ISU Rank and File Committee, including many Communists, attempted to take over the union. Eventually the ISU was wrecked. Joe Curran led most of the rank and filers into an unsuccessful three-month strike in the winter of 1936-1937, which the ISU leadership and Ryan helped break. In the summer of 1937 Curran took the men into the National Maritime Union, CIO. Very few East Coast sailors stayed in the AFL's new Seafarers International Union, but Lundeberg's SUP joined it. Before its official demise in 1941, the Maritime Federation of the Pacific had reached out to the Gulf. Rank and file sailors and longshoremen, discontented over the lack of workers' unity on the waterfront and disillusioned with their national leadership, organized the Maritime Federation of the Gulf in 1936. Headed by Mers, it quickly succumbed to a host of problems, including many of the same factors that undermined collective bargaining in general in the maritime industry. All are chronicled in Gilbert Mers' tale-personal enmities, racial antagonisms, craft jealousies, ideological chasms, accusations of dual unionism, and paucity of financing. In the Gulf the 1935 longshoremen's strike, the 1936 seamen's strikes, and the creation of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf were more than just labor events. They were part of the New Deal social revolution sweeping the country. But to Gilbert Mers and many other longshoremen and sailors, the strikes and the MFG represented a revolution on a local and much more personal level than the events of the national scene. Deeply imbued with leftist ideals, they saw the opportunity to create for themselves the sort of union that could put these ideals into practice. They particularly sought the substitution of rank and file power for decision making on the part of high union and company officials who did not much care what the men thought. Another sort of revolution was also involved in these events-the revolt of proud and independent men who had submitted to personal humiliation in order to support themselves

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and their families. They entered into the fray with a vengeance. Hostile newspapers carried part of their story at the time, but only Gilbert Mers, with his remarkable memory, has attempted to disclose the inside history of these events. Of the four major waterfront unions, the ILWU and the SUP on the Pacific coast and the ILA and NMU on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, it was Gilbert's fate to belong to the one that was least affected by the rank and file movement. He expresses about as much frustration over the plight of the ILA in the postwar years as during the time when it was fighting for survival. As the reader will see, he has "kept the faith" politically, down through the decades, and also is as opinionated now as he was fifty years ago. Nothing, however, has ever stopped him from listening as well as talking. Due to space limitations, there are some stories that Gilbert had to excise from the manuscript. In 1944 in New York he blew the whistle on Army thieves who were hauling off government property. In the mid-1950s in Corpus he tended a bar, played a bass fiddle in a unionized band, and had a band of his own. There is quite enough in the book, though, to make the reader ponder Gilbert Mers' adventures and life on the Texas waterfront.

GILBERT MERS: An Appreciation by Eugene Nelson

I

N FEBRUARY 1966 I was sent from Delano, California, to Houston by Cesar Chavez to be in charge of the first farm worker boycott for the state of Texas. My family and I were so low on money that after renting an apartment we could not afford to have the utilities turned on. In desperation I arose at 4 A.M. and drove to the ILA hall on Harrisburg Boulevard to make a fund appeal at the early-morning "shape-up" of longshoremen. In the pre-dawn several dozen dockers milled about in the large hall. A small raised platform at one side of the big room was pointed out to me. Trembling, I got up to speak. Finally eight or ten men came across the room to hear what I had to say. When I had finished my brief spiel one of them made a financial contribution. The sole contributor was Gilbert Mers-the first person in the state of Texas to contribute to the fledgling farm worker union's boycott. (Later many large and generous contributions were to come from Mers' ILA branch.) Extremely rarely a book comes along that is truly unique. There never has been and there never will be a book like Gilbert Mers' highly original personal history, Working the Waterfront. Memoirs of labor movement figures tend to be dry and factual, concise and colorless. This book is different. Because Gilbert Mers himself is a strikingly unique individual, an eminently social person and yet an individualist, a rare combination of the highly intelligent and warmly human, a very alive, humorous and larger-than-life actor on the human stage, an independent observer and thinker whose natural intelligence and vitality defy categorizing, Working the Waterfront is not only a vivid eyewitness account of important events in Gulf Coast labor history that have affected the lives of thousands, but also a moving and fascinating story of the man himself, his emotions, ideas, ideals, personal growth, and the vicissitudes of an active and colorful life. The writing is charged with wit, piquancy, Mers' own inimitable expressions and anecdotes, and refreshing and

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original insights into the events he observed or participated in. From his early life in the mines of southern Arizona, through hardfought waterfront struggles with strikebreaking goons and Texas Rangers, meetings with bigwigs of the labor movement, and his continuing search for a more democratic and human face to radicalism and unionism that led him late in life to join the Industrial Workers of the World, the warm pulse of humanity and love for life and his fellow beings shine through the author's colorful prose. In a remarkable final chapter Mers presents his solutions-eminently humane and democratic-to the major problems facing the world. It's all there: the story of the man, the history of his times, his prescription for improving humanity. So this is a book not just for the labor buff, but for anyone interested in what makes human beings tick, and especially those few among us who are idealistic and selfless and have changed the world for the better. Above all, Gilbert Mers has been and is his own man, one of those rare individuals who obeys the dictates of his conscience, regardless of public opinion, ideology, realpolitik, or whatever. On such behavior depends the salvation of the human race.

PREFACE

S

OMEBODY SAID, "History is written by the winners. The losers have nothing to say." This book is by one of the losers, a bit player, not the star of the drama. It does not claim to be a history. It recounts or touches on certain events in which I had a part, or that came to my attention through one medium or another. It cites the events, people, and things that helped to color one person's thinking over the years. Most of the action is concentrated in the longshore industry along the Texas coast. I have sprinkled it liberally with my own opinions about the impact of events and the people involved, especially in contending that the dominant American labor movement has retreated rather than advanced as a social force during the last four decades. I have tried to tell it "the way it was" and to weigh people honestly, the way I saw them. Stanley Weir persuaded me to start this writing. Talked me into it, would be the better way to put it. This book is a condensation of a long, rambling manuscript, abbreviated to "book size." A consensus opinion rendered by persons whose judgment I respect was that the decade prior to World War II should receive the most detailed attention. Adhering to that yardstick, we skip over events in early life and touch only lightly on events following that war. An interim experience with the "underground press" is omitted because of space limitations, for example. But then, you're really rather relieved to see an old codger shut up, and not talk all day long about himself, aren't you? Any first person account equates closely to oral history, of which it has been said, "Oral history is a fine tool for recording attitudes, a poor one for recovering facts." Wow! Well, I took the time to check and recheck most of it. However, deteriorating eyesight that fails to cope with the glare from microfilm screens, a shortened attention span, plus simply tiring physically sooner than I used to, force me to admit that this is less than a scholarly work. Still, should the reader

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wish to dig deeper, s/he will be helped, not hindered, by what's said in the book. Another critic said, "The danger of oral history ... is that everyone sets out to make himself look good." Pshaw! And come, come. Aren't we unheroic types entitled to a place in a sunspot for a brief moment? After they were grown, my two sons and I were reminiscing one day. Their mother and I divorced when they were young, so we didn't see one another daily while they were growing up, only on court-sanctioned visits. By the time they were grown, Michael and Kenneth were living in Michigan. The reminiscing took place there. "The thing that I remember best about you," Mike said, "is, when we would use a picnic area or campground, you always told us, 'Leave the place in better shape than what you found it."' He said it as a compliment, and I was highly pleased, and I think about it quite often now. Then comes the let-down. As a user of Campsite Earth, I have failed miserably. It was in much better condition when I began using it than it is as I face leaving it. There has been an accelerating environmental decline-that I haven't done a hell of a lot to block, I reckon. This book ends with an appeal to people to consider some suggestions that I think are necessary to improve the picture. If you should find some of the ideas alien to your previous thinking, please don't discard them out of hand. Give them a space of time to bounce around in your think-tank. Consider what lies ahead if we fail to change course. "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will" (Frederick Douglass, Letter to Gerrit Smith, March 30, 1849). GILBERT MERS HOUSTON AUGUST 1987

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A

of gratitude to all the following is hereby acknowledged: Stanley Weir, who persuaded me to start the writing, whose patience remained unruffied, whose encouragement remained steadfast as I diddled and dawdled along in the writing. Archie Green, formerly on University ofTexas faculty, now of San Francisco, who gave encouraging criticism and structural advice, and introduced the manuscript to UT Press. George N. Green, UT at Arlington history professor, who performed yeoman work and has preserved a copy of the original manuscript in UTA archives. Margaret Rose, History Department, La Retama Public Library, Corpus Christi, Texas, who collected half-forgotten and some wholly forgotten data covering the Corpus Christi years; my thanks to those unnamed students who worked under Margaret's direction in that collecting. Carol Schwartz, librarian, International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, for answers to questions about the ILWU and the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast. Esther Palazzi of the Marine Workers Historical Association, for solid general help. Temple Paysse, public relations, South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District of the International Longshoremen's Association, for pinpointing dates and events. The Houston Public Library, just for being there when I needed you! Also, Dr. Louis Marchiafava and helpers Deborah Bauer, Tom Krenek, and Steven Strom of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, an adjunct of the library, were most helpful. Bisbee, Arizona's Copper Queen Library, which made original material available. (I lost the librarian's name in the shuffie, and apologize.) Many thanks to Barbara Hooper and Elaine Saba and members of the Bisbee Civic Center Mining and Historical Museum for DEBT

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access to materials (with another apology, that space limitations make it impossible to use most of it). The hundreds of ordinary working men and women whose opinions and aspirations, expressed in a thousand different contexts, furnished food for thought; to the many who have expressed interest, encouragement, and suggestions to aid this effort. Shirley LeBourgeois, who strove mightily to bring forth a neat manuscript from sometimes badly scratched-over copy, while her husband Harold helped with proofreading and encouraged the troops. The whole staff at U.T. Press "broke their backs" to make the writing look good. Sally Jo Mers, my wife, who, although she resists becoming an activist or a "Movement" person, persists in believing that everything I write is worth everybody's rapt attention. G.M.

WORKING THE WATERFRONT

CHAPTER I

TilE DOCKS OF CORPUS CHRISTl, 1929

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was saying, "Stand back, you sonofabitch, or I'll cut you in two right across your goddamn navel!" The man was wearing cowboy boots, a ten-gallon hat, business suit, necktie. In his two hands he held what appeared in the dim light to be a tommy gun, well aimed. The man was a Texas Ranger. I stood back. There's a story leading up to how come the man to be talking like that, and some to follow after. So howdy, my friend. Welcome aboard. This is one of those "how come" books. I hope you'll come to find it interesting. I was twenty-one years old when I first saw a body of salt water and a bale of cotton. The year was 1929. Sometimes now, it seems that I must have made physical contact with a million of those bales as they were loaded aboard the ships that plied the bodies of salt water from port to port around the globe. Far short of a million, no doubt; but there were many, many contacts, much heaving and grunting-and sweat. I was born near Ponca City, Oklahoma, on January 21, 1908. My father, Clint Mers, farmed some and clerked in stores. My mother was Mattie Powers, who died when I was five. Father remarried after a couple of years, to Lora Roberts. I am the only living offspring from the first marriage. A sister, Edna Mae, survives from the second. In 1916 we moved to Quinlan, a small town on the eastern edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle. There Dad managed a general store, and there a brother, Kenneth, was born. He died in Corpus Christi years later. Then we found ourselves in Towanda, Kansas, an oil boom town, where the Old Man ran a grocery store. By that time the United States had entered the "World War" on the side of England and France. Then it was discovered that Mama, my stepmother, had tubercuHE MAN

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losis. The doctor prescribed moving her to a high and dry climate in the West, the ultimate foolproof prescription in those days. Foolproof now, for that matter; but now medical science has progressed to deal effectively with the disease in the lower, damper altitudes. Back then they lost more than they saved of those unable to make the move west. Dad disposed of the store in Towanda and we boarded a train headed for El Paso. The stay in El Paso was short. Dad answered a newspaper ad for a job in Bisbee, Arizona. For several years thereafter he was manager of the dry goods department of the Phelps-Dodge Mercantile Company's Warren store. Bisbee was a mining camp, copper being the principal metal produced. The Phelps-Dodge Corporation, called the "Copper Queen" locally, the leading producer of the stuff, operated a mercantile venture as an adjunct to its mining enterprises. The community consisted of three towns, Bisbee, Lowell, and Warren, each having its own post office listing then. Now they're all combined under "Bisbee." We were settled in Warren before Christmas, 1918. The Bisbee years were interesting ones. Aren't the adolescent years always so? There were happenings during those years that ran the gamut of graceful, ungraceful, and disgraceful, you could sayand first intrusions of social opinions on youthful consciousness. We may have occasion to refer back to some of it. Well, I stumbled along as time went along and graduated, belatedly, from Bisbee High School in 1927. Meantime, more than a year before (the graduation), Clint Mers had thought that he saw opportunity in Texas. The Bisbee climate had cleared the tuberculosis from Mama's system. It never returned. In Corpus Christi the Old Man acquired a fruit stand doing a good business. The term "fruit stand" applied loosely to small establishments that featured citrus fruits from the Lower Rio Grande Valley and fresh seafood from local waters. The Mers store was a substantial one, selling bread, milk, and various grocery staples, on the order of the "convenience stores" that would flourish later. The family began pushing me to leave mining country and come try my hand in Corpus Christi; specifically, in a small fruit stand which my dad would set up. So here I was, driving an old Model T Ford coupe that I had purchased for the trip, ready to become an entrepreneur in the fruit and fish selling business. My fruit stand was located on Water Street north of the ship channel and not far from the drawbridge that lifted to allow ships to enter and leave the port. A high bridge goes up and over the whole shebang now. A few of the port's longshoremen lived on North Beach. They would pass the stand going or coming when one or more ships

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might be working in the harbor. In fact, the longshoremen had a "hiring hall," an oversized shack built of dunnage, that stood between the stand's location and the bridge. If you find that word "dunnage" confusing, the dictionary at hand says, "packing, usually of fagots, loose wood, etc., used about or below a ship's cargo to prevent damage in transit." In this instance it was one-inch-thick, rough-cut boards of varying widths and from various species of timber, these nailed to appropriate supporting two-by-fours, etc. The "going and coming" of those longshoremen was mostly on foot, since most people didn't have cars in those times. You could say that we knew what our feet were for, and used them. So the man might stop and buy a piece of fruit or two on his going or coming. One in particular, Jack Todd, got in the habit of stopping by to chat. I would ask him stupid questions about the loading, unloading, and sailing of ships. He began to tout me on longshore work. "What's a husky guy like you doing in a sissy job like this? You look like you got some muscle. Are you willin' to put out some of it?" Back in Bisbee I had followed the pattern: growing-up sons of working class families sought employment in the mines; I had been so employed. I would tell Jack that I had just come from a brilliant career on the business end of a muckstick; if a strong back and a weak mind were prime qualifications for a longshoreman, then he had a hand. Then he would tell me how busy the port would be when "cotton season" began, and how the members of a cotton gang, paid by the number of bales stowed, collected $10.68 apiece for a straighttime day. Ten dollars was truly a big day's pay back then. Other cargo paid eighty cents per hour, darn good pay for the times. The catch was: there was more work than you could ever get done in the busy season, then days spent staring at an empty harbor in the off season. Finally I approached the Old Man and told him that I was discouraged with business and wanted to try longshoring. He wasn't ecstatic about it, but he agreed to it. So, along with other newcomers, I began to hang out where longshoremen hung out, hoping to be recognized at a hiring time when the work had picked up. Things were much less formalized in those days. A friendly dock clerk would let a couple of oldtimers show a couple of us would-be performers a few of the sleights that made the difference, whether you handled that five-hundred-pound bale of cotton or it handled you. Jack also informed us that all the regular longshoremen belonged to a union called the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). We should aim at making good hands and should apply for union membership as soon as our ninety-day tryout period was over.

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Jack was a believer in the union. What he told us seemed to make sense: You should belong to a union yourself and with your wages you should buy what other union members produced, and things would be better all around. One fine July morning, 1929, there were two ships in the harbor. Seemed like a good time to try for that first longshore job. When the hiring had ended there were still eight or ten of us newcomers unhired. The last foreman to "fill his book" told those of us who were left: "You fellows can probably get on in the warehouse in No.7 shed. It pays below scale, forty cents an hour, and it's non-union. But we won't hold that against you. It's a place you could pick up a few dollars while you wait for shipping to get better. Some of you might be a little soft. It's a good place to toughen up. And when we need more men here-and we will-then you can come back here." Some decided to head for the warehouse. Another fellow and I sort of partnered up and walked that way together. We got hired. The job we caught was unloading lead bars from boxcars on the back track, trucking them into the shed, waterside, and stacking them for later loading onto a ship. The lead came from smelters in Mexico. The bars weighed from around 95 to 105 pounds apiece. The bars were slightly wider topside than bottomside and were flanged at the ends, so that you could get a good hold of them. They were stowed in stacks in the boxcars, five bars on the floor, side to side, five turned crosswise on top of them, and so on. The cars were loaded to or near capacity, roughly fifty short tons, roughly forty stacks of twenty-five bars each. We stacked five bars on the prongs of a two-wheeled truck, "broke" the truck over and wheeled it to the designated pile in the warehouse, deposited the load, then back to the car for another, a great way to spend a day. The contents of each car were kept separate and so identified in the shed by car number. (And you would soon learn that lead was no respecter of a man's fingers.) There was a lot of that lead coming in. We trucked lead into the shed for three days. On the fourth day a coastwise ship had arrived. The scale and conditions of work on vessels in the coastwise trade differed from "deep sea," which signified that the ship was in foreign trade. Some ports had separate locals for coastwise and deep sea work. In Corpus Christi the one local (or the two locals, black and white) handled both coastwise and deep sea, plus an "intercoastal" category. The coastwise scale was seventy cents per hour as against eighty cents for deep sea. In deep sea work longshoremen moved cargo from the ship and piled it in the warehouse, or moved it from warehouse to ship, as the case might be. Working coastwise, long-

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shoremen landed the loads from the ship on flat-bed trucks and pulled the trucks to the warehouse door, where warehousemen took them into the shed and unloaded them, returning empty vehicles to the wharf. If the ship was loading, warehousemen loaded the trucks with cargo in the shed and pulled them onto the wharf. The warehouse foreman picked me among others to receive cargo from the arriving ship. We worked through the day and were told to return after supper. We did, and worked all night. It's worthy of mention that longshore pay, both deep sea and coastwise, was time and a half for overtime. Warehousemen just kept on grinding for that same old forty cents. Worth mentioning also: coastwise ships sought a quick turnaround. It was unusual for a coastwise vessel not to work around the clock. At breakfast time the foreman told us: "It's been a long stretch, but any of you who think you can make the day can come back. If you don't feel like you can, go get some sleep. If there's no work tonight, there will be again in the morning." Breakfast hour was from six to seven o'clock. I walked down the dock, crossed the bridge, and stepped into the longshoremen's "shack." There was an order on the board for a whole raft of sulphur trimmers for eight o'clock. I ate a bite of breakfast, drew three deep breaths to wake up on, and had my keister planted on the bench in the hiring hall at seven-thirty, the time for the eight o'clock hiring, and was hired. The word "trim" can mean a lot of things. In this instance trimming meant leveling. Raw bulk sulphur had been dropped into the lower holds of the ship by means of clamshell buckets or conveyors. When we got down the ladder in our hatch we faced a huge pile of loose sulphur in the middle of the hatch, sloping to wings, bulkheads, and corners. Armed with a shovel apiece-the old "idiot spoon," "Mexican dragline," the muckstick I'd used in the mineswe set to work to make a mountain a plain. In no time at all the message was delivered: sulphur dust and the human eye are not compatible. There was a lot of crying went on. The idea was to use the shovel with a raking, sweeping motion, never raising and throwing a shovelful, thereby keeping dust in the air to a minimum. The foreman was Dick Costello. Dick came to be a close friend as the years went by. At straight-up noontime they said that we'd trimmed 'er down. We strung our shovels onto a line, sent them out on the cargo hook, and the thirty or so of us climbed out of the hold, each to go his own way, all intent on relieving smarting eyes and washing sulphur and sweat from clothes and body. Later a gang would pull tarpaulins over our work until the sulphur cargo was covered, then make ready for other cargo on top by putting down

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the necessary dunnage. Yours truly found soap, shower, and a bed and passed out, in spite of smarting eyes. And that's one way to begin a career at longshore work, pardner. Two days later came the second job, in a lead gang. A lead gang consisted of four wharf men, the gang foreman, and a winchman on deck, and six hold men, a twelve-man total. Hold men worked three men to the side. I found myself working with two experienced hands. Lindgreen was of Swedish descent and from "up north." He had done a stint in the iron mines in northern Minnesota; so we had a topic of conversation right away. "Chico" (Little) Aguirre was from south of the border, a naturalized US citizen, small, as his nickname implied, but mighty-and I was mighty lucky to be with two hands as handy as they on my first true stevedoring job. That job lasted three full days and into a fourth. It's not impossible that I helped to stow some of the same bars that I had trucked into the warehouse a few days before. The lead came into the hold fifteen bars at a time on a wire rope sling. My education in the vocabulary of the waterfront work environment was beginning. This method ofloading, for example, was called "single whip." I would learn that that cable that wrapped around the winch drum and paid out through sheaves at bottom and top of the boom to the hold where we were, or to dock, was called a line, a runner, a fall, or a whip. Soon to come was respect for the ability of that winchman who brought the stuff into the hold to us. The loads were made up on the wharf(naturally), then dragged up a stage that rested bottom end on the wharf (or dock), leaned toward and rested its top against the ship barely above the ship's deck (or bulwark, if the ship was so constructed). At that point the load went onto the deck stage, that stage spanning the distance from ship's side to the hatchway, or hatch coaming, to be precise. When the load cleared the deck stage it was "airborne," in that there was nothing then but empty space until it reached the point where you were going to handle it. It took some skill on the part of the winchman to keep a tight line on that load at all times as he pulled it aboard to hatchway, then lowered into the hold. If he ever failed to keep that line tight, the sling could loosen. And if a bar of that stuff ever got loose-or if the load touched a part of the ship as it was lowered to you-it could give you a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach. In fact, it could make that hold a plumb unhealthy place to be. A competent winchman commanded admiration and respect. The stages, by the way, were built of heavy, tough wood to handle the rough punishment that they took. I don't think you'll find the

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stages around anymore. The usual operation now is "double whip," one boom spotted over the dock, the other over hold or deck as required, the whips of the two winches joined ("married") to make the journeys to and from ship and shore. Everybody knows, I guess, that port is left side and starboard is right side of a ship. Well, I was learning, in longshore language, that whichever side of the ship lay against the dock was "inshore"; that away from the dock was "offshore." There were decks: bridge decks, poop decks, weather decks, 'tween decks. And others that seamen learned and knew about, that didn't concern us longshoremen very much. And, oh yes, a saying, that if you were to get Iippy with some ready character and "let your mouth overload your ass," you could get decked. Back to work. A load on a single line lowering into the hold is going to spin. The farther it travels downward, the more spin generated. Deep in the lower hold that spinning 1,500 pounds could be intimidating. Well, you were supposed not to be intimidated. Get out there, meet that load, and overcome the spin with your two hands. But now and again you'd call on the winchman to "kill" the load by touching it down to the surface very gently. And I learned that that surface we stood on, the bottom of the hold, was the "skin." The sides of the hold were the wings. Bulkheads divided one hold or compartment from another. Where wing met bulkhead was "the long corner." That nomenclature wasn't hard to figure out. When a load was lowering away it was "coming back." Once we had the load steadied, the three of us would get our hands on it as handily as possible, give it a backswing for momentum, then push like hell in the direction of our stowage, "the work." When your swing was as close to the work as you thought you'd ever get, the leader of the set would yell, "Come back!" And the winchman would drop the load. We'd unhook the sling from the cargo hook. One would hang an empty sling from the previous load onto the cargo hook, give the whole business a proper swing as the winchman hoisted away, "picked up," so that the foreman standing on the deck stage above could catch it and carry out the maneuver that got the hook and sling to the dock where another load was waiting. Another expression learned: the guy who led the work on his side in the hold was said to "grease the work." I had formerly heard the word "greaser" applied to Mexican or Latin American people in a deprecatory sense. Well, the "greaser" in this shipboard cargo handling was the guy who said how it would be done. The three of us worked that job from start to finish, thanks in large measure to the willingness of my two partners to share with

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me what they had learned from previous experience. I was lucky to have them in my breaking-in. If you have a spot of luck, I think you're a crumb if you don't say so. Anyway, I had a fair idea of what you were supposed to do to stow a bar of lead by the time the job was finished. Another aspect of stevedoring had begun to percolate consciousness to a tiny degree on that first loading job. That was, those representing the employer's interest didn't ever like to "listen" to a silent winch. They wanted to hear the blamed thing running, either delivering a load of cargo or traveling to pick one up. That percolation would progress with potent impact in a short space of time. "The man" wanted you out there to meet that hook and to be quick in detaching a load from it or hooking one onto it. The consequence was-and it took less than forever for that to percolate, too-you learned to work fast to "beat the hook," to stow your load or to make up a load as the case might be, so that you gained a little "spot," a "blow," a chance to catch your breath and relax muscles a moment before you had to tie into that next load. The time would come when things would go awkwardly for your set, your side, for a spell and there would be a load waiting by the time that you had finished one. The lesson learned from that was: without that "blow" the job was a killer. There was a popular saying among the less refined elements familiar with longshore work: "You can spot a damned longshoreman every time. His ass is always lookin' for a place to set itself down." As with most homespun witticisms, the description had a basis in fact. If you could plunk your butt down on something between loads and relax, if only for a matter of seconds, the job was much less punishing. In the copper mines the idea was to set a rather steady pace and keep moving at that pace for the duration of the shift. So a new tempo to fit this new occupation had to be learned. Moreover, in most jobs in the mine you worked by yourself most of the time. Here it was always a gang effort. You had to learn to function as a member of a team. In the mine you'd see the shift boss twice in a work day usually. Here the gang boss was always right there. And the walking foreman in charge of work over the ship was always right there, too-it would seem. It seemed to me also that somebody was always shouting at us: gang boss, walking boss; even the ship's mates would get into the act. We discouraged that latter practice and toned down some of the former in time to come. It summed up that there were pronounced differences in ways of work to be learned that would take some getting used to, some of it confusing, but all of it interesting. Anyway, I was committed to

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learning enough, by George, to make them a good hand and to be adopted by these dockwallopers. Bring on that next load! The Port of Corpus Christi was beginning to hum with activity. You could feel a certain anticipation in the air. The cotton season was coming on. Bales of the early crop from the Lower Rio Grande Valley, eagerly sought by foreign buyers, were passing into dockside warehouses, ready for shipboard. Soon, cotton picked in adjacent fields was being trucked to the gins. Ginned bales were arriving by truck and rail at the compresses, there to be pressed into "square" bales for overseas shipment. Soon, the presses were working overtime. When a standpipe protruding above the roof where a press was housed belched forth a puff of white steam it meant another bale ready for shipment. Some wag would say, "There's another twenty cents for the hungry longshoremen." Twenty cents was the straighttime piecework rate paid for stowing the "white stuff." The twenty cents was split evenly among a gang of fifteen men. While it was generally in the province of the employer to order a gang of so many men for any particular job, a cotton gang was by tradition composed of fifteen men, and remains so as this is written, in the year 1987. Ships were entering the harbor, and regular longshoremen from Galveston, Houston, and Texas City were arriving to participate in the rush season. They would work in Corpus Christi for a month or so, by which time cotton shipping would have picked up in their port; then they'd return to the home port. Later, as the season petered out in Corpus Christi, some of the Corpus Christians would "invade" the other ports. After that first lead job there was seldom a day, aside from Sundays, that I failed to catch a job for at least part of a day-until the end of the busy season. The six-day week prevailed, Saturday work at straight time. Sundays paid double time (reduced later to time and a half). The hiring methods of these longshoremen brought on further extension of general education and vocabulary. Where I had been, you went and "rustled" a job: you presented yourself to an owner or agent and asked to be put to work. In this ILA hiring hall milieu you simply entered the hiring area (open to the public) and stood or sat around. At the specified hiring time each gang foreman whose name was "on the board" (ordered for a job) would pull out his book, generally a notebook from a hip pocket, and begin to hire his gang. Then he asked you if you wanted to work, when you could answer yes or no as you chose. To ask the foreman for a job was a faux pas. Each day was a new day. The fact that you had worked on a job the day before did not mean that it would be yours again today, unless

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you were a regular member of that gang-and we'll come to that. By the same token, you could turn down the job you had yesterday and hire to another foreman if you wished-again, unless you were a regular in that gang. There was, however, a sort of unwritten rule that "outsiders," new hands such as I was, should go back today with the gang they worked in yesterday, if the job was open today. A gang foreman was called a "toter" and the working member in the gang was a "flatter." ILA members were "button men." We have already mentioned outsiders. When a toter's gang was not on the board, ordered out, he could hire as a flatter to any gang with an opening. Gang foremen were selected by an arrangement between the union and the local stevedoring companies. Button men were assigned to regular gangs, each foreman carrying six or seven men as a rule. It was both the gang member's privilege and duty to go with his gang when the gang was ordered for work. There were "swapout" arrangements entered into from time to time where the foreman hiring would give first offer of a job to a member of the swap-out gang after he had his own regulars on his book. The member of the swap-out was not obligated to accept that job offer. He could shop for a better one if he chose. After local button men had been hired, next in line for job offers were visiting button men, ILA members belonging to locals in other ports. Then, members of other trade unions, a rule not always adhered to. After which, the lowly outsider would take the leavings. The outsider had no established rights. A permit system designed to give hiring preference to outsiders who had worked at the trade for some period of time was tried on occasion but withered away from inertia of union members-a minor setback for unionism, in my opinion. Among the non-rights of the outsider, he could be "bumped" by a button man at suppertime if the gang he was in was to continue working into night hours-those hours paying overtime, higher pay. This practice was discontinued later, but not until several years later. The most significant aspect that struck me then and stays with me now was the privilege (maybe not a good word) to decide not to work. As before stated, each day was a brand new day. Except for the regular gang member obligated to go with his gang, any other hand could "sweat" (hope to be offered) a more attractive job. Even the regular gang member could turn down the job his foreman had, but was prohibited from working in any other gang that day, so had to lay off. And if you decided that you didn't want to work on any given day, you solved that by simply not showing up at the hiring

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hall. You were not penalized in any way for such absence, except you didn't make any money. Back in the mines the company attitude toward laying off was quite lenient, I had thought. You could call in a half-hour or more before starting time, and your absence would be excused. This freedom not to report in any fashion at all was unheard ofl It was a kind of worker independence I'd not dreamed of before: Work when you pleased. (If the work happened to be there.) Then again, so much freedom could tend to make a bum of a man. I've asked myself that question: "Did it make a bum of you?" Never got a clear answer back. Worthy of note: Old Mother Needmore was often present to nudge a fellow toward the hiring hall. That busy season of 1929 was a record one for Corpus Christi in at least one respect. Ships literally piled into the turning basin until they reached an all-time high of eighteen within that confined body of water before their number began to decrease. This meant that nine or ten ships had to lie at anchor, not moored to any dock. Skippers of all those vessels must have had recurrent nightmares about the danger of collisions as ships maneuvered in the reduced turnaround space. Riding out a nightmarish experience too were the ILA business agents. Employers were requesting more gangs than the locals could possibly furnish. The business agent walked a tightrope in his efforts to supply the largest possible portion of those gangs without showing favoritism to any company, at the same time trying every whichaway to get ships finished, turned around, and out of the harbor so that waiting ships could come dockside and be worked. An apology here for not having noted earlier that there were two longshoremen's locals in the port-both ILA, to be sure-one composed of white men and the other of black men. The white local was ILA Local No. 1224 and the black was 1225. "White and colored" was the expression used to describe them. The work was done by solid gangs of white and black. Each local had its own hiring place and conducted its own business. There was an arrangement where the one local would work the forward hatches of one ship, then the aft (or "after") hatches of the next, and so on. The usual freighter of the day was a five-hatch vessel with three hatches forward of the smokestack. If a ship having four or six hatches was to be worked, the hatches were split two and two or three and three. The two locals would hold a joint meeting now and then, but there was never any arrangement for scheduled meetings of both memberships. This segregation lasted until the year 1983, when a federal court decreed that black and white locals having the same work jurisdiction in the same port should merge into one local union.

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The pervasive ambition was to learn to work cotton. The first cotton job finally came. A cotton gang was ordered for a 1 PM start. There weren't enough button men around the hall at the time to fill the gang. The man was going to have to take some outsiders. Well, my friend and sponsor, Jack Todd, was going in the gang, and he greased me on. That word "grease" again. It was used in that sense also. A man hired by a toter might ask the toter to hire a fellow to be his working partner. That was legitimate; but you never asked for a job for yourself. And the one who got his job that way would say, "Jack greased me on the book." To the ship and into the hold. The ship had already been working. We were loading cotton on top of cotton. Cotton stowage, without dwelling on the intricacies of how you fit your work into various rooms and spaces and so on, was mostly an exercise in stowing bales on their sides, called "flooring off." You made sure that they lay tight to one another, sides and ends. As you would come close to the top of any compartment you would head or pile cotton to fill the space against the deck above you. This day we were flooring off in a lower hold. Four men, a "set," worked on either side. Leading our side, greasing the work, was one Grant McGowen. And that deserves a line or two. The McGowens were by way of being a waterfront legend in their lifetimes, with two generations accounting for themselves at that time (and another since). They were powerful men, agile and skillful, admired and not messed with, if you get what I mean-and especially, Grant. Jack Todd was his rolling partner. John Morgan rolled the second bale. My job was to send out the sling so that the next load could be "wrapped up" and sent in. Then I rolled the third bale to the work. The cotton was pulled over stages, the same stages used for lead, single whip, three bales to the load. I've already told about the lead job, that the sling and cargo hook had to be swung in such a manner that the gangwayman on deck could catch it and carry it shipside and on to the sling-up man on the wharf. I was soon doing a fair job of that. For one thing, any time you failed to give that outgoing hook a proper swing you found yourself roundly cussed, a great encouragement to do it right. So Grant and Jack would hang their hooks in the front bale, roll it to the work and have it properly stowed, almost always by the time John arrived with his. Those three would stow that bale, then there would be all four of us on my third bale, and that was the resting place of a load of cotton. The pace was fast, but every now and then the experienced hands would take a few seconds to teach me how it should be done.

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Speak of that matter of luck again. John Morgan was the local president. He was not an "old-time" longshoreman, but was an oldtime union man with years in the stagehands' union. Well, old Grant, widely heralded for his toughness and roughness, took pity on my greenness and a liking to me at the same time that lasted through his lifetime. Jack was already prejudiced in my favor, of course. John Morgan decided that I was going to make a hand. So, from right there I had the recommendation of three "heavyweights." Who says that luck doesn't play a part? So, how lucky can you get? Various ports had their various cargo specialties. In our area it was cotton. In the Pacific Northwest, lumber. They stowed it beautifully! Ports like Philadelphia and Baltimore were specialists in handling pipe, steel, and heavy machinery. Again, the cotton handling added to education and vocabulary. The only tool required was a cotton hook. Add to that, though not actually a tool, a "handleather" to protect the back of the hand from buckles, rivets, and the sometimes exposed ends of the metal bands that held the bales to the size to which they'd been pressed. Those exposed ends were called "spiders" in the trade. Each cotton press was supposed to have a man, a "spider killer," to look for and hammer those ends back under the bands where they wouldn't "bite" you; but now and again one would be missed. They could inflict nasty cuts. The square bale measured a rough two by two by five feet. It had two "hard" sides and two "soft" sides. On the hard sides the cotton was exposed. The soft sides and ends were covered by bagging. That's where your hook would help you with handling the bale, in the bagging. The hook wouldn't "hold" in that cotton at all. The soft side of the bale was the "cant." Often the hard side was called the "white side." The square bale was not exactly square. The two hard sides bore a resemblance to flatness, all right. The soft sides would round out just slightly. A bale laid on the white side measured a fraction higher than when laid on the cant. Approved stowage, with only rare exceptions, called for stowing the bale on its white or hard side. The cotton hook had a shape all its own, differing from the more familiar box hook or hay hook. It was used backhanded. At first, that way of holding the hook would seem awkward, but it took only the briefest acquaintance with the problem for you to see the wisdom of using the hook as prescribed. Much more power could be applied that way, not to mention skill. You learned what was meant by expressions such as "cut," "come under," "set you," "set me," "pull for me," all having to do with aiming the bale toward the work in handiest fashion. "Home on the roll"

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or "on your knees" had to do with putting your bale snug against the bales already stowed: tight to the work. When you kneed a bale home you set your knees hard against it, hung your hook in the side opposite your knees, and heaved upward as both hook and knees moved in unison to direct the bale to where it ought to be. And you had better have those knees tight against that bale, pardner, because, if you didn't, and that bale slipped against those knees, you'd think they'd been singed with a blow torch! And you learned about the "lay" of the bale-and the "lip." Since cotton was worked piecework, there was an expression, "You're on your own time." It was the practice to take a short break at mid-morning and mid-afternoon and corresponding times at night. Smokers would have a smoke. A coffee bottle might be passed around. Then four men from one side of the hold would go to the wharf as four who had been on the dock would come aboard to replace them in the hold. This was called "quartering." The work break was often called "quartering time" or "smoking time." It didn't take long to find out that the basic secret in handling cotton was to keep your bale moving until it was stowed. Keep it "live," because starting and restarting a motionless bale was a drain on strength and energy. There was a saying: "live bale, live men; dead bale, dead men." The idea was to learn the moves and make 'em, keeping that bale alive and moving into its proper place, and look to the day when you could hear an old hand say of you, "He's a cotton cutter." "I'll cut that cotton titty-high today," the old hand would declare on a morning when he was feeling especially good. One more expression and we'll rest it for a while: When a man performed awkwardly in a gang it was called "muling." That made me think back to the mining experience. During that career I had spent a short time as a muleskinner. No visions of twenty-mule teams, now! Just a lone skinner and a lone mule pulling short strings of cars, loaded or empty, from and to working places underground. In that situation the main quality the skinner should have was sense enough to recognize that the mule was the more intelligent member of the partnership. I remember those times and marvel yet at the way that mule handled the problems encountered, such as shoving cars over switches into working places-and how he would cope with the slight upgrades and downgrades encountered on the main track. He was a hard-working, willing, intelligent animal. That word "muling'' -what a travesty toward my old mine mule! That first crack at a cotton job had come in early August-a whole

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half-day's experience. I didn't get to go back with that gang the next day. Button men filled the gang. Still, it had been a beginning. I felt good about it. From then on chances to work cotton came every now and then, sometimes with experienced hands as in that first start, sometimes alongside men almost as green as I was, when we'd sweat and grunt and mule the awkward way and not accomplish much, and wonder how in the world those proven cottonjammers ever got to where they could do it so well and make it look so easy. And I learned that those longshoremen in the cotton ports had an impeccably descriptive name that covered every type of cargo other than cotton: when you weren't working cotton you were in "deadweight." So, at that particular time, if there wasn't a job in cotton to be had, there was usually a job in deadweight waiting. We new hands learned that there were three morning starting times, two afternoon, and one night starting time, and learned that hiring was done a half-hour before the starting time. Work done after five in the evening and before eight in the morning was paid for at the overtime rate, time-and-one-half the straight-time rate. The earliest morning starting time was seven. Starting then, you were paid the overtime rate until eight o'clock, then went on straight time. There were provisions for unusual occurrences, such as being required to work through a meal hour (double-time pay until relieved), penalty pay-we called it "differential"-for handling certain dangerous or "obnoxious" commodities, and so on. The main thing we hoped to be learning was how to accomplish the work effectively. And August rolled into September. The labor contract between the ILA (our small four-port Texas portion of the International Longshoremen's Association, to be precise) and the Master Stevedores Association of Texas expired on September 30. The ILA's North Atlantic District contract expired at the same time; but the districts negotiated and signed contracts separately. It would take painstaking digging to uncover any practical coordination between the two. Reminding, the year was 1929 and our district was Galveston, Texas City, Houston, and Corpus Christi. The contract was negotiated annually. We didn't get into the multiyear contracts until after World War II, as my memory goes. The prevailing contract was renewed through September 1930 with only one change that I remember: the "limit" on a "day" in cotton was removed. Under the expiring contract a "day" in cotton was 801 bales handstowed, paid for at the straight-time rate of twenty cents per bale. If the gang finished 801 bales before five o'clock, the employer must

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pay overtime from then on to keep the gang working. Under the upcoming contract the rate would remain at twenty cents until five o'clock regardless of the number of bales stowed. We outsiders were not made privy to the ins and outs of negotiations and contracts. We were informed informally of what the next condition would be. Jack Eden was another young man breaking into the trade. Jack had knocked around a bit on jobs that included some piecework experience. I had had an acquaintance with a "bonus" system in the mines. We had become friends, on the chummy side. Jack said to me, "Gilbert, if we stay here and live to be a hundred, we've seen the biggest cut we'll ever live to see." How true. Before the high-density press came into use, the men who loaded cotton aboard ship were called "screwmen." I would hope that someone has described in detail how that work was done. A row of bales, more often called a "tier," was laid from either side (wing) of the vessel, to meet at midship. At a certain point before that meeting, the screws, a type of jackscrew, were set. The cotton was screwed back, making an opening for more bales than would have fit before the screws were used. How they filled this gap, "keyed" the bales that were to fill it, released the pressure on the screws and retrieved them without that pressure in turn kicking those midship bales out of place, how they forced those bales down into the tier, is the secret that made the cotton screwmen true aristocrats of labor. It required great strength and a high degree of skill. I never saw the work done, have only viewed the tools from a respectful distance. The names of the tools are slipping from memory now. The practice of a set number of bales constituting a day's work had come from the days when the "screws" were used in cotton stowage. It carried over to the later "pitchfork" method of hand-stowed cotton. It passed into history October 1, 1929. As the cottonjammers had become more adept they had made the "day" in shorter and shorter time. To have made a day by mid-afternoon or earlier in any but the hardest of working places was not unusual for an experienced gang. If the employer chose to let the gang knock off at that point, the men were prone to walk down the wharf bragging about "bankers' hours." Perhaps the American worker has a fascination with speed, abetted in the case of the cotton gangs by the urge of young muscular brutes to show off what they can do, to outdo the other guy. Then there's the lure of money in the hand, the "fast buck." Whatever the dominant or underlying causes, speed came to prevail, with the accompanying inclination to shave or bypass some safety and some just plain common-sense work practices, including occasional slight-

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ing of good stowage, leaving the work a little bit "looser" than genuine pride in workmanship would have dictated. An old hand, "Warhorse" Barton, who had worked many days with the screws, told me that it had affected the screwmen too. "For the sake of speed we got to where we were only tightening the work a little, not really putting the screws to it the way we ought to. Everybody wanted to make money fast." The button men ratified the new contract, but not without misgivings and some noisy complaining, by my observation, and not by any heavy majority. The sales pitch, as told to me by one of them, went: "The ships are not going to pay overtime after 801 bales. So you make ten dollars and change, and you have to go home. Take the limit off, you can make another five bucks or so the same day. That's what we're here for, to make money, isn't it? Then get out and reach for it. And them as can really reach and get it can make themselves some good money." So get out and reach for it-and reach and get it-they did. We did. Was there an attendant increase in the accident rate? I'm not a statistician; I don't have any statistics at hand. But take my word. The answer is "Yes." The all-time record that comes to mind was rung up by a gang in Galveston several years later. In their haste to get into a lower hold and begin bringing that cotton in, the men left a beam and a section of hatchboards in place in the 'tween deck, when prudent safety practice called for removal. Plainly put, they failed to make as much entering-exiting space for the loads and the hook as they should have. Through whatever mistake by whomever, later in the day the cargo hook on its way out of the hold hooked the beam, tearing loose whatever restraints there may have been to hold it in place. The beam and hatchboards rained down into the hold, injuring six of the eight men working there. It's a phenomenon of working class history, I think, how the American worker has so willingly swapped favorable working conditions for money. I think that workers in other nations have not been quite so money-struck. Our workers have been prone to take the money, let the condition pass. The profit takers call it "incentive." What about economics? The statement that the ships wouldn't pay overtime after 801 bales was persuasive but not necessarily true. The decision to work overtime was made by the ship owner or agent and paid for by the ship. The number of bales on which ships would have paid the overtime rate of thirty cents, had the limit stayed in effect, is wholly a matter of conjecture. Whatever that number, it would represent ten cents for each bale that would have gone from the wage earner's pocket into the port

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city's general economy in the main, but didn't, because the local longshoremen had loaded the bale for twenty cents instead of thirty. You wouldn't expect the capitalist types who benefited from the wage cut to journey to a Gulf seaport community to spend those dimes on a winter wardrobe, would you? Presumably, the seaport community's economy never saw that dime. The "limitless" day could also have another effect, to lessen the number of hands employed. Figuring that one gang was producing a day and a half, then two gangs would do what three would have done under the limit; so the employer could leave (a gang of) fifteen men unemployed. Thirty men, two gangs, chalked up "big money" while fifteen men left on the hill chalked up a big zero. But the Big Money turn of mind prevailed. The extra five bucks wiped the fifteen unemployed guys from the employed guy's mind. Our minds were on getting one load out of the way fast and getting to the next, to the "money hangin' on that string." A way back in time, if the screwmen and then the later jammers could have thought a distance into the future, perhaps the decision would have been to set a slower pace, to have taken until four in the afternoon or later to make the day-even when knowing that the work would go into overtime. Perhaps it would have been wise to decide that "money isn't everything." More important than the fast money: minimizing the chances for accidents, lengthening the man's working career in that commodity, and doing the work in a manner that he could speak of with pride. Besides the spectacular accidents where loose beams, boards, or bales rained down into holds, there were more minor accidents than need to have happened, strains and sprains brought on by trying for speed and still more speed in headlong fashion. As the cotton cutter grew older he found his career analogous to the professional athlete's. The skills were still there, but a fraction of a second lost in the execution was noticed; plus, the level of endurance required to meet the pace was ebbing, not rising. The pains from the strains and sprains came on more acute to start with and lasted longer. He finally had to give up and give way to a younger man learning the skills and enduring the pace. At the 801 bales in eight hours pace a man could have worked cotton into his sixties, doing work he could be proud of. But the cry was for speed and fast money. Pride in workmanship became secondary-or was lost. At the first October meeting Jack Eden and I were among a group of ten admitted to membership in Local 1224. Proud moment! Aside from the pride that I'm sure all of us felt, it meant for each a vast improvement in hiring conditions. We now became regular mem-

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hers of regular gangs and enjoyed all the hiring privileges accorded union membership. From peasant to aristocrat overnight! In those days almost all the craft unions held to a rule that once you had been admitted into the union you remained a member with full privileges as long as you paid your dues on time. You could leave the trade for an indefinite period and return at will if a job opening was there. Some required an absentee to take out a withdrawal card which could be reinstated, most usually, at the holder's option; or there might be a required annual payment to keep the card alive. Each national or international union had its own autonomy and its own rules for continuation of membership. Most followed a similarity to what has been described. It was the exception to require so many hours per year on the job to keep union membership alive. There have been many changes since then. We'll touch on some of them farther down the line. The admission of a handful of new members into Local1224 ofthe International Longshoremen's Association was no epochal event, but another happening that same month was: On October 24 came the stock market crash that, historians tell us, triggered the Great Depression. It was in the news and on the tips of people's tongues. We talked about it, but it didn't really ring any loud bell among our waterfront group. After all, cotton was still king. The harbor was still alive with ships waiting to load their cotton cargoes. We were getting all the work we could stand up to. Besides, none of us had any investment in the dang stock market. So-let the good times roll! In my naivete I had assumed that anywhere that the men on a job were together in a union the employer would be almost automatically bound to take direction from the union. Here I was in a union situation, but it was hardly like that. The sad fact was that some things were better back in the non-union mines. There hadn't been the constant shouting and driving, for one thing. It was confusing. In that period, the autumn of 1929, such considerations were not heavy on my thinking, hardly more than the stock market crash, although little nagging misgivings about both would enter the mind now and then. So we went on rolling cotton or moving whatever cargo came our way until, on a day in late November the SS Scottsboro departed and left the harbor empty of any ship for the first time since July. I happened to be in the gang that was last to finish and leave the ship. We had loaded cotton over a cargo of steel rails laid in her bottom. My rolling partner and the leader of our set was Gussie Thomas, a Houstonian, and one of the cleverest cotton handlers I ever worked with, let me say. Gus was addicted to alcohol and dope. What a trag-

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edy! No way to go but downhill. Still, as late as 1947 I made a couple of days in cotton with Gussie in Houston. By then he had literally "drunk himself out of' the union, was just another outsider catching a job when there was extra work. The man looked frail. God only knows what reserves of former strength he called on, but call on them, he did, and we made two big days. Information which I consider to be correct says that Gussie Thomas died a prison inmate behind the walls of one of the Texas Department of Corrections units at Huntsville. "There, but for the grace of God ... "The rational thing, I guess, is to dismiss him with "He had his choices." But I have to think that compassionate people feel a moment of mourning for the Gussie Thomases of our world. If a truly probing diagnosis were made, what circumstances would be exposed, do you reckon? That November day I watched the Scottsboro sail out through the opened drawbridge, feeling a certain sense of accomplishment tempered by a twinge of let-down. There was a restless feeling beginning to pester that somehow translated into an itch to see Bisbee and copper country again. So, short days later I wrote a letter back to the old home town. And the reply that I received said that they were laying men off from the mines, not hiring. Don't come to Bisbee looking for a job. That put the Corpus Christi arena in a distinctly favorable light that would become more so as the effects of the Depression became manifest. John Morgan, the president ofiLA Local1224, was a dedicated believer that union members should attend union meetings. Meetings were held twice a month. Three or four days prior to meeting night John would begin to give vocal reminders to every member he'd see. On meeting day, if ships were working, he'd take time away from the one he was on and board the other ships and holler down into every hold where our members were, that "tonight is meeting night." The employers never contested his privilege to do this. If night work were to come on a meeting night he'd announce that a postponed meeting would be held at first opportunity. Later we would arrange with the black local, Local 1225, to fill our work orders on our meeting nights, and vice versa. John believed in membership participation. He had his opinions, but he'd not stoop to finagling past the membership to see them prevail. If he believed in his mind that you were opposed to some proposition that he favored, and that yours could be the deciding vote, he'd still give you a lift to the meeting. He was, unfortunately, an alcoholic, the kind who goes three weeks or three months without taking a drink, then hits the bottle

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all the way to oblivion. During those drunks he would tum contentious, sometimes mean-tragic in its way, because he was basically a good man, understanding and fair. His bouts with the booze rendered him useless while they lasted and served to shoot down a lot of influence he could have wielded otherwise. He got off the booze later in life, lived to be eighty years plus. He was about forty when he swore our group into membership. J. E. Mitchell was our secretary, a long-time member of Galveston Local 307 before moving to Corpus Christi. He performed the secretarial duties meticulously and had the respect of all the members. J. K. Marshall was the business agent and financial secretary. An older man, he was almost always called "Mr. Marshall." He was the only full-time local officer. The business agent was also called "walking delegate." In earlier days the walking delegate walked the docks, observing the work, making contact with employee and employer, communicating. Sometimes I catch myself feeling that regression to earlier times might be for the better. With today's easy means of communication, too many union officers are busy widening their buttocks on the comfortable seats of office chairs, communicating by telephone, seeing conditions on the docks only by invitation. When our group was taken into membership in October the local numbered under ninety, no big number. In order to pay the one officer the local collected a "percentage" of five cents on each dollar earned from every man, except: union members didn't pay percentage on coastwise earnings, but outsiders did. The poor, tormented outsider! After a couple of years our collective conscience smote us so that we went to collecting from all alike. The Boyd-Campbell Company was the only local stevedoring company at the time. The firm handled close to all of the port's work the year around. During the busy season Houston and Galveston firms would do a share of the work, and occasionally in the off season, usually sending in supervision and the gear necessary for the job. Sometimes they would employ a local member as walking foreman. It was after World War II that the locals in the several ports adopted a rule that the walking foreman must always be a member of the local having job jurisdiction. In fact, in 1929 the walking foreman did not have to be a union member at all, but he had to be white. Captain Goudge, of E. Goudge and Sons Company, headed the master stevedores' bargaining committee for several years in that period. He had a military bearing. He'd sit ramrod straight at the head of the table, an impressive figure. He was a hard bargainer. But a bargain made was a bargain to be kept. Contract bargaining has long since been taken out of the hands of the stevedores' associa-

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tion by the steamship operators. Neither the posture of the bargaining nor the compliance with its results are as ramrod straight as in the days of Captain Goudge. A serious charge, I know, but candid. The Boyd-Campbell Company was headed by Tom Boyd and Steele Campbell. Talk had it that Boyd supplied the stevedoring knowhow and Campbell the financing. Boyd was an aggressive type. He was a man impatient to get things done, and done his way. When at shipside or on board he was as quick as one of the bosses to shout at longshoremen to "get moving." Down the road a piece we established that company executives should no longer do that, aggressive or not. Steele Campbell was self-contained, soft-spoken, urbane. He handled controversy with circumspection and cajolery, whereas Boyd met it head-on. Campbell rarely visited the docks. Tom Boyd showed up quite often. The firm employed three walking foremen full time. When shipping was slack they worked at making and maintaining the company's stevedoring gear. Simon Borison was the head walking foreman. He was Russian-born, the story went, brought to the United States in childhood. He had worked many years on the New Orleans docks. The second of the three, Joe Gude, came from Spain, Barcelona, where he had been both stevedore and seaman. The third member of the trio was Arthur Wilson, a young man out of Houston. Si and Joe were both older. Si will hold center stage in what's to follow, since he pretty much set the pattern of job conditions as head walking boss. Si was the embodiment of the storybook rough, tough, overpowering, driving, get-the-job-done overseer. He was a big man-no giant, but big-solidly structured, all muscle and sinew. His features were squared-away, if that gives you a picture, and showed the marks of old bruises and scars collected in goodness only knows what violent encounters. He had enormous strength and the will to use it, and expected others to follow suit. When old Si grabbed ahold and heaved, something moved. How to say this? The advent of the iron-constructed, steampropelled ship had spelled the end of the wooden sailing vessel, but the latter stayed around to carry a share of the world's goods over the oceans for more than half a century before disappearing, about the days of World War I. So, at the time we're talking about, entering the 1930s, there were still a fair number of seamen around who had sailed the wooden vessels, and longshoremen who had loaded them. I well remember one veteran of years on the high seas. He took a healthy swig of his beer, set his features in a fitting scowl, and declared to those within hearing:

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"We usedta have wooden ships and iron men. Now we got iron ships and woodenheaded men." The saying was probably an oftrepeated cliche at that quoting, but, no matter how many times I heard it after, it always carried a message. It was still in the memory of some around, coming awake to the roll and pitch of a ship's fo'c'sle with a splitting headache, sicker than a dog, awareness dawning in a hurry that some crimp had slipped a knockout drop into his drink. He'd been shanghaied. He was automatically "signed on" for whatever voyage lay ahead. He hit the deck and turned to, sick as he was, under the merciless eye of the legendary bucko mate, the meanest, toughest man aboard, who enforced his orders with a belaying pin. The old ways overlap from one era into the next before subsiding. Entering the twentieth century's fourth decade we were close to being fully emerged from those days when ways were rough and the toughest survived. To my mind, Simon Borison personified a lingering on of the rough times. Two men were pulling an empty four-wheel, flat-bed truck toward shipside across a wharf where there were double railroad tracks. At one point a switch from one track to the other had been laid. There were then sufficient gaps in the dock's surfacing to accommodate the switch's functioning. Instead of crossing the tracks where they should have, the two had carelessly followed the line of the rail. A rear wheel had slipped off the rail at switchpoint and wedged itself in the frog of the switch. They were making ineffective efforts at freeing it when Si came on the scene. He eyed the spectacle, hands on hips, for just five seconds. Then he stepped between the two, disposed of both with a backhanded shove to left and right, grabbed the bed of the truck over the stuck wheel, gave out a mighty grunt from deep down, heaved upward, and out she came. "Too goddamn blind to see where you're goin' ," Si roared. "Too goddamn weak to get there. Holy Christ! They expect me to get ships loaded, and they send me labor that can't pull their shoelaces tight! You two let that happen again-don't bother. Just start walkin' to hell off the dock. You hear?'' They heard. So did all the rest of us in the area. Si could have been classed a functional illiterate, perhaps, although I can't remember ever hearing that expression back then. But he was anything but deficient in his knowledge of stevedoring. He had a retentive memory to marvel at. A ship worked three or four years before and not seen since, he would tell you her general structure, characteristics, and capacities, and what she had loaded. The only trait of Si's that turned me away was that he had no sym-

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pathy for a weaker man. I grew up being a fool about tales of the John Henrys and Paul Bunyans. And I remembered from the copper camp days such monikers as "Steamshovel Red" and "Copperwater Slim," characters who out-produced any conceivable human capacity. I admired Si's obvious physical abilities, greatly, but not his coldness toward people with lesser strength. While it could be said in Si's defense that there really was no place for a physical weakling on the docks, I felt that he carried it too far. In December local union officers were elected to serve through 1930. The president, secretary, and business agent were all reelected. It was time to pay your poll tax so that you'd qualify as a voting citizen the coming year. Laggards had until a January 31 deadline to pay the tax. Mr. Marshall dabbled extensively in city and county politics. He was insistent that all of us local members should pay our poll tax. Back in Arizona they had people who came around and registered eligible voters, I happened to know, and it didn't cost the voter anything. To charge a citizen for the privilege of voting seemed wrong. I wasn't going to pay the tax. There was one other stubborn young fellow. Well, I've already said that Mr. Marshall was insistent. He was also persuasive. So, on the last day that the law allowed, I think it was, we broke down and bought our poll tax receipts and became voting citizens of the state of Texas. I distinctly remember that we were in a line of other late payers, mostly of Mexican descent. Quite truthfully, it could be said that the "voting competency test" in South Texas in those days was more did you have the price of a poll tax-and a competent interpreter, if needed-than did you understand the English language. There were certain advantages in paying one's poll tax, and in voting, aside from trying to elect good officeholders. When you went to the polls in any election you presented your poll tax receipt. An election clerk stamped the back of the receipt to show that you had voted in that election. Texas law enforcement officers in those days operated on the rough side, had done so for some time in the past, and would for a while into the future. As a matter of course, when an officer gloms onto you for any reason, the officer will want to see what you're carrying in the way of identification. If you were a resident ofTexas and you weren't carrying a poll tax receipt you could get yourself bruised, take my word. If you were carrying an unstamped receipt (after an election), indicating that you neglected to vote when you could have, well, if somebody decided to bruise you, he probably wouldn't bruise so deep. If you were carrying a receipt stamped to

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show that you had voted in all elections, it was close to a guarantee that you wouldn't be manhandled. As winter wore on, the significance of the description of a longshoreman's life as one of"feast and famine" began to sink in. During the cotton season there had been more work than anybody really wanted. Since then the harbor had occasionally been empty of any ship for as long as a week at a time. When cotton was rolling, everybody had a pocketful of spending money. Now the pockets were empty. You could say that it should have left the men with a lot of time for self-improvement. Yes, you could say that. I would reckon that our score in that area was less than excellent, however. Back in Bisbee I had heard, mostly from ex-Texans, about the need to "keep the nigger in his place," especially in Texas and the South where there were lots of black people. From time to time there'd be a terrible tale of what those people would do ifleft uncontrolled. It followed that white men in the southern states had devised the best ways to deal with them, ways best for the whites and for blacks too. It might seem that some of the measures taken were more stringent than called for. But you don't go challenging the experts when you have no knowledge of the subject. I knew that the word "nigger" was degrading and insulting-we'd been so taught in school-and wondered some about the white man's prerogative to use it, but it was never a big thing. So I had come to Texas with every intention of behaving the way that a white man was expected to behave. That "keeping" anybody "in his place" was by implication contrary to fair social concepts wasn't bothering me. I never witnessed any instance of Corpus Christi white people abusing any Negro just to see him or her suffer. (It could have happened.) There was abuse of a subtler kind, however. A black person could spend money at a service station but couldn't use its rest rooms, for example. Then an incident happened that made me promise myself that, ifl never had the nerve to help colored people up, I'd not be a party to pushing them down. It came during that breaking-in period oflongshoring. The cotton season was reaching full swing, more jobs than men to fill them. Quite often, the experienced men in a gang would leave the greener hands to truck cotton on the wharf all day, skipping the usual quartering from dock to hold. This particular morning the older hands had so decreed. I was trucking on the dock. We'd hardly started when a hold man got hurt and had to leave the job. Every last available man at the hall had been hired. There were no replacements. A man from the wharf was sent into the hold and-lo and behold!-came up a casualty within minutes. No one else could

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be spared from the wharf, so one side in the hold had to continue with three men. That was not extremely unusual. The catch this day was that the gang was "piling out." The expression "blocking out" means that you have brought whatever cargo you are working to such height that you can reach the deck overhead and you are now stowing the commodity that you are working just as tight as it will go under that deck. Cotton either headed out or piled out. With slightly over five feet of headroom you "headed out," stood the bales on end. Given something over six feet, you "piled three." You rolled in a floor bale, piled a bale on top of it, then muscled a third bale on top of the second. That was "piling out." With four men it was a job of work. Three men? Well, onerous. At the ten o'clock quartering break the gang foreman crooked his finger at me and said, "You go in the hold on the short side. See if you can make it to noon. They're killin' this man here." "They're killin' this man here!" Great encouragement, what? The man they were "killin"' was Clarence Vandever. We later hatched together for quite a spell. And Clarence served as the local's business agent over a broad span of years later on. As of that morning we were merely new acquaintances, outsiders breaking in. He warned me how rough it was going to be. He'd been through the worst of it. They had blocked out the long corner. The more you get done, the closer you are to the work, the shorter the roll. Normally the two front bale men would roll their bale into place, they and the second bale man would pile the second bale, "pile two"; then all four men would pile the top bale, "pile three." Also, in a seasoned gang forced to work short-handed, one man would send out the sling for both sides and roll the third bale clear of the hatchway toward the work. But this gang this morning was having problems on its "strong" side as well as its three-man weak side. It was up to yours truly to clear two bales off the sling most of the time, then hope that one of the front bale men would find time to come some of the way back and take that second bale. It wasn't happening half often enough. When you're doing most of the rolling oftwo bales per load and then helping pile them, it'll send your temperature up. I was soon looking through a red haze, my heart was pumping blood so fast. Well, you didn't let yourself burn out. Somehow, you kept going. Because, if you ever burned out on a job, you were suspect thereafter. There was that consuming need to show one and all that you could "take it." A character named Pat McKivett put it in a way that I'll never forget. Pat said, "I would've burned out, many's the time, only I was too

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damned weak to climb the frazzlin' ladder." So you stagger out for one more load and pray for noon to come. When either local could not supply all the gangs ordered it would call on the other local to supply such gangs if possible. This morning there was a colored gang doubled in our hatch. They were doing in their end what we were doing in ours, only they were not shorthanded and they were not struggling. I was about at that point where I didn't know whether I could turn another damn bale over, when here came one of the black guys and flat rolled that bale away from me to the work and helped pile it. Blessed relief! Time to catch one breath before the next load hits us. Seven or eight times the man found time between his own loads to do that. Seven or eight times in the space of an hour and a half may not sound like much when you say it real fast; but when it's saving your life, brother, you couldn't beat it with a million. I know. I was there. By dinner I was so hot and exhausted, I felt that my stomach wouldn't tolerate food. I stumbled into the Old Man's store and drank a bottle of soda pop. The carbonation seemed to ward off what felt like impending stomach cramps. I still wouldn't eat, just lounged and sucked in deep breaths. We returned at one o'clock to find that the foreman had found able hands to bring the gang up to strength. So the strain was off and the afternoon went smoothly. Vandever and I walked away from the job together that evening, and I told him about that colored guy coming over from his end of the hatch and saving my life. I told Van, "If you ever hear me use the word 'nigger' again, put the toe of your shoe about a foot up my ass, please." That experience sort of got me to watching who helped whom. Observation indicated that, if a white man were in a bind and a Negro close by, that Negro would almost always give the white a hand; but when a black man was caught in a bind, the white man, as often as not, stood or sat by and let the black man struggle. After that I tried to make it a practice to give a hand to anybody who seemed to need a hand, never mind his color. We are presently in a period when members of the black race are insisting on being called "black" and are holding the usages of my day, "colored" and "Negro" in less than high esteem. It has been my fortune to have experienced some amount of ridicule from some white quarters for refusing to use the degrading word "nigger." So, although I try to remind myself to use "black" in contemporary association, I suggest here that the old polite terms have their place in this telling. Moreover, "colored" is the word that was used in the la-

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bor contract. In the period we're reminiscing, "black" was not the nicest word to use to black people. Suppose you were addressing a meeting, for example; the expression "you black folks" might have evoked a certain uneasiness in the group, whereas "you colored folks" would have been cordially accepted. Let us leave philosophy and return to our story. I had joined the union in October, time had passed; the year was now 1930, and nobody had paid any marked attention. Just as winter was edging toward spring, I pitched a drunk. I had made friends with a fellow named Malcolm Smith. Malcolm lived with an uncle in a motor home, a rarity then. Uncle was a free lance writer whose stuff apparently sold well. He had acquired a quantity of winter strawberriesmust have cost him several pennies-and had run off a crock of strawberry wine. Ah! Nectar of the gods! Malcolm invited me over. Uncle turned us loose on the wine. We acted without restraint, made royal asses of ourselves. We were close to the port and to a couple of longshoremen's hangouts. We made it a point to be seen and heard, to advertise how looped we were. Why bring up such an incident? Because it "elevated" me from the quiet, barely known guy to recognition. Most of those longshoremen consumed intoxicating beverages in some degree. Those who indulgedjudiciously, sparingly, or not at all were extremely tolerant of those who overindulged. It was an accepted way of life. "Let the guy have his fun." Next day it was, "Man, you were travelin' high, wide, and handsome yesterday!" "You don't look as bad hungover as you oughta look." "What was the size of your head this morning?" Good-natured banter. Recognition. That it might be a kind of spurious, unstable popularity-yes, it prodded my mind. But, dammit, here were guys coming around, slapping me on the back, giving me the elbow, cracking jokes, guys who didn't know I was alive the day before yesterday. I won't say I reveled in it, but I didn't turn it away, either. Well, what about alcohol and alcoholism? Some guardian angel caused me to notice from early on the effects of alcohol on some people. Some little voice from somewhere would whisper, "IT CAN HAPPEN TO vou." Observation told me before very long that booze fighters end up losing. My trouble has been: the times that the message was forgotten for the moment. If I were to have a dollar right now for every time, in the words of the inveterate drunkard, "You and me could pitch us a good-un." So drinking was a way to popularity. So go along with it. The feel-

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ing of intoxication was enjoyable, the feeling of being "one of the boys" even more so. Back in Arizona there had been home brew and bootleg places. Also, there was Mexico, less than eleven miles away, no Prohibition. From the beginning I liked the taste of wine and most hard liquor. In the early experience I didn't like the taste of beer, but enjoyed the effect. After some years I developed a liking for the beer taste also. Later, as I became active in union affairs, I was stupid and cocky enough to believe that "a couple of drinks" sharpened performance. It was not very long until the blunt truth that the opposite was the fact made itself felt. The truth didn't blunt the appetite for the stuff, but it taught me to leave it alone when there was business to be looked after-to do the drinking "after business hours." The pendulum swung to a point in that direction, though, that I'd use the excuse that I'd "had a couple" to dodge work that needed doing. After recognizing that shortcoming I balanced things fairly effectively for the most part. Much as I've enjoyed drinking and the company of drinking people, I can't really recommend it. It provides the drinker with a pleasant escape from tension and reality, true enough. But there's a fine line, a boundary no one has ever traced indelibly. Across the line escape becomes imprisonment (dependence) instead. It is not pretty. All things considered, that fellow who cautioned "moderation in all things" was a right sharp cookie. By this time I was well aware of the differences between the old and new environments. Climate, for one. Those summer days on the Arizona desert could be hotter'n the hinges on the gates of hell. But it was a dry heat that evaporated a bead of sweat quickly, thus affording a degree of cooling. Here in the Gulf Coast's high humidity your sweat didn't dry away at once. Rather, it would tend to clam to your skin. I imagined a soppy feeling. On the mile-high desert, no matter how blistering hot it was in daytime, once the sun had sunk in the west the rocks and sand would begin to cool. Long before morning you'd be pulling cover against the chill. The guy who wrote that refrain, "Till the sands of the desert grow cold," was telling the gal, in effect, that his ardor wouldn't last past 10 PM. Gulf Coast summer nights cooled, of course, but never down to chilly (unless a hurricane blew in). One thing in Corpus Christi's favor: you could depend on a summer breeze to start blowing in off Corpus Christi Bay by ten o'clock each morning. (On those rare days when it failed, things were really

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hot and humid.) That breeze served to moderate the daytime heat and would continue to blow into the wee hours of the following morning, when the wind would lay and the bay would calm to an almost glassy surface. Working, you expected to generate a lot of heat. Keeping comfortable while loafing was the problem. Find a place in the shade exposed to that bay breeze. There was a difference in insect life. Mosquitoes, next to nonexistent where I'd come from, were present in swarms when summertime conditions favored them. And really relished the "new blood" of this newly arrived Arizona boy, fervently. The repellents available today were not developed until the World War II era; so the principal defense was slap, slap, slap. There were sprays that would kill the little pests on contact. Using these inside a screened enclosure, you'd be free of them. You could sleep under mosquito netting and be protected-if you didn't allow their buzzing against the netting to drive you crazy. And roaches! These had been rare in the desert environment. The new environment, ship and shore, teemed with them. Again, there were sprays that would kill on contact. The residual insecticides were still a long way off. So it was an everyday continuing battle against the horrible little creatures. Around Bisbee, any fishing was miles away. Those sportsmen who could afford it would go to the mountains and the trout streams. Most of us youngsters had never been acquainted with fishing tackle at all. Here in Corpus Christi salt water fishing was right at your doorstep, with fresh water fishing only a few miles away. I tried hard for a considerable spell to become a fisherman, watched fishermen and women around me catch fish, finally decided it wasn't going to be my long suit. Today I'm content to listen to and enjoy the tales that the fishermen tell me. With the first winter there I witnessed a sight never seen in my desert days: flight after flight of wild ducks and geese. That was the winter of 1929-1930. At that time and for some years after, before population crowded in, you could walk westerly on North Beach onto the flats bordering Nueces Bay when a "norther" was blowing and find good duck hunting.

CHAPTER2

SI BORISON AND UNION POLITICS

W

ORKING CONDITIONS in 1930 were pretty much determined by management and imposed by each walking foreman after his own fashion. Driving was the order of the day. A Houstonian named Sam Betts was an exception to the rule. Sam maintained that if work was laid out with foresight workers would respond without being driven. Our relations with Si Borison went about like this: Si would put something on us that we didn't like. We'd protest. He would overrule our protest. We'd insist. Si would cloud up and threaten to rain. We'd desist. One morning Si told the men trucking lead to the sling to haul six bars instead of five, increasing the slingload to eighteen from fifteen. There was a wrangle. Si carried the day. True, there were no load limits specified in the labor contract. The employer had the contractual right to say how much of what. However, there is such a thing as a man or a mule deciding that too much is too much. Si decided it wasn't too much. One thing that happened regularly: Men would arrive shipside before starting time to find Si, Joe, and Arthur rigging the hatches for working. Normally, it would take a gang from a quarter to half an hour to rig a hatch for working. Thus, finding that work already done by somebody else translated into from fifteen to thirty minutes' pay that you could have had but now would never see in your lifetime. Understood? Well, as stated, Si would cloud up and threaten to rain ... There were other irksome impositions that would be corrected in time to come, half remembered or forgotten now. (When the itch is gone, you tend to forget how you reached to scratch it.) One was the splitting of gangs. A gang might finish its cargo in one hatch and be shifted to another. The walking boss would direct a part of the gang to move on to the next hatch and start preparing it while the remaining short gang secured the first hatch. Or your gang might

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have brought its work to within easy reach, to where you could draw a second breath between loads. You'd be directed to "lend" a couple of men to another gang. We chafed under this. We felt, by George, that we should enjoy the advantage of a little easy along with all the hard. But then, Si would cloud up and threaten to rain ... There came an announcement that the president and secretary of the district would visit the port and that we would hold a joint meeting with Local1225 in their brand new hall. It would be 1938 before Local1224 would build theirs. Ours was (and is) the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District of the International Longshoremen's Association, with jurisdiction extending from North Carolina to Texas, with, at that time (repeating myself) only the four unionized ports in Texas "holding the fort." I know that others besides me were thrilled a-plenty at the prospect of seeing our district officers in the flesh. To have attained those high positions, in what was just about the worthiest cause ever, they would have to possess great personal courage and the highest standards of integrity and idealism. What they would have to say, these leaders of labor, would instill some spunk and backbone into us, by golly and damnbetcha! We hied ourselves to Local1225. There were rows of chairs set up on either side of an aisle extending from front to rear. Although it was a joint meeting, within the meeting we still segregated ourselves. Blacks sat to the left facing the chairman, whites to the right. That was the custom in ILA meetings of that period in the South. John Morgan was chairman. The chairmanship of joint meetings alternated from meeting to meeting between white and black presiding officers. John called the meeting to order and introduced the district officers, President Michael J. Dwyer and Secretary Frank Mellina. Mike Dwyer had been a firebrand in his early days, the story went. President Dwyer spoke first. He praised the officers of both Corpus Christi locals. I would find before long that this was standard procedure within the organization-and my best guess would be: within all AFL organizations. When a ranking official fails to praise a local officer while on local grounds you can bet your assets that that national or area officer is deploying forces into your local's business with the intention of either ousting an incumbent or bringing him into line. Dwyer's talk was short. We were a young seaport and a young local, with young men comprising most of our membership. He looked for us to accomplish great things in the future. He touched on

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the fact that the district held contracts in only the four Texas ports but did not belabor the point. Secretary Mellina delivered what I suppose would be called the "policy" speech. What he told us amounted, in a nutshell, to professing that we union longshoremen were beset on all sides by open shop labor, that we lacked the strength to do anything about it, and that, if we wanted to preserve ourselves as an organization, we must be prepared to do better work and more of it than the open shop labor, and not make any waves that might make management unhappy with us. What the hell? Defeatist talk like that from an officer, when I'd come expecting to hear fighting talk? I remembered hearing Business Agent Marshall express the opinion in conversation that we existed at the option of our employers. Mellina had brought that option into the open with a vengeance. I felt as if I'd been dumped into a pit. George Hartley had come into the union in 1929 also. George had hit the waterfront fresh from a hitch in the US Army. Stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, he had been middleweight (or was it light heavy?) boxing champion of the Islands and of the Pacific Armed Services. Anybody handy with his dukes was guaranteed acceptance and popularity on the waterfront, unless he was an out and out bully, so George was popular and well liked. George rose, asked for the floor, and was recognized by the chair. "One of my earliest memories from when I was a small kid," he began, "is of my dad being on strike-and there weren't too many groceries in the house-and my mother telling us kids how proud we should be of our father, who had the guts to join with his fellow workers to stand up for better conditions and a better living for us and all other workers' families. She believed that what would be won by that strike would make conditions better everywhere, because it would encourage working people everywhere to help themselves, to fight for their rights. She believed that then, and I believe it now. "Now you tell me that I, that we have got to lower ourselves below non-union labor to stay organized. I dispute that. We are organized so that we can fight to advance, not retreat. And I think that you are serving your office and this union poorly when you say what you said. We are together to make conditions better and, by our example, encourage open shop labor to organize. And, by God, I'll see it done or break a leg trying." There was spontaneous scattered applause when George took his

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seat-not heavy, because everybody present, no matter how unversed in union methods, was acutely conscious of the fact that Hartley was diddling with something sacrosanct in the union structure when he attacked Secretary Mellina the way he had. There were rumblings around the hall as some four or five of the Old Guard tried to reprimand Hartley for his disrespect toward a district officer. But it got nowhere. Hartley had thrilled a group of us young whippersnappers. It could be felt in the air, and it dampened the defenders of official infallibility. Mellina handled it quite smoothly. He reminded the meeting of the right of every member to express his opinion, thanked the young brother for being frank to express his, while voicing the hope and the prediction that experience and seasoning would temper the brother's judgment. Beyond question, our predicament was tenuous, contracts in only four ports, and a group of renegades from the Houston black deep sea local doing a small amount of"organized" open shop, below-scale work in that port. However, I could never see any justifiable basis for Mellina to tell us what he did. I would think it significant that Frank Mellina resigned his union office later on to accept an executive position with a stevedoring firm. (If only that were the only time that that ever happened in the union movement.) George Hartley's speech marked a turning point in local union affairs. It sparked a militancy that lay under the surface. The bulk of us had had no union experience or relationship of any kind. Here was a fellow who had experienced his father being on strike and who believed that that was the way to go. It had taken a lot of courage to stand up and say so. It was something to tie to. Often at union meetings somebody would raise a beef about some bad working condition. Every now and then we would say that we were going to do something about it. But the next time it happened on the job, Si would challenge us head-on, and we'd back down. And sometimes it looked as if the glibbest speechifiers in meeting became the quietest on the job. This morning we were fresh from a union meeting. Our gang was turning to, to load a small amount of cargo on deck before going into the hold. Simon Borison was in charge. "You won't need all these men to do this job," he told the gang foreman. "We got a ten o'clock gang comin' for number one. Send a man from each side to strip the hatchboards from the three after sections." We all threw up our heads like a flock of quail that's heard a strange rustling in the brush. Everybody looked around at every-

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body else. Well, you know about that small inner voice, don't you? That little voice whispered, "Sonny, this is it." I turned and faced Si. "Si, we voted in the local not to work like that any more." Si let it out! "What the hell is goin' on? Here's a kid not long enough in the union for the ink on his application to dry, and he ain't hardly dry behind the ears himself yet, and he's speakin' for the damned union already! And tellin' me how to run the company's business." Then he faced me squarely and said, "You better get back to tendin' your business, which is doin' what you're goddamn well told, and leave union business to them as knows somethin' about it, or you won't be around long to tend to anything." I saw myself walking a thin wire over a deep chasm. Then another man spoke up. "He's right, Si. That's the way it was voted." Then the gang foreman took it up. "That's the way it is, Si. I should have been the one to tell you. They're right. We're not going to split a gang any more." The thunder rolled. Did the damned union want to take over the stevedoring business? Hire him, maybe, and tell him what to do? By God, they better be prepared to do that, because they damned well weren't going to tell him what to do unless they hired and paid him, said Mr. Borison. But he turned and walked away, and we knew we had won! Happy day! Happy, heady feeling! We had stood up to Si and told him that we would have a say in our working conditions, and we had made it stick! Summer came, with anticipation of another cotton season, when one of those female flying insects seeking my blood turned out to be Anopheles, and I was laid low with malarial fever. There was next to no malaria in those parts, but I contracted my rare share. It happened on the eve of the cotton season. Even the lightest kind of malaria saps one's strength badly. Sadly, it takes a long time to get the strength back. There was only one "easy" job available to a new hand, slinging up. So they put me to slinging up until I'd get my strength back. Older men, regulars, took harder jobs and gave "the kid" the easy one. It made me feel one hell of an obligation to that union and its members, you can believe. On October first we had a three-day strike. In the settlement, the union took a cut in the cotton rate from twenty cents to eighteen cents per bale. "The biggest cut we'll ever live to see," Jack Eden had said when we took the limit off the day in cotton the year before. Now the employers had us in retreat. They were deepening the cut. At this point, it would be appropriate, I think, to mention a work-

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ing condition peculiar to our Texas ports, probably: We didn't work in the rain. No sir. Even in that period of prevailing oppressive conditions the men stuck to that rule. You could say that these Texas longshoremen were regular sissies when it came to rain. Anything wetter than a heavy mist, we'd cover the hatch and head for "the dry." I say that this rain condition was probably unique to our sector. It has been my loss never to have visited the Pacific Northwest. I have heard it said that, up there, there are times of the year when, if stevedores didn't work in the rain, no shipping would move for weeks. I'm told that they have come up with quite elaborate riggings for protecting men and commodities from the damp. In the Port of New York, in the section where I was stationed for some months during World War II, longshoremen worked in light rain. They would rig a three-sided hatch tent, open toward dockside to permit loads to travel in and out. The open side permitted some rain to enter the hatch, of course, but the closed sides kept a lot out. The stevedores were concerned with protection of the cargo. With a cargo of flour or sugar they'd knock off work and have the hatch covered in a hurry. Let it be steel or pipe-or that lead that we received so much ofthere'd be no hurry at all. In those early 1930s we stood by for one hour on our own time during straight-time hours "when prevented from working by weather conditions." After one hour the employer had to pay the men if he wanted to hold them. On showery days intermittent rains lasting only a short spell at a time could make for a long day with low pay, for standby time did not accumulate. You could stand by for a solid hour, turn to, be stopped after fifteen minutes by a shower, then stand by another solid hour on your own time, and so on, to cite the worst that could happen. During overtime hours the employer had to either pay the gangs or discharge them. It would be criminal to leave Paul Cecil out of this recital. I don't remember exactly when Cecil first showed up in Corpus Christi. It was before the three-day strike, because I well remember that we stood together at one end of the drawbridge looking at the only ship that worked in our port during the three days. Cecil said, "You've never seen a strike before, huh? You've never seen a scab. Well, those men you see there moving across the dock are strikebreakers. They're scabs. Don't look any different from any other men, do they?" They really didn't. Paul Cecil was a walking bundle of idiosyncracies. According to his story, he was a black sheep from San Francisco's Nob Hill society. He told stories about San Francisco society's doings and its tycoons

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that sounded as though he'd been there. One thing stood out for certain: he was expert in knowledge of ships and shipping. In the World War I shipbuilding boom (it was "the World War" back then) he was superintendent over one department of a major San Francisco shipyard. The youngest shipyard boss in America. He told that with obvious pride. But he wouldn't stand hitched. Nobody could put a collar on him. The Atlantic and Gulf stevedoring firm had persuaded him to take a superintendent's job in their New York operations. The job was a good one, he would say. But nobody spoke English in New York City, he would add. He couldn't stand constantly hearing all those foreign tongues. So A&G sent him to Miami, where the prevailing nonunion conditions went against the grain. So he quit and was just drifting when he decided to stop in Corpus Christi for a while. Quitting the Miami scene seemed like a legitimate move; the excuse for leaving New York, more like a temper tantrum. He was full of contradictions. To my own knowledge, Atlantic and Gulf tried on several occasions to persuade him to return to their employ while he was in Corpus. He always refused. Nor would he work for any other company. He survived on extra longshore work. A time or two he worked for a few days repairing or making gear for one company or another, but declined all offers of steady employment. He had a compulsion that could be a commendable trait or an obnoxious fault, depending on one's viewpoint. If he saw something that looked puffed up to him, he simply had to stick a needle in it to see if it would deflate. That practice influenced people but did not win friends in all quarters. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933 some Corpus Christi interests, planning to cash in on the alcoholic beverage trade, brought a little old pint-sized freighter out of a boneyard somewhere. The idea was to convert her into a floating night club. Cecil put in a bid to do the necessary dismantling. It appeared that he was going to get the money backing he would need. He was enthusiastic about the opportunity to exercise his shipyard knowledge. Shamefully, some of my fellow union members approached whoever had say over the dismantling and came up with a contract for themselves. They really had no conception of the job they had contracted to do. They tackled it with not much more than hacksaws and sledgehammers. After watching them fumble for two days, the man made them a token wage payment and told them to stay off his ship. Meanwhile, Cecil's bid had lost momentum. The contract went elsewhere. So, what my union brothers had accomplished: they had kept Paul Cecil from getting the job. Cecil hired out as a hand to

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the firm that did the job, thereby proving a point to those who had undercut him. By that time I had gained considerable influence within the local. I urged Cecil to make an issue of the matter. I felt that those union brothers should be reprimanded in some fashion for their part in a cutthroat deal. But Cecil would not press the matter. "They'll have to live with it," he said. "I can live without it." He was an irregular booze fighter. He was the first and almost the only person in my experience who openly declared himself to be homosexual. It was a subject that wasn't talked about in those days, except in the context of a dirty joke to be snickered at. I think that he was pushed by something in his makeup that sometimes compelled him to shock people. Still, the guy had a brilliant mind-and high moral standards according to his own measure. He never beat anybody out of his due. Soon after the 1934 West Coast maritime strike Cecil returned to his native grounds. In the spring of 1937 I was in San Francisco on a union venture. I asked Henry Schmidt, president of the San Francisco longshoremen's local, if he knew or knew of Paul Cecil. "Yeah, I know 'im," was the answer. "He's registered with us. He works long enough to buy a jug, drinks it up, then works long enough to buy another. He's not on the work list today. You might find him down on Wino Row." They had no residence address for him, Schmidt said. Not exactly a monument of praise to the sharpest mind I'd ever met in our industry, was it? Well, there wasn't time to explore Wino Row. Never enough time in a lifetime ... Paul Cecil was a loser by conventional standards, a wasted talent. Not worth the space he's given here, probably. But listen. I hold to this rebel theory: In a society where people shared alike the fruits of production, the talents and abilities of the Paul Cecils of this world would be contributed unstintingly. And what's even greater, their contribution would be graciously accepted. Meanwhile, in the local election for officers to serve for the year 1931 John Morgan did not seek reelection. Dick Costello was elected president. Some of the young element chucked my name into nomination for first vice president. So who pays attention to the vice presidency? I slipped in. Here I was, second ranking officer of the local, a member only a little more than a year! Business Agent Marshall and Secretary Mitchell were reelected. Time came for contract negotiations. We elected Costello our contract committeeman. The committee held its meetings in Galveston.

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We were asking renewal of the contract. The employers weren't about to grant it. "Money panic" was the expression taught us in school to describe the periodic dislocations and attendant hard times that occur in our economy. A new title would be given this one. It would be called "The Great Depression." The Depression was deepening around the nation. Our employers decided that now was the time to lower wage costs. On October 1, 1931, as the year before, we found ourselves on strike, "hitting the bricks." It was really a lockout, since we had asked for no new conditions, only renewal of the existing contract. But the word "strike" comes more easily, I suppose-certainly to the press-so a strike it was. And it conveyed to us strikers the fact that there really was a lot of unemployment in the land. Let me repeat right here what I repeat every time there is an opening: The real heroes of all the strikes in history are those unemployed who refuse to take jobs scabbing. Whatever the rhetoric spoken or written, whatever the ideals professed or propounded, as a practical matter the trade union is geared to trying to prosper within the economic system, not to changing it. So the trade union confines itself to doing what it can to further the interests of its own members in its own narrow field. The trade union may push for more employment in its particular jurisdiction. It does not push for full employment of the whole working class, no matter what the rhetoric. Thus, facing a system under which there is "never enough to go around," the trade union attempts to draw into membership all jobholders within its jurisdiction, then to protect those jobs for its members exclusively. It follows that the trade union guards against taking in more members than its jurisdiction offers jobs. It is natural for a worker to feel a proprietary interest in his or her job. The fact that you are on a job makes it "yours." The trade union acts on this assumption by excluding those workers who would be in excess of the jobs available. In our particular case we called on outsiders for extra labor during the rush season, but kept union membership down to what the industry was calculated to support in the off season. In case of strike or lockout the trade union theory is that the job still belongs to those workers striking it or locked out from it. Workers not employed on that job before the strike or lockout are supposed to stay away from it. To accept a job during a labor dispute makes you a scab. The trade unions disclaim class consciousness,

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but class consciousness most surely and unescapably enters the picture in a strike situation. The scabs are enemies, traitors to their class, and labor officialdom will call it that way during the course of a strike, then deny that there is a class struggle the day after the strike has ended. The desirable state of affairs, in the trade union view, is where all labor that might be available avoids the struckjobsite. The job stays shut down until the employers can no longer endure the loss of income and decide that they can do better by re-employing the hired hands, even if it means paying them more than formerly. (Heaven forbid dwelling on the other face of the picture: that the strikers come to feel that they can do better by returning to work, even if it means accepting less pay than before.) This setting, where the two sides are left to stand one another off until something gives, is fractured when strikebreakers enter the picture. Given a sufficient number of strikebreakers with sufficient ability, the employer can bid the former employees good-bye. So the strikers try to devise ways to discourage this from happening. Persuading workers that taking struck jobs is a most shameful thing to do seems to have proved the best way. Here we were, locked out, and quite soon we were seeing what we didn't like to see: strikebreakers, scabs. The companies did their hiring at a spot near the port entrance on the south side. And there were a lot of men available for hire. A fact began to sink in: there was a lot of unemployment in the country. These scabs hadn't quit other jobs to come stand in this shape-up. Lawmen were there in force to see that there was no interference with hiring procedure. We had blundered by not putting up picket lines. It was possible for a man looking for work to walk into that mass ofjobseekers without knowing that a strike was in progress. We corrected that error in subsequent strikes. Talking about it with John Morgan later, he said that the few older heads with strike experience should have wised up us younger fellows about strike conduct. The Boyd-Campbell walking foremen, Si, Joe, and Arthur, stayed on the job. We knew that they had the ability to teach men to do the work. Seeing the surprising number willing to be taught, some uneasy thoughts could enter your mind. Was there violence in this strike and in strikes of the time? The answer is "yes." You watch those other workers, those scabs, taking your jobs, drawing your pay, and tearing down your working conditions. Hate sets in. You hear an ambulance heading into the docks, you exult.

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"Hope it killed the scabby sonofabitch!" Man's inhumanity toward man. Man's way of survival. After about a week some of the younger members began to grow restive. A scattered few accidents happened to certain persons. The word began to spread in town that strikebreaking on the docks was not a safe occupation. A number of our members were questioned from time to time more or less vigorously by law enforcement officers, but no serious charge came from any of it. State, county, or municipal relief agencies were very frail structures then, if they existed at all. The Red Cross, Salvation Army, various churches, a hodgepodge of organizations were trying to cope with abounding hunger. It was brought to our attention that the Red Cross was refusing groceries to unemployed able-bodied men and their families, pointing to employment open on the waterfront. The Salvation Army was not using any such pressure. Those positions were reversed in Houston, we'd be told later. We should have picketed the port and the Red Cross relief center. The strike lasted twenty-one days. The union took a beating in the settlement. Deep sea wages were cut from eighty to seventy cents per hour. The cotton rate was cut even worse, from eighteen to thirteen cents per bale. Coastwise wages dropped from seventy to sixty-five cents per hour, with overtime pay eighty-five cents, a cut of twenty cents per hour. The unkindest cut of all was the expiration date, March 31, 1933, when shipping volume would be low and our employers could, presumably, lie back and enjoy life on past profits. Accepting the contract was a must, we were told, because one local in Galveston was ready to break ranks. This could have been possible. An irregular setup existed in Galveston. A black and a white local breasted one another, the usual arrangement in Texas; but a second black local had exclusive jurisdiction over the work of some four stevedore companies that handled a goodly share of the port's shipping. Does that word "breasted" call for definition? Suppose one worker has a bag or package to be placed at a certain height. The weight is an overload for one man. He calls to another, "Breast me." The two of them together pitch the object into place. The word "breast" means, in longshore parlance, to share with or lend support to the other fellow. In this case one of the black locals and the white local shared, divided between them, the work of the other companies in the port: breasted each other. Considerable distrust of the "exclusive" black local flared up from time to time, not the least of it between black and black. Anyway, rumor or fact, the report said

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that the suspect black local was going to break ranks. We accepted the contract. Paul Cecil had a happy solution. "They've cut your wage from eighty to seventy cents. Work just seven-eighths as fast as you did before." But it didn't happen. We were defeated. "Momentum" was on the side of the employers. Bosses were more pushy than before, if anything. Those who contend that unions advance in good times and retreat in bad have history in their support. Our resentment ran high, but defiance was missing. During the strike we had held morning weekday meetings in our old board shack, the hiring hall. The meeting served to keep everybody in touch, to pass on information, to boost morale. Mostly we'd be cautioned by the saner heads against doing anything rash, to keep cool heads, to trust our contract committee. President Costello was away on contract business some of those days, so the chairmanship on those fell to the vice president. I had come through as not the worst chairman in the territory, ifl am the one to say it. I've already said that Dick Costello and I became fast friends, and that is so. But Dick was a lousy chairman. Principally on that one consideration, I was elected president for the year 1932. George Hartley was elected first vice president, Oscar Wilds, another young man, second vice president. Marshall and Mitchell were reelected to their respective offices. Supporters and detractors alike sat back to see what direction "the kids," Hartley, Wilds, and I, all in our early twenties, would give to the local. There is no enterprise other than union labor, to my knowledge, where a person can become a ranking officer at the local level without a basic knowledge of the enterprise. You don't have to pass any tests. You need not have had any previous experience. Here I was, ignorant of labor history and union structure. All I knew about the International Longshoremen's Association was contained in a copy of the international constitution and bylaws, a copy of the local constitution and bylaws, and a ritual prepared by the international union governing conduct of meetings. The first upheaval wasn't long in coming. It was the practice in the industry in Texas at the time to pay the hands on Saturday of each week for work done through Friday of that week. If a company had a ship finishing on Saturday, it might well pay for that day also. Each company paid each gang foreman in cash the amount that that foreman's gang had earned with the company that week. Usually the union business agent would pick up each foreman's payroll and deliver it to the foreman at the union office, where the foreman

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would pay the union its "percentage" and then proceed to pay off the men. Or a company representative might hand the gang foreman his payroll cash at shipside. A company working a ship in a port where it did not maintain an office might pay off on the day when the ship was finished, mid-week or whenever. There was no formality, and no withholding tax. Each gang foreman, payroll money in hand, found a convenient table, sat there, and paid off each man he had carried on his book during the week. The foreman deducted "percentage" money from each man, plus a charge for ice used. Each foreman was responsible for seeing that his gang was supplied with ice water for drinking. He purchased a chunk of ice and carried three buckets-or a member of the gang did-one for dock, one for deck, and one for the hold. Each man's share of the ice payment would be a nickel or a dime a day. It would be some years in the future before "drinking water under sanitary conditions" became the employers' responsibility. The business agent carried the cash that the union had accumulated to the bank for deposit to the union's account. Union expenses were paid by check from the bank account. It was in my mind that high on the presiding officer's list of duties was the duty to see that the union's committees functioned. Early in January I called for a check of the financial secretary's (the business agent's) books. The check revealed a lack of money in the bank account that should have been there. That was a matter for the board of (five) trustees, as custodians of union property, to look into. What had happened, Mr. Marshall told us, was that he would be approached by this or that member with a hard-luck story between the times of collecting the union's cash and getting it to the bank. He hadn't been able to resist those pleas. Promises to pay back hadn't worked in many cases. To compound things, he had been so trusting of his borrowers that he hadn't even entered those loans in a book, or anywhere. There were no records. All we had was a bank balance considerably short of deposits of what the union's income should have been. The trustees reported to the next meeting, without any recommendation. Mr. Marshall repeated his story to the meeting. He apologized for having misused the funds and promised that it would never happen again, no matter how hard-luck the story. Mr. Marshall was trusted and loved by a hefty portion of the members. The matter was disposed of by accepting his promise to go and err no more and to try to collect from previous borrowers. Those who had borrowed and not repaid were asked to look into their consciences. The hard fact was, we were entering a period where there was hardly enough income to

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meet going personal expenses, let alone pay off the past. Not much was paid back. I stayed out of the meeting discussion, merely exercising my chairman's duties, letting the meeting majority have its way. Brother Marshall had had his wrist rapped lightly. Then came a reaction from a part of the membership that I would never have anticipated. I had been critical of Marshall's dealings with our employers on some occasions, contending that he was too soft. So had a number of others. Now a faction, proclaiming to defend "this fine old man," was accusing me of using the board of trustees to carry out a personal vendetta against the business agent! Didn't the ding-a-lings realize that the man had left himself open to serious charges? Couldn't they see that their officers had been generously forgiving in not demanding substantial restitution from the man? Here I was, in office less than a month, already in hot water up to my neck. These gazoonies were twisting a state of affairs into something that it never was and was never intended to be. Ex-president Costello, bless him, defended the trustees and the president publicly and privately, and that helped, but a sizable number of members persisted in contending that a pillar of the union was being gunned down. This local union politics was turning out to be a rough field to plough. There was a plus side. The financial secretary kept his word and made no more out-of-pocket loans from union funds. The books were better kept, and figures and funds began to match. The Central Dock and Marine Council met quarterly in either Houston or Galveston. The council consisted of delegates from all ILA locals in the West Gulf: all Texas ports and Lake Charles, Louisiana. Lake Charles, Orange, Beaumont, and Port Arthur were dormant in 1932, of course. Our local elected me as delegate for the year. We always held elections for delegates to any function, never sending any officer "by virtue of the office," a practice that I believe is commendable and practical. The delegate was paid a straighttime day's wages per day, plus six dollars subsistence, and rail fare. A member, Gaylord Eddy, always kept a good automobile in good running condition. Eddy and I entered into an arrangement that lasted over the next few years. We would make the trip in his car, pay car expense, room rent, eats, and incidentals from the delegate's allowance, and split what was left on return home. We put a proposition to the body. Eddy was going to carry me to the meeting, so why not issue him a credential to represent our coastwise charter, and thus have two accredited delegates "for the price of one"? The proposition was adopted and was repeated numerous times thereafter.

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It was our first time to meet with delegates from other ILA locals. We soon found out that the same things griping our members were shared in kind by longshoremen in these other ports. We listened to one another air similar gripes. District President Dwyer offered his advice in very nearly these words: "You must remember that you are in the union not so much so that the union will do things for you, but that you are in the union so that you can do things for yourselves. The stevedores are not going to stop these practices because I write 'em a letter or Secretary Mellina does. And there is only so much that we can negotiate at contract time. Then it's up to the parties to carry out the contract. So if it's something that you're not going to stand for, you have to tell them so when it's happening and where it's happening. Don't think you can run the whole show. Be cautious. Our union position is not a good one right now. But where you are sure that you are on firm ground, take a stand." Ah-ha! Mike Dwyer this day was speaking a language that we felt we understood. It would be a while yet, as remembrance goes, before I'd hear the term "job action." That's what the district president was telling us to take, although he didn't call it by any name. It wasn't a time to be telling the master stevedores how to run the industry, the president had implied, but there was always a time to defend yourself against a distressing condition. We so reported to the local-not to be received with the wildest enthusiasm, I'm forced to say. Our members were still subdued by the beating taken in the strike-resentful, but still less than defiant. The less subdued of our members were buzzing me about what could be done specifically to improve working conditions. I was doing a little buzzing myself, trying to persuade some of the less enthusiastic members to be more optimistic. Then another rock in that rocky road: Malcolm Smith, my partner in that wine-drinking excursion, jumped his gang one day-and got caught at it. He told his regular foreman that he wasn't going to work, then hired to a foreman with a job more to his liking, a definite no-no. It was the first gang jumping occurrence in my young term. Smith had been easily the most vocal of my supporters. I suspected that he expected to be let off lightly: the spoils system. "Mter all, it ain't as if it never happened before." Pshaw! This was the torpedo that could sink the ship. Those Marshall supporters were after my neck already. Now the noisiest backer that I had could bloody well defect. Did I remember to say that my election was by a single vote margin? The grievance committee tried Smith. There was no way but to

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find him guilty. The punishment assessed was stiff, a fifteen-dollar fine, a whopping amount, considering that we were in the dull season and shipping falling off at a painful rate. Well, Smitty paid the fine and then, unpredictable jackass that he was, backed me stronger than ever. I have this opinion, that authority enforced on all subjects alike will receive supportive obedience from a good majority, even when they dislike the rule being enforced. As a people, we sort of cotton to even-handedness, to use a good southern expression. The Smith trial and punishment had a solidifying effect. Members who had been skeptical expressed approval of the way it had been handled-no favoritism. They began to believe that the MersHartley administration would apply the rules to all alike. It was a turning point of sorts. At the Dock and Marine Council the specific question had been asked: How much longshore work is a walking foreman supposed to perform? Ours was not the only port where walking bosses did more than supervise. President Dwyer had answered, "As much as is reasonably necessary to show the men the proper way to perform the work." This day our gang faced a huge pile of dunnage lying in a 'tween deck, much more than we would need for our loading. We were to move the surplus through a doorway into the next hatch. Simon Borison was walking the ship. Sure enough, Si came down into the 'tween deck and pitched in. He hugged up his load-he would literally bear-hug umpteen board feet of the stuff-and went plunging through the doorway just ahead of me in the line of carriers. The man's work performance was a marvelous thing to watch, but he didn't always watch out for the other fellow's safety. It was wise to give him room. We piled our respective loads. As I followed him back I tapped each man in line and said softly, "Just stand back. We'll find out whether he wants us to do the work or whether he wants to do it." Si made another trip, then realized that his help had withered away. He let it out. "What the hell kind of a meetin' are you holdin' now? Get the damn work done and do your story-tellin' after hours. Come on!" "Si," I said, "we came down here to do this work. We want to do this work. We want you to let us do this work. We'll do what we're told. You know that. None of us here is as good a hand as you are, nor claims to be. But we are good hands, and you know it. We've made up our minds that we don't want you doing our work. So you can watch us do it, or we'll watch you do it. Either way."

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It was a wonder that he let me make that long a speech without interrupting. Perhaps it was the prestige of being the local president now. Anyway, he let me speak. "You ain't such damned good hands as you think you are," he answered. "''ve seen better hands on a busted clock. But get the hell to work. I'll watch. You damn well right I'll watch. And you watch out you don't let one of your fancy ideas overload your ass one of these days." We resumed moving dunnage. Si stood watching for a minute or two, then climbed on deck. Eddy and I had a "progress report" for the next Dock and Marine Council. President Dwyer complimented us on our handling of the matter and suggested to other delegates that they go and do likewise. We strutted a little. Stopping Si Borison from moving dunnage was a victory for the union, bearing in mind that the mission of the trade union is to sequester to itself all the work and working time that it can persuade the employer to provide. Forcing any supervisor to refrain from performing any work meant that much more work, time, and pay for the work force. It wasn't a victory for society, if you picture a society where the purpose of production is to supply the needs of all the people. In the course of time our walking foremen discontinued rigging ships and doing any work normally done by longshore gangs. Things moved along in fairly tranquil fashion until close to the start of the cotton season, when our gang foremen threatened a rebellion. A gang foreman could hire out as a worker in a gang when his gang was not "on the board" (ordered out). The local had a rule that a foreman picking up a gang should hire no more than two foremen until all flatters had been hired. The foremen were fretting against that rule. They claimed that they were "underprivileged." None of us officers had initiated that rule. We were, of course, charged with enforcing it. We huddled with the business agent and dug up some figures. The figures showed that our gang foremen's average incomes were at least a pittance above non-foremen's. Our report failed to mollify the foremen, who declared rather pointedly that they were entitled to extra privileges by virtue of the added responsibilities they shouldered. At that time gang foremen received the same hourly pay as the men. It was several years later that an extra ten cents per hour was negotiated for gang foremen, and only after 1964 that they were raised to fifty cents per hour above scale and relieved from tending gangway: giving signals to the winchman or winchmen, sometimes called "flagging." The local members didn't buy the foremen's argument. They set

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up a counter argument: that a gang foreman carrying his gang got out of shedding a hell of a lot of sweat that the men in his gang were shedding. The foremen groused and grumbled. They'd chip in to pay the fine if the grievance committee tried to enforce the rule, they boasted. Foreman D. D. Barker picked up a third foreman one morning, leaving a couple of flatters "on the hill." Barker was a plasterer by trade who had caught on longshoring during a busy time and had decided that it was a good occupation to follow, as unemployment hit the building trades. (A sort of parallel to one copper miner from Arizona.) We had worked together as outsiders. Now we were adversaries, in that it became my chore to write out charges for the violation. He was found guilty and slapped with a fine, toward the payment of which no other foreman chipped in a penny, as far as I ever learned. His noisy peers had deserted him. Barker finished his career years later as superintendent for the Boyd-Campbell Company. Along in the 1950s he offered me a walking foreman's job with his company. So those wounds don't bleed forever, do they? The cotton market had weakened. Money panic gripped European countries. We knew that our 1932 season would be down from previous ones. Still, we anticipated a busy, if shorter, season. Most of our members were not as proficient at cotton work as the more experienced Houston and Galveston hands who would show up for the season. There came noises from our disgruntled gang toters that, come cotton season, they were going to hire the hands that could "cut that cotton" without respect to where they held their union membership. I had expected this talk to subside after the local called their bluff about hiring each other. To my surprise, it hadn't, not altogether. We officers had not answered the agitation about hiring more foremen than the law allowed until Barker had actually done so. But this threat to make local members second class was laying it on too thick. At the next meeting we read the gang foremen the riot act, reminded them that, although the companies made their appointments, the local could take them away. The threats to do wrong simmered down and became silent. As times got harder, other crafts would ask us to alter our hiring order to favor their local unemployed members. This supports the point made earlier that trade unions try to protect their own members. We continued to follow traditional hiring rules, to parcel out extra jobs to our own trade first. Job experience had something to do with it. A man highly skilled with hammer, trowel, or wrench could be yet another green hand aboard ship. In the general scratching for survival, carpenters' locals in Corpus

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Christi and Houston put out feelers toward acquiring carpenter work connected with stevedoring: shifting boards, bulkheads, walkways, bracings, shorings, and so on, jobs traditionally ILA's jurisdiction. Longshoremen looked unkindly on any proposal to remove them from that jurisdiction. Nothing changed. A while later we worked out a "permit" system for nonmembers. These permits were issued on the basis of the applicant's ability to do longshore work and his agreement to make himself available. The list was revised quarterly, when permits of those who had showed up regularly were renewed, the permits of those who hadn't were recalled, and new applicants were considered. The system met less than enthusiastic support, mainly, I would say, because it required the time of a rank and file committee on those interview days, and the union lacked the money to make it a paying job. It's sort of sad. While most of us want fair play within our own group, we're not willing to exert a lot of effort to extend the same to those less fortunate outside our group. Under the system the permit holder was hired next after members of ILA locals. One expectation was that it would encourage good hands to stay with us and eventually become union members. The permit system was dropped after a while. Later attempts to reinstate it failed. The 1932 busy season passed without untoward incident. It is worthy of note, however, that pay for cotton work had dropped by seven cents per bale in three years. At the accepted standard figure of one hundred bales per hour, that was a drop, roughly, from $1.33 per hour to $.86 per hour, or forty-seven cents. The drop in the longshore rate had been ten cents. We were taking a disproportionate shellacking in our piecework rates. That disproportion was never corrected, let the record show. Adding self-inflicted injury to those already suffered, the union voluntarily agreed to accept time-and-a-half pay for Sunday work, as against the double-time rate that had prevailed. This job was done on us by our persuasive District Secretary Frank Mellina. He held impromptu meetings of the large Galveston and Houston locals (Houston Local1273 members gathered one workless day on vacant land used for baseball practice) and convinced them that the companies would order lots of Sunday gangs at the time-and-a-halfrate, but would leave their ships idle if we continued to draw double time. So much for God and Mammon, ILA style. Having persuaded those larger locals to buy his package, Mellina didn't bother to come to Corpus Christi. (Didn't relish another blistering from one George Hartley, I'm willing to bet.) Nor did he visit Texas City, as I remember. We were simply notified officially from

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the district office that it was the decision of a majority of our members to surrender double-time pay for Sunday work and accept time and a half. So much for the ILA version of the democratic processadmitting, though, that a secret ballot would quite likely have ratified time and a half. It was national election year. It had been a troubled one. In the spring a "Bonus Army" of World War veterans from all parts of the nation converged on Washington, DC, demanding immediate payment in full of the Soldiers' Bonus, a bill first adopted in Congress in 1922, vetoed by President Harding and in turn by President Coolidge, passed over Coolidge's veto in 1924. It was a delayed payment deal, wrapped in some kind of interest-bearing-certificate rigamarole, deferring payment until 1945. Veterans' pressure had brought Congress to authorize a partial payment in 1931, over another presidential veto, Herbert Hoover's. Bonus Army members were now demanding payment of the balance at once. For a while the "army" was allowed camping space in an open area and provided with food and certain necessities by the regular army. But their continued presence began to irritate people in authority. They were driven out and their habitations burned by the military, Gen. Douglas MacArthur commanding. An officer serving under MacArthur in that action was Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1936 the Congress enacted a cash bonus payment bill, again over presidential veto, Franklin D. Roosevelt's this time, and the "second bonus" was paid, paying off the bill enacted in 1924-or the certificates, to be precise. Without passing judgment on the matter, one can say that the commanders-in-chief of our armed forces showed a remarkable unanimity in their feeling that the veterans had been paid the full value of their service to the country while still in uniform. The Hoover administration and Congress had taken some random actions toward slowing the economic downslide. A few stopgap relief measures had been tried. In January the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created, providing loans to banks and businesses. Hoover held to the belief that if you gave relief at the top, enough would trickle down to bring prosperity to the bottom. By mid-1932 nobody was denying that the country and its citizens were in deep trouble. That old, true-blue American cliche that "anybody who is willing to work can find work" had flushed down the drain. The hopeful assurance that "prosperity is just around the corner" had been repeated until worn threadbare. The Republican Party nominated Herbert Hoover for reelection. The Democrats

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nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with John Nance Garner of Texas his running mate for vice president. In Ohio and neighboring states a Conference for Progressive Labor Action headed by A. J. Muste was organizing Unemployed Leagues. The Socialist Party, Communist Party, Industrial Workers of the World, and some other groups also were organizing unemployed workers. Already one or another of these organizations had demonstrated in New York City and some industrial centers, singly or in combination. The thrust of all the movements was "jobs-not relief." Police broke up many of the demonstrations. Attempts to bring the several movements into one national movement saw success a little later. Nearly every one of the separate movements banded together under the name "Workers Alliance of America." The Alliance accomplished much toward relieving the plight of the unemployed, influenced government policy, and eventually became bargaining agent for those employed on public works in localities where its chapters existed. Although it never represented a majority of the unemployed, its influence from 1936 until 1940 most certainly assisted all unemployed. The Alliance is reputed to have had 1,500 locals in forty-five of the forty-eight states. The Corpus Christi economy was just beginning to move toward industrialization. A local oil field was developing, with a refinery taking shape at Ingleside, some few miles out the ship channel. An office building, larger than any before it, was under construction and continued to completion without interruption, the exception at that time. Southern Minerals, a subsidiary ofPittsburgh Plate Glass, began uninterrupted construction of its Corpus Christi chemical plant in the depth of the Depression. Cotton farmers were hard hit. The bottom had dropped out of the market, as the saying goes. It marked the end of the South Texas one-crop economy. King Cotton's reign had ended. Farmers found that abundant crops of cabbage, onions, and maize could be grown in that same soil. The trouble was, for the next few years there would be measly little market for any of it. We shipped a lot of onions to North Atlantic points, though. Literally millions of men rode freight trains all over the country, to here, to there, to nowhere. Some would tell you that it was better being miserable on the road than being miserable at home. There was always the hope that one day you'd come up lucky, fall off a boxcar and into a job somewhere. The communities along the rail routes took measures to discourage the transients from staying very long. In order to keep them from staying, it became prudent to provide

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them with sufficient nourishment to supply the strength to leave. The community soup kitchen set up for transients was a fixture for a long time. Hobo 'jungles" on the outskirts of towns became a fixture also. Authorities learned a general rule: that if you left their jungles unmolested, the transients would generally content themselves with bumming enough foodstuffs from merchants in the vicinity to make a jungle stew, then they'd stay close to the jungle camp, braving whatever weather came, in such shelters as they and their buddies could improvise. After a day or so they'd move on. Destroy the jungle "conveniences," and you'd have homeless men all over your city bumming handouts and seeking shelter. Members of many a family living near rail yards went on short rations themselves out of the goodness of their hearts to provide as much as they could to the hungry men riding the freights. Corpus Christi, at a distance from any rail artery, saw comparatively little of this transient army. Still, in common with those in other communities, local residents took the view that we had enough misery of our own without inviting any more. Such out-oftown unemployed as came that way were encouraged to make the visit a short one. Where Clarence Vandever and I lived, Hall's Camp on the bay shore, you'd see a fisherman wade into the shallow water off the ship channel early in the morning with his pole and line and a few bait shrimp he'd scrounged from somewhere (Old Man Mers' store, likely as not). He'd fish until he'd caught a couple, then make for home, where the family would breakfast on fresh-caught fish. Don't let's think about what was to eat if he failed to catch anything. And that one fisherman was not by himself. The Corpus Christi commercial fishing fleet was small, supporting just a couple of fish houses. Shrimpers and fishermen began to bring in fish that were not "commercial," that ordinarily would have been thrown back into the water. Fish houses passed them on to one charity or another that operated a kitchen or distributed foodstuffs to needy families. In winter the bay fish would seek the deeper water for warmth. This meant that fish would enter the ship channel and the turning basin in great numbers. Marine life clustered around pilings that supported the docks and warehouses meant great feeding for the fish. That, in tum, meant an area attractive to a fisherman. Port authorities do not invite people to clamber around under the docks in normal times. However, facing this unprecedented economic dislocation, port authority and law enforcement mutually agreed to permit fishing under the docks, on condition that there be no smoking, nor

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any open light or flame of any kind. Fishermen were put on their honor to obey and help enforce this precaution against having our port go up in smoke. It worked out quite well, with almost no infractions. As you would expect, people passage under the docks was again prohibited when times "got better." Meanwhile, the presidential race progressed. Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot of charm, which he projected to the public with an ebullience that show business people call "the old moxie." He campaigned in thirty-eight states, promising remedies for what ailed the economy. Many were believing. In the November general election he won over President Hoover by some seven million popular votes. His administration would take office four months later, in March 1933. Local union elections held in December 1932 returned all of us incumbents to our respective offices. The Bull Line, running to North Atlantic ports, was our heaviest carrier of coastwise freight. The company decided it worthwhile to install a Corpus Christi office, which was set up dockside at City Dock Nine. Frank McCarthy was the man in charge. He was a company vice president and a knowledgeable steamship man. He rose to the rank of commodore in the Seabees in World War II and was in charge of Navy stevedoring operations for the entire South Pacific. A Houston-based firm, Southern Stevedoring and Contracting Company, came in as the Bull Line stevedore. C. L. "Charlie" Downey was their superintendent, no slouch with steamship savvy himself. He became a colonel in the Army Transportation Corps in World War II, serving in North African ports. But back in 1932 we longshoremen felt the lash on our backs from this new operator and his stevedore much the same as when Boyd-Campbell had the line. It seemed to us that every ding-dong company wanted more out of us than we could possibly give. One of our wittier hands had this description of it: "Get in there and hit it! Hit it 'til you're so damned tired you can't hit another lick. Then keep right on a-hittin' it!" But we had begun to change some of that, a little at a time. And all at once the year 1932 was gone and we were into 1933. Say, will you allow me one more reminiscence before we leave 1932? Another side of Simon Borison's personality. And if there's any opinion that an inordinate amount of space is being given to Mr. Simon Borison, my answer is, you just should have met the man under the circumstances that we longshoremen did. He left his mark on things, you can believe.

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I haven't mentioned Si's son, Charlie, have I? Charlie was built on the frame of the old man, not quite as heavy, but tough, rough, and ready. Charlie and I stayed on friendly terms during all my "feuding" with his dad. In fact, Charlie never let himself become involved on the company side of any of it. Charlie and a long-time buddy wanted to try their hands at trapping on St. Joseph Island, one of the barrier islands that lay a little to the north. I had spent a few weeks trapping in the edge of the Texas Hill Country below Austin in 1930 and still had some traps and a certain amount of camping gear. I told Charlie that he and his partner were welcome to use it. Charlie picked me up at the hiring hall on an off day. "Before I take you by your place for the gear I want to go by the old man's place for a minute," he said. Arriving there, he said, "Come on in." What was I to say? "Your dad and I are not friends. I don't want to enter his house"? Well, I didn't. I followed Charlie onto the porch. Si himself opened the door, invited us in, and told us to "sit." While we seated ourselves he left the room and returned with a bottle of home brew for each of us and one for himself. Mrs. Borison appeared. Si made the introduction. Mrs. Borison welcomed us (I reckon her son was always welcome, anyway), then, saying she had chores that needed doing, excused herself. If Simon Borison ever carried his work home with him it didn't show that day. He knew what Charlie was up to, of course. The talk quickly turned to hunting and trapping, and lasted a while. Si broke out the second round of home brew. He got to telling about his experiences trapping muskrats and gathering Spanish moss from the trees in Louisiana swamp country. Si probably would have slugged anybody who called him a raconteur, but that's what he was, a fascinating storyteller. I could have listened to him all day long, was sorry when Charlie said it was time we must go. During the visit, not one word about those Corpus Christi docks. But the next morning, there was Si, romping and stomping as usual, wanting more production, and more. The labor contract was to expire March 31. It was negotiating time. I was elected to represent the local. Gaylord Eddy got his car ready to travel. The local supplied us with credentials. We hied ourselves to Galveston at the district president's call and took part with other locals' representatives in formulating demands to be presented to our employers. To tell it briefly-and it was brief-when we later presented our demands to them, the employers looked them over and rejected every one. We came out of those negotiations, surely the shortest in ILA history, with one contract change: Suppertime on Saturday (payday) would be from five to seven o'clock, allowing

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an extra hour for paying off. Our employers conceded us that. Expiration date was March 31, 1934. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been inaugurated President of the United States. He had immediately ordered all banks in the nation closed, to reopen subject to findings of bank examiners. Whatever one's assessment of the predicament it was fashioned to meet, it did one thing impressively: it got people's attention. It was rather eerie seeing bank doors closed and wondering how and how long money would circulate without the assistance of those institutions. From that time on FDR had his citizens' attention. Luck or a stroke of genius, it guaranteed him a future audience. Roosevelt called Congress into session. Congress passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act. People breathed easier. Congress proceeded then, during a period that came to be called "The Hundred Days," to set a record for enacting "social" legislation. One bill that failed to pass was the Black Bill. Introduced by Sen. Hugo Black of Alabama, it proposed a work week of thirty hours. At home, Mr. Marshall resigned as business agent to accept a post as a state deputy labor commissioner. During his time as deputy commissioner he was stationed in the Corpus Christi area. To his credit, he was persuasive in influencing the cotton compresses to send out bales safer for handling than formerly. Ernest Hunt was elected to fill the business agent vacancy-over yours truly. A change in attitude toward cotton work developed. It came up for action following an unusual happening. A ship docked one afternoon and started work at three o'clock. She worked five gangs, three black and two white, and loaded a little over 2,500 bales, all for the same destination. The men piled onto the ship, rigged for loading, and loaded the cargo of cotton before suppertime. Reminding: cotton loaded before five o'clock was paid for at straight time, after five, at overtime. One hundred bales per hour was what you were paid on straight time for any waiting time that might occur. For example, should a winch break down, causing a gang to lay idle, the employer must pay the gang whatever it lacked of an average of 100 bales per hour for the time the gang was on the ship until the winch was operable again. Should a breakdown occur at three in the afternoon after an 8:00 A.M. start-and the gang had already loaded 800 or more bales-the gang could be required to stand by until five o'clock without compensation for idle time. During overtime hours the gang was paid for actual time lost at the rate of 100 bales per hour. So no employer could rightfully ask a gang to load cotton at a rate faster than 100 bales per hour at any time.

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Grover Polinard raised the subject in meeting. There were three Polinard brothers, Grover, John, and Rufus. Rufus was called "Preacher"-I never learned why. They had come to Corpus from Texas City, second-generation longshoremen, and all three outstanding cotton cutters. "Mr. Chairman," said Grover, "about this thirteen-cent cotton. It's priced so low, you wouldn't have any money to brag about if you made 2,000 bales a day. As it is, a day's work, 801 bales, comes to $6.94 per man. A longshore day is $5.60. So you make $1.34 over a longshore day if you load a hundred bales an hour. "So what did we do the other evening? We went out and worked like a bunch of maniacs and did five hours' work in less than three. And what do we have to show for it? We didn't have to go back after supper, that's true. But what the hell else did we have better to do? Anybody with something better to do wouldn't be hiring out at three in the afternoon. You can argue that you would have made less than a dollar more if you loaded 100 bales an hour and went back after supper. Well, that's eighty or ninety cents that you'll always be without. Spend two bits for supper, you still come out over half a dollar to the good. That's money, hard as times are." (Author: A quarter wouldn't buy a steak dinner, but it would get you a hamburger steak or a big bowl of stew that would stick to your ribs.) "But that's not the biggest thing," Grover continued. "Look at the accidents that happen that wouldn't happen if we worked at a reasonable pace. With shipping as slow as it is, brothers, we had better think about staying on the job a little longer and collecting some of that overtime pay ourselves instead of giving it back to the shippers. I want to offer a motion that the local pass a rule to limit cotton loading to 100 bales per hour." That stirred up the meeting. There was an opposition that predicted that ships would not stand by in Corpus Christi for any 100 bales per hour while other ports loaded cotton twice as fast. The turnaround time factor would put us out of the cotton business if we failed to keep pace. We must persuade all ports to adopt the same rule, this opposition argued, or forget it. In the end, the majority favored Polinard's reasoning. One thing that all agreed on, we needed the agreement of our sister local in our port. It wouldn't do to have our two locals working at cross purposes. A committee was chosen and the chairman was instructed to ask for a meeting with a similar committee from Local 1225. Within the joint committee we worked out a proposition that a cotton gang

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would limit its loading to roughly 105 bales per hour, not to exceed 850 bales in eight hours, with some small leeway allowed if a gang could finish a job by a certain time. The pace must be the same in both straight time and overtime work, it follows. How was the rule enforced? Very simply. The local union collected in fines any money made above the limit. It wasn't long until the members of both locals fell into the swing of the 100-bales-per-hour pace, and most strongly supported it. Our cotton trade didn't suffer. We gave the ships good stowage. We eliminated serious accidents almost entirely. (Perhaps quite entirely. I can't now recall one crippling accident during the years that the limit stayed on.) Corpus longshoremen kept the cotton limit until some four years after World War II, when young members coming into the local, eager to show their muscle and to make "fast money," put an end to it. We could never "export" our idea to the other ports. This was unfortunate, in my opinion, for several reasons, the matter of accident prevention the outstanding one. In mid-year Ernest Hunt chose to accept a walking foreman's job with Southern Stevedoring and Contracting. The office of business agent was again open. Meanwhile, we had butted heads a few times with management(s) with variable success: you win some, you lose some. More of that shortly. I was elected business agent at a special election meeting. My opponent, Dick Costello. Now, will you believe this? My winning margin was the same as in the 1931 election for president, one single vote! George Hartley was elected president. A day or so after being the new business agent I was into another set-to with the indomitable Si Borison over another disregard of good safety practice. A day or so after that found me in the BoydCampbell downtown office picking up payroll money. As I was leaving, Steele Campbell stepped from his private office, shook my hand and congratulated me on my new position. "We've been watching you, Gilbert," he continued. "You're intelligent. You can do a lot for that union and you can go a long way. I congratulate you, too, on the way you handled our little dispute the other day. We're guilty of being a little greedy sometimes, of being in too big a hurry to get things done, and we can stand correction just like anybody else, especially when it's for safety. I know every one of your members down there, Gilbert, and I don't want any of them hurt or unhealthy. "You can lead these men, Gilbert. They need a leader. They're

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good men, but they don't always think things through. A fellow like you can see that they stay in bounds. Sometimes you just have to tell them what they should do." Well! I had this feeling that, if flattery was bribery, I was being bribed. It disturbed me that he kept his conversation so personal. "Mr. Campbell," I answered, "I appreciate your good opinion. But, as the men go, I look at it this way: If I were working for you, I'd expect to carry out what you told me to do. The men in the local are my employers, as I see it, and as long as I work for them I'm supposed to carry out what the majority tells me to do. If it ever came to their telling me to do something that I considered morally wrong, then I'd have to quit the job, just like I'd have to quit a company that told me to do something that was against my principles." In retrospect, it sounds pretty stilted and stuffy, the way I put it, but it got across to the man. He didn't press his point further. We wished one another good day and parted. The local union was somewhat divided into two factions. We in the Hartley-Mers faction considered our ideas to be "progressive" (of course) and the other faction's to be "conservative." In employeremployee relationships our faction was more inclined to "take" from the employer than to wait for the employer to "give." Our faction felt that we were being subjected to certain work practices that were degrading. Dick Costello, although he had sought the office of business agent, came over to support the new administration. What a guy! What can I say? The likes of Dick Costello don't come in bunches like bananas. The question of salary came up immediately. During its first couple of years the local had paid the business agent during the busy season only. As year-round shipping had increased, the local had seen fit to pay the business agent full time. The salary was $50 per week. During 1932 the income had not matched that figure. We were flirting with a depleted treasury. So what does industry do? Industry cuts wages. We were a business union (although I wouldn't have known what the expression implied back then). The logical move was to reduce the payroll. A cut in the business agent's pay was called for. It was not a time to be looking at a dues increase. Most of our families were doing without some necessities already. I indicated my willingness to be paid what the men were making-and ran into another quirk in Working Class America's thinking. These guys, these union men, were determined that any salaried officer of theirs should appear to be well paid-$50 weekly was in that bracket-else how could he face our employers, they knowing that he was paid only as much as the labor? I thought it was silly

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then-and more than ever now. What could he face them with if he didn't have the union behind him? But it was a fixation with most members that the "outside" should think that the union officer was a well-paid executive-as if the "outside" that really wanted to know didn't have multiple ways of finding out. A seemly substitute was sought. The business agent would draw high man's pay per day; that ought to sound good to the public. However, some simple arithmetic showed that the treasury couldn't stand that either. A solution, the business agent to receive threefourths of high man's pay per day, was finally settled on. I stayed on as business agent for ten months. Figuring my "salary" on a perweek average, it came to a little over $23 per week, while the average for all hands on the job was just under $21. So it wasn't a rich man's territory, but better than many were doing. What I am proud of: I started with a treasury ofless than $100 that had grown to more than $1,800 when I left office ten months later. Not all due to my perspicacity, but I claim a share. It doesn't take mathematical genius to determine that a thousand dollars came from whittling down the business agent's pay; the difference between $23 and $50 weekly.

CHAPTERS

RISING MILITANCY

I

1933 JOB injustices still fretted us considerably. One of the worst was that a company, especially those stevedoring coastwise ships, would charge one or more members of a gang for cargo damage. It was done in Corpus Christi and in Houston. I can't speak surely for Galveston and Texas City. The local union had paid off such claims in the past. The sums demanded were usually trifling amounts. It was my feeling that the employers did this every so often just to remind the serfs of their condition of servitude. Our new administration had hardly had time to draw a deep breath when here came a claim for cargo damage caused by the labor force. We had had one of those rushes of work that happen rarely in the off season. Paul Cecil and Charlie McCann were driving winches in an "extra" gang on a West Coast vessel in the intercoastal trade. Intercoastal vessels plied between Atlantic and Pacific ports of the United States through the Panama Canal, with possible calls at Mexican or Central American ports. They did not go "deep sea" to South America, the Orient, Europe, or Africa. For a time we had a special intercoastal wage scale, between coastwise and the deep sea scale. The gang was discharging dried fruits packed in light wooden boxes. Starting out of the hold with a loaded tray, the winchman on the "outrigger" winch tightened his line too suddenly. The resulting jerk caused a couple ofboxes to topple off the load back into the hold and to break open. So the two winchmen and/or the gang and/or the local union were being billed for some dried prunes. From the company standpoint-it was the Boyd-Campbell Company-the men had "bought" the prunes. Fortunately for us, nobody accepted any of the fruit, which remained in the dock warehouse. The company sent a bill to the two winchmen in care of the local. The local then took it up. We notified Boyd-Campbell that we were advising the men to ignore the bill and that we would contest it leN

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gally if we had to, contending that the contract agreement to furnish efficient labor did not imply infallibility, a labor force that never made any mistakes. The company replied, "Until the bill is settled, don't send McCann or Cecil in any gang on any of our ships." That leads us to our most grievous grievance of all: barring men from work for indeterminate periods. How did it start? It was being done when we of 1929 vintage arrived on the scene, and had continued. Si Borison was bad about barring men. Charlie Downey had barred a man or two from his Bull Line ships. In Houston, one notorious for the same was Tony Mellina, a brother of District Secretary Frank Mellina. I've already low-rated Frank in this account, and now Tony. So as not to put down the whole family, there was another brother, George, who was president of Galveston ILA Local 307 for a number of years. As far as I ever learned, George never engaged in any action that damaged the union. I considered him a good officer. If there were other Mellinas on the waterfront, I never met them. The local had coped with the barrings by giving a barred worker "right-of-way" in gangs going on the ships of other companies. It appeared that no two companies had yet barred the same man, so this "solution" had served to keep their pay days comparable to the regular run. No great to-do had been made of it to this time, but there was resentment. We officers had discussed ways of proceeding in the matter. We wanted to win, not lose, when we chose to proceed. Lo and behold! Through a random couple of happenings, Lady Luck fell right into our laps. The first came on another intercoastal ship-and Boyd-Campbell again. If you've ever seen an old steam winch, you'll remember a steam cylinder alongside, from which a piston works to a cam that rotates the drum. There's a housing over each flange of the drum, with iron rods extending from housing to housing at intervals, designed to keep the winchline from jumping off the drum, in case the drum should pay out slack faster than the pull on the line is taking it up. One or more rods were missing from this winch. The gang should never have turned to with a winch in that condition. But we had not reached that plateau of safety consciousness at that time, may I say? The winchman happened to pay out slack too fast, the line jumped the drum and fell into the cam, resulting in a kink in the cable. The gang was billed by BoydCampbell for a winch cable, with gang foreman Bill Brown personally cited. Among both "conservative" and "radical" elements of our members there was a general feeling that we had been stomped down enough on "damage" claims. We reminded the company officially that we were already on record not to pay for what we contended

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were normal operational hazards. Moreover, we were claiming that this was caused by ship's neglect. We received a not wholly unexpected reply: "Until settlement of this claim is made, don't send any of the men who were in that gang that day back on any of our ships." President Hartley called a special meeting to deal with the situation. It was decided to send those men back on a Boyd-Campbell ship, all in the same gang, if such turned out conveniently practical for us. We would wait for a time when it was that gang's turn to work when that company had a ship to work, when the same foreman and the same men would report for work. In all likelihood, the company had wind of our intention. (Si used to brag that he received a full report of our doings on meeting nights before any of us were in bed.) We made our sister black local aware of what we intended to do and received their assurance that they would not replace any gang that the company might refuse to allow to work. Their business agent was a gentleman named Fred Hall. Fred died a few years later while still a young man. It came Bill Brown's turn to go out. Boyd-Campbell turned in an order for gangs on a Munson Lines coastline vessel, five hatches, a gang in each hatch-and our local would have the forward end, three gangs. Perfect! We held a last-minute strategy meeting. Brown's gang would be in number three hatch, the key spot. All three gangs were to be at shipside in time to board the ship before starting time. If the company fired Brown's gang, his men were to go ashore, but not leave the area, keeping themselves available for work. The other gangs were to perform the work assigned them in their respective hatches but were to refuse to go into the hatch where men had been fired. At that point Joe Moon, a foreman whose gang would be on the ship, spoke up. "I don't think it's good unionism, if some of my union brothers are fired, to keep on working next to where they've been fired from. If they're fired, I'm bringing my gang off." That caught on like wildfire. It was plain that Moon had articulated the men's thinking. "Yes, we'll pile off the ship," everybody was saying. Then it went a step further. "Let's just settle the whole damned thing once and for all," a member spoke up. "Let the other two gangs pick up everybody that the company has barred right now, and send 'em all to work. Let's put all the companies on notice this morning that we're through with seeing our men barred from work without reason. Everybody works or nobody works."

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By that time the flames of discontent were leaping high. The support for the action exceeded what we officers had dared hope for. The program now was to see that everybody was pointed in the same direction. Besides the "kinked runner gang," Boyd-Campbell had barred Cecil and McCann, as related here; our friend Malcolm Smith, for having opened his mouth instead of keeping it closed; President Hartley, for a similar offense; and a couple of others, for clumsiness or disrespect. All were hired in the gangs except Hartley, who said that he would go to the ship to represent the union and would keep himself personally out of it. Everybody else thought that that was bending over backward much too far, but I never saw anybody ever change George when his mind was fully made up. What happened at the ship comes from eyewitness accounts by others. I stayed in the office by the telephone. First off, Si met Bill Brown as Bill approached the ships. Reports had it that Si's demeanor was calmer than usual. "Bill," Si said, "you know that you and these men you are bringing are barred from our ships until that business about the damaged runher is taken care of." "Well, Si, my name went on the board, and I picked up this gang, and here we are." "There's no use going aboard, because you're not going to turn to." "We'll go aboard, Si, ready to turn to. If you won't turn us to, we'll go ashore, but we won't leave the dock unless you have the law put us off." Si let it go at that. He apparently had not noticed the other barred men in the other two gangs. He gave the other two foremen instructions to rig for working. At starting time he told Brown that his gang was not on the payroll. Brown then told his men to leave the ship. The other two gangs immediately stopped work and left the ship. Si got a little bit back into form then, reports said, raised his voice, used some profanity, and made some threats, but still didn't blow his stack in real Borison style. He went to the dock office. The men stood around. The colored gangs on the aft end continued rigging their hatches. The office phone rang. It was Tom Boyd. He was not happy. "Your men have tied up our ship," he informed me without ceremony. "They're refusing to work, and there's some kind of a conspiracy afoot, because Local 1225 is telling us that they won't work the idle hatches. Do you know what you're doing? You've broken the contract, for one thing." "I don't think our men are refusing to work, Mr. Boyd. I think management must be refusing to let them work."

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"Refusing to let them work? You know that we told you not to send any of the gang that damaged that runner on any of our ships until the bill is paid. Now, I understand, some of them are down there. That same gang, Brown's gang, is down there. You knew better than to send them down in the first place. And now the others are refusing to work, and you're breaking your contract." "No, Mr. Boyd, we're not breaking the contract. The company has already broken the contract. We claim that it's illegal for you to bar those men for the reason that you have. If you pursue that line, we think that we can legally declare that no contract exists and call for negotiating a new one." He hadn't had that idea sprung on him before, I could tell. He sputtered for a moment before saying that he was going to the ship's berth. I told him that he would find President Hartley there, with authority to speak for the union, and that I would be in the office. In the phone conversation Mr. Boyd had also accused us of taking the action without consulting the district office. He was right about that. We were afraid that, if we made the district office aware, Secretary Mellina would find some way to throw us a curve. Mr. Boyd hit the dock pretty hot, they said. Hartley told him and Si that hot words weren't going to help the situation. He advised lowering voices and talking calmly. Then he told them that our position was unyielding. They could work the labor we'd sent them or not work at all. Boyd and Borison returned to the dock office. After a few minutes Mr. Boyd came out and told Hartley, "I've just received some information that I don't know why I didn't have earlier. I've just learned that the ship didn't change that runner, but continued to use it." George assented to that. What wasn't said: We'd have resisted paying for the blamed thing if it had been chopped to pieces; but George was there to see the men go to work, not for debate. "The ship sent us a phony bill," Boyd said, "and we'll see about that. Tell the men to turn to." "All the men?" "All the men." "The 'prune men' too?" "Yes, dammit, the prune men too. But goddammit, Hartley, that doesn't mean that your men are going to come on our ships and tear up cargo at will. We'll fight you." "Our men don't come on your ships to tear up cargo, Mr. Boyd, and never have. And we'll fight to see that they don't get their living taken away. We want that understood, sir." "All right," Boyd answered, "we'll set up a grievance procedure

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and avoid these stoppages. Okay?" He offered his hand. The two shook hands. Boyd left the dock. The gangs went to work. George was back at the union office some minutes later to report how the issue had been settled. I called Fred Hall and informed him of the settlement. We followed up our advantage by penning a note to Mr. Downey of Southern Stevedoring and Contracting, informing him that the Boyd-Campbell Company had reemployed the men formerly barred from working on their ships. It would be a much appreciated courtesy if he could see fit to do the same, and let us start from this point with a clean slate all around. Downey was no dummy. He knew how come Boyd-Campbell had reinstated our men. Upon receiving our note, he called, saying, "Let me give you an answer tomorrow." The next day he told us that the slate was clean. That marked the end of being billed for petty damage claims. It marked the end of any man being unilaterally barred from work without a hearing. It was time for the regular Central Dock and Marine Council meeting. Eddy and I attended. Congress had been grinding out that "New Deal" legislation. The administration was encouraging workers to join unions and encouraging employers to bargain with them collectively. Joining a union had become the "patriotic" thing to do. It showed at the Council meeting. For the first time we met delegates from the Sabine District: dormant and defunct ILA charters were being revived, black and white alike. The dock hands were joining and rejoining. Optimism filled the air. When it came time for reports from the different ports and we gave our version of how we had put our barred men back to work, President Dwyer complimented us all over the place, not forgetting to cite Local 1225 for their show of solidarity in refusing to send gangs to work our hatches. "It looks as if you old-time leaders ought to take a leaf from these young fellows' book," he told the meeting. "Under Hartley and Mers, they've quit crying about their bad conditions and are getting out and changing them in Corpus Christi." My, my! My chest must have swelled like a pouter pigeon's. It appeared that President Dwyer was repudiating Mellina's cautious approach and was saying, "Be militant." Well, old-timers had told us that Mickey Dwyer was a firebrand when younger. He was backing us up now. That was the main thing. Hartley and I were his fairhaired boys. I couldn't wait to get back home to tell George about it. There were visions bouncing around in my head of becoming a righthand man to the district president, and goodness knows what-all. Politics outside the union was getting more exciting too. Tom

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Donald was a seaman who spent most of his "on the beach" time in Corpus Christi. Many seamen held a mild aversion toward longshore work. Not so Tommy Donald. He would hire on as an extra hand any time. He preferred seafaring as a career, however. He was a good worker and an independent sort of cuss. Right after our Munson Line "disbarring" action, Tommy asked if he could talk privately with me. He told me that he was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as the IWW or the Wobblies. He said that it was a different kind of union than the ILA and other American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions, principally because the IWW believed that every worker around the world should support the beef of every other worker, that an injury to one is an injury to all. Was I open-minded enough to listen? Did I know anything about the IWW, for starters? I told Tom that I had spent my adolescent years in Bisbee and had heard about the 1917 Wobbly Deportation there, where most citizens declared that the Wobblies were an abomination. I was willing to listen to some kind words about them, if he had any. Tom knew about the deportation. That was part of the class struggle, he said, where the capitalist class had used brutal force against the working class. The sad part is that there are so many workers, as there were in Bisbee, who don't know what it's all about, who can be recruited on the side of capitalism against their own class. The Bisbee Deportation occurred on the morning of July 12, 1917. An IWW-sponsored miners' strike had been in effect since June 27. The employees were divided, perhaps half striking and half working. In a predawn roundup, a huge citizens' posse, enjoying blanket deputization by County Sheriff Harry Wheeler, rousted out and corralled roughly 1,200 men-strikers and suspected sympathizersand marched them to the ball park in Warren and into waiting boxcars and cattle cars. The story is an engrossing one, but too long to recount here. The deportees were forced out of the cars in the New Mexico desert near Hermanitas, to become temporary wards of the US Army post at Columbus. A government commission later branded the deportation as "the most flagrant violation of civil rights in the history of the country." (I would suspect that the World War II impoundment of secondgeneration Japanese-Americans topped the Bisbee incident, but we don't have space to explore that one either.) I should think that serious students of labor struggles would class the Bisbee Deportation as a carefully planned and executed move by the mining interests, in a pattern of related maneuvers, to destroy the power of organized labor in the Southwest. It succeeded.

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I'd heard the expression "class struggle" before. Partisans believing that Thomas J. Mooney and Warren K. Billings, convicted of setting off a bomb during a "Preparedness Day" parade in San Francisco in 1916, had been framed, would charge that the two were victims of the class struggle. Tom Donald used the phrase with an intensity that made it alive and present. It was not something going on behind faraway prison walls, but a clear and present and ongoing envelopment. The gospel according to Donald: The trade unions support capitalism, while the IWW believes that capitalism must be done away with to make it possible for people to live in comfort and at peace. The trade unions often fight one another on the economic field, each seeking its own advantage at no matter whose cost. The IWW advocates solidarity among all workers, beginning by organizing all workers in one industry into the same industrial union. In a nutshell, the trade unions deny the class struggle; the IWW affirms it. The man broadened my vocabulary. He used words like "fink" and "noble," "scissorbill" and "wick." Do you know what a noble is? He's a super fink, a recruiter, a scabherder. A scissorbill is a bird who doesn't know a doggone thing, is proud of his ignorance, and is too brainless to be taught anything. Wentworth and Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang says the origin is unknown. I haven't pursued the matter any farther. And a wick? As nearly as I ever came to understand that one, a wick is a scissorbill with a Iotta brown on his nose. There are similar words in the Scandinavian tongues that imply weakness, or being pliant or bendable. The word could very well be a corruption of one of these, for many Scandinavian immigrants became staunch IWW members. In any case, a wick is not the guy you'd look to for support in a struggle. If we had had one union with one purpose in the maritime industry in our 1931 strike, if seamen, ships' officers, tugboatmen had all refused to perform their functions, most assuredly the strike would have been a victory instead of the defeat we suffered, Donald argued. (In fact, we both knew that there was hardly any union organization for any purpose at that particular time, but the substance of what he was saying made sense.) Moreover, under the IWW, those truck drivers who serviced the ships or hauled cargo to and from would have turned their vehicles away from the disputed territory. The objective was to organize the Industrial Workers of the World clear around the world, just as the name implies, said T. Donald, and then tell the employing class that it is no longer tolerable, that its members must become producing workers. All people would then

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work together and we would have production for use instead of for profit, with comfort and plenty for all. It was a large order, more than I could assimilate at one sitting. However, there were things close to home that I could understand and identify with. The idea of lending support to other workers in trouble seemed not only right, but RIGHT right. And I was already anticapitalism in an undefined way. It was the first of many conversations with Donald. The colored local had shown some of this solidarity by not accepting orders to place gangs in our hatches during the Munson action. In the IWW way, they would have walked off the ship with us; but, considering the conditions prevailing at the time, they had taken a steadfast stand, had done exactly what we had asked them to do. Without attaching any great importance to what I was doing, I approached Local1225 business agent Fred Hall. "Fred, I don't know exactly how to put this. It certainly isn't meant to embarrass you. But I know that they sometimes make it hard for a colored man to speak his piece. You helped us out, and we sure appreciate it. What I want to say is, if any time comes when you have a grievance and you send a committee anywhere, if you think that I could help you by going along, just invite me." He thanked me, saying he'd take it up with his group. And just days later they called my hand! To use Southern phraseology of the times, here was "me and three other niggers" calling on the Boyd-Campbell Company at their office. Why did every misunderstanding have to be with BoydCampbell? Not every one was. It just seemed that the BoydCampbell disputes highlighted the crop. It had been my luck to have witnessed or eavesdropped on a couple of scenes where a black representative was talking to a white man. It would go about like this: Black: "Mr. So-and-So, we've got this problem. The men don't like having to do such and such, and they're pretty dissatisfied about it. So I'm here to see can't we change it so that the men don't have to do such and such any more." White: "Aw, Sam, you bother us with the triflin'est things. That ain't no big thing that you've come here with, and you ought to tell your men so. We want everybody to get along with everybody, Sam. Your race of people is a happy race. Go tell 'em to have fun. Get their minds off trifles like this. Barbecue some pork tonight, have a party. Be workwise tomorrow. Don't go messin' with the way the work's being carried on. You know it yourself, we got plenty problems, just staying in business."

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Black: "But, Mr. So-and-So, this is not just a triflin' thing. Leastways, the men don't think so. It's a thorn in our flesh, and we were hoping that you would see it that way and give us this concession, sir." White: "Sam, we'll think about it. Okay? But we can't give you just every damn fool thing that your men dream up. Goddlemighty, they'll be wanting fur-lined toilet seats next. And God knows, they spend too much time in the crapper already. We can't give in to every fool demand like this, Sam. Go back and tell 'em how lucky they are to have what they've got-and what they'd better be taking care of-if they mean to keep it." If "Sam" pushed beyond this point he was treading close to the line that, if crossed, made him a "smart nigger." And a "smart nigger" could wind up hurting. Not an everyday occurrence, but it happened. The employer himself wouldn't do it. The published word that Sam had turned out to be "smart" and uppity with white folks could make him a target for unprovoked violence wherever he might be when it caught up with him. A gang of whites beat up a lone "nigger." Short of murder, the best detectives in Texas law enforcement could seldom turn up a suspect. This way, until the point where things reached an absolute boil among the black labor force, the white employer could simply avoid talking to the issue at all, and usually did. He would use cajolery and coaxing, backed up by veiled, or not so veiled, threats if the first failed. The option to deal with issues lay with the white employer, not the black employee. So here we were, we four, three from black Local1225 and a white "visitor." Steele Campbell's greeting was less cordial than on the day he had congratulated me on my election. "What're you doing here, Gilbert?" In the same breath, to the colored men, "What's he doing on your committee?" They answered that I had been invited to come along. I answered for myself that we all thought that it was in the best interests of both our locals for each to know what the other was doing, a "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" kind of thing. Campbell didn't like it. "Maybe your position has gone to your head and you've decided you can run the business of both locals, yours and theirs too?" I didn't appreciate that shot. I said, "Now that you've warned them and they know what to look out for, Mr. Campbell, can we get on with the business that brought us here?'' So we did. Tom Boyd was there also. There is little question; the white man's presence made a difference. Their grievance was much

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the same as ours had been. More whites than blacks had been barred from work for whatever reason, but blacks had not been totally overlooked. Black individuals had been discriminated against. They could as well-have taken joint action with us on the Munson ship, but we hadn't gotten into the swing of collaborating in such fashion at that time. The labor committee won its point. We left the company office, congratulated one another, and went our separate ways. I went walking off on a high cloud-right into a hornet's nest! I was a blasted "nigger lover." Our employer conferees had not lost any time spreading the word. Truly, I had not anticipated at all that a "nigger lover" label would be pasted on what I had done. I thought that every hand among us would be glad that the two locals were working together on their conditions. Not so. I was in hot water up to my-well, too high for comfort. Not that the whole darn local felt that I had crossed the color line and demeaned them, but a great vocal group did. Did you ever go through a period when you felt that "everything I do right is wrong"? The next union meeting was a hot one. There were some pretty harsh words said to and about me by some of the union brothers. I defended myself-I'd rather say, defended my position-with vigor, even striking a low blow by implying that those opposing my action were (unwittingly, of course) more company men than union men. Color had nothing to do with it. Unionism had everything to do with it. In the end, the members vindicated my action. It better have been that way, for I had told the assembly that I would do the same thing again, and from now on, as long as I stayed in office. It was clear that the majority supported my contention that each local supporting the other was better than each going its own way without the other. But it was a tussle with their "southern raisin"' for many. It was a squeaker. There's no time to push like the time when you're being pushed. Up to this time we had been taking work orders in the order in which the companies turned them in rather than by each ship's arrival. This was used discriminatorily by the companies-usually in favor of us whites. A stevedore would call the union office, "We've got a ship arriving tomorrow with work heavy on the forward end. What end do you catch on the next ship?" "No luck. We catch the aft end." "Well, we won't order now. Maybe somebody else will order in the meantime." White men did the ordering and were prone to favor white longshoremen. The picture could change, though, if our men had been

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overly contentious on some matter. Then the heavy end of a ship might go to the colored local on one or a few orders. You can bet that those ordering made sure that the message was delivered. Looking at it fairly, one had to say that the method was capricious at best, and immoral when misused. A spirit of fairness was shared by most of our guys. Catch-ascatch-can, based on actual ship arrival time, was fair enough. So, while "nigger loving" was a heated topic was as good a time as the next to correct the matter. We officers proposed to ask Local1225 for a joint meeting on the subject. The meeting was held. We agreed that the end of the ship that each local worked would be determined by the order in which ships passed through the drawbridge. The bridge tender logged arrival of every vessel, leaving no room for argument. That ended playing one local off against the other on that score. It seemed though, that as soon as one problem was solved, another popped up. "Come on over quick and see how number two hatch is rigged. Act like you ain't been told nothin' ," said the voice on the phone. A Lykes Brothers ship had arrived for a one o'clock start, two gangs doubled in the number two hatch, in process of rigging for work at that moment. Malcolm Smith was a trucker on the wharf. He had spied the dock office empty and had dodged in to make that quick call on the office telephone, unobserved. Even though we had put our men back to work, Smith himself prominent among them, he wasn't prepared to challenge the chance that it wouldn't happen again. The fact was, there were few men at that time who would have taken the chance that he did. The call had caught me putting papers and stuff away, clearing the office preparatory to visiting the ship. After the phone call I hurried it up. The first clear view of the ship showed that things were not good. The job was to load lead. The stages set side by side in the doubled number two hatch were so close together that if you had walked between them with arms akimbo, you'd surely have skinned both elbows. Where two gangs were doubled in a hatch, the one firstout in the ordering was the "right-of-way" gang; the other, the "visiting" gang. J. C. Raby was the visiting foreman this day. And (can you guess?) Simon Borison was the walking foreman in charge. Si wasn't on the forward end when I came aboard. I had learned that, if you ever wanted Si Borison to show up in a hurry, a shut-off winch would do the trick. I told the foremen to shut off their winches. It worked. Here came Si. I beat him to the first word. "Si, you're not going to get by with working like this. You're put-

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ting men's lives in danger. If you want to work doubled, have Raby lower his boom until you've got at least ten feet more room." Si let it out. The blue smoke rolled. He came on strong with what seemed to me must surely be his favorite theme: This Johnny-comelately upstart who thought he already knew all there was to know about loading ships, was going to tell them in business how to run their business. He'd be damned if he'd have a smart-ass kid, that didn't know from Shinola, tell him how to rig a ship. I turned to Raby. "Bring your gang to the station." Raby yelled into the hold, "Everybody on deck." Then to Si, "You want us to leave the stages up? You want us to cover this end of the hatch?" "Hell no! If you ain't gonna work, get your asses off the ship and off the dock. That's all I want." Si headed for the gangplank. I followed. Ashore, Si was making threats about the sad fate of our union if my kind stayed in charge. I was making counter threats about how he wasn't so almighty that he could go on risking our lives with improper rigging, and so on. Walter Williams, general superintendent, represented Lykes Brothers at shipside. A thoroughly competent man, he knew ships and shipping. He had been in Corpus Christi only a short time, the company having sent him in from Galveston. The thunder brought Williams out of his office. "What's the trouble, Si?" "Got a smart young clodhopper here trying to tell me how to run my business. He's pulling a gang off my ship." "What's the trouble with you, Gilbert? What's this about?" "He's doubled the gangs in number two too close together. He's putting the men in danger." "You say, men in danger. Is there enough hatchway room to set the stages far enough apart to make it safe?" "Hell yes. Plenty of room, ifhe'lljust have 'em lower the low boom." "Don't let that gang leave the ship. Si, I don't want to get into these labor disputes, but my job is to see that our ships get dispatch. Both the stevedore and the men are working for Lykes Brothers, don't forget. I don't believe that this young man is really that unreasonable." To me he said, "You go on. All this you two cussing one another isn't helping anything. You have my word the rigging will be done." And so ended that scene. A day or two later the union received a letter from the company. It was conciliatory. It pointed out that both sides were surely interested in preventing accidents and just as surely interested in getting

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ships loaded and unloaded. Surely both sides preferred that work should go on without interruption. It went on to suggest that the union submit to the company a plan or set of rules suggesting just what the union considered to be safe working distances where gangs were doubled in a hatch. If a set of rules could be agreed to by both sides it would eliminate costly delays and unpleasant misunderstandings in the future, something the company felt would be a welcome development for both sides. President Hartley and I were jubilant. Now we were getting somewhere! Hartley called a special meeting, from which a committee was selected to draft our reply. The colored local was invited to send a committee to sit with us, and did. Local1225 did not, however, sign the reply, since no such letter had been addressed to them. What kind of people is it they say learn only in the school of experience? Had we known what we learned from this experience, we would have insisted that the company deal with both locals jointly. We came up with a proposed rule: "Where a hatch is doubled, the falls should be at least twelve feet apart (author: a government code adopted in the 1960s said twenty feet) and neither fall closer than six feet to the end ofthe hatchway. Neither gang to work past a line across the ship halfway to the other gang's fall." That was cutting it as close as we were going to cut it, both locals agreed. We prepared and mailed our reply. A few days later we received a letter from District President Dwyer. Enclosed was a copy of our letter to Boyd-Campbell (no reference to the company's letter to us); also, copy of the letter that Boyd-Campbell had sent him. This latter alleged an impending violation of the labor contract, because the contract contained a clause providing that matters of safe working conditions were to be determined between the employer and the union business agent. What duplicity! It was a blatant contradiction of the terms in their letter to us, of their invitation to propose a rule for their consideration. We had been taken, lied to. But wait. The icing on the cake: In his letter to us and his reply to Boyd-Campbell, Dwyer agreed with the company fully. I'd been told betimes "Ain't no use you gettin' mad, 'cause you can't whup nobody, noway," and had seen the wisdom of it. But this made me mad enough to try to "whup" somebody. Hartley was just as mad-and he could whip somebody. We rarely made long distance phone calls in those days. There wasn't money to spend on such. We made a long distance call to Brother Dwyer that day. George and I both blistered him. We insisted that a safety margin set by the union employing the business

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agent was instructing him according to the terms of the contract. Else, what was he trying to do? Encourage a business agent to vacillate from one circumstance to the next? It got a bit uncomplimentary before it ended. Well, you don't go making harsh, derogatory remarks about his lack of common sense to your superior's face, or by telephone, and stay in his good graces. How sudden our fall from grace! From being trailblazers who could show the way to the more timid local unions only sixty days ago (Dwyer himself had said) we were now rash, power-drunk adventurers, bent on upsetting the apple cart of orderly labor relations. From paragon to pariah-overn ight. We felt that we were victims of duplicity on the part of our employers and victims of betrayal on the part of our district president. Retaliation is not really commendable. Is it? The Boyd-Campbell Company never doubled a hatch in as little as twelve feet from fall to fall where our local had jurisdiction during the rest of my tenure. In September 1933 a hurricane blew in and I hauled off and got married, in that order. We were forming our units for the Labor Day parade when the official word was passed that the parade was canceled because of the impending storm, all citizens advised to prepare to protect person and property against hurricane conditions. A few hours later there was an order to evacuate North Beach. Clarence and I each rolled an extra shirt and a toothbrush in one of the landlord's blankets and trudged to a designated shelter. My folks shut up the store and moved in with friends on higher ground. The center of the storm struck Brownsville. Winds out from center extended to record distances. Corpus Christi was hit early that night by winds approaching hurricane force. Reasonable precautions had been taken. Damage to buildings was "minimal." North Beach was covered by shallow water, but escaped any serious wave damage. Sometimes those storms stir up a tidal wave effect. By mid-morning next day, Tuesday, it had blown through and everybody was returning home or to work. North Beach was one big mud puddle. The water had receded. The mud remained. We went to look at our habitation. We had placed our belongings from the floor onto the bed. Thank heavens, the bedstead was high enough that water had not reached to slats or springs. The belongings on the bed were high and dry. It was then I noticed what I had failed to do. A small foot locker that normally stayed under the bed was still under the bed, contents saltwater-saturate d beyond reclaim. It contained my "law library" and, of much more sentimental importance, individual and group pictures of my high school graduation class. How could I have been so

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brainless? There was no excuse. I let it put me into a low spell. I ceased communicating with Bisbee, ashamed of myself. The hiring hall, that old shack, was built well off the ground. It was undamaged. I performed the required business agent's duties, then moseyed down Water Street to the store. The storm had left an inch or so of slimy, stinking ooze over the floor. I found my dad working furiously to get it cleaned up, so furiously, in fact, that I feared he'd bring on a heart attack. He acted as if the stuff were a deadly human opponent. I pitched in to help and persuaded him to slow his pace, if only by being in the way. Some ten days later at a local parsonage I tied the matrimonial knot with Thelma Harrod. It would be the first of four marriages, the first three ending in divorce. The fourth is now into its twentysecond year and shows no serious structural defects, if you'll accept my word. Sure as shootin', such a record does not qualify me to write a marriage manual. To go into any of them would reflect no credit on me. So, I beg your indulgence to permit me to keep this a recounting of labor events, leaving marriage patterns and opinions to the experts. All right? Under NRA, the National Recovery Administration, industries were settling on fair labor practices and fair competition practices, each industry drawing up its own code. Once agreed to by the industry, the code became enforceable under the law. Over five hundred fair-practice codes were adopted before the Supreme Court ruled NRA unconstitutional in 1935. In the longshore industry workers were permitted to work unlimited overtime to counterbalance those idle days waiting for ships to come in. Most employment was limited to a set number of hours per week. Attempts to organize the local labor force were proceeding at a frenzied pace. We longshoremen were finding ourselves "looked up to" now. We were no longer the dregs of society, not in labor's eyes, anyhow. We were admired, one of the "strong" unions that had weathered the economic collapse and the union-busting that preceded and accompanied it. We took it as our due. What the hell? Praise is so imbibable. Support for buying union-made products grew. So did moves to organize workers in stores and restaurants. This was in line with what my friend Jack Todd had first lectured me: buy union-made products, get everybody organized, do away with hard times. Back on the waterfront, Simon Borison confronted George Hartley walking down the dock. Says Simon, "How the hell come I don't never see you in a gang on any of my ships?" "Because you barred me off, remember?"

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"We put all the barred men back to work. Hell, you were there. You know that. What's the matter with you?" "But I wasn't included. I wasn't in a gang that day." "Wasn't included? The damned settlement included everybody. What kind of a dumb cluck does this damn union have for a president, anyway, that don't know that?" "I wouldn't use my office for my own advantage, Si." "What the hell does that mean? That you're not one of the gang? You mean, you're somethin' special, up there all by yourself? What the hell you want, man, a goddamned engraved invitation from the company to come to work? Well, you won't get it. Goddamned if I'll kiss your ass and beg you. You can stay to hell off forever, it's nothing to me. You come on, you stay off, it makes no damned difference." And Si turned on his heel and walked away. That was the scene as described by Hartley himself. I'd say that George pretty well had coming what Si told him. But George had his own idiosyncrasies. He was as hard-headed-and as honest-as they come. Anyway, he took Si's approach to have been an invitation. He began hiring out on Boyd-Campbell ships again. A very few local unions had held onto employment contracts: printers, movie projectionists, a couple of others. Up or down, all felt now that they were on the comeback trail. The building crafts were being assisted by the stimulus of public works programs. A bit of new life showed in the local economy. Some old-time unionists proposed that we form a local council as a step toward reviving a local central labor body. This was done. By December we had been chartered as the Central Labor Union of Corpus Christi, Texas, AFL. By virtue of representing that "strong" longshoremen's union, I was elected president for the coming year, 1934. A significant national happening occurred also in December: ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition. Most members of organized labor favored repeal. We felt that it would increase employment and redound toward better times. Ironically, just about everybody in my circle credited President Roosevelt with this accomplishment, when the act creating the amendment had been passed near the end of the Hoover administration, in February 1933. (Roosevelt had favored repeal, of course.) Another "tool" to fight the Depression and generally credited to Roosevelt was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, actually set up under Hoover more than a year before Roosevelt took office. A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) had been created, aimed at giving employment to youth. The corps worked in soil, forest, and natural life reclamation and preservation. It made commendable

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contributions in those areas. Employment in the CCC reached a half-million at its peak. Offsetting this conservation of natural resources was a terrible waste of produced resources; farmers paid to plow crops under, dairymen paid to pour out milk, destroying food that could have nourished hungry US citizens. By and large, labor opposed this destruction; but we were so caught up in our enthusiasm over the unprecedented blessing given the right to organize that we offered hardly even token criticism, certainly no concerted opposition to it. You could even say without slander that we kept our yaps shut. A government program of paying farmers not to plant designated acreages had the effect over the next years of putting small farmers and sharecroppers out of business and off the land and resulted preponderantly in enriching large landholders-and greatly aided the development of the corporate farm and agribusiness conglomerates that we see today. Back on the main track: In the local union elections Hartley and I were elected to full one-year terms. And a minor bombshell dropped on us. Si Borison, Joe Gude, and Arthur Wilson, the Boyd-Campbell walking foremen, sent word that they wanted to make application to join the union! My first reaction was, "not no, but Hell No!" But then, in our first January meeting, it must have been, who should rise up but the guy ever ready to put himself on the hot seat, Dick Costello? He spoke right out in meeting to tell us that the three walking foremen had asked him and Mr. Marshall at the onset of the 1931 strike what the union wanted them to do. He and Marshall had advised them to stay on the job. Their reasoning: If the strike should be lost, Si, Joe, and Arthur would be doing the hiring at shipside or dockside shape-ups. Costello and Marshall were relying on them to weed out the scab labor force and make employment for the old labor force as time progressed. Some of us young dudes didn't like our former officers' lack of confidence in the strength of our union, but one had to admit that it put the three bosses in a different light. In good conscience, I had to support their bid for membership. There was a practical aspect to it, too. They'd still be representing the employer, but they'd be responsible to the union for their actions. Bigger than that, though, we were almost certainly facing a strike at the expiration of the contract on March 31. Those three would be worth a million to us off the job. They could hurt us a million on the job, we knew from experience. Not without some simmering rancor, I determined to do all that I could to get them union membership.

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It was a hot issue. Many members believed that there was no excuse for scabbing, no matter what. It was a time for sober reasoning. We used the "black ball" system of voting on membership admissions. There were so many balls, marbles, in a container on a table in front of the voter. A small covered box was joined thereto, with a small hole in the side facing the voter. Members lined up in front of the table and voted one by one. If you favored admitting the candidate you shoved a white ball through the hole; consider him unfit for membership, a black ball. It took only five of the latter to "blackball" any prospect and deny him membership. The examining committee recommended the three candidates for membership. Still, candidates had been blackballed. There was some subdued breathing as the voting went on, take my word. When it was over, all three had been admitted. Soon President Hartley was swearing them into membership. Not to be forgotten, though, was the fact that a portion of the members had cast white balls without conviction, accepting assurance from us officers that it would turn out for the best. They would be waiting to be shown. I told myself, "Fellow, if this doesn't work out, I'm going to get religion and go join a monastery." Do they use the black ball system in monasteries? The year 1934 witnessed many violent labor upheavals. Reminding you again that this is not a history, only an account of how one working stiff came to form some opinions, four of those upheavals that gained national attention will fit into the pattern here. The strike against the Auto-Lite company of Toledo in April produced a phenomenon not happening before or since on that large a scale. Unemployed workers massed on the picket lines in support of the strikers and literally won the strike for them. They defied courts, police, special gunscabs, and the National Guard, and had dead and wounded among their number to show for it. The unemployed participants were organized in the Lucas County Unemployed League, affiliated with the American Workers Party, led by A.J. Muste. The West Coast longshoremen's strike that began in early May and ended in late July saw other maritime workers join the strike to make it a full-blown maritime strike, saw it develop into an abortive general strike of San Francisco labor. It sparked a labor solidarity that had been missing a long time. As longshoremen, we watched the West Coast strike with more interest than other struggles of the time. ILA International President Joseph P. Ryan flew from New York to San Francisco and "negoti-

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ated" a "settlement" with the waterfront employers on his own. San Francisco longshoremen booed him down when he presented his settlement to them, calling it a sell-out. The sell-out was that the longshoremen were to return to work without the seafaring unions having arrived at settlements. The settlements finally reached were not highly satisfactory, but groundwork for joint action had been laid. Joe Ryan contended to the end of his career that longshoremen had had their fingers burned every time they had taken joint action with any other union. The month of May also saw the Minneapolis Teamsters' strike, highlighted, in the minds of many, by "The Battle of Deputies Run," where, in a confrontation staged in the city market, the strikers outmaneuvered the city police force and subdued it. There were literally no cops on the streets of Minneapolis that evening. Striking Teamsters directed evening rush-hour traffic. Among great things about the Minneapolis strike was the solidarity shown by other labor groups in the city and the solidarity of farm people outside the city, who contributed great amounts of foodstuffs. The strikers set up a communications system superior to any up to that time. From out of the strike grew the idea and the impetus for what would become known as the "Eleven-State Area Agreement," the first positive step toward establishing uniform conditions for over-the-road drivers, to become the backbone and life blood of the Teamsters' expansion into a powerful union. All these strikes were violent and bloody. In fact, it would require painstaking research to find those in that period that were not. Employers lucky enough to be weathering the Depression were not about to "give away" a damn thing that was "theirs." By far the bloodiest and widest-ranging was the textile workers' strike. What had never been better than a hand-to-mouth existence had been rendered less than that by massive layoffs from the mills. With the new hope held out to them by NRA, textile workers were joining the union, the United Textile Workers, by the thousands. They were in for bitter disappointment. The industry's NRA administrator, one George Sloan, was an industry spokesman. The textile code called for a reduction in working hours without any adjustment in hourly pay. This set up a spotty wave of local strikes, mostly unsuccessful. At the UTW national convention in August, delegates voted for a strike of the industry. It is my impression that the strike began about Labor Day, without the national officers having yet called it. It began in North Carolina, spread into the Deep South, and to New England. It was met with suppressive violence by local and state

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authorities all along the line. On September 22, 1934, the union ordered the strikers back to work, claiming an "overwhelming victory." Actually, the only tangible thing they had won was one more government "study." It was, as a practical matter-and in its final resolution-a defeat. "Overwhelming victory" is the point here. No union, no union spokesperson (in this case a man named Francis Gorman) has the right to claim any kind of victory when defeat or near-defeat is the true state of affairs. We union people in sections of the country where there were no textile mills took the statement at face value. It would be years after when many of us learned the actual facts. Such claiming of victory when the truth is otherwise is a betrayal of the people spoken for and a betrayal of those spoken to. Back to the waterfront scene. Eddy and I had been to another Central Dock and Marine Council session since Hartley and I had paid our disrespectful respects to the district president. We had been received more coolly than cordially. I had been so imprudent as to press the matter of safe doubling of hatches. The only immediate effect was to rouse President Dwyer's dander. But there was unity among the delegates on one point. The Sabine District delegates reported that their four ports were strongly reorganized and would be asking for the same contract at the same time as the Galveston-Houston District. Action was taken to include the Sabine District in our upcoming negotiations and to bargain for one contract covering all Texas ports and Lake Charles, Louisiana. It came time for the contract committee to meet and draw up demands to present to the master stevedores. President Hartley was elected our contract committeeman. During this period my IWW friend, Tommy Donald, would be on the scene from time to time, and we'd find some time to talk some. Tom, the skeptic, would tell me that the AFL labor councils were gatherings where the different crafts got together to knife one another at close range. There was a modicum of truth in the charge. There have been some highly divisive actions pursued in the name of striving for unity. Tommy would bear down hard on limiting tenure of office. He argued that there are corrupting influences at work that most officials succumb to after a too long time in office. He would name two or three prominent union officials, declare that they were not such bad guys when they first assumed office years ago, but now they had sunk to the level of conniving with employers to keep the rank and file "in line." They were no longer militant, or even good, union

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men. Their only purpose in life now was to perpetuate themselves in office. Tom would further suggest that, if a person is proud of his or her occupation, that person should welcome a return to the trade, to the "point of production," as a respite from holding union office. Moreover, in every group there is more than just one individual capable of representing the membership. All it takes to be a competent union officer is a willingness to listen to the rank and file and the honesty to state the case the way you hear it. That was Tom Donald's message. I wasn't sure that I was supportive of that limited tenure. Newly elected to office and vain enough to believe that I was a pretty sharp cookie, the thought of a career as a labor union official wasn't all that abhorrent. Still, a small voice had already whispered without benefit of Donald's exhortations: the job was abrasive. It is enough to pose a question: If you find yourself avoiding a job that begs doing, will you have enough principle about you to just up and quit the office? Meanwhile, negotiations went by fits and starts. The employers were reluctant to include the Sabine District in the contract. Government representatives got into the act. The several pressures involved resulted in an extension of the contract from March 31 through the month of April. Finally, on May 1, 1934, the ILA struck all ports from Corpus Christi to Lake Charles. And in Corpus Christi, Johnny Ulcak, one of our "Bohunk" members, made a classic observation: "Might as well be on strike. Ain't no ships in port to work on, noway." In Corpus Christi some leverage that we hadn't counted on came our way. Among crops produced when South Texas farmers adopted diversification were winter onions, and May was the shipping month, to North Atlantic ports, mainly. Token marketing had been done in 1933. Growers, merchants, and shippers had been at work meantime. The projected 1934 shipping season would be heavy, except for the longshore strike. We had prepared rather effectively for the strike, had public opinion with us, had attended to the mechanics of strike conduct. But we hadn't done our "research." We weren't aware of what an effective weapon we had in the onion crop until it was already in our hands. The port's warehouse labor had joined the ILA and been issued charters for a black and a white local to share that work on the same basis that longshore locals shared the ship work. But the union's

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bargaining covered longshore work only. We called the warehouse workers together and told them that they were under no obligation to cease work, since they were not represented in the negotiations. Their answer: "We're in the union. If the union is on strike, then we're on strike." The strike was barely underway when the first railroad cars bringing onions to the port arrived. There was no warehouse labor available to unload them. Carloads and truckloads of onions returned to points of origin or were rerouted overland to the northeast. A couple of ships booked for onion cargoes lay idle. Things were looking up for us. Local shippers were feeling the pressure. We picketed around the clock, four-hour shifts on the picket line, twelve hours' office duty. About the fourth morning, one of the men reporting for four o'clock picket duty brought the local morning paper into the office, spread it on the desk, and pointed to a quarterpage ad, a statement by Mr. Frank McCarthy of the Bull Steamship Line. It was decidedly uncomplimentary to us longshoremen, then expressed great concern for the plight of the onion growers and the general public. Mr. McCarthy had fudged the truth a bit in a place or two. One union brother said, "Why don't you answer that?" "What good would it do? We don't have the money to buy that kind of space," I answered. "But the guy's not telling the truth. Newspapers are supposed to give readers the truth, aren't they? Get 'em to publish a correction." After some more palaver, we decided, why not? So pencil was put to paper and a statement critical of Mr. McCarthy's resulted. But would it be published? "The paper will never print it," I told them. At least three felt otherwise. I surrendered our statement to the trio, who took off for the Caller-Times newspaper office. Next morning's Caller carried our rebuttal to the Bull Line ad as a news story. It changed my thinking about the press. Maybe those tales about how newspapers distorted the truth to favor employers were not all true? As time went on I would learn that there had been a time when many papers attacked labor without strict regard for the truth. Not so, in Corpus in May 1934. What I found was the contemporary reporter doing an assigned job, just as you or I. The assignment: to produce a factual story. I soon reached the conclusion that being open with a reporter was the best way. I never had a reporter abuse a confidence, but-try to hide a fact from one? That reporter is

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trained to find facts. He or she will most likely ferret out what you're hiding, and you'll wind up looking silly. You can't expect reporters to make their paper your propaganda organ. You can look to them to report facts. A dependable rule: The newspaper you are reading is publishing the truth, as far as its coverage goes. The real "power of the press" is its power of exclusion, what it decides not to print. So tell that reporter the truth, and hope that the editor lets it print. They can kill you with their silence! If you feel that you have been misquoted or your position described inaccurately, contact that reporter, of course, and discuss the matter. Don't crawl into a manger and growl that that's all you can expect of the lying press. Be open. Hope that the press opens its columns to you. Well, okay. No charge for that media advice. Now to get on with events. The strike was fully settled by May 12. The pre-1932 deep sea hourly scale was restored: $.80 straight time and $1.20 overtime. Cotton pay was raised to $.15 per bale. Coastwise wages were $.75 per hour straight time and $1.00 overtime. The contract covered all Texas ports and Lake Charles. Expiration date: June 30, 1935. It was a signal victory for the times. There had been strikebreaking in other ports, but nothing of great magnitude. There was bloodshed in Houston when striking longshoremen massed on a city dock where a group of non-union black longshoremen worked. The "Buffaloes," a breakaway faction from ILA Local 872 mentioned earlier, had worked at that dock for some years. Strikers, informed that a ship was due, had hoped that their massed presence would persuade the Buffaloes to join the strike. Unknown to the strikers, gunmen had boarded the incoming vessel. As the ship moved into berth some of these gunmen fired into the crowd of pickets, wounding four-two blacks and two whites, as it happened. The gunfire dispersed the pickets. After ambulances had removed the wounded, the Buffaloes went to work and never joined the strike. In a separate incident, Ralph Landgrebe, of whom you'll hear more as we go along, was shot in the midsection. After recovering, he dragged, or hitched, one leg in his walking for the rest of his life, to be tagged with the nickname "Step-and-a-half' by his cronies. We had won the strike on the ships. President Hartley returned from Galveston with word that warehouse workers were on their own. A joint meeting of all locals was quickly called. Hartley was elected spokesman to pursue a contract for warehouse work in the Port of Corpus Christi. He immediately informed the port authority

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and all stevedore companies that the longshoremen would not return to work until warehousemen had a contract. If there was any appeal over our heads to the district office on the issue, we never heard of it. The feeling of solidarity was strong. We were in no mood to listen to any other than our consciences. Within hours the port's warehouse workers had been granted a wage of fifty cents per hour, with time and a half for overtime, an appreciable increase from forty cents, day or night. Onions began to move across the docks. In all following contract renewals warehouse workers were included in the district bargaining pattern. Unknown to us our actions affected seamen's unionism. According to Fred Hansen, a Wobbly whom I did not know at that time, the IWW actively exhorted seamen to refuse to work behind longshoremen's picket lines. This stirred up a sentiment of union solidarity sufficient to cause shipowners to become receptive to ensuing overtures from the International Seamen's Union, AFL. The ISU pitch was an offer of sweetheart contracts guaranteeing "no stoppage of work," while reminding the owners of the imminent threat that seamen could be swayed by the IWW proposal of One Big Union in the marine industry. The ISU approach worked, and that union picked up a spate of contracts through the offer to save the owners from that "IWW threat," says friend Hansen. On the Central Labor Union front we still galloped at our hell-forleather pace, at the same time savoring the sudden "respectability" and community standing that New Deal legislation was bringing us. A number of delegates proposed starting a weekly labor paper. They proposed that the CLU president be the editor. I accepted. Being editor of the paper and CLU president combined to a full-time job. I announced my intention to resign from the business agent's office. A gentleman who shall be nameless here, employed by the Bull Line as an office and dock watchman, told me privately that he had overheard Frank McCarthy's end of a long distance telephone conversation. McCarthy had deplored the employers' lack of preparation for the strike just past. He declared to his listener that the operators should begin preparing as of that moment to turn the tables on labor at the end of the contract. "He's a determined man," my informant said. "You had better begin now to get ready to fight for your next contract. If Mr. McCarthy can enlist the other companies, it will be like a war." At the next meeting, which was also my last as the union's business agent, I used all the influence I could muster to persuade the members to start paying percentage on coastwise earnings, contending mainly that it was not right to charge the outsider a fee that we

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ourselves didn't pay, adding that I felt a "hunch" that our employers might be figuring how to give us a hard time in 1935, in which case a "war chest" accruing from the additional percentage could be a valuable weapon. The proposition was adopted. The same meeting elected the business agent to serve out the unexpired term. I felt that George Hartley would be a shoo-in, considering the progress the union had made during his presidency. Alas for George, J. K. Marshall chose to shuck his deputy labor commissioner post to run for the office. He nosed out Hartley in a close vote. Hartley continued on as local president. The newspaper venture-we called the paper The South Texas Labor Record-began in late May and expired in early December. The high point that stays in my mind is a headline that I wrote when law officers attacked San Francisco longshoremen's picket lines on July 5, 1934 (to become known as "Bloody Thursday"), killing two pickets and wounding a number of others. "Greed-Blinded Employers Cause Bloodshed in West Coast Strike," our streamer proclaimed. It was an election year. From our first edition until the June Democratic Party primaries (Republican officeseekers were a rarity in Texas in those days) we enjoyed substantial revenue from political advertising, and as the November general election approached, we received another flurry. When that financial prop was removed, our income was less than our outgo, and our doom was sealed. While our relations with the daily newspapers' editorial departments were quite cordial, we found their business departments geared to warding off even the slightest threat to any revenues. Merchants who had encouraged us to start the paper, promising advertising support, became cool toward their commitments. We had not obtained written contracts. There was no way that subscriptions would sustain us. Union members didn't support us the way that their delegates had predicted they would. Moreover-and this really hurt-we saw some of what Tom Donald had charged: unions knifing one another within the council as they maneuvered their political support, some for one candidate, some for another. Before Christmas I was back on the docks "reaching and getting it." In the CLU I was reelected president without opposition. In the local union Hartley continued as president, Marshall as business agent. If it's of any interest, my editor's salary had been $25 per week. By this time I was convinced that equitable distribution and consumption of the world's goods would never happen under capitalism. I was beginning to feel that I had more in common with a coolie in China than with a capitalist in America. Something else: Better

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men than I were walking the streets and and riding the freights; and there was something wrong with that picture. Although I was praising Roosevelt's New Deal along with the other labor skates, I had a deep-down feeling that the profit system would always keep some people in poverty. What to do about it? Well, it seemed that, if we could just organize everybody, then we could say to the financiers, "You can have some extras, but you can't wallow in rich living while people die of starvation." During the newspaper tenure I had somehow learned that a bank was allowed to lend ten times the amount of its capital: one part substance, nine parts air. Where's the source of inflation? Anyhow, the idea of permitting banks to charge an interest rate just high enough to yield a modest return, approximating a service charge, seemed one hell of a sight better than what was happening. I even harangued local meetings of some of the crafts, advocating that the union movement should take the matter up, go after our legislatures to do something about it. It failed to create much of a stir. Congressman Wright Patman of Texas spent long years attempting to curb the banking and financial interests. He tried to acquaint the public with the fact that interest is inflation. For that matter, social thinkers before Patman's time had pointed out that every penny paid in interest must come from the value of goods produced. It may be only a figure on paper when the banker makes the loan, but it takes somebody's sweat to pay it off. Right there is an area where the power of the press to exclude is a factor. You won't find that kind of economic theory splashed over the newspapers' front pages, in any quantity. Instead, we are bombarded with articles telling us that interest rates must go this way or that way to stem inflation, and we gullibles gobble it up and run to throw more combustibles on the fire. Wright Patman fought the good fight. The bankers overcame him at every turn. Do you suppose there were times when the congressman had the thought, "There must be a better system"? Tom Donald and I would butt heads over that issue. He'd agree that interest and rents are an area of capitalist robbery, but, he'd say, you will still be robbed as long as you have a system that decrees that you pay more for a thing than it cost to produce it. Food for thought. Speakers from the higher echelons of the AFL and its affiliates would refer to "the sanctity of the contract." Donald and I wrangled over this expression and its implications. It seemed to me that making a contract was giving your word, so you should perform ac-

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cordingly. Tom would come back with a question: Do you owe more to the boss than you do to the working class? That was a stinger, all right. Still, the AFL was an old and respected organization. Its philosophy must be on the right track. Tommy would remind again how one craft scabbed on another, under contract. I was aware of that. In a lot of ways the One Big Union idea made sense. But, again, I looked on the AFL as really one big union that one day soon would get its act together. All this time we were holding meetings all over the place, preaching organization. The realities of making a living on the ships placed some restrictions on the time that I could spend in meetings and the like but the meetings still numbered many. It began to seem almost routine to get off work at suppertime, hurry through a quick cleanup, and make for a meeting somewhere. Dr. Francis Townsend, a Californian, had come out with his "Townsend Plan." Briefly, it proposed paying persons over sixty years of age pensions of $200 per month, a substantial income at that time. The funds were to be raised by a 2 percent transactions tax on all transactions, not just selective ones, with Townsend Plan currency to be spent within sixty days of issue. That last provision intrigued me. It seemed to me that that provision made the money a real medium of exchange and prevented it from becoming a commodity on the market, as our standard currency was, and is. The banking community was screaming bloody murder, ruination, and everything dire. That intrigued me also. Whatever the bankers railed against must surely be good for the public. The transactions tax would kill us all, the bankers moaned. But a "transactions tax" was already levied. It's called profit. The Townsend Plan finally came before the Congress in 1939. It was voted down in the House of Representatives. Back to 1935. In May the Supreme Court declared the fair practice codes of the National Recovery Act unconstitutional. It was a setback to labor's organizing efforts all over the country. Now that it was no longer the patriotic thing to adhere to fair practices, a lot of former cooperation with unions turned to opposition. Not all, but a lot. In various industries and sections of the country some employers and associations stood by the codes they had set up. Please remember that the codes provided for fair competition as well as fair labor practices. That's unconstitutional, said the highest court of the land. The shipping lines were among those employers who welcomed the decision.

CBAPTER4

THE GREAT LONGSHOREMEN'S STRIKE, 1935

Q

are dock workers so prone to violence? Answer: Pier pressure. (I lifted that from a column in The Houston Post by Lynn Ashby, who became the paper's editor some while later. Mr. Ashby has graciously consented to my using it here. It fairly sparkles with wit and wisdom. You have my word.) We didn't know it, but we were readying to step on stage to play our minor role in what author Irving Bernstein would call The Turbulent Years. It was time to negotiate another longshore labor contract. Longshoremen in New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, and Pensacola had been reorganized under the ILA. Buoyed by its 1934 success in the Sabine District, the ILA was ready to take on the shipping interests from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle. The South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District ILA convention passed a resolution pledging support to any ILA groups that might have to strike: a boycott, refusal to work ships bound to or coming from a strike area. International President Ryan had been present and had given his blessing. The district office called for a meeting of the contract committee. The local elected me contract committeeman. Gaylord Eddy got his car ready. The committee unanimously agreed that our best strategy was to extend the contract as nearly as we could to the old September 30 expiration date. Frank Mellina had resigned as district secretary. Albert E. Anderson was now our secretary. He had been a walking boss for Atlantic and Gulf. Mike Dwyer was still the president. The employers agreed to a fifteen-day extension, to July 15. A stevedore firm in Lake Charles declared its part of the contract terminated as of June 30 and moved a force of non-ILA longshoremen onto a dock where a ship was ready to work. These longshoremen called themselves "Louisiana Longshoremen's Association," according to press accounts. Apparently they existed in much the UESTION: WHY

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same fashion as the Houston Buffaloes. They had not been employed by that company nor on that dock before. On July 1 a gun battle took place. The press said that it was between the two rival longshoremen's unions. The ILA was never directly implicated, nor any member ever prosecuted, if my memory is correct. Eight or nine of the scabs were wounded; no deaths, apparently. No casualties suffered by "parties unknown" opposing. The scabs remained inside the dock warehouse after authorities had quelled the shooting. In a court hearing, the judge ruled that the "Louisiana Longshoremen's Association" could work for the employer until July 15, with ILA enjoined from molesting them. The scabs worked the one ship, but vacated the dock before July 15. Tom Donald took that occasion to say to me, "Sacred contracts, huh? Tell me what's sacred. Nothing is sacred to employers but profits, Bub. Until you've learned that, you don't know anything." I was beginning to wonder, if not beginning to learn. The ILA international convention, in session in New York City the second week in July, endorsed and adopted the Gulf resolution to boycott in support of any striking locals. We were much encouraged. Were there any doubts? Well, there was Harry Bridges, the president of the ILA Pacific Coast District, blasting Ryan's role in their 1934 strike, with Ryan accusing Bridges of "Communism" and Holt Ross, of the Southern AFL organizing staff, threatening to have Bridges and his delegation heaved out of the convention. Our committee sought and employers granted another contract extension, to July 31. Shortly after that the two parties agreed to extend the contract indefinitely, either side wishing to terminate the contract to give the other fifteen days' notice. From our side of the table we were demanding that the contract extend eastward to include New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, and Pensacola. The employers refused to go beyond Lake Charles. Finally, in late September, the ILA decided to strike the four East Gulf ports on October 1. We would continue to bargain in the West Gulf through October 10, meanwhile boycotting ships from or headed to the struck ports. We informed the employers of our intention to strike on October 11. Some two or three days before our deadline the employers offered the wage package we had asked, to cover Texas ports and Lake Charles only. We continued to hold out for inclusion of the East Gulf ports. On October 11, the West Gulf ports struck. Much local public opinion that had been supportive turned against us. "You've been offered what you asked for. Why don't you take it and go on working? Why tie up commerce on account of a bunch of people hundreds of miles away?" Some few were swayed to our side

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by the argument that equal wages in the East Gulf would help Texas ports in the competition for commerce-but not enough. The weight of public opinion was not sympathetic. Labor solidarity was not the general public's cup of tea. It soon became evident that the employers had prepared for this one. Plans had been made in every port to quarter scabs on the docks. Our local members were defiant to the point of belligerence. A third, perhaps, were going armed. I was awed by it. Although I had won the confidence of at least a majority of those men and had been rewarded by election to office, I had not grown up alongside them, didn't really know their attitudes. It caused me to think of Bisbee again. At one time there had been an influx of miners from Kentucky coal country. Many of those-a majority, possibly-carried a small pistol or a large pocket knife. A truckload of kitchen equipment bound for Number 3 dock, where strikebreakers were to be quartered, was stopped by ILA pickets, whose spokesman reportedly told the driver and escort: "We're not fooling around. You better be prepared to come a-shootin' if you figure to cross this line." The truck driver was unwilling to proceed. The police escort reported back to the chief that to proceed would have led to bloodshed, in their opinion, a circumstance they were unwilling to provoke. The port was without a labor force. A couple of days later the city council voted to request Governor James V. Allred to send in Texas Rangers. A day or so after that, five Rangers in two automobiles arrived on the scene. One of our "spotters" reported that the five were at city hall conferring with the chief of police. Hearing this, our men packing weapons fairly scurried to rid themselves of same. There was something about that Ranger tradition that struck terror in people raised with it. Not having been raised with the tradition, I couldn't understand that abrupt change from arrogance toward local law enforcement to such fear of this state force. "You challenged the whole police force and the sheriff. Now you let five ten-gallon hats and ten cowboy boots scare the piss outa ya," I told them. It wasn't a smart thing to say. The Rangers were operational, if that's an appropriate word. They prodded all parties concerned to get all materials together that they anticipated housed strikebreakers would need. A "convoy" of three trucks, as I remember it, was escorted into the port. Four Rangers in two cars drove up to the picket line, piled out, weapons in hand, and herded the four black and four white pickets into one group off the street. The pickets, thus held at gunpoint by the Rangers, watched the provisions for the scabs pass into the port. The "convoy" itself

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was led by a city police car under "command" of the fifth Ranger, followed by a second police car, then the three trucks, and a police car bringing up the rear. Later, recruited scabs were brought into Dock 3 under Ranger-police protection. The Rangers who came into Corpus Christi to deal with the strike were always profane when addressing any group of strikers. I couldn't say about the force as a whole, that strike marking my only observation of them. From the day when the first five arrived in town until the strike ended, there were never less than two, never more than five present every day. Whether any outside of the original five came into our territory during that time, I wouldn't know. We found no common ground for any striker to become societal with them. The equipment incident was the first contact between them and our people, who reported that the Ranger spokesman had informed them that they all came from canine ancestry, were something lower than scum, and that it would be a pleasure for any one of their force to find just any excuse to shoot any or all of those listening full of holes. These were the Texas Rangers, those heroes of song and story? Yup. The city police force cooperated with the Rangers. The sheriff's department did not. Sheriff William Shely declared that no unlawful act had been committed; until such came to his attention, he would take no action in the labor dispute. It must be remembered, of course, that the city council had invited the Rangers in. The sheriff deputized one of our members, Horace Butler, to "look out for the welfare of the strikers," and the chief of police appointed member Ernest Hunt a special policeman for "balance" to our side. The Bull Line recruited Negroes from San Antonio for its labor force. That Frank McCarthy had planned well and that it would be "like a war" was coming across to us, forcefully. And he had flat fooled us with that San Antonio recruitment. A Bull Line ship arrived weekly, if on schedule. The labor was transported from San Antonio on buses, chartered from regular commercial passenger carriers to meet a ship's arrival. They would work that ship, then be returned to San Antonio to await next arrival. They were fed and housed on the Bull Line dock (City 9) while working. The Bull Line continued that operation throughout the strike. We sat and cussed and discussed what we could do about those buses, to no effect. We flinched at the possibility of getting caught interfering with licensed passenger commerce. Well, a couple of unsuccessful forays may have been initiated, as well forgotten now. What threw a kink in the Bull Line's operation for a while and

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planted the germ of an idea in labor's consciousness happened when the strike was a week old. The SS Dorothy docked, and thirteen (I think I still remember the number correctly) of her crew refused to work behind a picket line! The vessel's master fired them, of course, and they came ashore to join the strike. It paralyzed the ship. There she sat, idle-what a lovely sight! The leader of the walkoffwas the ship's steward, one August Maas. We Corpus Christi longshoremen should have erected a monument to August Maas. Here's a salute from one of them, August, wherever you are. August looked the situation over. "These companies haven't made this much preparation for nothing. Youse guys better dig in for a long strike. How're you going to eat? Give me kitchen equipment and three or four helpers, and the groceries, and I'll be your cook for as long as it takes." Joe Simon was a furniture merchant in the city. He was also a city councilman. He had cast a lone vote against asking the governor for the Rangers. He had refused to allow anything that he controlled to be used to accommodate strikebreakers. "I have a restaurant type range and some accessories, if you fellows decide to set up a kitchen. The scabs have a kitchen. You strikers may as well have one." He had already made the offer. With Maas's offer, we surely couldn't refuse Simon's offer. Mr. Simon furnished not only the range "and some accessories." He furnished all the cooking utensils and appurtenances that it took. We used his equipment until the end of the strike. He charged us nary a penny. So, while public opinion generally may have been against us, we had a few heavyweights on our side to even things. Paul "Cowboy" Schilder, one of our members, owned a shrimp boat. The local furnished fuel and upkeep. "Captain" Schilder and his "crew" supplied us with more shrimp and fish than strikers and their families could eat. All men on picket duty were fed at our kitchen. Single men ate all their meals there, after they ran out of money. A local grocery chain, Biehl Groceries, made us a deal where families with our identification could buy groceries at reduced prices, itemized purchases billed to and paid for by the strike committee. Wives and children were welcome to eat at the strike kitchen, for that matter, but few ever did. A couple of bakeries gave us first call on their day-old bread at two cents a loaf, I seem to remember. So, yes, we had some heavyweights on our side. We had a modest treasury backing us up. I threw an elbow out of joint patting myself on the back for having persuaded the body to pay that coastwise percentage. Some half-dozen of the Dorothy strikers stayed with us the entire

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strike, taking regular turns at picket duty or wherever assigned. Two stayed on after, to become Corpus Christi residents. Now we were seeing what Tommy Donald had been talking about, one group of workers supporting another group: "An injury to one is the concern of all." And Tommy was pounding home his point. It was great, seeing what the action of a few could do: other ships in the harbor working, the Dorothy idle. Where was "sanctity of the contract" now? When you're hurting, and you get help, it's pretty easy to put sanctification where the help is coming from. Unfortunately for us, the International Seamen's Union declared that it had contracts with the shipping lines and would fulfill them. The value of an account like this one, if I'm to be allowed an opinion, is that it concentrates less than the history books on mainline happenings, but offers, perhaps, more insight into what happened along the spur tracks, at the way stations, if you'll allow. I promise you that any fracturing of facts will come from omission, not distortion. Mr. Stanley Weir is the gentleman who talked me into this. "Tell how come you've come to feel the way you do," he said. Says Stanley soothingly, "Don't rush it. It'll all come to you. You'll be glad you did it." That last I doubt. Okay, Stanley, I said I would. I'll try another round. Let 'er buck! On October 22, 1935, another gun battle took place on the Lake Charles docks. Three guards-that would be special police, gunscabs to us strikers-were killed and seven wounded "in a battle with pickets," the press stated. Again, there were no casualties among ILA members; so another attack (whether it was attack or defense) was chalked up to "parties unknown." Louisiana Governor 0. K. Allen ordered the port closed indefinitely. On the same October 22, a white striking longshoreman, E. G. Christ, was shot to death in Port Arthur. Close around that date Sam Brandt was shot and killed by a strikebreaker in Houston. Sam had been in Corpus for the 1935 cotton season. He was a youngster newly into the trade. So what is one human's sum-total worth on this violent planet? A puff of smoke ... Also on October 22, 1935, ILA Locals 1224 and 1225 were served with summons to appear in federal court in Houston to show why they should not be enjoined from interfering with interstate commerce by preventing seamen from manning the SS Dorothy in Corpus Christi harbor. George Hartley and A. W. Devaughn, presidents of the two locals, were cited personally. Once more the ubiquitous Tommy Donald had an answer. He recommended a Houston lawyer named Arthur J. Mandell, who, Tom said, had a feeling for the pro-

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letariat and was damned sharp in the courtroom. A joint committee, with Donald along, journeyed to Houston to see the attorney. Arthur Mandell and Herman Wright had formed a law partnership which lasted until Mandell's death in the late 1970s. Mandell specialized in labor law and personal injury cases. Wright dealt with what would be, I guess, general law practice. The firm became prominent as years went by. In 1935 they were two struggling young lawyers. Mandell told us that he'd be happy to represent us. After seeing the attorney, Donald took, or directed, us white committeemen to the Wobbly hall to meet his IWW fellow workers. The Wobs knew all about the SS Dorothy. It had been Wobs in Houston and Galveston who telephoned us when crew replacements were sent, once from each port. I liked that kind of unionism that the IWW practiced. Those crew replacements had been sent by rail. After hearing our spiel, principally from our seamen allies, both groups had turned back. On every occasion where seamen were concerned we assured them that they could throw in with us. We'd find them shelter. They would be fed at "Chef' Maas's kitchen. So Mr. McCarthy had hailed us into court for interfering with commerce. Lawyer Mandell went into court, obtained a dismissal of the Bull Line's petition, and-sweet revenge for our side-persuaded the court to order the Bull Line to pay his fee! We had found ourselves a champion in the courts and had gained a victory; but we wouldn't have long to crow over it. Memory is not clear now whether the next group of seamen came from Galveston or Houston. From Galveston, it seems. No matter, our IWW allies telephoned that replacements were being sent, this time by bus. From the departure time given, they would arrive in the evening. We kept highway watches at designated points throughout the strike. Late that evening our watchers called that the bus had passed a checkpoint. We beefed up the picket line with a good showing of pickets, black and white, at the point where the bus would enter port property, just across Water Street from our hiring hall, strike headquarters. President Hartley was away, leaving me the ranking member of the strike committee. I instructed the pickets precisely. The bus would turn off Water Street and stop for the railroad crossing where the railroad right-of-way divided port property from the City of Corpus Christi property. They were to be noisy, but not profane or abusive. Let the passengers know that there was a strike going on, and tell the bus driver that they wanted one spokesman (me) to talk to his passengers.

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Dusk was merging with darkness when the bus came, swung off Water Street, and stopped at the crossing. I hurried across the street. The idea was to make the "theatrical entrance" on the scene after the pickets had the driver's and passengers' attention, don't you know? As I approached the scene, it appeared that our men were not at the front of the bus where they were supposed to be. I was thinking, "Somebody will get an ass-chewing for this." I broke through the group of pickets on the bus's right side, who were, indeed, hanging back, to walk up-I don't know how close, much too close for comfort-right into, it seemed, the business end of what looked like a tommy gun pointed straight at my belly button, held by a man wearing a ten-gallon hat and a pair of cowboy boots. What our highway spotters didn't know was that two Texas Rangers had boarded the bus up the line somewhere. "Stand back, you sonofabitch!" said the figure holding the weapon, "or I'll cut you in two right across your goddamn navel!" I stood back. "We have a legal right to talk to these men here at the picket line and tell our side of the strike. I represent these pickets here." "I got your legal rights right here in my hands, goddamn you. These men came here to go to work, and they're going to work, or I'll shoot the shit out of all you bastards. Back off!" About that time the bus moved across the tracks and on toward the dock. I would find out that the Ranger who "exercised our legal rights" was Ranger A. Y. Allee. He stayed on duty in Corpus Christi until the end of the strike. Later, the bus driver telephoned to tell us that Allee's partner inside the bus had placed the shooting end of his pistol against the back of his, the driver's neck, and told him, "Move this bus on, you sonofabitch, or you won't live to drive another one!" A small sheet-iron building stood at the edge of the port property, to the left as you entered. The port authority had hired some seventy special police for strike duty. There were always two in the little building. The two on duty at the time had drawn pistols and had thrown down on our pickets on the driver's side of the bus. It was an effective job of holding us "at bay." Would you think maybe, that right about then your narrator was having second thoughts about the way he had talked to his union brothers about letting ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots cow them'? You'd be right. One ten-gallon hat and one pair of cowboy boots had cowed me. "May as well break it up," I told the pickets. "We can't help what's happened now." With that, all except the regular shift of pickets began to leave.

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Allee turned away, contemptuously, I thought, and walked toward the dock. The two gunscabs withdrew into their building, guns still in hand. That was my introduction to the Texas Rangers. After a few minutes the bus came back, the driver and the two Rangers aboard, and headed downtown. Next morning the Dorothy got up steam and stevedore operations began. Three of the latest replacements decided they didn't want any part of it, packed their gear, and came to strike headquarters. They verified that the Ranger aboard the bus had placed his pistol barrel against the back of the driver's neck and had spoken as quoted by the driver. A couple of days later the Dorothy sailed. "Well," we consoled ourselves, "it won't do them any good. The damned ships won't be worked when they reach the North Atlantic." It wouldn't be many days until we would hear it the way it was: Ships arriving from Gulf ports were being worked in North Atlantic ports. There was no boycott. President Ryan declared that the ILA's North Atlantic District had a contract. The ILA would honor that contract. Boston longshoremen refused to work a "hot" ship from the Gulf. The ship was shifted to Fall River, where it was worked. Ryan revoked the Boston charter. Later he would claim that he revoked the charter because the Boston local had not paid its per capita tax, not because they refused to work the hot ship. We could fume and curse and yell "sell-out." The unvarnished truth was, we were into a long fight and holding a short stick. May we digress here and direct a span of attention to the Texas Rangers? My second observation of Rangers in action came a few evenings later. A Lykes ship docked on the south side. A couple of sailors came ashore for a beer. Tommy Donald and I bumped into them. Tommy talked to them about as follows: "When you go back to your ship, explain to the crew that they're working behind a picket line. That's not unionism. Sailors are on strike with longshoremen in this port. We got the best stew-pot on the coast. Come out with us. You won't go hungry. Now, if your crew members don't want to join the strike, then tell 'em to stay aboard. Don't come ashore. Don't come through the picket line. Send a committee out to talk to us." The two assured us that they would deliver the message. We found a seaman off the Dorothy, and we three hung around the picket post, on the chance that a committee would come out to talk. It didn't tum out that way. About dark, two empty taxicabs and a sedan carrying our Ranger friends drove through the picket line into the port, to return in minutes with the Rangers' car trailing the cabs, now filled with members of the ships' crew. They drove through

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the picket line, turned toward downtown, and parked against the curb. The two right-hand doors of the Ranger car swung open. A Ranger in each doorway displayed a long-barreled weapon. The one in the front seat did the talking. "Alla yuh, come over here where you can hear me, all you brave sons of bitches. You're so goddamn brave-why don't one uh yuh tough bastards make a move? Come on. Make a move, anybodyjust one little move, any one of you cowardly bastards." Then he followed with references to our degenerate, perverted mother-son relationships. When he apparently tired of it and broke it off, the three cars drove on toward town. It was an unwritten code on the waterfront that you didn't ask for police protection. The police were enemy. You didn't turn to the enemy for anything. Those sailors had broken the code. There was talk of scouting places where they might go, and, finding them, meting out justice. But we didn't do it. Not because of humanitarian considerations, but because it was risky. The law could have been baiting a trap. On another occasion, when the San Antonio scabs had finished a Bull Line ship, employers on the south side of the basin borrowed the Bull Line force to finish a ship for them. The scabs were marched from their quarters on the north side to the railroad, across the drawbridge on the railroad track, walking the ties, to the south side and the assigned dock. Special police guarded their front and rear. Ranger Allee and a partner patrolled slowly along the street in their car as the scabs crossed from north to south in a column of twos. Ralph Tamez, one of our few Mexican-American members (and a bull of a man), unable to restrain himself, broke past the security, grabbed a target from the line of march, and bopped him two or three good ones before the law could reach and subdue him. The Rangers took Tamez into custody. They roughed him up some, then released him. As we strikers looked at it, it wasn't a very smart thing that Tamez did, but it was honorable. That afternoon the scabs were marched back to their "home" dock. The Rangers' car followed the column into Dock 9. Returning, the driver slowed to a crawl at the picket line and the street, allowing time for the two Rangers to glower at the pickets and at the strikers assembled in front of our building. I was sitting in our office watching the street. We had big wooden shutters, no windows. The day was warm, the shutters raised. Somebody who shouldn't have-1 never learned who-yelled, "Scabherders!" The car stopped across the street, driver's side to us. The driver stepped out, stood by the car, drew his pistol. From the passenger

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side stepped Ranger Allee. The guards in the tin shack took the cue. They stepped toward the railroad and street, pistols drawn. There were perhaps ten of our men in three small clusters along the curb. Allee crossed the street, weapon in hand, a long-barreled revolver, a .45 caliber, I'd guess. He singled out Sam Wilds, walked him several steps away from the rest. Two or three of us had come out of the hall onto a walkway that led up a low embankment to street level. The Ranger at the car called out, "Don't anybody move!" We didn't. Allee then proceeded to give Sam a pistol whipping. Through it all he kept his thumb on the hammer of that pistol, as if ready to cock it. He began with a couple of whacks to the side of Sam's head. Sam raised his arms to protect his head. Allee let him have it hard in the ribs. That sequence was repeated, I don't know how many timesseveral. The blows were not bone-shattering, but they cut the skin and left Sam bleeding, plus bruises that would turn purplish later. To say that Sam didn't feel like a well man when it was over would describe his condition fairly, I think. With the usual verbal description of our ancestry and a warning about behavior, Allee walked back across the street. He and the driver entered the car and sat there a long minute before driving away. We got Sam into our shack and smeared iodine on his cuts. The special gunmen retired into their shack, and "quiet reigned on the waterfront" once more. ILA members Tamez and Wilds were nursing bruises. Probably the scab that Tamez had grabbed was nursing a couple also. Other Ranger performances were reported from the picket line. A favorite stunt was to drive toward a picket post at a high rate of speed, then apply brakes suddenly, throwing the car into a skid. There would usually be two, driver and passenger. As the car slued to a stop, they'd pile out, the passenger with a long-barreled weapon in his hands, the driver with pistol drawn. They would herd the pickets, the usual four blacks and four whites, into a group. Then the driver would single out one, walk him away from the group, and give him a pistol whipping in much the same fashion that Allee had whipped Sam Wilds, perhaps not quite so viciously. After the "lesson" they'd spend a minute or two cursing the pickets, then drive away. Those "lessons" were delivered at a rough average of one per week throughout the strike. They practiced some racial discrimination, in that a few more whites than blacks were singled out for their exercise. It looked a lot as if those assaults were a kind of sport with them. I'll say for our men, those who received and those who didn't, none ever flinched from performing his picket duty.

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It could have been the first week in November that Ranger Allee and his partner stopped their car in front of our headquarters. A half-dozen men were standing along the street. (I seem to remember that we had six affidavits to the incident.) Allee called for them all to gather on his, the passenger, side of the car. He remained in his seat. "There's just been a Mexican fellow hurt out on Agnes Street," he began. "They've taken him to the hospital. He'd been working on the docks. Now I've got a message that I want you to hear and deliver. Listen careful. We know who's masterminding this violence. It's that sonofabitch Gilbert Mers. You tell that sonofabitch that we know what he's up to. And you tell him for me: The next act of violence that occurs in the City of Corpus Christi, I'm coming after him, and I'm going to lay him on a cold slab. You tell the sonofabitch that. You got the message?" The listeners indicated that they had got the message. The Rangers drove off. It seemed rather peculiar that Allee had not asked whether I was anywhere around. (I was away on contract business.) I wondered, really, if he would have recognized me if I had been in the group. Anyway, it should not be dismissed lightly, the strike committee decided. We went to Marvin Ericcson, a young lawyer who had defended a couple of unpopular causes. Under his direction, we paraded a host of black and white longshoremen before a public stenographer, where, being duly sworn, the men described their various encounters with the Texas Rangers, obscenities and all. We stacked the affidavits together and sent them to Governor Allred, requesting removal of Rangers from the strike scene, or at least a curbing oftheir violent practices and abusive language. Nothing came of it. At the same time, we selected certain affidavits from the collection, had copies made, and sent wives of strikers through residential neighborhoods soliciting signatures on a petition asking removal of the Rangers and a return to local law enforcement. The wives had many doors slammed in their faces. Public opinion was hardly solidly behind us. A friendly lawman passed a guarded message to my wife, who worked as a waitress at a downtown restaurant. (With her income as a cushion, we never felt the economic hardship that many others did.) The message was that the Rangers were talking about kidnapping me, spiriting me out of Nueces County, and holding me "unseen" until the strike ended. He assured her that the force had done this in other situations: take a person from one county into another and hold that person incommunicado in the second county's

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jail. Legal or illegal, they had done it on more than one occasion, and no county sheriff that he knew of had ever refused to cooperate with them. I wasn't greatly concerned about Allee's "cold slab" threat, figuring he'd said that for intimidating effect. But I was much concerned about the kidnapping possibility. From that time until the strike's end I never went anywhere alone. (We never saw a Texas Ranger alone anywhere, either, for that matter.) Not that the Rangers wouldn't kidnap two at once, but they probably wouldn't. (Some two years later, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, in the city of Harlingen, an old printer friend, Elmo Woodward, figured in a short-term kidnapping. Elmo was working on one of the Valley newspapers when union printers voted to strike all Valley papers. Elmo and another striker had just finished a shift of picket duty and were walking horne when a car carrying three Rangers swung in to the curb. The two printers were muscled into the car before they realized what was happening. The car then moved out of town into the country and into a pasture. Out there in the mesquite brush they were yanked from the car, to be told about their ancestry and their present immoral condition in the usual colorful language. Next, two Rangers produced a quirt apiece from the car's trunk. The two captives were told to remove their shirts "because we're gonna cut your back to ribbons, and you wouldn't want your shirt ruined, would you, now?" Shirts removed, they were told to get on hands and knees. Elmo told me he steeled himself, wondering how much punishment he could take. Then, "Aw shit!" one Ranger said, "I don't want to get the kind of shit that you sons of bitches are made of, on my quirt. Get your stinkin' asses up and put your shirts back on. Get back in the car." They were taken toward town, privileged to listen on the trip to the usual threats and profanities from first one and then another of their captors. A half-mile or so from the city's outskirts, they were told to get to hell out of the car. "The walk'll do you bastards good." The car went on into the city. The two printers plodded the same course afoot. Elmo identified the chief Ranger as A. Y. Allee.) Some super-intellectual idiot carne up with the idea, and port security approved, of mounting a searchlight on a utility pole that stood next to the watchman's shack across from our hall. Every night that blasted thing was turned on our headquarters all night. I don't know how much candle power. It was blinding. Being bathed in bright daylight all night is not a comfortable experience. We felt humiliated. It was a cheap display of arrogance on

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the part of the port authority, serving no worthy purpose. You think about retaliation. I had an idea. Back in Arizona, where there were lots of rocks and very little soil, almost every boy learned to use a slingshot, the weapon that David used against Goliath. We called it a "whirly-sling." It's axiomatic that light cast against an object must leave a shadow in the outline of that object. Hence, out back of our building at night in the shadow it was blacker'n a coal dust fog. What better spot for a concealed launching pad if you had projectiles in mind? I decided to make a slingshot, and fashioned a makeshift one. In contrast to Arizona, the country around Corpus Christi was all soil and no rocks. Good, dependable Everett Dickson carried me where he had access to a river. From the river bed we gathered scads of stones of proper size. I spent a couple of hours practicing with the sling to see if I still had the hang of it. It came back to me pretty good. I was confident that I could come close to target. The sheet-iron building was the target. Better still, its gunscab occupants. The searchlight? Ah, yes! But that was getting into expert class shooting. The firing had to be done from the darkness behind the hall, out of sight of the target-and everybody. We had pickets just off the railroad right-of-way, hardly more than fifty feet from the watchman's shack. It was like artillery. A too-short range, we'd be firing into our troops. We couldn't pull the pickets off. That would tip authority that we were up to something. On the other hand, if the pickets knew what was going on, they might elect not to stay. "I'm going to fire three rounds," I told Everett, "slow, so there'll be time between shots for our runner to get back to me." (We had a man in the shadows who could catch a signal from Everett.) "The first shot I'll aim to overshoot target. Next two I'll shorten a little and a little bit more." Everett went over to mingle with the pickets offhandedly. The firing practice went well. The third round had struck the pole on which the light was mounted, Everett said. The guards had stepped out of their shack to do some nervous looking around. Good. I was confident that I had the range. The slingshot saw use thereafter as an instrument of counter harassment. They harassed us with their light. We harassed their gunscabs with projectiles from out of the dark. Three was the magic number. I'd make sure that I was unobserved, sneak into that dark pit behind the hall, fire three rapid rounds, ditch the sling, and be back mingling with the gang in no time at all. The light was shot out on a couple of occasions. Now who would do

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a thing like that? On one of those occasions, in the sudden darkness, I ran across the street to the cover of the railroad embankment. I had a fair shot at the shack's doorway from there, and scored once. That stone rattled around around inside that tin shack, it seemed like forever, and hadn't touched one of those gunscabs yet! A Wobbly named Charlie Houghton came and moved in with Tom Donald for the duration. This particular evening a call had come for the contract committee to meet in Galveston. Eddy and I were to leave the next morning. Suddenly it seemed as if things were too peaceful on the front. Seemed like we ought to be sending greetings to the enemy. Charlie and Tommy stood along the sidewalk chewing the fat. Other strikers lingered nearby. I faded into the dark, made ready, cut loose with the first round. Blam! from a heavy caliber weapon from across the street. The heart in the mouth, they say, don't they? That describes me. The sling was stashed in a flash as I scampered to the front. I saw others scampering, too, for coverexcept Charlie and Tommy, cool as cucumbers, continuing their conversation. One of the gunmen had been sitting in the doorway reading a paper or magazine in the reflection from the searchlight, they said. It appeared that my rock had struck the do01jamb and ricocheted onto the back of his neck. He had jumped to his feet, pulled his pistol and fired into the air, as nearly as they could see, then had gone inside. That marked the end of sitting in that doorway reading newspapers, I might add. Ernest Hunt, our member appointed by the chief of police "to protect our interests," dropped into the office for a private chat. "I have a theory about how those rocks that are falling across the street get there," he said. "Rocks?" I stared at him with mouth wide open, eyes likewise. "Oh, come on. You must know that that building and the guards have been getting a shower of rocks every now and then." "A shower?" "Well, every once in a while a few rocks are thrown against the building. You surely know about it-or something about it." "They don't tell me everything that goes on, Ernest." "All right, I'll tell you. Well, I've told you. Every now and then somebody throws rocks against the building. Only they're not throwing them. Somebody's using a slingshot. The angle those rocks come from is behind this building. None of our people could heave a rock that distance. But somebody who learned to use a slingshot could. That's how those rocks are thrown."

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"Slingshot?" "Yes, a slingshot. David and Goliath. You savvy?" "Yeah. But I don't know nuthin', Ernest. If it's like you say, I hope whoever it is kills one of the rats, or at least splits his skull." "You shouldn't talk like that in front of me. I represent the law, remember? So what else is going on? Any good news?" "No good news, Ernest. We're on strike until it's over." "Well, be careful. If you need me, call me." Ernest could have been fishing, or he could have been giving me a warning. He was no dummy. His "theory" was uncomfortably correct. I took it as a warning: Be careful. As the strike lengthened to more than a month, the scabs were a long way from matching our working efficiency, but you had to admit that they were improving. Also, it would seem to us that they led charmed lives. A load of pipe would part in mid-air, shower down all around two or three of them, and they'd come through untouched. They had accidents, of course, but not as many as conditions should have produced. (Or we would have wished on them, eh?) Maxwell P. Dunne operated the Maxwell P. Dunne Funeral Home and ambulance service. Mr. Dunne was, in common parlance, "his own man." He sent word to parties concerned not to call on his ambulance service, because "no Maxwell Dunne ambulance had ever hauled a scab, and none was about to now." Things were more elemental and there was less folderol in those days. He notified our side that we were to call on him any time for any need. As I said before, majority public opinion was hardly on our side, but some of the community's heavyweights were. From time to time we'd slip somebody into the scab labor forcealways in pairs. We didn't learn a great many of the operators' secrets by this, but we learned a little more about the doings of the Rangers. The Rangers would herd a truckload of newly hired strikebreakers into the dock warehouse that was to be their "home." They would bluntly tell them that they had been protected going in, but would receive no protection leaving. They'd tell them horror stories about how brutally the strikers would treat them if they caught them. (We really weren't interested in keeping them healthy, for a fact.) To sum up, the scabs were prisoners on the docks. Freedom, according to the Rangers, was at risk of life and limb. Bryan Walker was a dock clerk. We had failed to organize clerks and checkers. We didn't class their work as scabbing. They passed through the picket line without question. One evening during Thanksgiving week a picket captain reported that Bryan's car had

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made several trips through the line at the port's main entrance. What legitimate business would warrant his going in and out that many times? Bryan had a new Dodge coupe. It had a big trunk. Clark and Everett Dickson had a car they shared. Clark had the car that evening. He heard the report. "Let's go over there and park. If he comes through again we'll follow him," says Mr. C. Dickson. So we parked on the street just off the picket post. We hadn't been there long until here came Mr. Walker. He drove through the picket line and into the warehouse, to come back out almost immediately. As he passed our car, Clark hollered, "Wait up, Bryan. We want to talk to you." Bryan didn't stop. Clark set in behind him. Bryan took a sort of meandering course through downtown, onto Agnes Street and the Robstown Road. Robstown lies some seventeen miles west of Corpus Christi. On the highway, Bryan stomped his accelerator. The new Dodge walked away from the old Chevrolet. When his taillights had almost faded from sight, we saw brake lights light up. Then it appeared that a figure, the driver, quickly moved to the rear of the car, and two figures came out of the trunk and dashed across the railroad that paralleled the highway. By the time we reached the point where we judged the stop was made, Bryan was well on his way again. We found ourselves looking across the railroad at a pipeyard, property of one or another of the oil companies operating in the local field. Adjacent were three or four shotgun type houses, lights showing. Clark wanted to go look for Bryan's passengers. "Oh no," I said. "Whether those who got out of that trunk are still around or not, prowlers get shot, and we'd be prowlers in that pipeyard." Later we learned that there were, in fact, two men in the car trunk. They had been scabbing on the strike, and they lived in one of the houses. On Friday evening, the day after Thanksgiving, unless memory is tricking me badly, Jack Bradley, president of the white warehousemen, who were striking with us, took me to one side. "Bryan Walker wants to talk to you." "Talk to the scabherdin' sonofabitch with a piece of lead pipe." "I think you should listen to him" Jack insisted. "It could help the strike." Jack was pretty darned good people in my book. I had to believe that he spoke with good reason. So I agreed to stop shooting off my mouth and listen to Mr. Walker. Walker made no attempt at flimflam. We knew what he'd been up to, and he knew that we knew. He readily admitted that carrying those scabs from the docks was motivated by greed. Then he told us

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that the morale of the labor force confined on the docks was about as low as it could get. "Here it is Thanksgiving season, and they're prisoners. Some of them have been in there from the start, the middle of October. They're sick of the deal. A lot have sneaked out already. If the law would give them the same protection leaving that it did bringing them in, that shed would empty in thirty minutes. But the Rangers threaten them all the time, that, if they leave, the longshoremen will stomp the hell out of them. "Here's my proposition. There won't be any work on Sunday. Give me a clear passage through your line, I can damn near have the dock cleared before work time Monday, two at a time in my car trunk. The watchmen at the front will be looking the other way. All I have to do is haul 'em to different places on the edge of downtown, unload and come back, if I can assure them that the longshoremen won't bother them. "I get ten dollars apiece, twenty dollars a trip. I'll split it with the union." "We'll keep Local1224 out of that," I said. "We can do without the money. The warehousemen have a money problem. If you and Jack want to deal, go ahead." Jack said it wasn't fair for the white warehousemen not to split the money with the colored local. He wanted more like a three-way split: say, eight to Walker and six each to the two locals. Walker argued that incidental expenses were involved, such as: those watchmen weren't looking the other way for nothing. Bradley agreed to ten for the union's share. Then there was the question of passing through the picket line unhindered. I took that responsibility. Bryan said that he would make a couple of runs Saturday evening. Sunday the "dock clearance" would begin in earnest. We ended our conference on that note. I climbed down off my high-horse, and we shook hands on the deal. Sunday would be "Port Evacuation Day." The idea of dealing with Walker, feeling that it was only our catching him at his unsavory endeavor that had "made a Christian" of him, came close to being morally repugnant. Weighed against the practicality of seeing the strikebreaking force diminished, dealing with the man became singularly attractive. A little before noon Sunday the report from the picket line was that Walker was "in business." It occurred to me later that I had been careless in not having someone tally his trips. I had left that between Bradley and Walker. At about two that afternoon Walker

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found Ranger Allee and his partner waiting for him at the port entrance. Here's how Bryan told it: Allee said, "Just sit right where you are, you smart, scab-haulin' sonofabitch, and hear me out. I ought to jerk you out of there and cripple your ass. You turn that shiny new automobile of yours around-Now-and get gone from here, and don't you show your ass around here again until work time on Monday. Do you hear me? If I find you within a mile of here again today, I'll smash this shiny machine up so bad, you'll be glad to take a junkman's price for it. Now go!" Bryan went. The two Rangers then went inside and herded together what was left of the labor force. We received a report from our "spies." "Any of you that had an idea they were goin' to be hauled out of here today, just forget it. We've just stopped the smart-ass bastard that was doin' the hauling. He won't be back. Now let me tell you something. You sonsabitches hired out to come here and work until the employer says for you to leave. You understand me? Anybody tries to get out of here from now on, we'll stand back and let those longshoremen tear his ass. I might even tear some ass myself. Just settle down now, and stay right here, where you belong." Judging from the way that Allee talked to strikers, and then in turn to the scabs, one could speculate that the man had a burning contempt for anybody who worked for a living, under any circumstances. So ended "Project Port Clearance." It had not succeeded totally, but it had put a dent in the strikebreaking force, had reduced that force to around sixty hands, those demoralized. The scabs were coming unglued. It was a shot in the arm to our morale. We needed that! It wasn't the classical way of ridding a project of strikebreakers, maybe, but it bore out a classical old maxim: "More than one way to skin a cat." Maybe not unique in strike annals, but a rarity. One more mention of the Corpus scene, and we'll go into the broader aspects of the strike. The strike was perhaps three weeks along when Gabriel Cruz, one of our "Mexican" members (he was actually from Guatemala), told us that Mexicans in the warehouse local were in dire straits, families going hungry. A number of us felt guilt and shame after hearing Cruz. Those warehousemen had served every hour of picket duty and never offered a gripe. We were all joined in a common cause. We gringos had ignored the needs of the Mexicans, who made up 75 percent of the white warehousemen's membership. They hadn't felt welcome to eat at the strike kitchen. We had taken it for granted that they knew they were welcome. They hadn't

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put in for their share from the fishing-shrimping expeditions. We had formed an elitist strike committee from Local1224, treating our warehouse unionists like stepchildren. A quick meeting of the strike committee added a couple of warehousemen to the committee and also designated G. Cruz to be liaison relief committeeman, to concentrate especially on the needs of warehouse union members. Never again did yours truly become involved in a strike without insisting that relief be the next priority after picket assignments. Many words could be expended on the pros and cons of strike benefits and strike funds. We'll leave that subject to others. My experience in several ILA strikes, from the short three-day stoppage in 1930 to 100-days-plus in 1969, has been that each locality and each local worked out its own arrangements in that area. I pick no fault with it. "Different strokes for different folks," didn't some wag say? You could say that we struck and stroked in our own way and survived. And improved our condition. Corpus Christi was the only port where the governor sent Texas Rangers especially for strike duty, until, late in the strike, a car carrying strikebreakers in Orange was riddled by bullets. The casualties are lost to memory. Governor Allred ordered a contingent of Rangers into Orange following that incident. The tactics employed by the Rangers in our port were extremely intimidating and inflicted pain on a number of people. But, to keep the whole picture in perspective, we were treated gently compared to the brutality practiced by law enforcement people against sharecroppers in Arkansas and Missouri, and thousands of other workers in hundreds of other places around the nation. Houston authorities hired ex-Ranger Captain Frank Hamer to lead their special police. Hamer came fresh from his triumph of laying the ambush from which outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were shot to death. But being an ex-Ranger wasn't anything like being on the force. It was apparent that much of the Ranger awesomeness lay in the majesty of the State of Texas. That taken away, Hamer was just another special gun toter, the fearsome reputation built up in his years on the force standing him in but feeble stead. Most ofthe Houston scab force was recruited and herded together in an area close to the Cotton Exchange Building downtown. The newly hired scabs we.re then hauled in trucks to their dock quarters under armed escort. On three or four occasions sudden forays into the downtown concentration area by "parties unknown" scattered recruits and disrupted hiring procedures. So it went, up and down the Texas coast. A great deal of our information was hearsay, of

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course; but it would appear that Corpus Christi police, cooperating with the Ranger force, gave more protection to the scab labor than city police forces elsewhere. Guarding scab labor in other ports was left to the special police. After the thirteen crew members walked off and paralyzed the SS Dorothy, we Corpus Christians did our best to convince members in other ports that that was the way to go: the men who sail 'em and the men who load 'em acting together. Somehow, our message failed to register with significant impact. Some shared the idea. The majority expressed a weak admiration for the seamen's action, but were wishy-washy when it came to encouraging or spreading the activity. Even after West Coast ships arrived and their crews piled off, refusing to work behind a picket line, leaving those ships the only idle ones in the harbor, the message, somehow, failed to set firmly into Houston strikers' thinking. I'd become frantic, seeing this studied lack of concern from people whose continued eating habit might depend on it, dammit! You can fight, retreat from, do something about anything but apathy. These union longshoremen, in a fight for their lives, were apathetic toward an idea that could be their salvation! Ralph Landgrebe, mentioned previously, shot by a scab during the 1934 strike, had been exposed to the coal miners' tradition of union solidarity. Ralph was rapidly gaining influence in the Houston white local, 1273. He and his group of supporters agreed with what we Corpus guys were talking about. Landgrebe was forming a working relationship with A. J. Wilson of Local 872 (black). Wilson was gaining influence in his local. The blacks played few agitational roles, however. Their collective attitude was "wait and see." President Ryan came south the first week in November. He made some speeches, gave some pep talks, called the shipowners mean names in the newspapers; but the words that we wanted to hear-or wanted our brother unionists in the North Atlantic to hear-"Stop working hot cargo from the Gulf," he hadn't uttered. The East Gulf had been out more than a month. We in the West Gulf had been out three weeks. Ships from the Gulf had reached the East Coast. We were ready to hear that they were being boycotted and were lying idle, that convention instructions were being carried out. No such news. On November 8 the Port of Lake Charles was reopened by federal court order. Eleven US marshals were assigned to the port to assure peaceful execution of the order. A meeting of the contract committee in Galveston, about a week after Ryan's visit, found the delegates in a rebellious mood. Ryan, after all his fine speechmaking down South, had gone North and

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said nothing to change the picture. His threats to institute the boycott if the shipowners in the South kept on mistreating the ILA were not scaring the owners. After a considerable amount of explosive talk, somebody put a motion to send a rank and file committee to talk to New York longshoremen on the pierheads, man to man. The motion was adopted. We settled on a committee of four, two whites and two blacks. Landgrebe and I were elected the two white delegates. I must apologize for having forgotten the black delegates' names. Incidentally, this meeting could have marked the first appearance of AFL Organizer Holt Ross among us. He had been assigned to the ILA strike. He had paid some dues in the field, seen rough days, been left in a roadside ditch in Mississippi or somewhere with the life beaten half out of him, the story went. In performance, the man was an orator. This attracted me, always the fool for oratory. But I had to wonder: wasn't his approach more demagogic than working class some of the time? We committeemen didn't shape up as a gaggle of intellectuals. Holt would rise up, throw those four-and-moresyllable words all around the place, and our people would figuratively roll in the aisles, shouting, "Amen, Brother!" Election of the rank and file committee came toward the close of the day's session. President Dwyer, presiding, suggested that we make the matter of providing delegates' expenses, instructions, and so on the first order of business in tomorrow's session. The meeting adjourned on that note. Only minutes after convening the following morning it was obvious that officialdom had done its "homework" overnight. Delegates red hot on yesterday to send the rank and file delegates were now cool toward the idea and committed to the notion that only our officers ought to represent us. The pressure had been applied. It wound up with the previous day's motion and election rescinded. The district president and vice president and Organizer Ross were chosen to present our case to New York. Those worthies assured us that they would fight the good fight. What happened? Upon arriving in New York City they went directly to President Ryan's office, where they were quickly informed as to what they had better do and what they had better not do. "Better not do" was specifically not to go on the piers to agitate the men. And they didn't. And so ended that effort to make the East Coast membership aware of our sad circumstances. There was talk in some quarters that persons attempting to persuade New York longshoremen at pierhead not to go to work could get themselves hurt. We'll never know. It wasn't tried.

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Reporting back to the contract committee, Holt Ross let his impatience with Ryan's failure to impose the boycott show in his speech. At this point we began to learn about union protocol: The American Federation of Labor did not interfere in the internal affairs of any affiliate. The conduct of a strike was an internal affair of an affiliate (the ILA in this case) wherein the AFL would suggest and advise, no more. Thus, Ross could only state the case of the southern longshoremen and beg Ryan to give them support. Anything stronger, such as appealing directly to Ryan's membership, would be overstepping his organizer's prerogatives. A small, nagging, unwelcome doubt was beginning to form in my mind: that the American Federation of Labor was NOT-as I had imagined-the One Big Union, only waiting to get its act together. Was it really what those Wobblies called it: "The American Separation of Labor"? President Dwyer spoke a few words critical of Joe Ryan on his own, nothing very harsh. Then he warned that, without the East Coast boycott, the strike in the East Gulf was as good as lost, and the strike in our sector was in trouble. Time passed. Every few days Ryan's name would be in the paper, threatening again and still again to impose the boycott if the shipowners didn't come to terms. And still no boycott, only talk. A group of Houston longshoremen went to New Orleans to see at first hand how things were going. Their report was disheartening. They went so far as to say that great numbers of men were picketing at one dock one day and working behind the picket line at another that night or next day. The situation was out of control, in their words. This reached members of the contract committee, of course. While unofficial, it was generally accepted as valid. About December 1, President Dwyer called the contract committee together and told us that West Gulf ports had better work toward a separate settlement for themselves as a practical matter, else the whole structure might collapse. We might as well resign ourselves, he said, there was not going to be a boycott. Eddy and I had come to the meeting buoyed up by the knowledge that Bryan Walker's scheme had left the Corpus Christi scab force short-handed, that morale of those left was low, and that recruiting had become more difficult. But we could hardly balance that against the larger picture, especially the report from New Orleans. In November, eight AFL international unions had formed a "Committee for Industrial Organization,"* led by John L. Lewis of the *CIO history in a nutshell: In 1936-1937 the AFL suspended and then expelled the CIO unions, still the Committee for Industrial Organization. In

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United Mine Workers. The CIO was talking labor solidarity, industrial as opposed to craft unionism in "basic" industries. On our Texas strike front we were beginning to receive literature from and about the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast. These pamphlets, brochures, and papers would point to the effectiveness of joint action, "an injury to one is an injury to all," would criticize Joe Ryan for not supporting his southern membership, and would criticize the leadership of the International Seamen's Union for not instructing members to support the longshore strike. A little less openly, others passed literature in the name of the Communist Party, USA. This followed pretty nearly the line of the Maritime Federation literature, calling for labor solidarity, a federation of maritime unions in the Gulf patterned after the Pacific Federation, joint action of North Atlantic longshoremen and East Coast seamen to bring a successful end to the Gulf ILA strike. The CP pamphlets would scorch Joe Ryan, calling him names such as strikebreaker, sell-out artist, and shipowners' stooge. Officers of the ISU were treated likewise. The pamphlets were critical of AFL leadership as a whole, and generally supported the Committee for Industrial Organization. Those questions never became major issues in our contract committee. The district officers played down the Maritime Federation proposals and bitterly denounced the Communist Party. The great majority of the committee followed that lead. Those of us who favored the federation idea were not exactly muzzled. Just say, we were not much listened to. In early December 1935 two breaks came that could win the strike for us! Ryan finally declared the boycott of Gulf shipping, and a couple of scabs quartered on the docks in Galveston took sick. The doctors diagnosed their ailment as spinal meningitis. Galveston County health authorities ordered the docks cleared at once as a prevention measure against a possible epidemic of the highly contagious disease. "Aha! This is it," we romantic militants thought. "Now we've got the operators by the old ying-yang, and a downhill drag. We can bring enough pressure so that the state health authority will order every dock in the state cleared. The scabs will disappear." 1938 the CIO unions, with one international union defecting and rejoining the AFL, formalized a federation in rivalry with the AFL. Still keeping the initials CIO, they called themselves the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1955, following a series of negotiations, the rivals merged under the title AFL-CIO.

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On the heels of that heartening news we were called into contract committee session. This time the proceedings were in Houston. Edward F. McGrady, chief "troubleshooter" for Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, was ramrodding them. He had a settlement worked out. It would cover Texas ports and Lake Charles. Well, we had agreed to that among ourselves. The companies had returned to their wage offer made in early October. That was acceptable. Then came the kicker: The Houston Buffaloes, who had worked as strikebreakers throughout the strike, were to remain as a legitimate labor force under their own ILA charter. Adding insult to injury, their jurisdiction was to be the intercoastal trade, the West Coast ships, the only ones that had lain idle through the strike! A half-dozen of us were on our feet clamoring for the floor. Each got his chance to speak. Individually we sang a collective tune: We should use the spinal meningitis as a lever to persuade the State Health Department to clear the scab force from all docks in all ports. The ILA should not charter a group of strikebreakers, least of all a group like the Buffaloes that had worked non-union by their own choice for years before. Now was the time to dispatch them to parts unknown, and be well rid of them. Above all, it was utterly ridiculous to give them the work on the West Coast vessels, the only vessels that had stayed strikebouno. McGrady had a ready answer to our last point: The Buffaloes would learn good union behavior through contact with those unionminded West Coast sailors. It would redound to our benefit in time to come. Time to come, hell! There was no time coming to those renegades. Let 'em get lost. We dissidents were heard, but it was apparent that we were influencing nobody but ourselves. All of the delegates had come empowered by their respective memberships to consummate a contract. The preponderant majority intended to do so-now. The vote to ratify McGrady's proposition (already agreed to by the employers) was overwhelming. Perhaps four black delegates (our man Fred Hall from Corpus, for one) and eight whites voted against the settlement. Of the whites, I remember Landgrebe and Henry Raymer of the Houston deep sea; Jim Holley, Houston coastwise; George Rivette, Lake Charles; Eddy and myself. I wish I could recall them all, because it was a time when I felt, as I'm sure they did, more manly in defeat than in winning. So we had a contract. We held to our union pride enough to agree unanimously on one point: All scabs must be off the docks before union men would report for work. We sent a telegram to that effect

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to Corpus Christi, then spent the night in Houston, to work on coastwise business the next day. The date was December 12, 1935. You can find newspaper stories of the time reporting "strike settlements" all the way from December 10 to December 20, as settlements were accepted, rejected, ratified, revoked, made and unmade, as differing work jurisdictions and local conditions entered the picture. But the McGrady settlement of December 12 effectively ended the 1935 ILA strike in Texas ports and Lake Charles. The 1935 West Gulf strike, a rough one, had ended. Hadn't it?

CHAPTERS

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returned home to find that our men had returned to work before all the scabs had been cleared from their dock quarters, in disregard of the contract committee directive. They had bypassed Number 3 shed where the scabs were housed, using the back street. President Hartley had been away for the day. I stood in the middle of the floor one more time and raised hell, to non-applause and empty stares. Next day I made it a point to walk through the now empty Number 3 shed. What a stink! There's an expression, isn't there: "It stinks to high heaven"? That's how it stank. It stank to high heaven. Mercifully, a sanitation crew was setting up to disinfect the place. What an unhygienic mess! You r:ould well imagine spinal meningitis or any other disease. Those in charge had provided only three showerheads for bathing. (It's a wonder the scabs didn't strike.) From the odor, most of the "residents" must have become too tired to bathe before their turns came. There had been some two hundred quartered there at the peak. It made me think, what heroes our "spies" had been, to subject themselves to those conditions for a week at a time. May I again repeat here what can't be repeated times enough? The real heroes of all the strikes of history have been those unemployed who refused to take jobs scabbing. The contract was to run until September 30, 1936. So now we could settle back into the workaday rut. Only, we were hardly settled back at all when the contract committee was called to another session. It was only a couple of days until Christmas. Lykes Brothers, which carried probably three-fourths of the cargo moving into and out of Sabine District ports, had locked out ILA members. We in the Galveston-Houston District ports had enjoyed one pre-Christmas payday. Most of our Sabine District members hadn't had any. They were looking at a bleak Christmas, not to mention daily problems of DDY AND 1

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survival. One after another, delegates from Port Arthur, Beaumont, Orange, and Lake Charles took the floor to describe the hardships besetting members and their families. It was an ugly picture. What Lykes was doing had to be illegal. But what good is legality when you're not eating? As a practical matter, there was no absolute certainty that our men in the other Texas ports would answer a call for a sympathy walkout after less than two weeks back at work, President Dwyer declared. How soon Lykes could be brought into line through the courts was a matter of conjecture, but seemed the only recourse. The men in the Sabine and their families must somehow exist on the meager amount of work from the other companies, on donations, loans, or whatever, until legal measures could be applied. Suppose Lykes persisted in the lockout until the end of the year? Badly bitten by the solidarity bug as I was, I bounced to my feet. The ISU was presently in contract negotiations with the operators, I reminded the body; contract expiration date, December 31, 1935. Why not, right now, make official contact with the ISU, with the object of persuading them not to sign any new contract with Lykes Brothers until Lykes would have respected its contract with the ILA? If the lockout should still be on at the end of December, or if the ISU had failed to negotiate a satisfactory contract by then, both unions would walk out New Year's Day. Hit 'em by land and by sea, until we had fair dealings all around. Looked at with a coldly practical eye, my appeal may have rated more wishful thinking than solid substance. But that was not what came into question. The question that arose was the principle of the thing. President Dwyer was apoplectic, looked for a moment as if he would have a stroke. When he finally got his breath, he used it to rip me up one side and down the other. It was a travesty of good unionism to suggest what I was suggesting, he said. We did not go to other unions with our problems, and we did not interfere in theirs. He wondered how any responsible representative of a local union could come across such ideas. He wondered whether my union actually knew what I was doing. He wondered what unholy influences I was listening to. And more. He was courteous enough to let me attempt an answer. I rehashed our Corpus Christi experience with the SS Dorothy. I reminded them that West Coast ships had stayed crewless and idle in Houston and New Orleans. From my view, there was everything right and nothing wrong with it. The West Coast was running its business and we were running

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ours, Dwyer answered. We had never asked their sailors to take any action on our behalf-nor would we. That's the kind of unionism we practice, and that's the proper and honorable kind, he said. Then came the responses from the True Believers. One after another, Sabine District delegates, who had been describing the destitution among their memberships only moments before, rose to say "amen" to what Dwyer had just said. (These are union leaders? Yup.) They would never sully ILA honor by poking their noses into other unions' business. They'd starve first. Only delegates Burroughs from Beaumont and George Rivette from Lake Charles disputed the orthodox stand. The delegates from the Galveston-Houston area who didn't join the "ameners" evidently decided that the better part of valor was to keep their mouths shut. Ralph Landgrebe offered words in my support. That was about it. The theory of joint union action was far from popular there and then. The meeting closed with a decision that the ports in the Galveston district would continue working. The district office would give all assistance possible to the Sabine District in getting their men back to work. Lykes turned to honoring the contract shortly. I would have to guess that some set of brains in the Lykes organization thought it was worth a try to see whether Sabine longshoremen would break ranks in the face of a lockout. Certainly nobody with brains would have been set on maintaining that captive scab labor force for a great length of time. In December Ralph Landgrebe was elected president of Houston Local1273, unseating incumbent Bill Leared. Hartley and Marshall were returned to their offices in Corpus Christi. In the Central Labor Union I declined to run for reelection to the president's office. I had served two years. In my opinion it was an honor to be shared rather than an office to be coveted. I still hold to that opinion, butoh golly!-the things I've learned since that time about how the power inherent in those offices is coveted and manipulated! (Joseph P. Ryan was president of the New York City labor council for years and years.) First thing after his election, Landgrebe brought a resolution before the Houston city council which stated that longshore work under the ILA in Houston had always been performed by white and colored locals sharing the work fifty-fifty. The recent strike settlement had placed a local made up of colored members in exclusive jurisdiction over the stevedoring of intercoastal ships, thus depriving the white ILA local of its traditional half of the work that had been its share ever since those ships had first entered the port. The resolution asked restoration to the white local of its traditional half

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of the work on intercoastal vessels. The city council adopted the resolution. That adoption created sufficient pressure that employers and the ILA District officer structure yielded to it. Intercoastal work was then divided fifty-fifty between white Local 1273 and black Local1409, the former Buffaloes. The International Seamen's Union renewed its contract with the shipowners for the year 1936. Any improvements over 1935 conditions and wages were minuscule, rank and file seamen claimed. The agreement was not submitted for membership ratification. Through November and December, agitation for union support of other unions, for union solidarity, for a federation of maritime unions in the Gulf similar to the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast had gradually increased. It was pushed mostly by seamen. West Coast seamen were especially effective at delivering themessage, having been in on the founding of the Pacific Federation. "Rank and file" members of the East Coast ISU were active and vocal, condemning Joe Ryan for his "sell-out" of his Gulf membership, condemning their own union for not having given the strike any support. Announcement of the new ISU contract, with the failure or refusal to put it to a ratification vote, signaled an abrupt escalation of the agitation. A gentleman named Van Ermen showed up in the Gulf. He was a seagoing radio operator. He carried credentials from the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast and his own union, the American Radio Telegraphists' Association CARTA), as their official emissary to Gulf Coast maritime unions. In that capacity he was given audiences by ILA Gulf officials and by ISU Gulf officials. The ideas he was advocating were given short shrift by both sets of officers. Van Ermen came to Corpus Christi. The time could have been around the middle of January. We arranged for him to speak to our white local, our sister black local declining to participate. He announced that a meeting to discuss formation of a Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast would be held in Houston. Then he asked the meeting if it would be agreeable for me to join him on a speaking tour that would cover Gulf ports as far east as Pensacola, if it were sanctioned by the Houston meeting. The local not only gave permission, but would pay expenses and lost wages. The Houston meeting failed to produce black longshoremen's representatives from Texas locals. There were white ILA delegates from Beaumont, Galveston, Houston, Texas City, and Corpus Christi. Port Arthur was the only seamen's branch that sent delegates officially elected. "Rank and file" ISU delegates came from Galveston and Houston. Whereas the Port Arthur seamen's branch was strongly

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for the maritime federation idea, defying their ISU international officers, both black and white longshoremen's locals there were cool toward the idea. Arthur Thomas was Port Arthur ISU port agent. He enjoyed tremendous popularity among the seamen who sailed the tankers. He was credited with almost single-handedly bringing about unionization of a couple of shipping lines, Texaco being one. The Texas Company operated a fleet of its own tankers. Those refineries sit behind high steel mesh fences topped by barbed wire set at an angle calculated to repel intruders. On not just one, but as many as three or four occasions, stories said, Thomas had gone through, over, or under the fences (how, remained his secret), eluded company guards, and bounced onto a ship right in the middle of her crew, union literature, pledge forms, receipt book at the ready. Those crews had joined up-if not on the instant, as time went on. Port Arthur Chief of Police Hardie F. Baker, with the reputation of being a hard guy, had thrown Thomas into and back out of his city jail a number of times, all adding to Thomas' popularity among seafaring men. Port Arthur seamen had a strong union branch under a strong union leader. Therefore, they were able to defy international union directives to stay away from Maritime Federation activity. That preliminary session in Houston evinced enthusiasm for a maritime federation patterned after the West Coast model. A couple of spokesmen from the Sailors Union of the Pacific were there to warm our spirits. The meeting endorsed the proposed Van ErmenMers speaking tour. We were soon on the road. Van Ermen drove a Chevrolet coupe, a replica of the one Clark Dickson had driven in our pursuit of Bryan Walker that night. We kept expenses to a minimum. Sometimes families would set us down to their dinner tables, or some guy or guys hatching would do the same. On a couple of our stops people had spare rooms and beds for us. Otherwise, we ate at the cheaper restaurants and engaged rooms in four-bit flophouses. "Progressive Committees" (dedicated to "progressive unionism") were springing up all over. Almost always they were established and manned by rank and file seamen who would stay ashore as long as individual funds lasted, then ship out. In some places the committees operated from no more than a rented room. In others they received sufficient support to set up functional offices. They sponsored our maritime federation meetings. In some places our audiences numbered only a dozen or so. In others, sizable crowds turned out. We spoke to large crowds in New Orleans and Mobile.

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The longshore strike in the East Gulf had been declared lost. Incredibly, Joe Ryan was issuing ILA local charters to the elements that had furnished strikebreakers throughout the strike and was revoking the charters of the locals that had sponsored the strike. The newly chartered New Orleans locals, numbers 1418 (white) and 1419 (black), were thereafter commonly called the "new locals." The old locals that had conducted the strike refused to surrender their actual charters, but were without any standing in the ILA and, consequently, without any labor contracts. Ryan did the same in Mobile and Pensacola, issued charters to the scab labor force, revoked the old charters. West Coast seamen's crews sent to New Orleans to man the idle ships ruled that any longshoremen working them must have strike clearance from the "old" locals, thereby ignoring Ryan, who was asking that they accept gangs from the "new locals." It follows that this display of solidarity was giving the old locals a new breath oflife. There was no such cushion for the old local in Mobile. The ILA local that had gone on strike had lost its work, period. It was in Mobile that I saw white and black members meeting under one local head for the first time. Joint meetings of white and black locals were not unusual; but here the whites, you could say, belonged to the black local. Years before, whites had done Mobile's stevedore work. A strike had taken place, broken by black strikebreakers, and blacks became Mobile's stevedores. After a period of time, these organized a local under the ILA that was broken, in tum, in the anti-union drives of the 1920s. Meanwhile, a number of white men had been employed and retrained as "carpenter" gangs to install shifting boards for grain cargoes and fittings for various other special cargoes. These whites, a small minority of the total labor force, had united with the black majority in the 1934 union revival, all joining the same local union. The entire group, black and white, had struck in October 1935 and were now replaced by strikebreakers. They were keeping themselves alive and their organization intact by doing any odd job that offered. Their president, a black man, was doing yard work. His wife was doing maid work. The local had managed to hold onto a wellappointed meeting hall. Both Mobile and New Orleans had lively "Progressive Committees," each maintaining a "headquarters." Also, in Mobile there was an unforgettable place, a bar near the foot of Government Street, known as "Joe Palooka's." The proprietor was Joe Paluggi. He made

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rank and file seamen welcome in his place. It almost became more of a headquarters for rank and file activity than the couple of rooms that the Progressive Committee rented "officially." In Pensacola we found a next to hopeless situation. There had been waterfront unions in Pensacola before the founding of the ILA. A white and a black ILA local had been reorganized, had struck, and had lost the strike. We would not admit to hopelessness at the time, but, without support from the men on the ships, hopes were dim. Van Ermen and I were received enthusiastically by the black and white longshoremen who attended the meeting. We had little of substance to offer them, only our feelings about the situation. We've skipped Gulfport, Mississippi. No meeting was arranged in Gulfport, then or later, as my memory goes. The ILA there (black) had weathered the strike in fair shape, according to reports. It was never clear in my mind. It appeared that they were able to get most or all of their members back on the docks at strike's end. Popular talk described Gulfport longshoremen as a rather independent lot. Whatever they were, we never made any measurable penetration with our maritime federation persuasions. Our tour served to heat the water some. Along with his Maritime Federation literature, Van Ermen carried and distributed literature from the Communist Party, USA. I helped Van distribute both literatures. Although I wasn't yet committed to any of it, I figured it should be everybody's privilege to read or hear the other fellow's spiel. Still do. On a second trip shortly after, it was evident that sentiment for a federation was growing. The unions representing licensed seagoing personnel-the National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots (MM&P), deck officers; the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association (MEBA), engine room officers; and the ARTA-all supported the idea officially. The ISU, representing unlicensed personnel, remained officially uncompromisingly opposed, but a growing number of dissident members were identifying themselves as federation supporters. Among longshoremen the picture was one of confusion. ILA officialdom was as much opposed to the federation idea as the ISU. Our black Texas longshoremen were great followers of their leaders. It made me bitter to see them follow President Ryan's dictates, after he had denied us the support of the boycott sanctioned by the international convention, and in the face of what he was doing to the old unions of their own race in the East Gulf. We had white locals in Beaumont, Galveston, Houston, and Corpus Christi officially in support, disregarding district and international opposition.

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A third meeting in Houston decided that there was enough support to warrant calling a convention to discuss forming a Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast. A number ofiWW seamen appeared at that meeting. Their speakers warned that the announced aim of our maritime federation, "a Maritime Trades Department within the American Federation of Labor," was off-target of true working class solidarity. They reminded hearers that existing AFL departments and councils had not prevented one union or the other from seeking advantage at the expense of the rest from time to time. They predicted that this would happen eventually within any federation or department under the rules that we were proposing. The true-blue federationists countered that what the Wobblies were proposing, one big union of all maritime workers, was "dual unionism," that the AFL represented the cream of the American working class and should be preserved for that reason, that the Committee for Industrial Organization would in time bring about true industrial organization of our industries, that what the IWW speakers were saying could amount only to disruption and to nothing of a constructive nature. The IWW delegates readily agreed that they were preaching dual unionism. They contended that what the federationists proposed was not a workable type of unionism. The federationists had used the word "disruption." What the federationists proposed was really working class disruption, AFL-style, the Wobblies charged. The action of the meeting was to call for a convention to be held in the month of March in the city of New Orleans, inviting both official and "rank and file" delegates to attend and speak their minds. What the Wobblies described as the AFL's built-in resistance to solidarity nagged at my mind. I wasn't unaware that each and every union had the right to go its chosen way without obligation to any other union. In the Corpus Christi CLU we had received a gentle slap on the wrist for concerning ourselves with an affiliated local's "internal" problems. It would be years later when I would read how the international unions had taken decision-making power away from the central bodies. Before that was done, there had been some solid grass-roots unionism practiced in several city central bodies, Chicago and Seattle being two outstanding examples. Remember what I said about union officer being one position that a person can attain without knowing the first thing about the subject matter? Here I was, the head officer of a central body, knowing utterly nothing of the history of central bodies. Hardly a qualification, most probably a disqualification, in any other field.

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Another inter-union conflict that had arisen was in the field of retail sales. We had managed to organize clerks in a couple of stores that sold men's and women's wearing apparel. Neither store carried all union-made products. The clerks felt that the union members should buy from the union clerk whether the product was manufactured by union labor or not. There was pressure from the other side, the AFL Union Label Trades Department, to buy only union-made products, whether sold by union clerks or not. When the ideal situation, a union-made article sold by a union clerk, didn't exist, the conflict was there. So, yes, the Wobblies had a point. Each AFL union was an island unto itself. It made solidarity hard to achieve. But we starry-eyed federationists were going to prove it could be done, in spite of AFL opposition, in spite of international unions' opposition, in spite of employer opposition, in spite of any old opposition you could name. A gentleman named Homer Brooks was the area organizer for the Communist Party, USA. "Indefatigable" describes him. He had talked so long and so hard to so many people that the muscles where the jaws hinge were overdeveloped. In appearance Homer was as average as average can be, nothing about his person that would attract close attention. The Communist Party backed the formation of a maritime federation in the Gulf. The literature they put out went on to project an Atlantic Coast federation, then a Great Lakes, all components of a National Maritime Federation. The Party backed the CIO unions, calling for unity of all workers everywhere and world-wide-but, for the USA, within the American Federation of Labor. Once more the fact that labor union officers can attain those offices without really knowing the movement they're in comes to the fore. I didn't know that the CP "line" had been changed-from organizing unions in opposition to the AFL, to advising workers to join AFL unions and work to influence the policies of the AFL unions along "progressive" lines, a maneuver to be dubbed by its unsympathetic critics "boring from within." On the social front the CP called for equal rights for black people specifically and everybody inclusively, and for, eventually, a government by the common people which would end government by the privileged few and also bring an end to profiteering and poverty. At this time the cry "dual unionism" was being raised against the maritime federation idea by ILA, ISU, and AFL officialdom. But the AFL did not proceed against the Masters, Mates and Pilots, an affiliate participating in the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast

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and supporting the idea of a Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast. So much for AFL consistency. The CP came down hard on the IWW for advocating dual unionism. Well, any time there are two similar entities within an area, there is duality: there are two. The larger of two unions appropriated unto itself the right to proclaim the smaller union "dual," always with acrimonious intonation. Don't ask me why. Common usage doesn't have to explain itself. What I was reading and being told about the Communist Party was setting well with me. Party members would work within the trade unions to build progressive unionism, promote rank and file participation in decision making and in implementing those decisions, thus doing away with a state of affairs where an officer elite made decisions, too often without consulting or considering their members' wishes or welfare. Tactically, a Party fraction within a local union would find out the pulse beat of rank and file thinking. The fraction, the Party group, would meet together to decide how best to articulate rank and file aspirations on the union meeting floor. In the meeting itself Party members would seat themselves individually in different parts of the room, where, by speaking out on any subject from those various locations, each would encourage those around him or her to rise and speak their feelings. The overall effect was to encourage membership outspokenness, a full and free discussion of the issues, with resulting union democracy. On the political front the Party would recruit members from the working class and accept members who believed in ultimate working class government. This "dictatorship of the proletariat" wouldn't be a dictatorship at all, since it would represent the collective will of 90 percent of the people. Government would be through soviets, local and territorial councils, organized more around the economy of the region than inside any set geographical lines. The whole aim of government would be to gear agriculture and manufacturing to provide sustenance and comfort to the entire population: first, of the country, then of the continent, then of the world. The ultimate goal, a superabundance of those items that make life comfortable and carefree: "The Theory of the Super Abundance." There was no talk of violent overthrow of the government either in the speech of professed Party members or in such literature as was passed my way. There were warnings that no privileged class has ever given way without having resorted to violence in trying to retain its position. Hence, once the working class had become suffi-

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ciently organized by the Party to have the power to legislate against capitalism, workers should be prepared and ready to defend themselves against the mercenaries of capitalism who would be attempting to overthrow the socialist state and reimpose capitalism. The foregoing paragraphs capsule the general impression of the Communist Party delivered to me at that time. To others active in that period who might hold differently, I say, to each his own. This is a recounting of who and what influenced one person's thinking over a period of years. It does not pretend to critical analysis. The aims and the tactics being articulated sounded valid to me. In New Orleans, on the eve of the federation convention, I joined the Communist Party, USA. A half-century has elapsed between the happening and the telling. Expect to be told here my own experiences within and with the CP, not speaking for any other individuals. In the first place, the way the CP operated in those days (whether it still does, I wouldn't know), a guy or a gal, or a group, would identify to you as a CP member or members. You weren't shown formal credentials. I wasn't. If you were accused of being a CP member by some person, you were to make answer in this vein: "I consider myself to be a progressive thinker with progressive ideas. If having progressive ideas makes one a Communist, then maybe I'm a Communist." You neither admitted nor denied Party membership to those whom you considered antagonistic. West Coast labor leader Harry Bridges was brought three times (as I remember it) before US government tribunals seeking to identify him as a Communist Party member. None succeeded. Was Harry Bridges ever a CP member? How should I know? Most of those who identified themselves to me as CP members are probably dead by now. For certain, most of them have gone their several ways, many lost to memory in the time between. Of those few with whom I might still have occasional contact, none are professed CP members today. Most remember it much as I remember it. One or two will deny ever having been in the Party. One or two will claim to have been in the CP only in an effort to seek out subversion there. One or two have repudiated the Party openly and verbosely and have sought the sanctuary of patriotism. Again, to each his own. I have mentioned Homer Brooks by name because he was identified in the press as a Communist Party organizer and welcomed such identification. The last time I ever saw Homer Brooks was probably around 1939. I have no idea what may have become of him. At a caucus of the Texas delegates the night before what was to be the founding convention of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast a proposition was offered that we should not formally set up a

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federation; rather, set up a committee for the promotion of a maritime federation. The proposal to set up a promotion committee was favored by the CP. But I had argued that, if we would give Gulf Coast maritime workers something that they could join, they would join up. The CP fraction yielded to my argument. The Texas caucus went along. Looking back, the Party had the more practical view. The convention was held in the MEBA Hall on St. Charles Street, in the month of March. Over the next three days we hammered out a constitution and by-laws, ending up with one patterned pretty much after that of the West Coast federation. It provided for setting up a district council in Galveston which would include all Texas ports and Lake Charles. A second district council would sit in New Orleans, taking in territory to the east as far as Pensacola. Projected in the future was a third council on the west coast of Florida, probably in Tampa. Each district council would have its own officers and devise whatever ways deemed best to build the federation within its own jurisdiction. The officers of the federation were a president, two vice presidents, a secretary, and a treasurer. The convention elected me president. C. P. Chase, a seaman, was elected first vice president; S. Nathaniel Smith, of the New Orleans colored longshoremen, second vice president; Jim Croney, ARTA, New Orleans, secretary; Frank Sayre, Galveston MEBA, treasurer. Brother Sayre came to the convention authorized by his local to offer free office space to the new federation, an offer readily accepted. The MEBA was giving us a fine send-off: a convention meeting place rent-free, then office space likewise. Our Galveston office was not closed in. We were allotted one corner of the MEBA meeting hall, a large table, chairs, and a storage space for our papers. We obtained a typewriter, and we were in business. Secretary Croney was Gulf representative for the Radio Telegraphists, a full-time job. The president's office became, in effect, secretary-president. What with turning out federation propaganda and keeping up with correspondence, my office was much more desk than field oriented. Frank Sayre was MEBA business agent for the Galveston-Houston area. The Galveston-Houston MM&P rented an office from the MEBA. Those two offices adjoined one another, and both adjoined the meeting hall. Captain Charles Kertell functioned as the MM&P representative. Maritime Federation officers were limited to a tenure of two consecutive one-year terms. After serving two consecutive terms, an officer was ineligible to hold office until after one year out of office. The affiliated unions being independent bodies, their officers could hold office indefinitely, given a sufficient number of votes at election

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time. The Wobblies were quick to point out this discrepancy. But we were observing AFL practice, so there was no discrepancy from an AFL position, only a difference in rules. May I pay respect to my fellow officers at this point? Vice President Chase, rank and file seaman, was a smallish fellow, but in moral stature he stood giant tall, a man you could tie to. Vice President Smith, of the New Orleans black longshoremen, was a scholar, a college graduate-and what an orator! He was a man of high principle. Although our opinions may have diverged later on the best way to seek that principle, I never doubted his integrity. Secretary Croney-they'll never come any better. He had a brotherly feeling toward every working person who ever lived. Treasurer Sayre came under fire before the year was out for making less than herculean efforts to persuade MEBA engineers to stay off their ships in support of the rank and file seamen's strike. However, considering the conservatism of the MEBA and the unorthodox aspects of the strike, I can see where Frank Sayre was suddenly confronted with a hurdle he hadn't been trained to clear. As our treasurer, he handled the accounts meticulously. The affiliates, moving from east to west, began with two Pensacola longshoremen's locals, both locked-out victims of a lost strike. From Mobile we had the "old" longshoremen's local, with both black and white members, also locked out, and a rank and file seamen's "committee." New Orleans gave us officially the licensed seagoing officers' groups in that jurisdiction: ARTA, MEBA, and MM&P, all with the support of their national offices; white and black longshoremen's "old" locals, both losers in the recent strike, but holding work on West Coast ships by virtue of support from their ships' crews; and a rank and file seamen's group. In Texas we had the MEBA and MM&P; white longshoremen's locals from Beaumont, Houston, and Corpus Christi (excluding the Houston coastwise local); an ILA (white) fruit handlers' local from Galveston, working the fruit ships from Central and South America; and rank and file seamen's groups from Galveston and Houston. We had counted on Galveston white longshoremen's ILA Local307. That group had backed away just before convention time. Truly, my supporters and I had let enthusiasm overcome sober judgment. A committee to promote a maritime federation would have fit the situation much better. To encourage recruitment we had placed a provision in our bylaws allowing individual voluntary payment of per capita tax. Said per capita tax was ten cents per member per month. We had quarterly pin-on buttons printed, changing the color of the button each quarter. You paid your thirty cents and "wore your button with

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pride," and thereby engendered support toward bringing all maritime workers to unite to press their respective unions to affiliate with the federation. Unfortunately, it didn't work out quite that way. Goons with muscle and an eagerness to use it on federation supporters began to hang around ISU offices. Wearing an MFGC button could get you crippled for a brief period, maybe a lengthy one. We hadn't anticipated so much goon squad activity. It served to terrorize and subdue great numbers of seamen. We'd have done better to put out a "per capita tax card" that could be tucked away out of sight. That violence did not spill over into longshoremen's affairs, neither by longshoremen versus longshoremen nor by seamen against longshoremen. The beef squads "dumped" only seamen who dared voice or display support for the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast, such support being translated as disloyalty to the ISU per se. It made building the federation difficult. The refusal of Galveston ILA Local307 to participate was a severe setback. That affiliation would have given us an enviable springboard, since 307 was District President Dwyer's home local. Emmett Townsend had been the persuader in turning that local's stand from pro- to anti-federation, we were told. There were several Townsends on the Galveston waterfront, all good hands and active unionists. Emmett and Tom Townsend would become outstanding. On Van Ermen's say-so, we had been depending on Emmett Townsend to lead the move to affiliate. A hard core of Galveston members who kept up voluntary "affiliation" said that Emmett had done an about-face. When Van Ermen and I had spoken at a Galveston meeting, Emmett had been there. As I remembered it, he had not said much, but certainly nothing in opposition. We were victims in those days of a "white hat-black hat" psychology. All who agreed with us wore white hats; all in disagreement wore black hats. We never looked for shades between. Thus, someone who switched sides was automatically suspect. Next time I bumped into Emmett, he would not voice any extreme opposition to the federation, would only say that he wasn't convinced that it was proper for the time. He exhibited a bit of a "Red Scare," I thought. He wasn't exactly hostile, but he remained in opposition to us in a sort of non-aggressive way. Years later I would hear a story that, interim experiences considered, sounded plausible. This story had it that Van Ermen (and whoever else) had had agreeable sessions with Townsend (and whomever else). In one of these sessions Van Ermen had told Townsend that he would be his, Van Ermen's, partner on his second speaking

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tour. But, when Van Ennen had brought the Communist Party into a subsequent discussion, Emmett had not been receptive to that part. Subsequently Van Ennen had dropped Emmett from any speaking tour plans, and I had been reinvited to accompany him on that second tour. None of this was even hinted to me at that time. I would have insisted that Van Ermen keep his first promise. More than that, I could have supported Emmett Townsend unreservedly for president of the federation, an office for which he might well have been a candidate, had he been given that promised half of the exposure that I was given double of, if that's an apt way to put it. A Gulf Coast Maritime Federation headed by Townsend, in his capitally tactical "home town" role to oppose Dwyer and the ILA machine, would have taken off with a momentum that its actual start sorely lacked. If the Communist Party had a hand in Van Ermen's decision making-and I suspect that it did-the Party paid dearly for that decision, if one assumes that the Party really wanted a Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast-and I believe that it did, at that time. If we could only communicate, huh? On my part, I felt that Emmett had picked what he thought would be the winning side. On his part, he could very well have thought that I was in on the doublecross that kept him off the speaking tour. Neither of us had enough savvy to know how to open up a dialogue. Isn't that something like seven-eighths of the history ofthe human race? By the end of March 1936 the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast was set up and beginning to function. The Galveston and New Orleans district councils had formed and elected officers. Since we were yet a "paper" organization, our main function was propaganda. For the most part, we'd hack out a leaflet at the Galveston office, carry it to Houston, where their Ship Channel Progressive Committee was better equipped than most, and there turn out copies in volume. The Houston volunteers would mimeograph a designated number of copies for local distribution and for mailing in bundles to other ports, where volunteers would pass them out to meetings, jobsites, aboard ship, wherever. Every local Progressive Committee had its typewriter and its mimeograph. Those were its arsenal. The Houston Ship Channel Progressive Committee probably exercised more influence in shaping events than any other local committee, not detracting anything from others. Progressive Committees in Galveston, Port Arthur, Beaumont, New Orleans, and Mobile contributed mightily. Houston was lucky in having a lively flow of seaborne commerce (for those depressed times), the backing of a strong longshoremen's local, a de-

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termined group of rank and file seamen, and a strong Wobbly influence, whose advocates, while critical of the federation, had been preaching labor solidarity to all concerned for a very long time. Longshoreman W. B. (Bill) Follett became the Houston committee's secretary at the beginning, then its chairman. There were several Folletts on the Houston waterfront, from more than one family. Brothers Bill and Joe were especially well thought of by President Landgrebe. Among other strong supporters was the guy who led the side on my first day in cotton, old Grant McGowen himself. By now he was blind in one eye from an accident, but still cutting that cotton-and whatever other cargo offered. Later, in the 1940s, he would be totally blinded by another accident. It's painful, naming names. You know you're going to leave somebody out. Many gave of time, money, and energy to help the cause. And a remarkable thing: many wives were into it as intensely as the men. These were people who sought unity of action, tired of one group of workers being used to defeat another group of workers, while both called themselves "union." The thrust of our propaganda was to bring the several unions in the maritime industry to support one another: "An injury to one is an injury to all." We repeated how, on the West Coast, a longshore gang would have a dispute with the employer on a certain ship, and the seamen in the engine room would shut off steam to the deck, making the winches inoperable. Such actions greatly assisted an employer's ability to see the point that the longshoremen were trying to make. Likewise, if the seamen on a vessel had a beef, longshoremen would refuse to board the ship to handle cargo. We related these incidents with emphasis. On the local scene we advocated a return to the practice of mixed longshore gangs, half white and half colored, that had existed before 1925. This, we argued, would put a stop to the practice of pitting one race against the other in a production contest. The "old locals" in New Orleans took this step. In practice, usually, four whites would work as a team on one side in the hold, breasting four colored men on the other. On deck, winch drivers would be one white, one colored. The gang foreman was assigned by the local having "right of way" on that particular ship. On the wharf, it was not unusual to see a white and a black man paired where the work called for bringing cargo to or from the ship on flat-bed trucks: one pulling on the tongue, guiding, the other pushing from the rear, both partnering up to load or unload the truck. The New Orleans locals went a step farther. Both backed the white local in setting up a "board" of qualified walking foremen, some-

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thing like six or eight of them. These were dispatched by the local in turn when a ship started to work. The walking boss was always a white man in those times. The mixed gang idea was a pill that some of our whites found hard to swallow. It was my feeling that the colored longshoremen were not so much opposed to the idea; but our colored brothers, with rare exceptions, were simply not going to challenge the ILA power base. To the credit of our white supporters whose race prejudice was hard to deal with, they stuck with us, willing to give the mixed gang a try if it would bring the Negro into the solidarity camp. We attacked the isolationism that the ILA and the ISU practiced. Thinking back, we were guilty of using up energy in name calling that could have been better used on the issues. We were victims of the conventional wisdom: that we must take a position and defend it against all criticism. If we'd listen to reason, reason would tell us that we should be willing to assume a position, assay its advantages or disadvantages by trial and error, being not disheartened by failure, being excited but never fully satisfied by success, always seeking improvement. That's not an easy assignment. In the name calling we were handed stuff as potent as any that we dished out, a phenomenon of the times, I guess. But we could have shrugged that off and have spent our own ammunition more wisely. The Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association was an independent union. The AFL made great issue of our having council relations with this non-AFL outfit. Holy Moses! Mates and engineers share the officers' mess aboard ship. Masters and mates depend on the engine room's response for reduced or added speed in navigation. But, by AFL measure, they should not mutually assist one another. Our agitation, in line with a maritime trades department within the AFL, called for an AFL charter to the MEBA. (I doubt that the whole MEBA membership really thought that we were doing them any great favor there.) The MEBA was classed as a conservative organization. The AFL attitude had the effect of radicalizing them a little, I felt. In March the SS California was in San Pedro harbor. The East Coast crew decided that that friendly environment would be a good place to strike for adjustment of some grievances. They pulled a sitdown. Some parties conceived the idea of telephoning the US Labor Department. The bosun, Joseph R. Curran, was selected to make the call. The telephone conversation with Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins brought Curran's name to national attention. He would later head the yet-to-be-formed National Maritime Union for many years. Secretary Perkins urged the California crew to bring the

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ship to the East Coast and air their grievances there. The crew complied. In New York the crew failed to achieve favorable adjustment of their grievances, so struck the ship. The strike spread to a number of other vessels in the harbor, some eighteen or twenty, as I remember, and became known as the "Spring Strike." Joe Curran was the strike chairman, his name becoming well known among rank and file seamen. The strike was "outlaw" in the eyes of ISU officials. Without detailing, it could be said that the strike was a partial victory, even though it didn't spread to the rest of the coast. The seamen had struck against the indifference of employers and their own union officers and had won some small concessions. Joe Curran remained in New York after the strike to be chairman of a rank and file seamen's committee which disseminated propaganda calling for democracy within the ISU and joint action with other maritime workers, quite similar to the type of stuff the MFGC was putting out. The month of May 1936 brought education to me. To this day I'm not sure just what-all I learned, but it had to be something. The annual convention of the Texas State Federation of Labor was held in the Carpenters Hall in Houston. The ILA local and the Corpus Christi Central Labor Union both sent me credentials to represent them. So I proceeded to the convention, was seated as a delegate, and listened as the "friends of labor" and the political officeholders made their speeches, those interspersed with pauses for the report of the credentials committee, reports of officers, reading of resolutions, and referral of such reports and resolutions to the appropriate committees. There've been many, many more conventions held than I ever attended. That would disqualify me as an authority, no doubt. However, it remains my opinion that there has to be a better way than convention government. The chairman, Bill Arnold, president of the state federation, a printer by trade, had just gaveled the meeting to order following the noon recess on Wednesday, when he was handed a slip of paper, from which he announced to the convention, "Delegate Gilbert Mers is ordered to appear before such and such a committee in room so and so." It was the committee on law, if I were to give it my best memory shot at the moment. At this point it is pertinent to mention that Professor George N. Green, Department of History, University of Texas at Arlington, dug into the published minutes of that 1936 TSFL convention. What he produced (copies of those pages) differs from my version, except as to end result. Both versions agree on that.

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Oh-oh! What kind of mindless euphoria had I wrapped myself in? Anybody with a thinking apparatus knew that people opposed to the maritime federation idea were in power. Anybody above the intelligence level of an idiot would have expected them to exercise that power. Honest to gosh-you have to believe-I let it take me by surprise. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Even then, I lacked the presence of mind to grab some friendly delegate who knew the ropes to be my "lawyer." I dutifully rose and went to the designated room. And entered the lions' den. The trial had already been held. The only personality I remember after all these years was one Robert Novack, a wheel in the ISU. He spoke for the committee. He quickly informed me that the activities I was into were inimical to the American Federation of Labor, besides being just plain reprehensible; that I was associated with a Communistic activity that was subversive of Americanism; that I was going to be unseated from the convention. The accused is entitled to his day in court, I tried to tell them. I had not been asked for a word of evidence, nor shown any charges, nor invited to speak in my own defense. My own union had not taken any action against me. (I was so simple minded, I didn't even feel a premonition.) How come another union, the ISU, could bring charges against me, superseding the international that I belonged to? In answer, Novack shook a sheaf of papers at me. "It's all here, typed and mimeographed material over your signature, subjecting the AFL and affiliated unions to ridicule and vilification." I tried the "maritime trades department within the AFU' pitch. It got nowhere. The committee chairman had had enough. "You can appeal to the convention," he told me. In the convention hall a few minutes later President Arnold interrupted the business of the moment to announce a committee report. The committee chairman read a report, to the effect that Delegate Mers had been found guilty of working to build an organization in the maritime industry that was dual to the American Federation of Labor and its affiliated unions. The committee found Mers unfit to sit among AFL representatives and recommended that he be unseated. He concluded with the usual, "I move adoption of the committee report," and a ready second was ready. A delegate whom I didn't recognize rose, and was recognized by the chair. He protested, "Since no formal charge has been read to the convention, he cannot legally be put on trial." To which President Arnold answered that the chair was going to

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put the motion; and put it, he did. With Oil Workers delegates Bob Oliver of Baytown and John Crossland of Houston, printer William F. Hill of Port Arthur, and last and least, myself all standing asking to be recognized, the chairman called for a vote, which was thunderingly affirmative: to adopt the committee report and unseat the delegate. He quickly declared all dissent out of order and ordered a resumption of regular business. I expected the sergeant-at-arms to come escort me out of the hall. Instead, no one approached me. So I sat there, not knowing what move to make. I was numb. A minute or two later a party whispered that Holt Ross wanted to talk to me, and led me to an anteroom. Holt came in a moment later. "They treated you rough out there," he sympathized. "Some will have different thoughts after they've slept on it. You've scored a point, even if it doesn't seem so right now. You've brought the question of an AFL maritime trades department into the open. You have some supporters, even if the majority is opposed as of now. Consider this: Consider resigning as president of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf, to work within the AFL for that maritime trades department. Hold it, now! Hear me out. You retain your standing in the AFL. That's important. "I'll take the floor, the rostrum, rather, and you will too, to tell them of your good work in your central body and the ILA, and assure them that a maritime trades department within the American Federation of Labor is a desirable goal. We'll ask the convention to reseat you. Then, I promise you, I'll work with you to get you your maritime trades department. "Don't you see? If you keep on in the direction you're going, you're inviting more and more AFL opposition at every turn. Here's an opportunity to work within the AFL in a constructive way. I promise, you'll have my backing. We'll work together on it. "You won't be selling out the men that you've been working for. We'll see that the ports where the strike was lost get organized and those men get back to work." That was a long shot, for sure. But the idea of having somebody of Holt Ross' stature advocating a maritime trades department couldn't be dismissed lightly. That was what we'd been saying we wanted, a department within the AFL. It was already understood and declared that the Maritime Federation would dissolve whenever the AFL would charter a maritime department. Under the pressure, I decided to buy Ross' proposition. Ross went to the front, whispered something to Arnold, who nodded. Then Holt brought me onto the platform, where I took a seat as

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Holt addressed the meeting. He let his oratory flow, paying high compliments to my work for the American Federation of Labor, related the deal he and I had just made, then implored the delegates to reseat me. Ross then introduced me. I attempted to present a picture of what we hoped to accomplish in maritime labor, affirmed the deal with Holt Ross, whereby I would give up my Maritime Federation office and activity, to work with him and others to bring about an AFL maritime trades department, abiding by AFL rules of conduct. Both of our efforts drew light applause; but a motion was quickly made to reaffirm the previous action to unseat, and as quickly passed. The staunch craft union supporters and the unions in the CIO were already separating into hostile camps, a rather veiled hostility right then that would flare into open hostility soon after. Craft unionists, in control of the convention, were not welcoming back a suspected renegade. TSFL President Arnold was a printer. His International Typographical Union had joined with the Committee for Industrial Organization. Arnold's demeanor and behavior made it convincingly plain that he didn't approve his international's doing. So I was still out in the cold. My bid to be reseated hadn't worked worth a durn. I should have told Holt Ross that I'd resign my MFGC office "if reseated." I had flubbed it again. Pages from the published proceedings of that convention photographed by Professor Green record a Delegate Lockwood, secretary of the resolutions committee, announcing that Gilbert Mers had been unseated from the resolutions committee; then a motion to concur in the action of the resolutions committee and also to unseat Mers as a delegate to the convention carried. That was on Wednesday. On Thursday morning the convention received telegrams from officers of Corpus Christi Central Labor Union and ILA Local 1224 protesting against Mers' unseating. These telegrams were read to the delegates, and also the text of a telegram sent by TSFL President Arnold to ILA International President Ryan. Following these readings, a motion carried to rescind the action to unseat and to refer the matter to the credentials committee. On Thursday afternoon the matter was referred by the credentials committee back to the convention. A motion by two Houston ILA delegates to defer action until Friday carried. On Friday morning telegrams from ILA President Ryan and AFL President William Green were read to the convention. Both recommended that Mers not be allowed representation in the Texas State Federation of Labor. A motion by a Delegate Moran that "the re-

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strictions of the telegram from President Green be observed to the letter" was seconded by Hill of Port Arthur and carried. Well! There are differences between the official published version and my own. No difference in the end result, however; both agree that I was booted out. I would have said that my debacle began on Thursday. Reminded by the official minutes, I agree that it was Wednesday. Where the minutes say that I was unseated from the resolutions committee, I do not remember having been an appointed member of any committee. In those published proceedings there should be a roster of committees somewhere, if anyone gives it that much importance. I don't. I stick by my story that I was ordered by the chairman from the convention floor to report to a committee in session, which I still think was the committee on law, then the close of the committee session, the return to the convention floor, report by the committee chairman, the protest by the one delegate, then the convention chairman's overruling further debate and putting the question. The telegrams in my support and the following ones from "on high" that put me under for the last time are fact, without dispute. The glaring omission: no mention of my appearance with Holt Ross on the speakers' platform. I would gamble that Professor Green would not have overlooked that, had it been there. Well, the mechanics of making up the minutes for publication would have gone about like this: A stenographer employed for the purpose would type, on a machine called a stenotype, the words of all who spoke at any time. It could be possible for errors, such as mistakes in hearing what was said or of correct identification, to creep in. The record would have been edited by Secretary Wallace C. Reilly and his staff. The convention would have the power to expunge selected matter from the minutes. It is possible that the TSFL executive board could have exercised that power also; I don't know. Anyway, that appearance on the platform was every bit a fact, one that has embarrassed me ever since, and that's another fact. A short while later the MFGC would put out several leaflets referring to it. Why should it have been erased from the convention minutes? It occurs to me that the expression "a maritime trades department within the AFL" was from the Maritime Federation side and not from the AFL side. There could be good reason to believe that neither the ILA nor the ISU leadership wanted anything to do with the idea. It could be that Holt Ross committed an error of judgment when he used the expression in the setting that he did. I find it fairly

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easy to believe that combined AFL, ILA, and ISU pressure commanded that it get no mention. I always admired Secretary Reilly. On his part, he would have had to bow to an AFL edict. I felt that he sympathized with me personally and that he leaned toward the stated aims of the CIO unions ideologically. It's a wild conjecture: Wallace Reilly might have decided on his own to leave that scene out to keep from exposing what an ignominious ass I'd made of myself! Truly, May 1936 was a long month. There was more to come. On the Monday following the Texas State Federation of Labor convention, the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District of the International Longshoremen's Association convened in Galveston. The sessions were held in the Screwmen's Hall, home of Galveston Local307. The first morning, local dignitaries representing the city, county, and police and sheriff's departments were introduced and offered speeches welcoming the delegates to the city and assuring us of their support of organized labor. The public officials departed. President Dwyer then announced that the only business of the day would be registering of delegates, after one introduction that he wished to make and after one recommendation that the credentials committee would make to the convention. In the bitterness shared almost unanimously by Texas longshoremen against Joe Ryan for having made us suffer through a lengthy strike, to be lost in the East Gulf, by disobeying the convention mandate to boycott Gulf shipping, many declarations were heard, to the effect that "He won't dare come into this state for a long, long time. Somebody'll kill 'im. And whoever does ought to get a medal." Well, it hadn't been such a long time, and there on the rostrum in Galveston, Texas, sat Joe Ryan, "big as life and twice as natural," as the expression goes, down in this cotton-pickin' country. A rather husky, handsome young man sat alongside Ryan. He wanted to introduce President Ryan right now, Dwyer said; he would introduce the others tomorrow. Ryan spoke only a few words. He was glad to be with us, glad to be in Galveston, glad that the rest of us present were able to be there. He looked forward to a successful and harmonious convention. How labor leaders love that word "harmonious"! Then came the recommendation from the credentials committee. The committee proposed a gag rule against any discussion of the Maritime Federation, either Gulf or Pacific. The proposal had to be a total surprise to everybody present except those in on its making. Emmett Townsend took the floor to declare that the Gulf Federation

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did exist, whether we liked it or not, and wouldn't be dissolved by our refusing to discuss it in this convention, and that we couldn't influence what the West Coast might do, in any event. He declared himself against any such rule and in favor of a free discussion. His was the only voice raised against the recommendation. The rest remained silent. No more than a dozen of us voted against the recommendation. It was passed and entered in the record. Then the meeting adjourned for the day. Emmett collared me quickly. "What's ailing you? You should've been on your feet quicker than me, and you never got up. Damn! I expected you to defend the damned federation. I'm the only one who spoke up, and I'm not a supporter. What's ailing you?" I answered that I figured that my telling the state convention that I was resigning from the federation disqualified me to speak. It sounded weak when I said it. "Oh, boy!" says Emmett. "You'll live and learn. Maybe. If you live." Nobody in our "progressive" ranks had recognized the young, husky fellow who had come and left with Ryan. There was sotto voce speculation that he was the international president's bodyguard. Introduced to the convention next day, he turned out to be Mr. Charles M. Logan, Regional Chairman, National Labor Relations Board, New Orleans. Ryan had invited Logan to accompany him to the convention, and Logan had accepted. So much for Ryan's bodyguard. Which is not to say that labor union officials have never employed them. That evening we held a "progressive" delegates caucus. I was chosen chairman of the meeting. Ralph Landgrebe offered George Hartley's name as a candidate for district president on the "progressive ticket." That was really all of any substance that transpired. There was talk about the pending AFL maritime trades department, but nothing concrete came of it, no resolutions drafted, no course of action agreed on. The next morning the bombs started falling. The credentials committee announced that the credentials presented by delegates from the "old" New Orleans and Mobile locals were invalid because those charters had been revoked by the international. Pensacola was not represented, as I remember the occasion. The New Orleans and Mobile delegates claimed that they had not been notified of any charter revocation. I often wonder at our lack of communication in those days. There is some evidence that Terence D' Arcy and Joe Spencer, presidents of the "old" New Orleans locals, knew of the action, but decided that feigning ignorance would be the best convention stance.

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President Ryan then told the convention that he had been forced to take the action because the three locals had not conducted themselves in a manner recommended by the international union; also, because developments had brought to light that the locals and their leaders did not have the confidence and support of waterfront workers. He would take this opportunity to introduce to the convention the presidents of the three new locals, whose credentials had been validated by the credentials committee. They were: Ed Rhone, new Local1410, colored, Mobile; Leo Tujague, new Local1418, white, New Orleans; and Paul Hortman, new Local1419, colored, New Orleans. It was the first time for us Texans who were not "insiders" to see the three. But their names were notorious. They had led the strikebreaking in their ports in the recent strike. Moreover, the story went, all three had been active scabherders in strike actions for a period of years. Now they were presidents of union locals! The usual aisle ran from front to back of the meeting hall, whites to the right, blacks on the left, facing the chairman. Significantly or not, Leo Tujague had seated himself among the colored delegates. There were fireworks from the white side protesting the seating of these scabherders, with Ryan the target of a shot or two; but talk was all it amounted to. The union establishment had already acted. After an interval the protesters talked themselves out of words. President Dwyer put the question. The vote sustained the recommendations of the credentials committee: to deny seats to the old locals and seat the delegates from the newly chartered locals, a bare majority of whites against, an almost solid vote of black delegates in support. There were no more fireworks as the committee finished its report. Chairman Dwyer announced that President Ryan would address the convention. Joe Ryan was a large, round-built Irishman, fiftyfive years of age, by his say-so. His complexion could be described as a healthy florid; his hair, reddish sandy. He dressed conservatively but expensively, and seemed to prefer khaki shades. This day he was wearing a silk pongee shirt and a necktie that blended with the color of the shirt. He did not gesture a lot in his speechmaking. A frequent mannerism: he had a way of placing his left hand just under his heart when describing how he was being attacked. It seemed to engender sympathy. I was reviving somewhat from the previous day's stupor, had the presence of mind to check the time when he began and again when he ended his speech. He held the floor one hour and five minutes! After introductory remarks, Ryan began a blistering attack on the Maritime Federation. Told how it was Communist controlled,

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about his own continuing and unrelenting war against Communism and for Americanism, God, country, and the Catholic Church (hand under the heart). On solidarity with other unions: the ILA had never been anything but badly burnt on those occasions when it had helped other unions, a recurring theme in Ryan's public statements throughout his career. Then he launched into an expose of Communism, Joe Ryan version. Then he brought me into it. He couldn't be sure yet, he said, whether I was only an unwary dupe being used by the CP or whether I was an old hard-line comrade, although my recent behavior would point toward the latter. Anyway, I had showed up in Corpus Christi, nobody knew from where, nor what I had done previously, had wormed my way into the longshoremen's local there and had gotten myself elected secretary. These Communists always go for the secretary's office, he told the audience; that way they are in a position where they can intercept the organization's correspondence and learn its inner workings. (I had never yet been the secretary of anything.) By now the lying jackass had me so hot that I forgot that I really had joined the CP. I had stopped being concerned with what he was saying about the Party to being concerned with what he was saying about me. From there he rambled into a dozen different fields, but always back to deliver a blow against the Maritime Federation. He dealt with Wobblies more kindly than he had with the Commies. He said that IWW's were good union men, but impractical. They wanted only a little for themselves, he said, then wanted to assure everything good for posterity. Which was all right, within limits. We all want our children to do well. But let them do well on their own, the same as we have done. We've all made it against the odds; let them make theirs the same way. He concluded that phase with this classic: "What has posterity ever done for us?" He jumped for a while into the subject of his New York associations and associates, going well out of his way, I thought, to impress us with his close association with one Ownie Madden. Madden was reputedly a torpedo, a killer for one of the New York mobs. Whispers had it that several unsolved murders were his doing. Ryan described Madden as a valued and trusted crony, and a guy who could get things done. I wondered whether Ryan was tossing us dissidents a veiled threat: that he could send Ownie south to take care of some too troublesome troublemaker? Not such a very long time after that speech, Ownie Madden was sentenced to prison. The details are lost from memory. Ryan finally ended his speech and took his seat. Holt Ross took

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the speaker's platform. I was still watching the clock. Holt held forth for thirty-five minutes. The weight of his oration was yet another attack on the Maritime Federation. He offered some softer words toward me personally than Ryan had used, but he never came on with anything close to the encouragement he had promised the week before toward promoting an AFL maritime trades department. By the time Ross had finished, I was riled to the point that ire was overcoming yesterday's timidity. I was extremely irked. As Ross took his seat, I was on my feet. Dwyer let me have the floor. "On yesterday this convention agreed that the Maritime Federation would not be a matter for discussion in these sessions," I reminded the delegates. "Yet we have just listened to an hour and forty minutes of speeches, most of it attacking the Maritime Federation. The first speaker talked for an hour and five minutes, the second for thirty-five minutes." (I was nettled to the point that I was not going to dignify either of them by name or title.) "On top of that, I've been lied about personally. It's no secret where I came from or what I did there, or what I've done since coming to Texas. Since the rule against discussing the Maritime Federation has been broken, I think the convention floor should now be opened to a full discussion of the subject. And since I've been personally attacked, I'm asking this convention for thirty minutes on the floor to answer the one hour and forty minutes of insinuations and untruths that have just been uttered about the Maritime Federation and me personally." That stirred up a storm. The administration adherents didn't want me to have the time. The dissidents wanted to hear me. After some minutes of the bickering, Ryan rose. "The brother has brought up a rule adopted by the convention. Legally, that rule is still binding on the convention. The brother is trying to extend the rule to apply beyond the delegates. Organizer Ross is here representing the American Federation of Labor. I am here speaking as your international president. Neither of us is a delegate here; neither of us is subject to the rules governing delegates." (Can you imagine such arrogance? When you've been kicked in the butt by it, you can.) "We were invited to speak, and that is what we did, for the best interests of labor. "Still I would not be offended if you let the brother speak his piece. True, it will be thirty minutes taken away from convention business. But give him his time. Let him show you himself how bankrupt his proposed program really is." A motion was made and seconded to give me the thirty minutes. Dwyer stated the motion, then added a reminder that allowing the thirty minutes at that time would throw the convention off schedule.

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A question: when? After a moment's study, Dwyer answered that it could be scheduled for the opening of the afternoon session next day. (Fine! thinks I. Now I can deliver a prepared speech.) The motion was so amended and passed. That night I set to work to outline the speech that I would deliver the next afternoon. I was glad that it had been put off until then. Had I taken the floor immediately to answer Ryan and Ross, I'd have started off hot under the collar, not thinking as coolly as might be, perhaps. Now I'd be going into it cool and collected, if not altogether calm. I carefully prepared the notes that I would use. There was going to be some powerful refuting done. You could bet on it. The next morning's session was uneventful. We went to lunch and reassembled for the afternoon's business. My moment was at hand. President Dwyer banged the gavel to open the session, then felt a sudden call of nature, excused himself and handed the gavel over to District Vice President "Doc" Hamilton, a Negro. Hamilton appeared to be confused by the sudden assumption of authority. He began shuffling papers, as if to dig out an agenda. He had sat beside Dwyer through all the sessions. In my mind I knew damned well that he knew that my speech was the first order of business. I looked around. Nobody was making a move. I bounced to my feet andreminded Hamilton that my speech was first in order. That reminder was greeted by a shout from somewhere on the colored side, "We don't want to hear 'im!" I reminded the chairman that it was the convention's expressed will that I should be heard and that it was his duty to bring the body to order and let me get underway. A "point of order" was called from the colored side. I took my seat to allow the point to be stated. It went about as follows: "Mr. President, we don't want to hear his speech. Whatever he says will serve only to delay and disrupt convention business. It will only stir up trouble. President Ryan has already told you that the man is a professional troublemaker. I move you that we rescind yesterday's action to let him speak and move on with regular business." I'm back on my feet contending that a point of order can't be turned into a motion. President Ryan rose. The meeting quieted in deference to his position. "I was in favor of letting the brother speak his piece. I still am in favor. But I don't want to dominate this convention. It is not my place nor desire to tell this convention what to do. You run your own business. I would let the brother speak. But if a majority don't want to hear him, certainly a majority can rescind a previous action."

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That was the signal. I knew then that I had been taken, and good. That part of my brain having to do with self-preservation had been in euphoria again instead of in gear, just as it had been the week before. Also, I had failed to remember what had happened during contract and strike time, the scuttling of the rank and file committee to New York. "You'll live and learn. Maybe," Emmett Townsend had said. I was on my feet again, arguing for my right to the floor, when the chair recognized another delegate. "Mr. President, he's proving the point. He won't keep quiet. He won't wait to be properly recognized to speak. He won't abide by the rules. Mr. President, I make a motion that he be declared unfit to be a delegate and be unseated from this convention." The motion was seconded. Not twice in two weeks? It couldn't happen! Oh, yes, it could. There were cries from the floor to "put the question." Doc Hamilton suddenly shed his fumbling role, stated the motion, and quickly called for a vote, ignoring several delegates asking to speak on the motion. It was a standing vote that left no question about the "majority will" of this convention: a near-unanimous black vote for unseating, a divided white vote. I was OUT. Again. This time I waited not on the sergeant-at-arms or any other, but marched downstairs to the bar that occupied a corner of the building, where the beer was cool and the atmosphere not hostile. There weren't as many as six men in that convention who, a bare six months ago, had not been calling Joe Ryan all sorts of uncomplimentary names. Now, with Ryan present and the struggle over, they were breaking their necks to climb on his bandwagon, much the same as the Sabine District "leaders" had backed away from the suggestion of joint action with the sailors' union in December in order to curry favor with District President Dwyer. Later on-not that day, but days later-1 would be told that a group of Houston and Galveston longshoremen sitting in the visitors' section were expecting me to throw a chair at the people on stage, which would be the signal for them to rush the stage, and toss Joe Ryan out an open window onto an awning built over the sidewalk, off that onto the street, to see if he would bounce when he hit the pavement. Well, they hadn't told me what they expected-and I suspect that those expectations came more as afterthoughts. Still, there was that tendency on the part of longshoremen to think with their muscle, so some may have felt that a riot would serve to settle things. They loved a "fighter." Hell, I never was a fighter. I was only a poor, timid yokel born with a stubborn streak that would push back after so much of being shoved; that was all.

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If Joe Ryan had come off that platform and struck me, I'd have struck back-unless his first blow was a plumb good-un, and I was unable. But I never leaned to initiating violence, although I believe that counter violence is justified defensively. So I'd not have thrown that chair or anything else, asked to or not. But, you know, I really should have gone back and flushed Mickey Dwyer out of that toilet where he was hiding. What really bugged me as I began to assess what had happened overnight was that I had failed to remember what could happen overnight. I had failed to let it register on my mind: setting my appointed speaking time for the next day was setting the stage for an overnight scuttling. No warning light had flashed in my mind. How gullible can you be? Would I learn, ever? Events would transpire later on that would lead to some exchanges of confidences between Mr. Charlie Logan and me. In one of those sessions he told me that he and Joe Ryan shared a hotel room during that convention. Being Ryan's guest, he couldn't, in good conscience, eavesdrop on Ryan's telephone conversations. He would and did tell me, though, that Ryan kept their room telephone busy, one call after the other, well into the night, on the night before I was to speak. He, Logan, couldn't. possibly have had any idea about whom Ryan might have been calling, he told me, with a chuckle and a grin. My chances of ever answering the speeches of that morning were being blown to smithereens that night by an expert, huh? Hindsight aside, my position then was that of being without a position, and no operating base. I wasn't confident that I could pick up enough longshore work in Galveston to survive. Plans for a move back to Corpus Christi seemed in order. I was always something of a loner. Still, it was comforting to imagine that people thought well of me. People weren't thinking well of me now. Even my "allies" were shaking hands limply. I was hurting. Let the record show that the May 1936 ILA South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District convention proceeded quite expeditiously without my presence and was concluded to the general satisfaction of the majority. The conservatives-we more often called them "reactionaries"-had undisputed control. The rout of the "progressives" was so complete that they did not put even a single name into nomination when election time came. The Galveston District Council of the MFGC called an emergency meeting. I submitted my resignation to the council secretary, a copy of one already sent to Secretary Croney in New Orleans. A resolution was introduced in the Galveston meeting. It stated, among the

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"whereases," that I had been inveigled into promising my resignation by false promises, and so on. The "resolve" was: not to accept the resignation and to instruct me to proceed in the office as before. A copy was sent to New Orleans and was adopted in a council meeting there. So I accepted the "mandate." I wrote a statement which, while not accusing Holt Ross of the blatant duplicity that the council resolution implied, made the point that he had backed away from his promise made in the TSFL convention to work actively for creation of an AFL maritime trades department. He had taken no stand at all, in the face of ILA President Ryan's opposition, unless it was to side with Ryan. My statement agreed with the language of the council resolution, that I had been duped by Organizer Ross, whether it was intentional on his part or not. (I really felt more like a dope than a dupe.) The conclusion was that the best method for persuading maritime workers in the Gulf and on the East Coast to stop scabbing on one another was to keep the Maritime Federation going. We published a leaflet to that effect. Joe Curran was sent from New York on a speaking tour covering East and Gulf Coast ports. I was present when he spoke in Houston. The crowd was less than it should have been, but sizable. Joe was a large man, no mammoth, but big, spare-built, not fat. His visage would grab your attention. His nose had been flattened and shoved over to one side of his face. He looked the part of a fighter. He had a command of words and an impressive delivery. He spoke to a meeting in the Ship Channel Progressive Committee headquarters. The committee occupied a building at 76th Street and Avenue N, in the southside turning basin district, the same area where ILA locals and the ISU branch maintained offices. The constant presence of a number of ILA activists around the headquarters assured that rank and file seamen were safe from any beef squad activity. Joe Curran exhibited one outstanding quality that impressed me at once. He could go over a text or a set of statistics in the afternoon, then toss them at an audience that evening as if he were the one who had compiled the whole shebang. I would think that he liked being furnished with ideas and figures in that fashion and that he liked delivering them. His speech was received with enthusiasm. At the end, when the usual crowd of well-wishers and the curious had the speaker surrounded, a "dressed-up" gentleman pushed through and identified himself to Brother Curran as a Houston city detective. He informed Joe that he had been sent by the chief to bring him to the chiefs office for a talk. Joe said, "Sure. Let me get my jacket from the back

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room here, and I'll be right with you." Only he didn't return to be "right with" anybody. After a minute or two, we admirers and the detective looked into an empty back room. Joe Curran had taken a dive through an open window. An hour or so later a seaman approached me. He had Joe hidden out, he said. Joe wanted to be taken to Port Arthur. Would I do it? Did I think they might be watching my car? I didn't think they were watching. So we casually took off, drove to the Curran hideout. From there, Joe and I set out for Port Arthur. I thought that Joe and I understood one another pretty well during that ride. Maybe some values changed later. Who knows? We both agreed that working conditions and pay in the industry needed improving. We agreed that chances for improvements without striking for them were remote. We agreed that the chances for any decisive victory in a strike by one group without the support of the others bordered on the remote. Both of us wanted democracy within our respective unions and throughout the labor movement. We agreed that we were up against powerful opposition from leaders of the longshoremen's and seamen's unions and the AFL. We both held great hopes for the CIO movement. We were both conscious that the Communist Party was trying to play a role in the rank and file movement. (I didn't tell him that I was a CP member.) We both felt that tactics suggested by the CP were effective in defending ourselves against entrenched ILA and ISU officialdom. We both agreed that the union movement should come first; but then, the Party had assured us both that it would. The role of the Party had been explained as one that encouraged rank and file members to think for themselves and to express themselves. Nothing sinister there. It appeared that Curran was not ready to support the CP with his membership, but he welcomed the Party's support of his position. He was more than willing to memorize the statistics that they dug up for him, because they had so far been accurate, and delivering them to an audience impressed that audience. We reached Port Arthur. I delivered Curran into friendly hands and headed for home. The Houston police hadn't been watching my car, but they had been watching the car with the New York license plates that Curran had driven into Houston. They impounded it. Curran had to return to Houston to recover it. His talk with the chief of police had only been postponed by his dive through the window. Fortunately for Joe Curran, the chief didn't make an issue of that. All he did was lay down certain ground rules that he would expect Curran and all the

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other agitators to observe. Those rules were not especially suppressive, although some actions of his force were, later on. We'll come to that. The federation president's salary was $150 per month, or such part of it as might be in the treasury when the month rolled around. Most months it was there. Subsistence allowance when traveling was $2 per day. Transportation expense was either the price of a bus or rail ticket, round trip, or actual car expense. When there'd be a few extra dollars in the treasury, I'd go into the field, as far as Brownsville at one end of the line, Pensacola at the other. That summer we determined that there was enough money in the treasury to send Vice President Smith and me on a speaking tour. The two district councils endorsed the idea. One sunny morning I picked up Smith in New Orleans. We drove east to Mobile and Pensacola, then back west as far as Corpus Christi. At about that same time, renegade Spanish generals were sending their commands into battle in a revolt against the Spanish government. The Spanish Civil War had begun. Smith and I didn't visit Port Isabel and Brownsville. One local union of white longshoremen headquartered in Brownsville worked both ports. In years past a race riot had occurred in Brownsville, with a number of US Army black soldiers involved. The aftermath was a bitterness and marked intolerance of colored people by Brownsville and Cameron County citizens, so pronounced that probably no more than six or seven black families lived in the area. In all other ports except Lake Charles meetings were scheduled, and the turnouts were good. Lake Charles was unique. In no other port had union longshoremen defended their position so determinedly against formidable odds. They had done so under the ILA banner. The ILA had become a religion with them. We had a few whites committed to Maritime Federation thinking. Most whites and practically all Negroes believed in the ILA so strongly that, if an official declared something to be bad for the ILA, they were ready to tear it to pieces. The ILA leader in Lake Charles was Walter Mayo, a white. He had standing in the community and on the waterfront. Anything branded outlaw by Walter Mayo was anathema to the men. Mayo opposed the MFGC. Passing through Lake Charles, we caught a group of idle men at both the colored and white hiring halls. We convinced no one that I know of. Smith's plea to his own race in behalf of his own people was met with cold indifference. The white men were not so cold, but equally indifferent. Our experience in a meeting with the colored ILA local in Port

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Arthur points up emphatically the prevailing attitude among the black race. We both had spoken and were welcoming exchanges from the audience when their leader, one J. C. Ford, took the floor. "These speakers are smart and eloquent men," Brother Ford began. "They have the command of words to make all this sound good. I won't say that they don't believe what they preach. But that don't make it right. They may be wrong. They are wrong, brothers. Now, we all know that the ILA got us to where we are today. We trust the ILA." ("Amen, brother!" from the audience.) "Our ILA leaders tell us not to trust any part of this. Our leaders know things that's goin' on that we don't know about. When our leaders are ready for us to make a move, they'll let us know, and we'll make it." I had a rebuttal question: "Why aren't we in the ranks entitled to be told what the leaders know?" A ready stooge answered, "Brothers, the man's a tryin' to create a mistrust between us and our leaders, just like we been warned he would do. I say, trust our leaders. Trust Brother Ford. I want him and our leaders to know more than I know, 'cause I trust him and them to do the right thing for me and for all of us. Don't let this man create a mistrust of our leaders amongst us. I got confidence in my leaders." (Applause.) It was a typical scene. Corpus Christi scheduled a joint meeting for us. Once again we could not persuade black longshoremen to cross over to our view of what unionism should be. They preferred not to cross their ILA leaders. I was much disappointed and somewhat teed off. I had done a lot more for their local conditions than their district and international leaders, whom they were so determined to follow, ever had, I told myself. However, making a pitch that they "owed" me allegiance would have been playing politics, I told myself. I wouldn't do it. Two things about that tour, not exactly related to union movements, stick in my mind. One, in each meeting I would be introduced as first speaker, by virtue of the title of president. I'd speak, generally well received. Then Smith would come ori and so catch them up in his oratory that people would forget that I was even in the house! He was an ego bruiser! Two, the problems of lodging. We'd arrive in town for an overnight stay. First thing, we'd have to head for "nigger town" and seek out a hotel or some residence where Smith would be welcome to stay. Then I'd go elsewhere to make arrangements for my own lodging. That such a pairing can travel freely in the South today, stay in the same hotel, even share the same room, is something that still seems a little on the imaginative side rather than real, even though I've lived to see its start and development. Yes, it's hard to imagine, for one who traveled the roads

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in the South under the conditions that we did. Well, it's a little late now to take the trip over, would you say? And so easy to lose touch. I wonder if S. Nathaniel Smith is still alive? The Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast was a fact accomplished in action in the 1934 strike. What began as a longshoremen's strike grew into a maritime workers' strike. The Wobbly tradition of worker solidarity was strong in the West, as witness the "criminal syndicalism" statutes enacted to combat it. A preponderant majority of members of the three seagoing ISU departments representing unlicensed personnel, the Sailors Union of the Pacific, the Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders, and the Marine Cooks and Stewards, had walked off the ships in the tradition of worker solidarity. What "weak sisters" there may have been were soon persuaded to do likewise. Licensed officers had shown solidarity with their crews. Soon, every group had a set of working conditions to be negotiated before a return to work. Creating the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast was merely formalizing what already existed in action. The Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast was facing a hard fact: it was going to be markedly different in the Gulf. Our longshoremen were already forgiving President Ryan for not having ordered the boycott in support of the Gulf strike. Longshoremen in San Francisco had run him out of their meeting hall. What seemed plain as the nose on your face, the effectiveness of the joint action taken by those seamen in Corpus Christi, was not plainly understood by a majority of our longshoremen in the other ports. The individual union contract and the "sanctity" thereof were still much in our Gulf ports picture. The rebellion against union authority that I had thought would develop wasn't shaping up. Whereas I had contended that if you give the men something to join, they'll join it, they were not doing so in great multitudes. Whereas I had confidently predicted that maritime workers would flaunt their individual MFGC buttons proudly, many were pocketing and hiding theirs rather than risk physical injury from ISU beef squads. Our ILA Negroes were the aristocrats of black southern labor. A few black miners and railroaders had achieved some economic standing. CIO organizing in the South was to bring better economic circumstances to more blacks as time went on, but in mid-1936 the black longshoreman was the aristocrat of black southern labor, and quite conscious of it. I have held a feeling that he was not going to step into a situation that he considered would be risking what he already had. We were face to face with another fact: by formalizing our MFGC

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we had placed ourselves in a position from which we could hardly back away. We had to strive to forge ahead now, come the proverbial hell, high water, or whatever. Our main source of encouragement was the growing restlessness among East Coast seamen, as they voiced dissatisfaction with their unratified contract, in effect since January 1, 1936. The seamen's rank and file movement was beginning to declare out loud that, should there be a West Coast strike in October, East Coast seamen were going to strike also.

CHAPTER&

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Seamen's Union was in trouble and its leaders were reacting violently. It was said that Dave Grange, head of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Department, was preserving order in New York headquarters meetings with a six-shooter in his hand instead of a gavel. Beef squads were visible around union offices. How these goons were supported, I never learned. Since some remained on the beach for months at a time, they had to have income from somewhere. They did no work ashore. A reasonable supposition is that they were supported by union funds one way or another. They operated on the theory that a dissenter with a broken arm was likely to do less mouthing-off after his accident. Memory is tricky. Fine details of many things are no longer clear in my memory. Outlines remain. I promise not to throw in an event that never happened. I won't flimflam you. It's just that I won't always be able to name all the characters or describe all the details with keen accuracy. There was a little guy who'll go nameless here. He had received a "light dumping" at the hands of the Houston beef squad, after which he gave every appearance of having learned his lesson, keeping his mouth shut. On this particular afternoon a select group was huddling in the union office. Somebody spoke more loudly than he should have. Our man overheard. Two carloads of goons were to go to Port Arthur and "take over the hall." Taking over a local ISU branch in this fashion was not that extraordinary an event. International union headquarters would already have provided one of the group of taker-overs with credentials as port agent; likewise, others as patrolmen or whatever, to the number normally administering union business there. The "new" agent would carry a statement from international union officers saying that present officers were being suspended for cause pending trial, or something of the sort. That took care oflegality. HE INTERNATIONAL

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The mass of the union's membership was at sea, except in time of strike or lockout. The average seaman in average times was on a ship somewhere on the high seas. His union business was administered in whatever port he found himself where the union maintained an office. Members ashore waiting to ship out or simply taking it easy for a spell did most of the "governing" of the local branch, subject to international union rules. So it was quite possible for a small group of men to take charge of a local branch by physically ousting that branch's office staff and cowing the members ashore. Our eavesdropper made note of personnel, cars, and license plates, then managed a phone call to Port Arthur. By sheerest coincidence, I was sitting in the Port Arthur branch office talking to Agent Arthur Thomas when the call came through. Thomas told me in one breath what had come over the phone, then stepped from his office into the meeting hall, where a half-dozen seamen were lounging around. "There's trouble brewing for the hall, men. We want every damn hand here in this hall in thirty minutes. You take this section; you take that," he assigned each sailor his area for spreading the word. In a little while about sixty men on the beach had gathered in the hall. Agent Thomas quickly informed the men of what was in the wind, made an estimate of the goon squad's arrival time. He advised the men that their defense should not be made in the hall, but that the attacking party should be met in the street. "No use having our hall tom up for the likes of these buzzards," he told them. He suggested dividing into squads of so many, each under a squad leader. The suggestion was adopted and squad leaders elected. These then huddled to lay out their respective positions on the street. Clubs, but no firearms, was the caution. Not wanting to arouse the townspeople's curiosity by an unusual number of sailors on the street at an unusual hour, the members stayed in the hall, except for a few scouts. It turned into a time for speechmaking. Most of those speeches were pretty vitriolic. After a time, the chairman told the members that he wanted to introduce the president of the new Maritime Federation of the Gulf, who would be the last speaker, after which it would be time to begin deployment of the "troops." I claim to have adhered faithfully to what two reverend gentlemen in Bisbee taught me: appeal to reason rather than emotion when addressing people. I never violated that rule more than the proverbial "couple of times." This was one of the times. "Mr. Chairman and Brothers," I began, "I stand here, honored and

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humble at being called on to speak on this occasion. I've heard a lot of hate expressed by previous speakers. I agree that you have every right to feel that hate. And yet, I wonder. Hate is such a damaging emotion. I hate to see it gripping us so." (By now the entire audience is hunched forward, looking up at me through narrowed eyes under wrinkled brows. I've got their attention.) "What I want to say is, I wish that we could accomplish what needs to be done without any hate in our hearts toward any fellow man. These men, these goons, on their way here are human. Misguided humans, but human. Probably some of them believe in what they believe in as strongly as we believe what we believe in. The trouble is, they have chosen the wrong way to try to prevail. Instead of sitting down and reasoning with one another, they have chosen to force their way on us. So we have to defend physically what we believe in. "So I appeal to you, brothers, do not have any hate toward any fellow human in your hearts, but look on these invaders as an impediment to progress that has to be removed, and go out there and coolly and deliberately KNOCK THEIR GODDAMN HEADS OFF!" And that is what happened. The Port Arthur defenders spotted themselves in strategic positions with admirable inconspicuousness. The invaders moved into the trap, confident that the element of surprise was with them. Their two cars arrived at dusk, just as street lights were coming on. They parked on the street and disembarked, to find themselves instantly surrounded by a determined, superior force. As I remember it, there were four in each car. All were hospitalized in Port Arthur with injuries of a serious nature. It didn't stop, but it slowed down goon squad activities in Texas for a spell. Plus, one previous victim of their activity savored sweet revenge, wouldn't you guess? Port Arthur Police Chief Baker was almost bound to have known that something was up. His "intelligence" could hardly have been that badly fooled. Baker was not noted for kindly feelings toward union seamen. Later, during the rank and file seamen's strike, Port Arthur seamen would obtain a court injunction restraining Chief Baker and his force from physically abusing their numbers. The Port Arthur police force also participated with Jefferson County sheriff's deputies and the Beaumont police in a mass arrest of seamen throughout the county during that strike. So Chief Baker was not the best friend of Port Arthur seamen. Could the failure of Port Arthur police to reach the scene before the local sailors had dealt with the problem to their own satisfaction have stemmed from practical considerations? Probably so. Baker could have figured that the

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local seamen were in a good tactical position to discourage the interlopers. Much as he was opposed to the Arthur Thomas union, he was used to dealing with that; he didn't care to gamble on what problems this Houston-backed gang might bring him. Scuttlebutt coming our way later had it that Chief Baker called in person on the recovering victims in the hospital. He informed them that such shenanigans as they had attempted were repugnant to the citizens of Port Arthur, to him personally, and to law enforcement generally. Once well enough to move, they were to remove themselves from Port Arthur. If they ever showed up in Port Arthur again, he had people on his force who could and would do a much better job of hurting them than the local seamen had done. Maybe there was such an interview, maybe not. Such a move would have been in character for Chief Baker. I believe it happened. Author Irving Bernstein hit a high in apt titling when he called his fine book describing the period from 1933 to 1940 The Turbulent Years. They were that. In 1936 the number of unemployed was still crowding 20 percent of the work force. While legislation had been passed recognizing the right of collective bargaining and thousands of speeches had been made encouraging same, most United States employers resisted paying higher wages and resisted even harder improving jobsite environments. Thus, with broad employer resistance to labor demands, a vast army of unemployed to be tempted toward strikebreaking, and law enforcement agencies almost always backing the employer, more often than not it came down to a question of which side could muster the most muscle and flex it most decisively. Yes, the times were turbulent. Your writer had also entered a state of ideological turbulence. What had begun to trouble me was the absence of the encouragement of rank and file self-expression that supposedly was a major objective of the Communist Party, USA. I had witnessed a couple of occasions where CP members had been chairmen of rank and file meetings, where they had purposely, it seemed to me, recognized "their own" to speak from the floor, while ignoring those who might have spoken in opposition. This was not the encouragement to ordinary workers to get up and voice their ideas that I had been told was a guiding Party principle. Added to that, the chairman, after hearing "Party line" speakers, had rather imperiously cut off debate, I thought. When I questioned this behavior I was told that dragging out the debate would only have tended to be disruptive. To my countering reminder that "disruption" was a word much used by union officials in power, the explanation was that those officials used it in a phony

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sense; the Party used it in a legitimate sense. Arguing that union democracy called for all colors of opinion to have a voice, I was told that Party opinion, formed by those educated in and dedicated to the class struggle, was what was best for the workers, who didn't always have the good sense to see what was right there in front of them. There wasn't time enough in the struggle that we could waste it in interminable speechmaking that could only conflict with the workers' best interests, said Party stalwarts. It was the Party's obligation to rescue the unsophisticated worker from his or her fallacious thinking. A developing feeling among seamen with whom I came in contact was that they wanted a new union. They no longer felt any loyalty to the ISU. The Party worked to stifle that sentiment. The Party line called for staying within and taking over the old union. Well, the Maritime Federation also pledged to stay within the AFL, so how could I argue to destroy an AFL-affiliated union? I wasn't arguing to destroy it just for destruction's sake. I argued that no union should ever be an end in itself. All ideas should be given a hearing, especially those arguments contending that no democratic union could ever be built within the frameworks of the constitutions governing the three ISU departments. Now I was really preaching disruption, Party spokesmen told me. Vice President Chase and I talked about it. He also was much disturbed by the inflexible line adhered to by many of our "progressive" rank and filers. It looked as if we were caught between two opposites that were much alike. The first, the entrenched union bureaucracy, disallowed freedom of expression, we knew from experience. The second, the Communist Party, we were beginning to suspect, would disallow freedom of expression whenever it conflicted with their previously adopted line that the working class should follow. We both wanted earnestly to work with a movement whose vision took in the welfare of the whole world working class. Still, we couldn't rub out a feeling that this ship was being steered off course. One thing we were certain of: the party at the helm was not consulting with the people on board about plotting a course. We weren't ready to pose an opposition yet, but we weren't through questioning, either. All this time I had kept in close contact with the Wobblies. Whenever I'd be in Houston I'd find time to spend in the IWW hall. It was a quiet place, where I could put notes together or sit and read from one of the many volumes that graced their bookshelves. In New Orleans, Bill Patton held court evenings in Duby's on Exchange Alley. Failing health had forced Patton to give up a seafaring career. He held a job with the City of New Orleans-or it could have been with

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Orleans Parish. The anomaly of a Wobbly being employed by a political body did not go unnoticed, considering the IWW's apolitical stance. However, Bill Patton never compromised Wobbly principles, as far as my knowledge goes. I never told the Wobblies that I had joined the Communist Party. That might have gotten me the old heave-ho into the street. Not really. Supporters of every school of thought would come around to discuss and argue. But Commies were not exactly the most welcome. The Wobs considered the CP to be betrayers of the working class. In their speech they would often transform the word "comrade" into "comrat." They would picture CP policy as one of "rule or ruin," "the end justifies any means," things like that. There was a stock story they would tell, usually delivered with a heavy Russian accent. The Party faithful were gathered and the leader was holding forth. "Come the revolution, comrades," says he, "we will have strawberries and cream." A voice from the audience: "But, comrade speaker, I don't like strawberries and cream." Whereupon the speaker fixes the interrupter with a gimlet stare. "Come the revolution, comrade, you will have strawberries and cream-AND LIKE IT!" On the rough side, that Wobbly humor. But gutsy. The crazy-quilt pattern of organizing and disorganizing, agreements and disagreements, strikes and lockouts proliferated. In every section of the country the patternless pattern was there. In late spring, workers at a Houston furniture factory (Myers-Spalti) struck. Although the factory was some three miles from the waterfront, a number of longshoremen and seamen made it their cause. Their presence on the picket line and their savvy about strike conduct undoubtedly made the way to a settlement favorable to the strikers much easier, if, indeed, their help did not spell the difference between winning and losing. An election for the offices of secretary and treasurer of the Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Department of the ISU had begun in April. Results were announced in August. Seamen's union elections necessarily lasted over a period of months in order to allow members manning the ships to vote. In the ISU set-up the secretary was the department's executive officer. A "progressive" slate, F. C. Phillips for secretary and Moe Byne for treasurer, had been nominated against the incumbents. The August count showed that the Phillips-Byne slate had won. But the incumbent secretary, one Oscar Carlson, refused Phillips and Byne access to the union's property, whereupon the Phillips fac-

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tion sought a court order to gain access and to prevent the Carlson faction from removing any property or records from the headquarters. The Carlson faction filed a counter suit. The issue fast became a picnic for courts and lawyers. Out of the hodgepodge came an agreement to hold another election, to be government supervised, as I remember. This was greeted with loud groans from many rank and filers. They were tired of court maneuverings and undecipherable lawyer language. Many felt that, just as they had never been consulted on any decision by the old regime, they had not been consulted on this decision by this new slate, either. These complainers wanted to declare formation of an independent MFOW and simply out-muscle the Carlson faction for the privilege of representing the unlicensed personnel who sailed below deck. In New Orleans I became acquainted with Charles Logan, regional chairman of the NLRB, the fellow who had accompanied President Ryan to the Galveston convention. I came to rate Logan as one of the good guys. He had a certain sympathy for the working class, and he had a prideful feeling about the region under his jurisdiction, especially the city of New Orleans. In 1936 the NLRB stance was pro-labor. When the pendulum swung away from that after World War II, Logan had set up his own labor consulting service. Charlie Logan was the first person I remember who candidly pointed out that a profuse number of labor union officers knew next to nothing of the history of the labor movement. "You don't have to go to the classic authorities to begin," he told me. He took a volume from the bookshelves in his office. "Do you think you'll be in the city long enough to have time to read one this size? Or read as much of it as time allows, return it, and borrow it again the next time you're here." The book he handed me was Louis Adamic's Dynamite. Did I have time to read it? I devoured that book! Dealing objectively with the subject of class violence in America, it leaves the reader aware of a number of things that have gone to shape the American labor movement. On a later visit he loaned me Jack London's The Iron Heel, a futuristic tale about fascism coming to these United States. At the moment of the lending, Benito Mussolini had ruled Italy with his brand of fascism for more than a decade. Italy had just completed the conquest of Ethiopia, an act of war looked on with horror by most Americans. Adolf Hitler, ruling Germany by decree for two years, was stamping his brand of fascism on that country. So Iron Heel made timely reading. Another thing you could say about the book: London painted a realistic picture of what could happen to the

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American labor movement. The book pictures a labor movement grown insensitive to the distress suffered by a growing number of unemployed rendered jobless by advancing technology. Fanciful? Nothing has happened to contradict that fancy yet, late in this twentieth century. In all, I had three long talks with Charlie Logan during my year of serving the Maritime Federation. It was surprising to find a government functionary expressing some of the ideas that he did. He declared quite candidly that Joseph P. Ryan was obsessed with maintaining a "kingdom" in the Port of New York primarily and in his North Atlantic District secondarily, to the point that the outports became subordinate, each to be dealt with according to its relation to New York conditions. In line with that judgment, he declared that Ryan was using New Orleans as trading material in New York negotiations: "If you gentlemen are going to be stubborn about giving my boys in New York a good deal, I'll organize New Orleans and make you trouble down there." "As a government employee I have to be neutral," Logan said. "I act only when called on by one side or the other. As a citizen of this city, I want to see waterfront labor and all labor better organized." He agreed with me that giving union charters to professional strikebreakers-Leo Tujague, Paul Hortman, Ed Rhone-did not augur well for militant unionism. It looked very much as if Ryan felt that he could control his two "union" presidents in New Orleans. They, in turn, would control the men. Thus, New Orleans union demands would not be so expansive as to pose a problem to New York negotiations. Speaking in general terms about the old locals and the charter revocations, it was Logan's opinion that there had been friction between those local presidents and Ryan before the strike. When D' Arcy and Spencer were unable to hold their ranks intact in the strike period, it gave Ryan the opportunity he sought to throw D' Arcy and Spencer out of the union. Again speaking as a citizen of New Orleans, Logan felt that D'Arcy and Spencer had the welfare of New Orleans longshoremen at heart, yet he doubted that either could ever come back against the odds. Some "third" movement would really be good for waterfront unionism, as he viewed things. D' Arcy's and Spencer's locals were in our federation, so I figured that I had to defend their interests the best that I could. When I pressed Mr. Logan about what could be done for the two locals, he surprised me by offering to arrange a meeting between the local heads, or a committee from both locals, and President Ryan at some point in the South away from New Orleans.

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"I have enough clout that, if I set up a meeting, Joe Ryan will be there," he said. You could ask for more, but this was more than I had ever expected. I quickly called for a joint meeting of committees from the two locals, 231 and 1226. I rather enthusiastically put Logan's offer before them. Spencer quickly declared that he would welcome such a meeting. But D' Arcy backed off. From D' Arcy's group, I remember Charlie Stein and Louis Stapp. I always felt that Stein was the strongest character in that group. I remember and remain fond of Stapp because he was a Maritime Federation protagonist extraordinary. It appeared to me that Stein influenced D' Arcy much of the time. On this occasion Stein yielded to D'Arcy, although my feeling was that he would have welcomed the meeting. Spencer was not willing to go unless both locals were represented together. D'Arcy couldn't be moved. I was much disappointed. It wasn't that I expected Ryan to reverse himself, but I thought we had a good chance to push him to retreat some distance, perhaps to the point of ordering an amalgamation of the D'Arcy-Tujague and Spencer-Hortman locals respectively, a period under international union administration, then election of local officers and self-government. It didn't come off. In August, Congress enacted the Copeland Act, a principal provision of which was a continuous discharge book that an individual seaman would carry. When a seaman terminated his service on a vessel he received a discharge. The discharge told his length of service and his work performance, among other things. Almost all seagoing personnel viewed the continuous discharge book as an instrument for blacklisting. Their distrust of the companies went so far as to theorize that the companies would agree on some secret marking that would label a hand a "troublemaker" even when his work record showed satisfactory performance. West Coast unions were strong enough to refuse the book. The East Coast ISU officials advised their members to accept the book. There was a CP-sponsored proposal that seamen take the book until May Day of 1937, when a national seamen's march would converge on Washington, D.C., and all participants would burn their books in one enormous bonfire on the White House lawn. Anyway, the book was something that the great mass of seamen didn't want. By late September ten thousand seamen had signed protests against the continuous discharge book, by rank and file calculations. The pot continued to boil. ISU officials were still playing rough, holding their members in line by intimidation. Vice President Chase made the mistake of going into the Mobile ISU hall alone and un-

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armed. The Mobile agent, one William "Scotty" Ross, and a couple of others dumped him and robbed him of his union book. Then they proceeded to demonstrate a characteristic arrogance. They went to the authorities and charged Chase with vagrancy! Without the union book, forcibly taken from him, he was "without visible means of support." It had been agreed that Chase was making good headway promoting the federation cause in the Mobile area. Our district councils had voted to allot him a subsistence pay. So we were sending Chase a subsistence pay of $18 weekly. No princely sum, not even a vice presidential sum, you might say; but he was existing on it and keeping things humming. Word reached our Galveston office that the Mobile authorities had Chase in the clink and that he needed some evidence of"visible support" to get him out. I was dispatched to Mobile, armed by Treasurer Sayre with canceled checks showing our weekly payments to Chase. A young Mobile lawyer had taken his case for no fee. (Yes, we had some idealists around in those days.) The young lawyer did it up in style. He had Chase tried in superior court before the traditional 'jury of his peers." After I had been placed on the witness stand to testify to the financial arrangement made with Chase, and that such arrangement would continue, and after the canceled checks had been placed in evidence, the judge gave the jury an instructed verdict of not guilty, a verdict that sorely vexed some jury members. Those "good men and true" wanted to "hang the danged Communist agitator," and told our lawyer so as the courtroom cleared. The really good news in Mobile was that a rebellion was developing in the new ILA Local1410. Ryan-appointed President Ed Rhone was becoming unpopular. The rebels were talking amalgamation with old Local1284. That dickering with the old displaced union was most unusual. It was sparked and fueled by two pressures, primarily. C. P. Chase was ubiquitous and tenacious. In common parlance, he "got around." People were drawn to him. He was gaining a following among longshoremen as well as seamen. The other pressure working on longshoremen: a West Coast ship would put into Mobile every now and then; those crews were not bashful about approaching the longshoremen with solid union talk. After the trial we held meetings with the "old" longshoremen and with rank and file seamen. Besides that, Chase and I did a lot of conversing on a personal level. The distance between the Communist Party and me had now widened to where I was not being invited to CP caucuses. Individuals would still try to persuade me to the Party viewpoint, but I was not included in inner circles. The conclusion

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that Chase and I drew from our observations was that the Party was not so much interested in changing the ISU as in taking charge of it. Somewhere I had come across a statement by some Communist spokesman where he said that the machinery of capitalist government must be destroyed and the machinery of Communism erected in its place. In this case, the Party was telling us that we would capture the machinery as is and proceed to change it to a democratic function after. After what? After when? I was becoming doubtful, doubtful that the Party really wanted change as much as it wanted control. In the case of the ISU, I couldn't help being of the opinion that the bulk of the membership, given any encouragement at all, would leave that union and form another, leaving the ISU high and dry and unable to navigate. Staying within the ISU and electing rank and file candidates, which the Party insisted was the best solution, was becoming less and less tenable every day, as I was seeing it. For one thing, suppose a rank and file slate came into office, what had changed except some faces? I felt that a campaign of issues instead of candidates was called for. If you couldn't change the machinery of the union, change unions. Chase was thinking along much the same lines. We were both about fully convinced by now that we were going to have to oppose the CP on grounds of not being responsive to wishes of the rank and file. I had had an unpleasant encounter with the Party's inner legislative process. Initiative was encouraged in neighborhood and local cadres. Members were encouraged to submit ideas through the group for higher-level consideration, all the way to the Central Committee, maybe. Then a decision would come back telling the group whether the idea was worth a hoot or not. If it turned out not, the one who proposed it was due for a lecture about deviationism. There was no appeal. It called for a pledge from the proposer to study the Party line more diligently. Secretary Croney was disturbed also. Croney would go so far as to say that the CP, in his opinion, was attempting to stampede maritime workers into a course of action, rather than giving them sound counsel and leaving them to make their own decisions, as it claimed to do. An ideological tug-of-war within the rank and file movement was in the making. The month of October 1936 rolled in. West Coast maritime unions negotiated for new contracts. East Coast rank and file committees stepped up their agitation for a strike by East Coast seamen in the event of a West Coast strike.

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The only ISU office in the Sabine District was in Port Arthur. ISU ships entering Beaumont, Orange, and Lake Charles were serviced by the Port Arthur branch. It is well to remember that Port Arthur was big in oil refining, so had tanker rather than freighter trade at its docks. Early in October the ISU began furnishing replacements to freighters from its Galveston branch. The reason? Well, we're not mindreaders, are we? Certain obvious facts are at our disposal, though. The Port Arthur branch was a "renegade" branch, while the Galveston branch was "loyal ISU." The ISU had tried to take over the Port Arthur branch with muscle, and had failed. Any shipping of replacements into the Port Arthur jurisdiction from elsewhere would necessarily tend to diminish the Port Arthur branch's prestige and influence, whatever the motive behind it. The maneuver was brought to a halt when the crew of the SS Youngstown, a Lykes ship at berth in Beaumont, refused to accept replacements from Galveston, demanding that they come from Port Arthur, as they had formerly. Beaumont longshoremen supported the job action. A spokesman for the longshoremen got the ear of the Youngstown's skipper, to inform him that the longshoremen were prepared to give continuing support to his crew and the Port Arthur branch. At that point the line's agent signed a special agreement to order replacements only through the Port Arthur branch. Men dispatched from Galveston returned to Galveston. Men dispatched from Port Arthur came aboard. Work resumed. In Houston the crew of the SS Fluorspar staged a sitdown protesting working conditions. The longshoremen supported that action, and the seamen won their beef. We congratulated ourselves that our agitation for solidarity among the maritime crafts was bearing fruit. Also, earlier in the year, a joint meeting of Houston ILA locals had adopted a resolution calling for a return of the mixed gang system, plus employment of colored walking foremen on a fifty-fifty basis. This was only a resolution for distribution, of course, not an action put into practice. Still, it indicated that our message was being heard. One Lester Lord came into Houston bearing credentials from Phillips and Byne to represent the Houston branch of the MFOW. Wilbur Dickey, the Houston ISU agent and a member of the MFOW himself, along with others, beat Lord pretty badly and tossed him out of the hall. Lord was unable to muster enough support to establish himself. A bit of irony there: Lester had been a functioning member of the old ISU machine for a long spell before he had a change of heart and swung to the rank and file side. For quite a

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while he found himself, with his new allegiance, physically incapacitated by the former and not completely trusted by the latter, relegated to a kind of no-man's-land. ILA Local1300 in Pensacola was notified by Ryan's office that the local owed one full year's per capita tax, which must be remitted immediately to prevent the local's charter being revoked. The local remitted the tax immediately. The international office then refused to accept the remittance, returning it with a notice that the union was issuing two new charters in the Port of Pensacola and that old charter 1300 no longer had any standing. Local 1300's President Leon Antone was as fine a man as I ever met. He was secretary of the Pensacola AFL labor council. Ryan notified the council that Antone had lost his standing as an ILA member. The council compliantly unseated Antone and his local, bowing to government by remote control. Seeing such blatant misuse of power hurt. It hurt even worse to see the local people knuckle under to it. Heartbreak. In a monthly form letter sent from the international office to all local unions Ryan stated that he had ordered Corpus Christi Local 1224 to order Gilbert Mers to desist from all activities connected with the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast. Should Mers fail to comply, the local was to expel him from membership, or have its charter revoked. The local took no action, and Ryan took no action; but it is likely that his form letter gained the psychological response that he figured it would. As a West Coast maritime strike loomed a virtual certainty, ISU branches up and down the coast-except Mobile, Galveston, and Houston-voted to support West Coast seamen, meaning that they would not supply crews to struck West Coast ships. That was a minus for our federation, only two of the five ports in our territory (New Orleans and Port Arthur) expressing solidarity with their own brotherhood, especially when you consider that all ports on the Atlantic Coast had voted solidarity support. West Coast maritime unions struck at the end of October. As soon as the word was verified on the East Coast, rank and file seamen began to strike. ISU officialdom immediately declared the strike outlaw. ISU officers announced that the union would carry out existing contracts with the owners. They began using all the means at their disposal to persuade men aboard ship not to strike and to recruit replacements for those who did strike. Wild times were coming-a period of conflict and confusion. Joe Ryan immediately announced that the ILA would not support the rank and file strike. Dave Grange of the Marine Cooks and Stewards, speaking for the ISU, announced that the union would

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break the strike of the East Coast rank and file seamen. The MEBA announced that their union would not furnish engineers to replace any who might walk off their jobs in sympathy with the unlicensed strikers. Amid such contradictions the strike began on a wave of enthusiasm, as don't they all? The Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast endorsed the strike, of course. I was in Beaumont when the "official" word came from New York rank and file headquarters that a strike was in effect. I drove to Houston as fast as prudence allowed in Sunday evening traffic. At the Progressive Committee Hall we immediately ran off a couple thousand mimeographed leaflets endorsing the strike, to be sent to all ports where we had distributors. These called on all workers to show solidarity and respect all picket lines. It was heartening to see the businesslike manner in which a hastily elected strike committee in Houston set up registration, picketing assignments, communications, and strike relief. Never discount that last. Some general observed that an army travels on its stomach, or words to that effect, didn't he? I was especially impressed by the speed with which they set up a working communication system. It was in happy contrast to the ILA experience, where we were most usually left guessing at what was happening. These striking seamen sent out daily bulletins to all points. They were guilty of bowing to the conventional wisdom sometimes, in reporting situations more optimistically than hard truth would have dictated; but the main thing was: they communicated. It took only a few days for Dave Grange to charge that the strike was Communist led, the standard bureaucratic accusation. All striking members were ejected from ISU halls and barred from reentering, the only exception being Port Arthur, as far as I know. The ISU began at once to carry out Grange's promise to break the strike by recruiting strikebreakers from all possible sources. The ISU movement split into three divisions: rank and file members on strike, "loyal ISU" members who refused to join the strike, and the strikebreakers recruited from any and every source and issued union books by union officers. US shipping commissioners, charged with determining a prospective seaman's fitness in the capacity for which he was hiring, grew soft about enforcing standard requirements, or just looked the other way. Law enforcement was soon into the act-not on the side of the strikers. A full account of the strike would fill a thick volume. This account will center on remembered events and those in which I was personally involved. New York strike headquarters called for each port to send a dele-

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gate to be a member of a central strike committee, to remain in New York for the duration. In a probably unprecedented action, Houston striking seamen chose longshoreman Bill Follett to represent them. Bill dutifully packed a bag and took off for the Big City. Police Lieutenant J. E. Murray was in charge of the city of Houston's waterfront detail. Ex-Ranger Captain Frank Hamer was called on to form a corps of "special police." By mid-November, Governor Allred had assigned six Texas Rangers to Houston and lesser numbers to the other Texas ports. Peculiar, but I don't remember our old buddy, Ranger Allee, figuring prominently in this strike. Lieutenant Murray didn't wait long to throw his weight around. Before the strike was two weeks old, his detail had made a mass arrest of pickets along the waterfront. Police Chief B. W. Payne-who was in a lot of hot water about a lot of charged transgressions and would be out of office before the strike was over-decided that the city did not have the facilities for keeping so many under arrest. He ordered the arrested strikers released without bail. A day or so later Beaumont and Port Arthur strikers were in court seeking an injunction against frivolous arrest and physical abuse by peace officers. The court granted the injunction. It didn't take long for law and order to prevail in law-and-order fashion, though. Shipping interests found a judge who granted an injunction severely limiting picketing in some instances and forbidding it in others. Law enforcement people used this to make at least two mass arrests of strikers in the area. A little later in the month the American Federation of Labor convention, on motion by the ISU, condemned the Atlantic and Gulf strike as "aided and abetted by Communists." In the face of this condemnation, plus strikebreaking by AFL, ILA, and ISU, our Maritime Federation's lack of muscle was quickly revealed. The fact that black longshoremen had refused to embrace the federation split us right in two. A negligible number of black longshoremen refused individually to cross picket lines. A larger number of whites refused likewise. But there was little unity between them. A white local refusing as a body to work a struck ship ran the risk of a sister black local's deciding to furnish labor for the hatches ordinarily worked by whites. While not a certain reality, the threat of its happening was very real in the white thinking. Allow a remembered experience to intrude here: Back to September. My good friends, the Vassallo brothers, Charlie and "Babe," approached me. Galveston cottonjammers, members of Local 307, they had visited Corpus Christi regularly in cotton seasons, and we had become fast friends.

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"Would you like to speak to an audience of our Galveston colored brothers?" "I sure would." "In a barroom?" "Barroom, dining room, meeting room, cloak room, any damn room that you can get 'em to gather in." They proceeded to tell me about "Catfish" Johnson. Johnson was one of their gang of white and black longshoremen who had undertaken certain missions and endeavors calculated to discourage members of both races from strikebreaking during the strikes of 1931, '34, and '35. "He's afraid of nothing," the Vassallos told me. "All his people know that. And they like him." They had talked to their buddy, Catfish, and he would take me to a place where colored longshoremen hung out on a payday afternoon, and guarantee me an attentive audience. Catfish Johnson turned out to be a little guy, like pintsize. Afraid of nothing, the Vassallos had said. We proceeded to the designated bar. It was noisy and rowdy, the way you'd expect a working class hangout to be on a payday evening. Catfish spoke to the man behind the bar, then went to the middle of the area where tables for dominoes and for drinking were placed. A word to a group seated at one table. One surrendered his chair; the others hunched back a distance. Johnson stepped to chair seat, to table top. The jukebox clicked off. "Quiet down, all ya," he shouted. He had a pretty fair bellow for a fellow his size. "This is Catfish Johnson speakin' to you. I'm here with a white friend of mine. He's goin' to tell us somethin' about unionism, and all you black sonsabitches are gonna listen. Now, let's have it quiet." Quiet it was. Talk and loud laughter stopped. Pool balls and dominos came to rest. The crowd's demeanor indicated that Catfish was liked and respected and that his use of the profane word was in comradeship, the working class idiom. I stood on the vacated chair and told the assemblage who I was and what the Maritime Federation was about, keeping it short. It was no place for windiness. Their attention was alert and courteous. I received a round of applause when I had finished-partly for keeping it short, I figure. A couple or three men came around to exchange ideas. But it was a place for festivity, not lucubration. I accepted a proffered drink, answered such questions as had been asked, then got the hell out. You never know what you may have accomplished with an appearance like that. You only hope that some of it will stick on somebody and have a bearing on his performance some time in the fu-

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ture. At any rate, it beat having no audience at all ... Now it's November-and extremely unlikely that many of those in that barroom crowd are respecting picket lines. Still, maybe the idea is percolating? Hope springs ... In the fourth week of the strike, Thanksgiving week, mates and engineers struck from Maine to Texas. Now we had shipboard solidarity! Didn't we? Things were looking up. Weren't they? On Thanksgiving morning law officers in Beaumont and Port Arthur began mass arrests of pickets, transporting them to the Jefferson County Jail in Beaumont, where some of the holding tanks were jammed so full of bodies that there was standing room only. The only newspaper account of the incident that I recall stated that the strikers had figured to get a free Thanksgiving dinner from the county by a mass violation of the injunction limiting their picketing. They got fooled, the account said, because the jail ran out of rations and couldn't feed such an unexpected number. Our union friends told a contradictory version. Members of the Port Arthur Oil Workers Union and their womenfolk had provided and prepared a Thanksgiving dinner for the striking seamen of Port Arthur. Law enforcement found out about the preparation, so set out to arrest all striking seamen Thanksgiving morning, wherever found, not just on picket lines. Beaumont seamen were included in the sweep just to make the round-up complete. The men were held without Thanksgiving dinner and without Thanksgiving supper as well, while the food prepared by the Port Arthur sympathizers spoiled. In such subtle ways Texas lawmen worked at generating respect. By late November French longshoremen were refusing to handle cargo on American ships. The Mexican Confederation of Labor had voted a boycott of all American shipping. And the American Federation of Labor was demanding a thirty-hour work week for the entire USA. Trouble with that last was, they were asking the government to do it for them. Not the way that the eight-hour day was won, exactly. French longshoremen tied up the passenger liner Washington. ILA president Ryan threatened retaliation. He would keep his members from working French flag vessels. He made good on that threat shortly after. New York longshoremen went along with his order to boycott French ships. The move put such pressure on the French that they were forced to resume handling American ships' cargoes. "Loyal ISU" beef squads were beating up strikers when and wherever conditions were favorable. Law enforcement officers aided and

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abetted the "loyal" beef. Although they rarely teamed up with the ISU goons, they pretty well declared an open season of their own on unwary strikers who came within range. Striking seamen were retaliating in kind against the scabs. Of a sudden, I was finding myself escorted much of the time by self-appointed bodyguards. Jess Barton and Bob Wright were two. I don't know for sure that either was a Wobbly, but both were generally lumped with the Wobs in waterfront conversation. A Wobbly, Castle, first name forgotten, and a radio operator, Clark, were two others. I'd be heading somewhere. One or another would announce, "I'm going along." Protesting that I didn't need "protection" deterred them not at all. One or another went as far as from Galveston or Houston to New Orleans and Mobile and back on occasion, providing his own expenses going and coming. I never felt that I was in any particular danger when driving, but they made welcome company, so I was glad to have them. By my observation, the weaker get beaten up by the stronger in those "beef" situations. Better put: the unknown more than the known, the followers more than the leaders. (Because, if it were the other way around, there'd be nobody aspiring to be generals, would there?) However, between us and the gatepost over there, when walking city streets in that period, coming to a comer, I walked closer to the curb than to the buildings. You get the picture? I had been a track man in high school. It was my intention, should I encounter one of those beef squads, to take to my heels and leave the goons far behind, to be a healthy coward rather than a busted-up hero. For he who does not fight, but runs away, will live to run some other day, huh? There had been company on some trips before the strike. Adrian Duffy and a seaman named Phillips had traveled with me on earlier occasions, also one Marty Garnier. I've long ago lost track of them all. I've heard that Castle died at sea in World War II, his ship torpedoed. Phillips and Garnier went to the West Coast, I think. Jess Barton was retired and living country-style on a plot of land some miles from Galveston in the 1960s. Bob Wright? No word. Adrian Duffy was back in the Gulf as a personal representative of NMU president Joe Curran shortly after World War II. Our paths didn't cross at that time. The last time I saw Duffy, he was sailing on deck on a Lykes ship. That must have been around 1963. I was in a cotton gang. We talked on deck a few short minutes during one quartering time, were unable to get together later because the ship was sailing. I didn't get around to asking him how come he wasn't still in NMU

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"politics." I had the impression-maybe it's the one I wanted to have-that he felt that the air was cleaner where he was then than where he had been formerly. On December 4, 1936, Houston ISU Agent Wilbur Dickey shot rank and file striker Johnny Kane. Someone reported seeing Dickey and others removing papers and files from the ISU office. Kane was at the head of a crowd of strikers who approached the hall. Dickey and others were in fact leaving the building through a rear passage and did indeed have papers and ledgers in their possession. As Kane neared him, Dickey fired one shot from a small-caliber pistol into Kane's midsection. Dickey was immediately surrounded by other strikers, disarmed, and beaten badly enough to require hospitalization for several days. Peace officers, quickly on the scene, rescued the others of Dickey's party before any serious harm came to them, and prevented the rank and file crowd from seizing the papers and books. No one at the scene of the shooting realized it then, surely not John Kane himself, who was not even downed by the shot-but the wound would prove fatal. Kane held onto life for some ten days, then expired in a Houston hospital. Dickey was indicted on a charge of murder. He pleaded self-defense, successfully. He probably had been in serious physical danger. Kane had no intention of taking Dickey into his arms lovingly, one can assume. Up until the shooting, Johnny Kane had been just another "readyfor-anything good ol' boy." He belonged to the IWW and believed in its philosophy, but wasn't known as an evangelist for the cause. As news reports came that the doctors were losing the fight to save his life, sentiment built up. When his death was announced, John Kane became a martyr, a symbol. His funeral was attended by all the striking seamen in Houston, many from Galveston and other ports, and contingents of unionists, official and unofficial, from all over Houston. Seamen vowed that they would erect a monument over Johnny's grave. And they did, at a later time. It is quite an imposing piece of work, saluting John in the name of the Marine Transport Workers and the NMU. (The National Maritime Union hadn't been heard of in Kane's time; the objective was still taking over the ISU when Johnny died.) The grave and monument are in Houston's Evergreen Cemetery on Latham Street, a mostly forgotten piece of land within the city, overgrown by the undergrowth, if that wording makes sense, of vines and weeds that flourish in this southern bayou country.

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So Johnny Kane, the martyr around whose memory hundreds of workers rallied in 1936, lay in Latham Evergreen, his grave more neglected than cared for, his life more forgotten than remembered. Johnny Who? Clean-up efforts in 1987 exposed the Kane grave, to reveal that the imposing marker had toppled, inscription side down. Two younger men, a seaman and a longshoreman, David Holiman and Harvey Breed, respectively, took an individual interest in soliciting support to have the Kane monument righted and restored to its original position. They spoke to local heads of the National Maritime Union and the Seafarers International Union. Both unions expressed an interest in remembering the 1936 rank and file struggle, but took no immediate initiative, whereupon Holiman and Breed took it on themselves to raise funds on their own. A local monument company restored the Kane marker to its original position early in 1988. The inscription at the curved top reads: AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL. Below are the initials M.T.W. and N.M.u., then the name JOHN KANE and dates 1902-1936, and the inscription DIED IN THE BATTLE/TO UNITE LABOR/DEC. 15, 1936/MARINE TRANSPORT WORKERS/NATIONAL MARITIME UNION. So you're not entirely unremem-

bered, Johnny. NMU President Shannon Wall, writing in the "Golden Anniversary Edition" of the NMU Pilot, says that "over twenty-five" seamen were killed during the 1936-1937 strike; so Johnny Kane is not unique, but one of a fraternity. As John Kane was losing his fight for life, King Edward VIII of England was announcing to the world that he was abdicating his throne in order to marry the woman he loved, a commoner, American society beauty Wally Simpson. It became the love story of the century. On December 11 and 12 there were more mass arrests of strikers in Beaumont. On December 14, in Houston, Judge Frank Williford upheld the right of striking seamen to picket the downtown Cotton Exchange Building. There was bad news for the rank and file on that same day. The mates and engineers had ratified contracts and were going back on the ships. A small revolt was staged by a group of engineers in Galveston who claimed that only handpicked members were notified of the ratification meeting. They failed to block the move to man the ships, however. As with our longshoremen, some individual mates and engineers, believing in the striking seamen's cause and willing to risk their careers for that belief, refused to accept employment that they defined as strikebreaking.

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The licensed officers' defection cut at the guts of the Maritime Federation. Two of our three official affiliates were betraying the principle that was our cornerstone: they were crossing the picket lines of other maritime workers. The harder reality was that it cut at the guts of the strike as well. I found myself in the awkward position of hardly being on speaking terms with the two officers, Sayre and Kertell, with whom I shared office space. Their joint argument that they were obliged to put the owners' offer to a vote because it was negotiated nationally and so ordered by their national offices was valid. However, I was extremely dubious that either had made any impassioned plea to their members not to disrupt the three weeks' unity that had existed between them and the unlicensed strikers. Coincident with the mates' and engineers' return to work, Gus Brown, a high-ranking ISU spokesman, issued a plea to striking seamen to return to the ships, promising no discrimination against any of them-almost. "Just a handful of Communist agitators will not be rehired," said Mr. Brown. Both sides were hurting. The strikers were not preventing the ships from sailing, period, but they were hampering operations and disrupting schedules, thus cutting into revenues. The other edge of the sword, the problem of keeping men eating and housed, was beginning to cut into the strikers' ranks. One highly unusual aspect of the rank and file strike was the number of attempts on the part of all sorts of people to negotiate settlements. People with credentials and people with no credentials approached various employers with proposed settlement solutions. There is evidence to show that many of these were seriously considered. None bore fruit, however. What it proved was that the operators were looking for some agency other than ISU with which to deal. Employers are always looking for "responsible" unions that can "control" their members. The ISU had lost control. There is really no published evidence that any of the operators looked back at their previous deals and concluded that a more generous package of wages and working conditions might have prevented the strike in the first place. The tug-of-war between those wanting to stay within the ISU and those wanting to break away flared up at almost every strike meeting. The CP was unyielding in its determination that the strikers should remain ISU members. It cost the Party some members who felt that the ISU should dissolve. On the other hand, the Party could have gained some members by its stand, but I doubt it. Many strikers wanted to conduct the strike in the name of the Maritime Federa-

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tion. But that would have set the federation up as a dual union, something we were constructed not to be. Moreover, we couldn't persuade the workers in the industry to make it an industry-wide strike. So the banner of the federation was a tattered one to start. A young Wobbly named Gorman and I got together and in a period of three days came out with a neatly typed proposed constitution for a new seamen's union which followed the constitution of the IWW skin-tight, you could say, except for the name of the union and the preamble. It was our idea to carry it to a Port Arthur meeting, where the strikers would rally around it, we felt sure. We felt that the momentum generated there would serve to bring about its adoption in the other Gulf ports, and that that momentum would in turn carry it to adoption on the Atlantic Coast. But we failed to clear our first hurdle. Presenting our creation to the Wobblies in Houston, we found their prevailing opinion to be that they would not support our plagiarizing of IWW language to bring out an independent union in which they had little or no trust. I was not willing to gamble without the support of the Wobblies. Gorman, as an IWW member, was inhibited by that adverse majority opinion. Thus, our idea for continuing the strike under that independent banner died a-borning. West Coast ILA president Harry Bridges came to the East Coast about mid-December. He made speeches in Boston, New York, and Baltimore, as I remember it. He did no speechmaking in the Gulf. He urged East Coast longshoremen to come out in support of the rank and file strike and dwelt on the need for a National Maritime Federation. If you are one of those who loves to delve into the more trivial aspects, you would find, I think, about as follows: There was much oral and written mention and support of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast by those who spoke for the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast until the time when the Gulf Federation's officers had broken with what we defined as the Communist Party line, after which those spokesmen often espoused a National Maritime Federation, but made little or no direct mention of the Gulf Federation-ostensibly still to be a link in the chain that would be the national federation: Pacific, Gulf, Atlantic, Great Lakes. Bridges stirred things up on his trip, but not to the point of persuading Atlantic Coast longshoremen to support the rank and file strike. He stirred up one person in particular: International President Joseph P. Ryan. Bridges had been on the ILA payroll as an organizer. Ryan fired him, calling him uncomplimentary names. Baltimore longshoremen were showing some rank and file strike sympathy. Ryan went into Baltimore, where he had to be rescued by police from an angry group of strikers and strike supporters. How-

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ever, the next day Baltimore longshoremen voted against a sympathy walkout. At about the time of Bridges' arrival in the East a news report was published to the effect that the Sailors Union of the Pacific and West Coast Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders had arrived at a tentative agreement with employers on all points but hiring hall control. Questioned about the report, Bridges answered that he had been told nothing about any such agreement. About one week later Harry Lundeberg of the SUP announced that a complete tentative agreement had been reached, subject to ratification by both sides. This led to a charge by those identified as the Bridges faction that the SUP was threatening the solidarity of the federation by pursuing this early settlement. This brought a counter statement from the Lundeberg faction that Bridges was using tactics calculated to undermine the SUP. Meanwhile, we were having our problems in the Gulf, these affected incidentally by what happened on the West Coast. I'll not sit as an authority on West Coast inter-union maneuverings, nor intra-union either, being too far removed from the scene. It was evident that there was "trouble in paradise." Toward the end of the month Barney Mayes was fired from his position of editor of the Voice of the Federation, the MFPC's official organ, by pressure exerted by the Bridges group. I found myself taking sides with Mayes, not so much with regard to the local issues involved, being, as already said, too far removed from the scene, but with regard to what I'll call the window dressing. The firers had suddenly discovered that Mayes had served time (a fact well known by the editorial board when he was hired), plus a couple of other things that might have made him other than a prime candidate for Rotary Club membership, but had little or nothing to do with the class struggle, protagonists of which Bridges associates claimed to be. At the same time, the Ship Channel, published weekly by the Houston Ship Channel Progressive Committee, commended the MFPC for getting rid of Mayes; so there was something other than unanimity of opinion in most places most of the time, it's plain to see. Leroy Williams, a printer, was president of the Houston labor council. He also published the official labor paper, the Labor Messenger. The Typographical Union was in the Committee for Industrial Organization, yet to be expelled from the AFL. After some groundworking among friendly delegates, I approached a council meeting and asked permission to speak in behalf of the rank and file strike. Williams ruled that I should be allotted a specified time "in the interests of fair play and general information." The council sus-

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tained his ruling over objections from ISU delegates and some others, I was told-I wasn't invited to witness that procedure. That appearance before the Houston central body may have been the single biggest contribution that I made to the strike. A number of unions donated to strike relief. Others authorized voluntary contributions from members. Together, they added up to a substantial amount for the soup kitchen. That was in late November. Christmas Eve, 1936. I was returning from the East Gulf. I would drop off the self-appointed "bodyguard" in Houston, then continue home to Galveston. We drove to the Progressive Committee hall, debarked, and entered. The scene was of a field hospital in a battle zone! Bandaged heads, bandaged arms, bandaged chests, bandaged legs, bandaged feet! Crutches, arms in slings, splotches of bruised skin showing, lumps and bumps. What in hell had happened? Perhaps there had been a harbinger of things to come that was ignored. Ten pickets had complained earlier in the day that they had been forcibly rousted from their picket posts the night before and beaten by members of Police Lieutenant J. E. Murray's waterfront detail. Now it was Christmas Eve-peace, good will, love. Many a striker, spending Christmas far removed from home, was going to buy some forgetfulness. Those lucky enough to have a few shekels still in pocket were going to kick the gong around, bury the damned strike for one night in a haze of blurry, pleasant drunkenness. Bar proprietors shared the spirit. There were occasional freebies to the less fortunate whose pockets had ceased to jingle. A time for giving and enjoying. Bars in Texas served only beer at that time, but at Christmas there were often bowls of eggnog stirred and served, compliments of the house. Nobody called that unlawful. Lieutenant Murray and the waterfront detail put an abrupt end to yuletide that night. The officers started at the foot of 75th Street and worked inland, from bar to bar, smashing heads, furniture, whatever came within range of flailing nightsticks. From an issue of the old Houston Press, no longer in publication: "Police beat 150 in raid on docks," a headline said. A subhead: "Acting Chief Honea goes to scene, restores order-after police use clubs, guns, gas, fists." From a reporter's eyewitness account: "Police visited every open beer parlor, clubbed customers and chased them into the streets, where they were knocked down and kicked by other officers." Lieutenant Murray and his detail practiced only minimal sex discrimination. Several barmaids and waitresses sported "shiners" and facial cuts and bruises for the next few days, plus body bruises not

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showing. "Mom" Beard, a bar proprietress known for her rank and file sympathies, was knocked down and kicked by the raiders in her place of business. Ambulances hurried to the scene. "Twice police jerked men from ambulances and resumed beating them," continued the reporter. There is more. A few days later in a follow-up story ambulance drivers and attendants complained to a city council meeting that their attempts to administer first aid to victims sorely needing it were interfered with by police, to the point that they were prevented from rendering such aid at the scene, forcing them to transport victims to hospital emergency rooms in worse shape than they need have been. Merry Christmas! Time moves on, pausing not for justice or injustice. As the year neared an end it was announced that US shipping commissioners were beginning distribution of the Copeland continuous discharge book. It has always seemed to me that the ruling class made a minor slip-up there. Every book issued from then until the end of the strike branded the holder as a strikebreaker against the rank and file strike, facing a future day of reckoning. Perhaps the industry's brainiest were of the opinion that the strike would peter out to nothing. That would have been blind optimism. Their scabherding machinery was performing in broken-down fashion. Meanwhile, agitation and organization continued in almost every industry. Dr. William States Jacobs, a wealthy man with a strong social conscience, preached on Sundays in his own independent church, a theater building in Houston's downtown area. Dr. Jacobs championed the cause of the underprivileged in the strongest terms. He appeared and spoke at many labor rallies in many Texas cities. "Revolution" was a word that did not stick in his throat. Whereas we labor skates were a bit shy about using the word, Dr. Jacobs would fling it out to his audience without apology. He often said that his aim was to see have-nots achieve social justice: to be well fed, well clothed, and well housed. "If we find that social justice cannot be achieved under the capitalist system," he said many times, "then we'll change the system." We of the ILA had our own Houston "preacher." C. N. "Preacher" Hunter was in considerable demand to address labor rallies. Largely self-educated, Preacher Hunter commanded an impressive vocabulary. Moreover, those down-to-earth expressions loved by working people came as naturally to him as cornbread and buttermilk. And he bolstered it all with passages from the Scriptures. Bob Oliver was a well-educated refinery worker, working hard to organize his industry-another Houstonian with the gift of oratory,

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in demand at labor rallies. Worth a reminder here: These gentlemen spoke without microphones and amplifiers. They projected their voices and their ideas to the last person in the rear on their own power. As the strike rolled into 1937 and on through the month of January, it began to drag. The participants were running out of resources. Many had left the front for homes inland. While some of those sent cash contributions back to the ports they had left, many were unable to contribute, for the very good reason that there were no jobs to be had. The "official" side was badly hurt. Scabherding under a union banner had not produced the manpower that the operators needed. Ships were not depending on the ISU exclusively any longer, but were accepting crew replacements from any source that could provide them. In the last days of January the strike was declared off-as far as picket line tactics were concerned. A slogan was raised, "Carry the strike to the ships." I think the Communist Party people get credit for that slogan. Whoever first voiced it, it caught on. The ex-strikers were welcomed by ships' officers tired of supervising inexperienced strikebreaker recruits with "two left hands." They were extremely pleased to have rank and file seamen back on duty-by hook or by crook, it didn't matter. Once rank and file seamen had a "working" nucleus aboard any vessel, they used such tactics as seemed applicable to open employment to more of their fellow ex-strikers. In spite of the fact that the Gulf Maritime Federation had failed to generate support for the strike among longshoremen, seamen in the Gulf voted to make an MFGC clearance the "official" and recognized clearance for all ports from Mobile to Houston. (There was no picketing done south of Houston and Galveston.) We turned out some few thousand clearance cards. I doubt that any of them is in existence these fifty years later. Worth mentioning: the seamen included in their decision that longshoremen who supported the strike individually should be issued the strike clearance, a fine gesture of solidarity. At this point I'm asked, "What was a strike clearance?" Well, it was a statement, usually on a wallet-size card, attesting that you had performed your assigned strike duty for the duration of the named strike. It's axiomatic that it proved that you hadn't scabbed. I must disqualify myself as an authority, or else display my ignorance. Whether the strike clearance saw any widespread use in industries other than maritime, I couldn't say. I can say positively that every seaman I ever knew displayed his clearance(s) with pride.

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None ofthe West GulfiLA locals affiliated with the Maritime Federation struck in sympathy with the rank and file seamen. The threat of international union receivership and reorganization was too much to risk. In Houston, white deep sea president Landgrebe and black deep sea president Wilson both advised their members that unsafe working conditions might be encountered behind a picket line. Landgrebe's local was an MFGC affiliate, you will remember. Wilson's local had turned thumbs down. Several ships were thrown off schedule on occasions when Houston longshoremen refused to cross a picket line, but these refusals were sporadic and of short duration. The Beaumont affiliated white local, breasting an unfriendly black local, staged a few off-and-on work stoppages. By early February all the West Coast maritime unions had come to terms with the operators and shipping was resuming. We in the Gulf who had become solidarity-indoctrinated were soon beset with some new problems, compounding the old ones.

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seamen's strike American flag East Coast ships had moved. Moved erratically, but moved. By contrast, West Coast ships had remained berthed where struck. With the West Coast strike settled, these ships would resume sailing. We of the MFGC had assumed all along that West Coast crews would go aboard and that our federation-affiliated New Orleans longshoremen would work them as before. But that was not the way it would be, we found out. We had been so caught up in the war that we had assumed things about the peace that were not so. The West Coast seafaring unions adopted a temporary policy of "get the ships back to the Coast." To implement this, they agreed to allow East and Gulf Coast steamship agents to man the vessels with available hands without regard to union affiliation. Such crew members, unless members of Pacific Coast unions, were to leave their respective ships at the first Pacific port, safe conduct and overland transportation back to the East Coast guaranteed. New Orleans master stevedores declared that they would not rehire members of old Locals 231 and 1226. They intended henceforth to deal with the "new, legitimate" ILA locals chartered by Ryan after the 1935 strike. The old locals put up picket lines. Sailors hiring under the conditions outlined in the preceding paragraph were not likely to refuse to cross a picket line nor to refuse any assigned duty, once aboard a vessel. The "new, legitimate" ILA longshoremen had "legitimized" themselves working behind picket lines. They wouldn't refuse to cross the same people's picket lines again. The immediate future of the old locals looked bleak. The temporary policy of the West Coast unions seemed a betrayal of that union solidarity that all of us had been preaching. Still, we couldn't know how badly they were hurting, how much strength had been sapped by the long strike. We had to remember that our locals would have been wiped out long ago, except for their previous show of solidarity. A worse apparent betrayal was of their own West Coast URING THE

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members who had fought the fight alongside the East Coast rank and file. Most of those who had struck West Coast ships on this coast had gone "back home" -west. Those who had elected to stay and perform strike duty with the rank and file in New Orleans were now faced with violating union principle on two counts in order to get back on their "own" ships: They had to, first, cross a picket line; second, make a voyage in company of known or suspected strikebreakers, because these ships' masters would not accept replacements sent by ISU agents. A considerable number chose to go "on the bum" rather than ship back to the West Coast under those conditions. Under the circumstances, the best that we could do was advise the old locals to release their members to go into the hiring shape-ups as a matter of survival, however distasteful that might be, until a break would come our way. I remember talking to a representative of the Swayne and Hoyt Line (West Coast), a man named Thibodeaux, who informed us that his company would use labor under the jurisdiction of the new ILA locals. He felt confident that our side would not be able to hamper the operation. At the time, Mr. Thibodeaux was right. The Houston local chartered in the 1935 strike settlement, the former "Buffaloes," with a history of strikebreaking and working below scale, now working West Coast ships jointly with white Local1273, couldn't be expected to boycott ships from New Orleans, certainly not those sailing with President Ryan's approval. We had no control in Mobile. Corpus Christi was the only other port in our claimed jurisdiction where West Coast ships called regularly, and those were few. Corpus Christi black longshoremen were siding with Ryan. The beleaguered Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast had no muscle to flex. A Swayne and Hoyt ship, arriving in Houston from New Orleans, called for stevedore gangs at 1:00 P.M. Zene Lowry went shipside before time for gangs to arrive and stationed himself at the foot of the gangplank. He had picked up a solid, functional piece of scrap iron along the way. "This is a one-man picket line," Zene told would-be workers as they began arriving. "If you decide to cross it, the first one to cross it, won't." The men decided to respect the picket line and returned to "the hill." But they did not rally to Zene's cause. One man cannot maintain such a stand forever. Next day gangs went to work. Zene's oneman stand had been only a gesture. But what a gesture! Men like Zene Lowry don't come in bunches like bananas, either. I was in New Orleans during the 1937 Mardi Gras, my only time to see the celebration. That one time is unforgettable. I made the

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trip by bus. There was a change of buses in Lake Charles. As we pulled out of Lake Charles the bus driver advised passengers going to New Orleans that New Orleans bus terminal personnel would assist them in finding lodging. At each stop, as new passengers came aboard, he would repeat the offer. I was asking myself, "What kind of gimmick is this? Greyhound is in the hotel business?" I was walking away from the bus station on Canal Street when consciousness came. It was the beginning of Mardi Gras. Carnival time! Only numbskulls like me were in the city without prior room reservations. I walked on to the Godchaux Building where the ARTA office was located. There, resourceful Jim Croney called on his knowledge of the city and found me a room on St. Charles, close to Canal Street. The room was away back through a maze of hallways, and rented for $2.50 per night as I remember. It would have gone begging at a dollar in normal times. But it was clean, and glory be!-a balcony fronted on St. Charles where the parades passed before turning into Canal Streeet. It was like being in a reviewing standwhat a bargain! It was not so much the physical aspect of Mardi Gras-although the parades were grand and spectacular-it was the spirit that pervaded the whole city. I don't have words to describe it; so I won't. Let it be said, nothing like it ever happened before or since to this old country boy. On the national scene President Roosevelt, unhappy with a Supreme Court that had declared some of his New Deal legislation unconstitutional, attempted to persuade Congress to legislate a reorganization of the Court, proposing that as many as six justices be added to the existing nine. Opponents called it "packing the Court." It turned out to be one of his proposals that failed to catch the popular fancy. Perhaps it is significant, though, that the "nine old men" upheld the constitutionality of both the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act while the debate over "packing" was going on. Is it possible that Roosevelt's pressure "liberalized" the Court a mite? The second convention of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast was held in Beaumont in the Carpenters Hall the second week in March 1937. Inviting speakers to address the convention was left to me. I invited the president of the Beaumont labor council and the president of our host carpenters, and that was it. So the convention was near unique in one respect: neither holders nor seekers of public office appeared before the convention. There was some low-key griping about that exclusion, but most delegates supported it. There was work to be done. Get at it. The convention adopted the usual resolutions supporting the

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Loyalist government in Spain, against the right-wing uprising of General Franco, urging freedom for Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, calling for labor solidarity, condemning fascism, and so on. I recommended that we combine the offices of secretary and treasurer and make the secretary-treasurer the executive officer of the organization. The most of my work had been secretarial (correspondence), so let us set up the secretary-treasurer as the full-time officer. That change was adopted. It was decided to move the federation office from Galveston to New Orleans. Vice President Smith was unopposed for reelection, as I remember it. The other incumbents had opposition. We called ourselves the "direct action" slate and referred to our challengers as "the politicians." Smith, Chase, and I were reelected. Neither Frank Sayre nor Jim Croney sought any office. Arthur Thomas was elected to the new office of secretary-treasurer. We felt that Thomas had a good name and probably the best-known name, barring Joe Curran, among Gulf rank and file seamen, the element we were counting on to propel us through troubled waters. There would be one last official Galveston-to-Pensacola tour. Then I would bow out "until times got better." I made that tour by bus, arrived in Pensacola about noon on a Sunday, found a room, stowed my bag, got a bite to eat. No appointments for the day. I was not far from the harbor, could see the smokestack of a Bull Line ship there, decided to have a look. The ship was working. Nobody dockside or on shipboard paid me any attention. I invited myself aboard. Leaning against a thwartship railing that overlooked the ship's two after hatches, I watched a wharf gang making up loads for the number 4 hatch. They were loading bundled barrel staves out of boxcars into the ship. A staging had been rigged on the wharf even with the boxcar floor. They would lay a tray on the staging, load it with staves, receive an empty tray from the hold, hook on their load, lay the empty tray down, load it, on and on. Bundled barrel staves are heavy, rough, and hard to get a grip on. In a word, they are mean to handle. Five men were working in the car, three blacks, two whites. A young black man was leading the gang, leading and driving. He worked at high speed and demanded that the others match his pace. The others were suffering. The hold gang was returning empty trays to the wharf as fast as the gang could load them. They had no chance for that "blow," that "spot," that time for a quick breath before the next load is on you-so necessary when you're bucking heavy packages of cargo. The job plainly called for a sixth man in that boxcar. Likely, these men were members of Ryan's new locals. Undoubt-

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edly, they had earned their "right" to the job by strikebreaking. As such, they deserved no one's sympathy. Still, I found myself thinking that the other four in the car should collect a loose, handy stave apiece at quitting time and meet that leader around a corner leaving the dock. Their pay was something like two-bits an hour less than was being paid in Texas. There followed another frustrating, heartbreaking visit with Leon Antone and the "old" locals. Nothing less than a miracle of shipboard solidarity could help them now. It wasn't happening. Then west to Mobile, where Joe Curran showed up. He was making a tour of Atlantic and Gulf ports, consolidating such gains as had come to the rank and file strike effort. Beyond question, the power of the ISU had been broken. The shipping companies were no longer concerned about the terms of their labor contract. A few were still dealing with the ISU. By contrast, one or two had formally repudiated the former contract and were dealing with the "ISU Rank and File." Most did whatever served an immediate advantage. Curran, C. P. Chase, and I had a half-hour of private conversation. Curran told us that he felt an obligation toward the CP, because of the support the Party had given him and because many CP members had served with distinction in the strike. He found himself leaning away from the continued Party insistence on capturing the machinery ofthe ISU, however. He pretty much agreed with Chase and me, that it was doing little more than bogging the movement down in a continuing swath of lawsuits. While things dragged in the courts, rank and file militancy eroded. He was undecided yet whether to oppose the Party's stand on the ISU, but he was thinking about it, he said. He appeared to be really disturbed. Needless to say, Chase and I talked hard to persuade him away from the "capture the ISU" position and toward forming a new union. Looking back, my opinion is that it was a time when much more vitriol was poured out than was warranted, and by more than one agency. The CP would characterize a person questioning or disagreeing with the Party line as a "misguided worker," maybe "supermilitant." A person persisting in opposing the line more sharply would earn sharper epithets, such as "shipowners' stooge," "sell-out artist," "agent provocateur." The Party would question the morality and integrity of a person who opposed its program of the moment. "Trotskyite" was the most damning epithet of all. In my blissful ignorance, I was not yet familiar with that one until about the time of the Mobile meeting with Curran. AFL union officials had their way of smearing whoever or whatever they felt threatened their own "party line." They shouted "Com-

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munist" or "Communism" or "un-American" at any person or activity that distracted from their way of doing business. It was unimaginative and often patently untrue. But, in their opinion, it worked. Why tax self-satisfied minds with imagination? Those of us who endorsed the idea that we should change the social order, but suspected that the CP was aiming more at changing the people at the controls than at changing the order, hurled our own uncomplimentary words and phrases at both those who followed what we took to be the Party line and those who conformed to AFL doctrine. We painted CP tactics to include "boring from within," "the end justifies any means," and "rule or ruin." We charged the AFL with betraying the working class, existing only to keep labor divided: described most pithily by the Wobblies, "The American Separation of Labor." We had made contact with a fishermen's union in Biloxi. It had been arranged for me to catch a morning bus out of Mobile and for the union's officers to meet the bus in Biloxi. The bus was a "local" that stopped at half a dozen stations along the way. It began to fill up rather quickly. How many remember those signs? "Colored" or "Colored Only" indicated that the wide seat across the back of the bus and the couple of seats over the rear wheels were where Negroes sat in Dixieland. At a small station a short distance from Biloxi the bus had taken aboard more passengers than there were seats. The bus driver edged through standing passengers toward the rear. "You niggers get up off that back seat so these white folks can sit down," he ordered. Without argument, they did as told. Two were women, one with a baby in her arms. The favored whites seated themselves on the rear seat. I had an aisle seat just ahead of the "colored" section. A young fellow around my age occupied the window seat. There had been no more conversation between us than exchanging the time of day. I was always diffident about striking up conversation with strangers that way, a weakness I never overcame. My fellow passenger had been watching the scenery out the window. I had been reading a paperback, probably a whodunit, a habit of mine when on buses or trains. The rearrangement of passengers left the two colored women standing in the aisle by our seats. The man turned to me. "You feel like standing?" he asked. I answered, "Yeah." We rose into the aisle. "Take those seats. We're going to stretch," I told the black ladies. They moved to take the seats. The bus driver was settling back in his, ready to put the bus in motion, when he noticed the movement

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between us and the other passengers. He bounced from his seat. He was a little squirt, incidentally. He was bristling. "What the hell is goin' on back there?" he called out. "We just thought we'd stand and stretch a while and let these women sit down," I answered. "You'll do nothin' of the kind," the driver corrected me. "You see this sign up here?" (pointing). "'The operator reserves the right to seat all passengers.' Well, I'm the operator, and I've seated the passengers the way I want 'em, and that's the way they'll stay seated. I'm tellin' you two to get back in your seats. You're in Mississippi now, where niggers keep their places and where any whites that don't know it had better learn it, or they'll get showed theirs. You want a taste of Mississippi law, just try me." "Do what he say," the woman with the baby cautioned in a soft whisper. "You only make it harder on us ifn you don't.'' Passengers toward the front, stretching to look back at us, appeared to me to be aligned with the driver's philosophy. We resumed our seats. The women resumed standing. The driver gave us one last withering look, reseated himself, put the bus in gear and on the road. "We got told," I said to my companion. "Yes, we did," he answered. There was no more conversation. I didn't feel talkative. I suspect my friend didn't either. My guess would have been that he was from the North and had just been introduced to Jim Crow. So I have never walked the trail in another's moccasins, but our paths have crossed. It was only a few miles on to Biloxi. I said "Good luck" to my fellow passenger and took my bag down from the overhead rack. As I stepped down from the bus the driver gave me one last nostrilly look-you know what I mean? I gave him back, as nearly as I could manage, a brief "nothing" stare. Three officers of the fishermen's union were there to meet me. They carried me to their headquarters. They were a refreshing contrast to run-of-the-mill labor skates. They were totally unimpressed by the importance of their positions-not impressed by anybody else's, either. They had impressed the local fish houses that a share of the wealth should go to those who brought in the catches. Although they did not represent the processing employees, they had been instrumental in bringing about wage increases for them. That gave me an opening to urge them to take those employees into their union. I don't know whether they ever did. We got along swell. They bought me bar drinks and fed me lunch. But on the question of affiliation with the MFGC we struck two

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snags. First, Biloxi not being a seaport in terms of world commerce, they couldn't see any advantage to themselves in affiliating with an organization that put emphasis on freight rather than fish. We might have cleared that hurdle, though, by an appeal to labor solidarity, had they not been ideologically adamant on objection number two. An American Federation of Labor organizer had approached them a short while before, they told me. They didn't remember who he was. From their description, he was well impressed with his own importance. That insulted their sense of values to start with. Then he had implied that anybody organized outside of the AFL had to be a little on the trashy side, they said. Workers just didn't measure up unless they had that AFL tag. That attitude had infuriated them. They had told him to get up and get out. They hadn't told me to get up and get out; so what was the problem? The problem was: that provision in the MFGC by-laws that called for a maritime trades department within the AFL. That part they weren't buying. My protesting that we had affiliates that were not AFL was a dog that wouldn't hunt, they told me, pointing to that eventuality, the AFL maritime trades department. My claim that we would finally bring a pressure that would liberalize and progressivize the AFL failed to shake them. They weren't having any part of the AFL, no matter how you sliced it. The three union officers were white. They appeared not to have any "true Southern" prejudice against Negroes (of whom there were some few in the fishing fleet). They appeared to accept the "equality" references in our constitution without any problem. I decided against telling them about the incident on the bus, however. Then it was bus time again. I bade my friends good-bye and boarded a bus heading for the Crescent City, little ol' New Orleans, on a sunny southern afternoon. In New Orleans, Charles Logan took me into his confidence with a surprising proposition. The two "new" New Orleans ILA locals were not satisfying the wants of their members. Although they broke a strike to get there, they could still be organized into a legitimate union labor force, was Mr. Logan's expressed opinion. The "new" locals were not doing the job. The "old" locals could not win the men's confidence. It would take a whirlwind campaign, taking the Old Guard by surprise and firing up the rank and file overnight. Could the Maritime Federation field such a campaign? Be prepared to do it in a hurry, before the opposition could organize against it. He felt that conditions were ripe for such an endeavor to succeed. He promised a swift NLRB representation election. As a practical matter, he reminded, it was almost a certainty that the "new, new"

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independent locals would be forced to affiliate with the ILA at a later time. But think of the concessions that could be forced from Ryan when you had an organized Port of New Orleans for a bargaining weapon! That appealed to me. There had been hints that the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast or some affiliates might contribute money to such an undertaking. How quiet we could keep our intentions while we martialed forces for such a campaign was a problem we'd face when it hit us. I wangled a small amount of money for a special survey. I chose Clarence Vandever of Corpus Christi for the job, and he did us a walloping good one. In three weeks we had name, location, and function of every waterside facility having to do with shipping on both sides of the river: the commodities handled; approximate number of employees, by race, and union affiliation, if any; their hangouts, restaurants, bars, pool rooms, clubs. You could get a similar survey done in these 1980s by some management consulting firm for $50,000, perhaps. Vandever's total upkeep came to less than $100. (Well, he didn't generate as much paperwork.) As it turned out, we were never able to use the ammunition that he furnished us, for the ample reason that the funding necessary to conduct the concentrated, whirlwind type campaign that we had in mind failed to materialize from any quarter. Shortly thereafter, in April 1937, Arthur Thomas was pulling together loose ends in Port Arthur preparatory to moving to New Orleans. I was doing likewise in Galveston for the move back to Corpus Christi. A call came from Joe Spencer's longshore local in New Orleans. Would I go along with a committee to the West Coast? Their local would pay all travel expenses. I would. Their car picked me up in Houston on a sunny morning a day or so later, and "me and four other niggers" set out: destination, San Francisco. Jim Crow prevailed in Texas. As already stated, a colored person could purchase products from service stations but couldn't use their restrooms, except in rare, larger stations that provided separate "colored" facilities. Well, I voted "democratic." If they couldn't, I wouldn't. So we did what we had to do out of sight along the highway, all the way to California. There was probably less than one car then to a hundred that travel today's highways, meaning hundreds less pairs of eyes to be observing. There was also a vast difference in driving speeds and highway construction. (Arizona boasted "the best dirt roads in the world," I remember.) In the "white" sections of southern cities a white person entered an eating place through the front door; a colored person went around to the back, and, most likely, didn't enter at all. Our expedition

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didn't afford time for shopping for either facilities or neighborhoods. We'd stop where it seemed the handiest. The four Negroes would stay in or by the car. I'd order sandwiches sufficient for the crowd, then we'd eat while the car was underway. Whether written law or not, I couldn't tell you, but Jim Crow attitudes prevailed to an extent in New Mexico and Arizona; so we followed the Texas mode oftravel through those states. The first day and night were spent driving through Texas. The second night found us negotiating Arizona mountain roads. The third evening we wheeled into San Pedro, spent a short hour at the SUP hall there, ate our first non-sandwich meal since departure, then drove through the night to San Francisco, where, about mid-morning, we checked into a small hotel, a weary, bedraggled, constipated lot. What'd we look like? Well, I reckon you could say that I stood out: I was the pale one. The others were honest black. S. Nathaniel Smith was smallest of the crowd. Spencer was the heavyweight, and the elder of the party. His age would have been early forties. I had just turned twenty-nine in January. Spencer was about my height, slightly under six feet, a heavy build, and carrying some fat, that corpulence that attaches to so many who change from the hard physical activity demanded by the trade to the sedentary life of labor official. The other two and I were about of a size, in the middle to light-heavyweight class. Added together, with baggage, we made close to a capacity load for the Buick automobile that carried us. We all wore business suits, rumpled by this time, and neckties somewhat askew. Spencer's members were sponsoring this trip on their own, after a proposal that the white local also send a delegation had been rejected. It was Spencer's decision to come in unannounced, then approach the several maritime union offices, ask an opportunity to state the New Orleans old locals' case, and see if something would give. He was pinning his hopes principally on Harry Bridges and the West Coast longshoremen. Since I had been invited to go along in a support role, since it was a New Orleans local's project and not a federation mission, I had agreed to Spencer's approach. I think now that that was a mistake. Had we announced that we were coming, we most probably would have been apprised of what would be happening at the time of our arrival. We put our baggage into our rooms and immediately walked to Bridges' office, headquarters of the Pacific Coast district, ILA. It was soon to become ILWU, International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, under Bridges' leadership. It would represent all longshoremen on that coast except those in Tacoma and three other

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small ports in the Pacific Northwest. After a number of years those locals would drop their ILA affiliation and join ILWU. Bridges saw our delegation in his office without delay. Spencer opened with his request that Pacific Coast longshoremen refuse to work ships coming from New Orleans that had been stevedored by labor not belonging to his or D'Arcy's locals. Bridges interrupted him to inform us that the executive board of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast was then in session, only a short distance away. It was a federation problem, not an ILA problem, he asserted. He advised that we go immediately to the board meeting and state our case. It seemed to me the thing to do. Spencer was fixated with the idea that Bridges held the key to relieving his woes. He began to argue the point. (True, the Bridges longshoremen had the power not to work any vessel that called at US Pacific ports; but Bridges was right in saying that any such proposal was a federation matter.) During the course of their argument Bridges put more weight than need be, I thought, on the contention that seamen aboard vessels in New Orleans should refuse to permit longshore work to be done by any other than members of the old locals. It became a standoff. Bridges was not going to commit his union to anything unless we had commitments from the seafaring unions, especially the SUP. We left Bridges' office. I wanted to steer the group to the MFPC board meeting. The others pled fatigue, their need for baths and rest. Hell, they didn't need a bath and rest any more than I did. But Spencer insisted that I meet the board alone in my official capacity. I let them off the hook and approached the meetingplace by myselfanother mistake. Then I committed still another error, of omission. A lady at the federation office informed me that the group in the meeting room would be taking their noon recess momentarily. I thought, "Why interrupt them now? They'll go eat lunch, be in a better mood to listen to our troubles in the afternoon session, and my gang and me will be cleaned up, rested some and looking less like a bunch of tramps." The trouble with that was, when they came through the door minutes later, they were not in recess, but had adjourned. Now their minds were set on getting back to home bases, not on any further union hassles. It may have been somewhat discourteous not to make a concession for a visiting officer from the Gulf, but that wasn't bothering anyone very much, unless it was me. After introductions and short conversations-a somewhat longer one with MFPC President William Fischer-! went back to the hotel for a much needed bath and slumber. President Fischer had been open enough to let me

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know that rumors reaching the Gulf of a Bridges-Lundeberg factional feud had a foundation in fact. Each faction seemed to be claiming that the other was violating the principle that "an injury to one is an injury to all." All of our luck wasn't bad. We stayed over the weekend and had the luck to be able to attend meetings of the San Francisco branch of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, the San Francisco local of the ILA, and the San Francisco Bay Area Council of the MFPC on successive nights. Barney Mayes had edited the Voice of the Federation during the last six months of 1936. He had pursued an editorial policy that offended the Bridges faction and, as mentioned in Chapter 6, had been fired by the editorial board, despite being supported by the SUP and some others. That he had been fired at a time when MFPC unions were on strike might indicate the rancor that existed between the two dominant factions in the federation. Mayes had been employed since the firing by the California State Federation of Labor in their headquarters office in San Francisco. I looked him up. On the weekend he took me to a meeting of a Socialist group. "Socialist" is the name that I remember. I'd say now that they were probably Trotskyites, or leaned that way. That would partially account for the bitterness that surfaced against Mayes, for certainly the group around Bridges followed close to the Communist Party line of the time, and the name Trotsky was anathema to every Stalinist (although I still had that to learn at that time). The two persons that I remember best from the Socialist meeting were women, Norma Perry and Joan London. Perry was Harry Lundeberg's office secretary. There was speculation that she "did Harry's thinking for him." That I would doubt. I would doubt that either persons or events dictated Lundeberg's thinking, although I would agree that Perry kept him more alert to current events than he might have been without her. Joan London was the daughter of writer Jack London. Her biography of her father, Jack London and His Times, is a superior piece of work, in my opinion, and I'd recommend it to all and sundry interested in the man's career and the social mores of the period. I continue to think of Joan London as one of the finest persons I ever met. Jim O'Neil had replaced Mayes as editor of the Voice of the Federation. Although prejudiced in Mayes' favor, I found O'Neil to be quite an affable fellow. He invited me to continue to contribute my opinions to the paper. Henry Schmidt was president of the San Francisco longshoremen's local. He was in close collaboration with Bridges. Regardless

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of the animosity I harbored toward Bridges because of his political aims, which I considered to be not in the best interests oflabor, I had to admire the way that the San Francisco local ran its hiring hall. Their hiring system assured that all individuals on the "regular" board would stay very close together in earnings, without anybody being afforded opportunity to profit at the expense of another. After "regular" came the "permit" men, their number governed by a quota, that governed in tum by the volume of shipping. The San Francisco method of handling work permit men was targeted on sharing the extra work evenly among the extra hands. I was well and favorably impressed. President Schmidt took me on a walking tour of some of the docks. I was again favorably impressed by their working conditions. The following morning, a surprise. I bumped into Joe Curran on the street. He had come to the coast to seek advice and hopefully gain support for the Atlantic Coast rank and file movement. He was on his way to talk to Harry Lundeberg. Would I come along? I surely would. Walking toward SUP headquarters, Curran again told me that he was uneasy about some points in the program that the CP advocated. He was ready to listen to what Lundeberg might recommend for East Coast seamen. He was not ready to quarrel with the CP-ers who had helped his career, but would, if somebody could suggest better tactics for union building that he could understand. He was hoping that Harry Lundeberg would paint the picture, he said. We arrived at SUP headquarters, where Norma Perry ushered us into the executive secretary's austerely furnished office. No frills for this Harry. (Harry Bridges' office had a more "mahogany" look.) Lundeberg's hamper filled with indoor baseball bats grabbed my attention. It was said that Harry L. was the first to grab a bat and lead the way when any physical beef might develop on the waterfront. The two Harrys differed in appearance and mannerisms. Bridges wore a conventional business suit. Lundeberg wore sailors' dress, flannel shirt open at the collar. Bridges was less than average size. Lundeberg towered six feet and inches to spare, spare built but heavy muscled, and had the rugged facial features of the handsome Scandinavian. Bridges, also well muscled, but diminutive alongside Lundeberg, had sharp facial features with a prominent sharp nose. (Detractors referred to him often as "'Ooknose 'Arry.") Lundeberg's manner of speaking leaned toward the measured cadence of Scandinavia. Bridges' speech was incisive, staccato, with some of the Australian inflection coming through. And neither agreed with the other's program. Lundeberg greeted Curran and me cordially. (We New Orleans

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missionaries had attended the SUP meeting the night before.) Curran made his pitch. He was looking for allies, he said, and would most of all like an alliance with the SUP. He was becoming more and more convinced that the theory of "capturing" the ISU was not going to work to the greatest benefit for seamen. He believed that seamen should form a new union. Would the SUP support such a move? Instead of asking Curran what kind of support he expected, Lundeberg ripped into him about his Communist Party connections. He charged that the East Coast rank and file movement had followed a Communist Party line and charged Curran with encouraging it. Curran readily admitted to having worked with the CP faction, but pointed out that he had come west to try to win support for independent action and an independent union, a program in opposition to the Party line. Lundeberg was not influenced. Curran's previous collaboration made him suspect. Until he had purged himself of all that, the SUP would have none of him. Curran tried to reason with Lundeberg-and I supported him there-that the way to best the Commies was to have free speech all around and put up the better reasoning, or we come out looking like hypocrites ourselves. Yelling "Commie" or "Communist" would sound like the ISU officials. At that point I suggested, can't we just raise the issues involved and say what we think is right and wrong, without putting a label on it? Lundeberg wouldn't budge. Curran had tarred himself with the Commie brush. He had to wash that away before Lundeberg would touch him. Contending that conditions in our part of the world were decidedly different from those on the Pacific failed to shake the man. He would have no association with any outfit that, in his opinion, was dominated by the Communist Party. We tried to show him that he was putting the cart before the horse, that the prime question was not domination; it was organization, around what issues could a group of disorganized, misorganized workers be reorganized? Given organization based on free discussion of the issues, the rank and file would "dominate." No sale. The man wasn't buying our argument. He would view from afar. He wouldn't be a participant. Back on the street, I said, "Joe, would you wait for five minutes?'' He would. I went back to Lundeberg's office. "Harry," I begged, "reconsider. This man Curran is enormously popular among the seamen. No way you or I, or even the Communist Party, can stop him from being head of a new seamen's union if he wants the office. He claims to want to break away from some old as-

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sociations. Throw in with him, Harry. There's no way that what happens on the East Coast can jeopardize your union. If you get your hand in now, there's an awfully good chance that SUP policy could become the policy of the whole damned maritime movement. Can't you see it?" Harry Lundeberg would not budge. I rejoined Curran and told him, "No change." Curran had a date to see Harry Bridges. I did not accompany him on that one. A new seamen's union was formed, with Joe Curran its head officer, the National Maritime Union. Historians will agree with me, I think, that it followed closer to a "Bridges line" than a "Lundeberg line" during its first several years. If asked to guess at Harry Lundeberg's greatest idiosyncrasy, I would say: his obsession with fashioning chastity belts for his beloved SUP. About a decade later, Curran turned on his old CP comrades and drove many out of the industry. It has been charged that he manipulated the National Maritime Union (formed from the ashes of the ISU) to ends of his own enrichment. The charge is based in fact. The amount(s) could be in question. The Lundeberg incident was my last conversation ever with Joe Curran. I do not, of course, know what was truly on his mind then, before, or later. I have merely told here the conversations in which he and I figured in 1936 and 1937. Meanwhile, my black colleagues were reveling in the hospitality of the California city. They could take any empty seat on a streetcar or bus, no "Colored" or "Colored Only" signs. Take any available seat in a movie house, no climbing the stairs to "nigger heaven." Seat themselves anywhere in any restaurant, no seeking back door service. No hunting for the "Nigger Town" section of the city. San Francisco was a union-minded town, and nonracist. At the SUP meeting, when the New Orleans longshore problem hit the floor, there was a note of caution injected. What were the Pacific longshoremen going to do? I came away with the impression that the two warring factions in the MFPC were both going to try to twist any issue into a shape to make the other look bad. Next evening at the San Francisco longshoremen's meeting we found ourselves in a theater setting. We were seated on stage with local officers and dignitaries. Spencer, Smith, and I made our usual speeches, with Spencer admitting the helplessness of his group and making a strong plea for West Coast longshoremen to pull them out of a hole. We spoke into a microphone, a first time for all of us, I believe. District President Bridges was on stage with us. He took the floor as soon as we Gulf speakers had finished. His theme was a kind of reverse of what had been asked in the SUP meeting. Now the ques-

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tion was: what were the sailors going to do? It wasn't the greatest show of solidarity on earth. Still, not for us from the Gulf to judge, separated by great distance as our two coasts were, and standing hat in hand on their doorstep asking for help; but the finger-pointing and the insinuations were not in the finest tradition of worker solidarity. Bridges stung us a time or two with comparisons between West Coast accomplishments (principally longshoremen's) and Gulf Coast lack of accomplishment. It became evident when Bridges had finished that he did not have all San Francisco longshoremen in the palm of his hand. A fair number opposed the cautious approach. If the damned cargo on the ships was hot, they said, then tie the damned ships up until the New Orleans locals gave the word that they were back on the job. To these speakers, it was a simple issue, just one way to meet it, the direct way. They were disputed and, I'd say, confounded by other speakers supporting Bridges' stand-or his caution to take no stand. In the end the meeting acquiesced to Bridges and his supporters' advice not to pledge individual union action. Throw the problem to the Maritime Federation. My attention was especially drawn to one speaker for the minority opposition, not so much by his rhetoric as by his intensity. I was told that he was Henry Schrimpf, credited with outstanding performance in the 1934 strike. He didn't tarry after the meeting closed, so I missed meeting him. The MFPC Bay Area District Council meeting was a stormy one. When the New Orleans situation came under discussion, the air filled with charges and counter charges. Maybe insinuations would be a better word. It looked as if the New Orleans problems were reduced to a setting for each side to snipe at the other. The meeting offered a classic picture of what the Wobblies charged AFL councils with doing: they convened so that they could knife one another at close range. West Coast maritime unions had been through a long, tough strike. There could be valid reasons for hesitating to risk present resources in support of faraway workers. A federation leaves each member union autonomous. United action with other unions is a voluntary (or coerced) choice. It was my feeling that charges of violating labor solidarity came mostly from leaders feuding with leaders. My conversations with rank and file members indicated that they still held a great feeling of solidarity. Whatever the facts or the fancies, the Bay Area District Council adjourned without making any recommendation concerning the New Orleans problem.

Gilbert Mers, 1987.

The restored John Kane grave marker, February 1988; Gilbert Mers looking on. Photo by Harvey Breed.

Gilbert Mers in army uniform, pre-war 1941.

Taken shipside, Corpus Christi, ca. 1933. Left to right: unidentified worker; Jack Dupre (in background); El Brown (rolling cask); Gilbert Mers. The casks contain olives, probably incoming from Italy or Spain. Courtesy The Doc Fred K. McGregor Photo Collection of the Corpus Christi Museum.

A cotton gang from Houston, in Corpus Christi for the early cotton season, ca. 1927-1933. Left to right: Adair McGowen (leaning forward); unidentified; Archie McGowen; "Sun" McGowen; two unidentified (standing above hatch); "Warhorse" Burton (standing on bale); Cecil McGowen (on beam); unidentified with arm around shoulder of Ralph J. Landgrebe, Sr. Note community water bucket in right foreground and cargo hook at upper left. At lower left, the end of the deck stage, over which the loads of cotton were dragged, can be seen resting on the hatch coaming. Photo courtesy Ralph J. Landgrebe, Jr. "Sun" McGowen's name is short for "Sundown." Sun was anything but an overtime hog. He coined a classic saying: "No self-respecting working man was ever caught on the job after sundown."

SS Kofuku Maru (Japan) at Corpus Christi dock, 1931. Good view of wharf stages set for loading cotton, a load of which can be seen just clearing the second stage in view. In the far background, another ship with "outrigger" booms swung over the wharf can be seen. Courtesy The Doc Fred K. McGregor Photo Collection of the Corpus Christi Museum.

George Hartley, ILA Local 1224 business agent, 1966. Hartley had served Local 1224 as president thirty years earlier. Photo courtesy Mrs. George A. (Jackie) Hartley, George's widow.

Corpus Christi ILA Warehouse Workers "all dressed up" for the 1935 Labor Day parade. Courtesy The Doc Fred K. McGregor Photo Collection of the Corpus Christi Museum.

Edmund Wendel, left, and Everett Dickson repairing pallets, late 1960s. Dickson is mentioned in text. Wendel lived to be the last surviving charter member of ILA Local 1224. Photo courtesy Mrs. S. E. (Jewel) Dickson, widow of Everett Dickson.

Ollie Johnson, a longshoreman 32 years, still loads cotton, 1966. Johnson was a cottonheader, one of the men who unloaded the bales from the vehicles that delivered them to the port, then headed the bales in their proper locations in the sheds. Cottonheaders at work were a beautiful sight to watch: "poetry in motion." Ollie Johnson was a peerless performer. Photo courtesy Jackie Hartley.

ILA Local 1224 hiring hall, 1966. Doyle "Little Red" Butler, wearing hat, is seated at table facing camera. The man in skivvy shirt and cap, wearing glasses, is Mike Castillo. Photo courtesy Jackie Hartley.

Bill Follett, of Houston, working the early cotton season in Corpus Christi, takes a day off for fishing and hauls in a couple of prize-sized drum from Laguna Madre, ca. 1928. Photo courtesy Bill Follett.

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We Gulf emissaries had fired our best shots. We were out of ammunition. The New Orleans old locals were still out in the cold. Joe Spencer was sorely disappointed that Harry Bridges had not come to New Orleans' aid. There were some politics going on, said Spencer, that he didn't understand, but knew for sure that he didn't like. It was time to go home. My companions were so generous as to return by way of Bisbee and let me visit a few hours. I had a fine visit with my very best chum from boyhood days, Raymond Bigelow. A visit with Carl Hatcher, and his wife, Chloe, revealed that his father had died. Mrs. Hatcher, John, and the girls had moved to California. (Did I remember to say earlier that I was living with the C. E. Hatcher family at the time of the move to Texas?) The "front page" news was that Bisbee miners now had a union (Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers) that held a contract with the mining companies. From Bisbee, on to Galveston and the chore of moving back to Corpus Christi. Arthur Thomas had secured office space. The headquarters of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast was now New Orleans. A meeting of the West Gulf District Council passed a resolution calling on rank and file seamen on the Atlantic and Gulf to form an independent union. Japan was pushing its invasion of China and was posing a saberrattling posture to the world. And it was starting to buy huge amounts of scrap iron from sources in this country. Corpus Christi became one of the shipping points. The first gangs called to load scrap iron did not tum to, however. One of the men spoke his thoughts, "We're going to ship this stuff to them, and they shoot it back at us? I'm for not shipping it." So the men walked away. An appeal to the district ILA office to support a refusal to load the scrap, or at least to call a conference on the subject (which implied conferring with seagoing officers and men-horrors!) brought only a reminder that they had a labor contract. Honor it. After two days, the men went to work. I was still in Galveston. I was proud that the men in my home port had at least made the gesture. Scrap iron shipping to Japan became a booming business in the USA. Soon after, so did shipment of gasoline in steel drums. On May 1 the US Congress passed a neutrality act to prevent US involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Nineteen thirty-seven could be called the year of the sitdown. Sitdown strikes in the auto industry received the broadest publicity. There were sitdowns in scores of small industries and workplaces all around the country. There were occupations of public offices by un-

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employed groups. The sitdown was used aboard ship to win conditions the men had struck for in the 1936-1937 rank and file strike. When the occupation of the auto plants began, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made a public statement that the workers were morally justified in occupying the plants. They had a proprietary interest in them, she said. Unfortunately for "our side," she was soon made to realize that she had done the doctrine of private ownership a serious disservice, whereupon she dutifully decided that worker occupation of workplaces was not in the best interests of society. On Memorial Day, 1937, regular and special police fired into pickets massed in front of the Republic Steel plant in Chicago, to enact what labor and liberal circles would call "The Memorial Day Massacre." At least ten people died from gunshot wounds. How many were less than fatally wounded, I couldn't say. An open field adjoined the plant. As erstwhile pickets fled across that field, law and order had a "rabbit shoot." Newspaper accounts stated that some officers then walked through the open field and used their clubs on some of the wounded and on those braver souls who had paused to try to administer to the wounded. Turbulence in the turbulent years. It was about May that Atlantic Coast rank and file seamen began organizing what would be the National Maritime Union. Before that they had used the name Atlantic Seamen's Defense Committee. A call went out for a seamen's convention. That convention was held in New York City the last two weeks in July, and the National Maritime Union was officially christened. In a matter of months the NMU came to represent by far the majority of seamen on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Some remnants of the International Seamen's Union still held to contracts with a few steamship lines. The NMU affiliated with the CIO. The AFL made inconsistent efforts to maintain an AFL seamen's union. I was surprised at an NMU policy move that came almost immediately after the union's founding, a call for the members to behave "responsibly." I put the word in quotes because there were differences of opinion about how it should be defined. NMU officership called for a virtual halt to job actions. The decreed alternative: Bring your grievance to your port representative; don't be messing up your ship's sailing time with a sitdown. It was just what the old ISU would have ordered, we rebellious-minded ones complained. Another move that came as a shocking surprise was a sudden insistence that the strikebreakers in the '36- '37 strike be accepted into the union upon payment of only token fines. They were "misguided brothers," the NMU leaders said, who didn't understand the significance of what they had done, so should not be unduly pun-

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ished for that lack of understanding. Before the year was out the official union line was to accept them as members unconditionally. This newborn union, hardly out of swaddling clothes, was already striving to be known as a responsible union by Establishment standards, as I saw it. It wasn't the way that Joe Curran had talked to me on three occasions. I don't know how it was masterminded; but Joe articulated it. The Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast was foundering for lack of financial support. Reports to the March convention had assured us that the ex-strikers were getting back on the ships. We had anticipated solid financial support from them. Instead, word from Thomas was that he had been notified that each rank and file seamen's headquarters would contribute a token ten dollars per month "until they could stabilize" their movement. In late August I received a letter from Thomas saying that funds were exhausted and prospective income not enough for survival. He was shutting down the office, all "Qills paid, nothing owed anybody. Well, you can have a lot of afterthoughts. Those of us who had backed Thomas to become the federation's executive officer had banked heavily on his tremendous popularity among seamen, for starters. Given such an instance as he reported, rank and file groups failing or neglecting to collect an MFGC per capita tax, we pictured Thomas panhandling seamen ashore in New Orleans: "Your port committees aren't contributing. Lay it on me, some eating money, until we can get those gazoonies straightened out." Whether he did or didn't try that tack, I never learned. Moreover, it was common belief among our crowd that Thomas had a "pipeline" to Harry Lundeberg that would bring him an unofficial loan from SUP in a pinch. It failed to work out that way. The East and West Gulf District Councils soon dissolved, and the short-short history of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast was finished. We hadn't accomplished much that was visible to the naked eye. We had, though, popularized to a considerable extent the idea of respecting picket lines and acting in solidarity, and this would bear fruit. It is worth noting here that Texas longshoremen were not involved in another formal strike against their employers after the bitter 1935 struggle until after World War II. The companies were not that eager to test our muscle again. We were able to negotiate small pay raises annually and gained some betterment in working conditions. The fact that the NMU leadership was calling for the members to desist from job actions didn't deter those members from lending

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ready support to longshoremen in disputes over working conditions, disregarding the fact that longshoremen's support of their rank and file strike had been, at best, lukewarm. That is how working conditions are established, in the main, by action on the job. (It was some little while before NMU seamen were deterred from job actions for their own conditions, really.) So great credit must be given those Gulf seamen for bringing solidarity to the labor scene. After a time, longshoremen began to repay seamen with support when a ship's crew would have a beef. It has been said that every action is followed by a reaction, or something to that effect. The demise of the MFGC was the signal for the ILA to move against those who had defied ILA authority in support of the federation. My friend Bill Follett was singled out for persecution, within and outside of his local union. Ralph Landgrebe, in his second year as president of the local, was not attacked openly, only by innuendo, shots from the dark. I wondered sometimes if Ralph defended Bill as much as he could have. Well, I wasn't there, and no move to expel Bill from the union gained much headway, so I concluded that Ralph was furnishing Bill some protection. Down in Corpus Christi I was catching a certain amount of hell, but a sizable majority of the members were determined that nobody from outside was going to mess up any of our members. My influence was blunted considerably for a while, but my livelihood was never threatened. Immodestly, I think that those of us who labored (propagandized) in the federation cause share some credit for bringing about concern on the part of one segment of the work force for the problems of others. Damn! You like to take credit for having landed one solid blow in the course of a bout where you're in there gettin' the hell beat outtaya! I was into a period of personal reaction. Returning home full of enthusiasm for the hiring method that I had observed in San Francisco, I found my fellow workers not so much opposed as indisposed to expend the effort necessary to establish such a system. The same for the gang steward system that some of us proposed. It never caught on, and I couldn't understand why. The job steward in the building trades was an institution. Department stewards in plants and factories were certainly not unknown. Somehow, these Corpus Christi dockwallopers, more union-minded than some, failed to appreciate the advantage of it. You couldn't even get them to argue hotly about it. It was sort of a "Don't disturb me; I'm comfortable where I am" attitude. Inertia. It happens.

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With those defeats-or failure even to stir up a respectable fight, if you will-my ship of union enthusiasm sailed into the doldrums. The ding-a-lings could take their indifference and shove it. I was going to take a break from it all. I still believed that working people should band together, and that they could change the world if they'd ever get smart enough to do it and really mean it; but I had no compelling dedication to the cause. My withdrawal from the scene was hardly noticed, I'd say. Did I have second thoughts about not having stayed on as the executive officer of the MFGC? Yes, I had some. Did I think that I might have engineered the survival of the organization where Thomas had failed? It crossed my mind. But that wasn't how it had come out, so I was going to be selfish, look after my own interests for a while. Attempts to organize workers continued in almost every field nationwide. There was a great union success rate. Houston, a vigorous, growing city, was having labor spasms almost daily. I let it all go on without my attention, or pretty much so. I served on the finance committee of the local union, lent a small hand to help port maintenance employees form a local union, continued some inconsistent, spasmodic correspondence with some of the people I had met in MFGC comings and goings. That was that. In August the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union accepted a CIO charter. In October President Roosevelt made his "Chicago Speech." I listened on the radio. In one passage he proposed that peace-loving nations band together to "quarantine war." But there was an undertone that indicated, to my thinking, that the man who had said in August in his distinct, aristocratic enunciation, "Ah-h hate wah-h," was fixing to have the country fight one. As 1937 drew to a close, savage fighting was going on in Spain as General Franco's insurgents attacked the Loyalist government. Italy and Germany were furnishing troops and materiel to Franco's cause, testing the destructive power of their newest weapons and the effectiveness of projected military maneuvers. Russia was sending some supplies to the Loyalists, plus a number of military officers. The 70 percent of Americans who sympathized with the Loyalist cause were prevented from helping by the Neutrality Act passed in May. In Germany the refrain to a Nazi marching song went: "Today we own Germany, Tomorrow the whole world."

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In Russia the Communist Party was purging the Old Bolsheviks who questioned the Stalinist direction of the Party line. Time marched on, and the year was 1938. My wife worked in a downtown restaurant. There the operator of a local bingo club told her that the club was considering employing a husband-and-wife team in the operation. The pay was attractive. I went for it. The ship of union enthusiasm remained in the doldrums. In September I received a wire from Barney Mayes. He was traveling with a Sailors Union of the Pacific delegation to the convention of the America Federation of Labor in Houston, where Lundeberg was to be issued a charter for a new AFL seamen's union. Mayes asked me to meet the SUP delegation in Houston for a discussion. I drove to Houston and took a room at the Ben Milam Hotel. The SUP delegates were housed at the Texas State Hotel. High echelon AFL wheels stayed at the Rice. And thereby hangs a tale. Longshoreman Blackie Williams was acting business agent for Houston's union of cooks, waiters, and bartenders at that time. At that time most bar and restaurant union organizations were in working class areas, where union members and families patronized union establishments because of union loyalty. Well, Blackie reasoned that those high-ranking union officials ought to show a parallelloyalty, so he was making plans to put a picket line on the nonunion Rice Hotel come convention time. It threw Houston AFL heavyweights into a dither. By various approaches, some of them dishonorable, they hacked away at Blackie's base of support until they persuaded the local union not to undertake the move. Suppose that, at some time in our history, our AFL (and/or CIO) ranking officials had come into a convention city and stayed, the whole caboodle, individually, with individual union families in an available spare room rather than use a non-union hotel? Do you think that that would have given organized labor an ethical boost in the eyes of both organized and unorganized labor and the public generally? Speculate on that. So I met the SUP representatives at their hotel on the eve of the convention. Mildly skeptical at first, I was soon won over by the way they outlined their proposed campaign. They would "inherit" the East Coast seamen still under one or another AFL jurisdiction. They promised to make "Union Christians" of that element in short order. They would preach union solidarity, instill it into their new members, and practice it in action. They would assist the progressive members in the ILA in their program to make Joe Ryan clean up his act. Based on a premise that NMU officers who set union policy were

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hindering rather than encouraging the aspirations of their members, the new AFL union would prove to the world that a union could be organized that would, by a program of direct action, allow American seamen to realize their aspirations. Once the new union's programs were underway and working, then the NMU would have to come up with matching programs or almost surely witness a defection of its members to the AFL union. When the NMU had changed its course from hindering to helping its members' progress, then a merger of both unions into one great North American seamen's union could become reality. It sounded promising. For a long time I had wished to see SUP influence on the East Coast. Now it was coming. I could and would support it. On the second day of the convention Holt Ross latched onto me at breakfast time. "I was on my way to Lundeberg's room to talk to him. Now I'll talk to you. Lundeberg is going to receive his charter for a seamen's union. I know that you're here at his invitation. Well, listen. There's a campaign going on between the ILA and the ILWU in New Orleans, with an NLRB representation election less than two weeks away. Bridges is making a bid to establish his union in the Gulf. "With the AFL having just put a new Atlantic and Gulf seamen's union in the field, wouldn't it look like hell-wouldn't it be hell-if the CIO should take over longshoremen in the Gulf's principal port? It would make the road for Lundeberg's union twice as hard, if it didn't ruin his chances completely. "What I want you to do is organize a team of four besides yourself, four guys who are well known to be anti-Joe Ryan. Go into New Orleans. Let the four you choose make the hiring shape-ups. Tell the men that you are still anti-Ryan, but are even more anti-Bridges. If they vote ILA, the Texas guys can work with them to make the ILA better, but if they go ILWU, they'll isolate themselves from the rest of the longshoremen in the ports along the whole coast. "The AFL will pay transportation, subsistence, and wages. You pick the team. You'll be in charge. Your personal assignment will be to call on all the New Orleans contacts that you have and try to persuade them to support our side. Leave the shape-ups to the four. You devote your time to contacts. "Quite frankly, I'm scared. I'm not at all sure that we're winning this election. We need the help of you anti-Ryan guys, badly. Let's talk to Lundeberg." Ross put his proposal to Lundeberg and the SUP delegation. The decision was that I should form the team and get going. I left the conference, checked out of my hotel and headed for the

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ILA office on 75th Street. I was lucky to find President Ralph Landgrebe and member Bill Follett in the area. Both enlisted for the New Orleans campaign. I pointed the car toward Corpus Christi, where I recruited Clarence Vandever and Everett Dickson. By evening of the following day the five of us were in New Orleans and ready for our first briefing. Leo Carter had a two-room suite in the Roosevelt Hotel, one room serving as a conference room where the AFL-ILA campaign planning was done. Carter was a butcher workman by trade. He had risen in that union and had shown effective organizing skills. The AFL had borrowed him from the Meat Cutters for this waterfront campaign, as they had borrowed Holt Ross from the Hod Carriers. The entire campaign was under AFL auspices. Nobody of high rank in the ILA was taking any part. Joe Ryan's name caught some flak on occasion because of his nonparticipation in the port election. All the money being spent was coming from AFL organizing funds, we were told. The ILA wasn't putting up any. Holt Ross had come in from Houston. He was in charge of the New Orleans campaign. His instructions to the meeting were the same that he had outlined in Houston. He emphasized that the Texas gang was to have a free hand. There were some four hiring shape-ups on the New Orleans side and one in Gretna across the river, as I remember it now. Our men focused attention on the New Orleans side. Vandever's previous reconnaissance of the port paid off. He knew where the shapes were and what companies hired from each. The four fell into an early-tobed, early-to-rise routine. They'd get up about 4:30 each morning and prepare to hit the early shapes. They'd go again in the evening where men were shaping for night work. Evidence of a coming election was profuse. There were leaflets from both sides in every neighborhood where longshoremen gathered. Most ofthe ILWU leaflets were distributed by NMU sailors on the beach. There were a lot of volunteers working for both sides. We five Texans would hold a council around mid-morning when the four "riverfront agitators" had come in from the front. They reported rumors that the AFL side was using goon squad tactics. By the third morning they were convinced that the rumors were founded in fact. They instructed me to say to the AFL committee that we would not be a party to goon squad methods. Further, if the goons were not called off, we would call it off and go back to Texas. When I brought the message to the AFL committee, it seemed that all eyes turned toward Leo Carter. At first Leo said that we had been hearing wild tales. Our four men disputed him. They had bumped into seamen

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they knew from back in the ISU rank and file days, men they trusted. The reports were not wild rumors. Ralph Landgrebe did a good job of summing it up. "We know quite a few of these guys," he told the AFL people, "and while we don't like what they represent, we still know that they supported us when we needed it. They're not scabs. This is a difference of opinion to be settled by an election, right? We want the voters to have a free choice and choose us because we put up the best argument, not to be scared into it. Furthermore we have some reason to believe that this strong-arm stuff may be backfiring against our side." As president of the second largest ILA local in Texas, Ralph's opinion carried weight. At that point Carter made a slighting remark that put in question our organizing savvy and ability, and possibly, our dedication. Everett Dickson had a temper that was known to flare up on occasion. It flared now. He called Carter's hand. In a flash, the two were on their feet. George Googe had come to New Orleans at the close ofthe convention in Houston. His AFL title was Director of Organization for the South. He had not spoken up to that point. Now he did, sharply. "That'll be all of that. You two take your seats, shut up, and listen. Holt Ross enlisted this Texas delegation with my approval. They stay. At no time has the AFL approved or sanctioned violence in this campaign. Apparently some has been used. Until this came up I wouldn't have believed it. Leo, I want it stopped-now. If you can't pass the word that will stop it, I want an explanation of why you can't. Now let's get on with planning this campaign." That ended the beef squad activity. The last days of the campaign were free of physical violence by either side. A disgruntled Leo Carter told a Texas ILA meeting a while later that we Texans had worked for the CIO instead of the ILA in the election; but after World War II, some ten years later, he had words of praise for me, both "on stage" and off, as it were. How does the saying go? Time is a great healer? My renewal of old contacts was not producing any support for our side to brag about. I was finding the going surprisingly sticky in quarters where I hadn't expected it. I was cussing myself for not having insisted on a two-man interview team. At least, that would have meant that I had a witness to the failures. Bill Patton, the Wobbly, was lukewarm toward our effort. Jim Croney of ARTA was on our side, but his members were divided over the issue. Neither he nor his members were in a position to wield appreciable influence among longshoremen. Captain Forrest, the New Orleans MM&P agent, was with us, but Charles Vosburgh of

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MEBA favored the CIO. The AFL had taken too many ill-considered shots at the marine engineers. The old longshore locals were again working West Coast ships. A combination of pressures had brought this about. I had figured that Joe Spencer would still be harboring his disenchantment with Harry Bridges from the 1937 trip, but I anticipated wrongly. He was strongly ILWU-CIO. I had thought that S. Nathaniel Smith and I had exchanged enough confidences during our Gulf speaking tour that he would give me the real lowdown. Not so. Smith wasn't being any more specific than anybody else. I could think of a couple of reasons why Spencer might feel as he did, his long-festering animosity toward Joseph P. Ryan being the main one. I could speculate, but I never got to the bottom of it. Terence D'Arcy was pro-ILWU. Charlie Stein was actively working for the ILWU. So my old New Orleans contacts were panning out like zero minus. It goes without saying that I was not invited to speak to either local. The officers probably figured that they were being damned generous to give me the time that they did. The few AFL trade union officers that I had met in earlier days were supporting the AFL. They would have done that in any event. The turn-down that hurt most of all came from Arthur Thomas. By this time Thomas had become a patrolman for the New Orleans NMU. I met him at night at his apartment. I was sure that he would be glad to see SUP practices come into the Gulf. He would look at it as I did, a chance to unify the maritime labor movement on our side of the continent. Instead, Thomas was for the ILWU in the coming election and strongly opposed to the new AFL seamen's union. I reminded Thomas that he and Lundeberg had been close. Lundeberg had taken the wrong tack, Thomas insisted. "Being right in the past is worth nothing in the labor movement," said Arthur Thomas. "It's where you stand at present that counts." Lundeberg had turned the wrong way, which didn't exactly indicate praise for those of us who were following him now. The CIO brought up its heavy artillery. Harry Bridges was to speak in New Orleans' Coliseum, where wrestling and boxing matches were held. He would speak from the ring, preceded and introduced by a couple of CIO heavyweights (labor figures, not wrestlers). The big night arrived. We Texans walked to the meeting place early. The coliseum occupied most of one city block. We could see, along the sidewalk surrounding the square, a state trooper, then a city policeman, posted alternately at intervals of perhaps fifteen

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feet. The City of New Orleans might look the other way as unknown maritime workers got the hell beat out of them, but Bridges was a national figure. It wasn't going to be said that a national figure came into New Orleans to a public meeting and was physically abused while law enforcement looked the other way. At the nearest public entrance we had our first sight of gate tenders and ushers, each wearing a brassard lettered CIO PATROL. It was impressive. We were challenged at the gate as to the what and why of our intentions toward the meeting. Ralph Landgrebe had the faculty of being always ready for any situation like that one. "We came to hear Harry Bridges speak. That's what the advertising says. It says it's a public meeting. We're the public. It doesn't look like anything bad could happen, with all these cops and all you guys keeping order. Anyway, we don't go anywhere where we feel we couldn't take care of ourselves. On the other hand, we don't force ourselves in where we're not welcome. So if we're not welcome here, all you got to. do is say so and we'll go take in a movie." That melted the ice. "Oh, you're welcome," the CIO spokesman said. "It's just that some threats have been made-not by you guys, but by some you're associated with." He called an usher by name, "Come take these brothers and seat them." (So we were still "brothers," if warring brothers, maybe.) The usher seated us close to ringside. Ralph looked around a couple of times, then announced to our group that he preferred seats on the perimeter. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable on the top row of those bleachers back there," he said. Ralph had that gimpy leg from the 1934 shooting. I knew that he grew uncomfortable sitting for any long spell, so figured that the bleacher seat offered more freedom to move and stretch. That was not his only concern, it turned out. "Take a good look at where you are and where you just came from," says Ralph. "These CIO guys don't love us with any passion. That AFL beef of Leo Carter's probably likes us even less. If anything were to happen in or around that boxing ring, look where we'd be. I never did like being caught in the middle. I never could win in that situation. Suppose those two factions decided they hated us worse than they hate each other? And us in the middle. "From here, nothing behind us but a corridor. A short drop to the floor. I can do it on my game leg. And close to an exit and lots of law and order. I never believed in running to the cops, but in this case I'd do it, and I might beat the rest of you there. In fact, if anything does start in the arena, that's what we're going to do: get out and get to

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hell away from here, and read about it in the paper in the morning." Old Ralph! Only a slight acquaintance with physical fear, but not a stranger to reasonable caution either. There was no disturbance. No AFL campaigners outside of our crowd attended the meeting, as far as I know. Bridges delivered a good, solid trade union speech. I never heard the man speak enough times to qualify as a judge, ifl could qualify at all, but it remains my opinion that he was most effective when he would spear the opposition with sarcasm and ridicule. I believe that he delivered the mild speech that night on orders from someone high in the CIO. If so, that person made a mistake in keeping him under wraps. The affair attracted a huge audience, many of whom had left their seats and the arena before Bridges had finished. My guess: They had come looking for fireworks and didn't find any. The ILA won the port election by something like a two-to-one majority. So Holt Ross' fears of a possibly losing election were most likely groundless from the start. There is no reasonable assumption that the presence of five guys from Texas could have fashioned that kind of turnaround. The AFL people were elated. They were generous with their thanks and kind words to the Texas delegation. In the election's aftermath we received many unkind words from erstwhile allies who had chosen the CIO tack; in fact, unkind is a very mild description of some of it. In November, Red Dean, arriving to direct activity of the new Seafarers International Union in the Gulf, asked me to meet him in Houston. Red's first name slips my memory. He was always just "Red," red hair, husky physique, face bearing scars from a vicious dumping by Houston ISU goons during the late part of the rank and file strike, as memory serves. They really did a job on Red. He stayed hospitalized some weeks, head busted, features disfigured, ribs kicked in, internal injuries-well wrecked. If that dumping left any "rabbit" in him, I could never spot it. Red told me that Harry Lundeberg wanted me to be an organizer in the new set-up. I was to ride with him to Atlanta, Georgia, where we would confer with Holt Ross on coordinating SIU-AFL activity in the Gulf. We stopped overnight in New Orleans, where Red attended the AFL seamen's branch meeting and set those people on their new course. He wouldn't let me go to the meeting; said he wanted only bona fide seamen there. We met Holt Ross in Atlanta. He and Red worked out ground rules for cooperation between the new union and the parent body. Then Red told Ross that I was to be the SIU's first organizer in Gulf territory and asked him if he could wangle AFL

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organizer's credentials for me. Ross agreed to recommend the same to President Green. I was to be stationed in Houston. The move there was made. The organizer's credentials arrived. For the next six months, from late November 1938 until late May 1939, I operated in the Houston area as an AFL general organizer, my pay coming from the Sailors Union of the Pacific. That credential opened doors throughout the AFL structure. Even ILA District President Dwyer opened his-grudgingly. He did not embrace me, however. He and the secretary let me know that they would give our program as much support as the AFL might force International President Ryan to give. Solidarity forever! Checkered describes the pattern of events for the six months. The Houston NMU branch permitted me to speak to a membership meeting, where I delivered a written speech and left a copy with them, the theme being: no raiding, support each other's beefs, general improvement of American seamen's conditions, an eventual merger into one powerful union. Still, while they were amenable to allowing me to speak, there was that undercurrent of thought which reasoned that the AFL seamen would soon have been forced to come into the NMU anyhow. Consequently, there was a resentment against the SUP's Seafarers for having breathed new life into a corpse, as many of them saw it. This spilled over into what could have become a nasty confrontation when we set up our Houston SIU office, avoided through cool-headed intervention by the ILA in the person of their coastwise local's business agent, "Uncle" Tom Cochran. The coastwise local housed us rent-free in a large room abutting their hiring hall. There, under the wing of local longshoremen, even the most violence-prone among NMUers were constrained from venting their ill feelings. Prior to that, Ralph Landgrebe had intervened in one faceoffthat could have become warlike; and Bill Follett had maneuvered to defuse another potential one. All stories worth telling, but space doesn't allow for them here. Blackie Hobart had been brought in to be our Houston port agent. He was known among seamen as one of the old militants. I had been acquainted with Blackie for a few years. I was with him when the first ship with an AFL crew arrived__:after he assumed office, that is. We went aboard. Hobart made the customary or necessary requests, and a crew meeting materialized. He laid it on them right down the line what the SUP people had said the mission of the new union would be. I felt real proud about it. The Isthmian Line was then the largest unorganized steamship line flying the US flag, as my knowledge goes. I remember that many

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(most?) (all?) of their ships sailed "'round the world." We boarded the first two Isthmians that arrived. Blackie could hardly go to the skippers of those non-union vessels and arrange a crew meeting. We only agitated the best that our instincts directed. Unfortunately for our cause, we became well recognized on the second ship and thereafter were denied the right to board those ships by alert gangway guards. Outside of Isthmian there wasn't a whole lot of seamen's organizing in prospect. Up to that time not much organizing of inland boatmen had been done. The great bulk of tug and barge freight traffic via the intracoastal canal was to the east of us. I felt rather isolated and helpless in the immediate Houston environment. Our area fostered a lively shell dredging and processing industry. Two fleets of tugboats were employed towing barges from dredge to processing plant. The fly in the organizing ointment there: They had been through an organizing attempt and a losing strike. The tugboatmen employed at that time were scared to death of any form of organization. There was simply no way you could touch them. The few willing ones were outnumbered, forty to one, by men afraid of losing their jobs. A fleet of tugboats belonging to General American, an oil refining company, came into the SIU through the efforts of one of the captains-handed to me on a platter, as it were. That was truly the extent of my marine organizing, except for one or two individuals. I soon began to feel pretty useless. I asked Lundeberg to transfer me farther east, or for at least a transportation allowance to explore prospects to the east along the inland waterways. My salary was not stingy for the times, but came short of allowing for much travel. Red Dean endorsed my request, but Lundeberg sat silent on it. Well, my general organizer's credential covered the whole breadth of AFL jurisdictions, so, to be making myself more useful generally where something could be accomplished, I began offering my services to the field, sort of. There I was helpful to a number of projects, ifl am the one to say so. At that time Houston longshoremen, teamsters, and oil workers formed an informal, loose, but effective "triumvirate." Longshoremen, especially the ILA warehousemen, more commonly called carloaders locally, had given the Teamsters big boosts in organizing freight truck drivers. These carloaders, who loaded and unloaded trucks and railroad cars on the docks, had been tellingly persuasive in urging truck drivers to join the drivers' union. The various Teamster groups were into some sort of struggle almost daily. They were winning those struggles. The freight drivers had an enthusiastic

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core of black members. Bill Follett took some credit for that. He told me that, attending a public organizing rally put on by Teamsters, he noticed a group of black fellows on the fringe of the crowd. There came a timely recess. Bill steered a course into the middle of the group, introduced himself, and made them a pitch. They promptly selected one of their group to speak a few words from the speaker's stand, a happenstance more than welcome to the all-white sponsors. The outcome? They invited the blacks to name one of their group to the union's organizing committee, and things moved on from there. Thinking back to the many projects on which teamsters and longshoremen collaborated in the Houston vicinity in that day and time, I find my imagination wholly boggled by the news, not quite fifty years later, of union teamsters vying for contracts to do stevedoring at wages one-fourth and more below the ILA scale. What a decay the union movement has suffered! It would appear now that a settlement of differences between the two unions has been reached and that Team~ters will be in the business of driving trucks and longshoremen in the business of loading ships by the time you read this. However, given the rank opportunism that seems to govern union thinking today, I'd not guarantee anything. I'd not make book on it. Oil workers were striving to organize the refineries in the area. Now CIO, they were "the enemy" to the AFL's highest-ups, but not so on the local level. The loose threesome of refiners, teamsters, and longshoremen continued to perform favors for one another, favors extended to other segments of workers without fanfare on many occasions. A gentleman named Harold Rassmussen was organizing for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), CIO. I stuck a finger into all of these. SWOC conducted two well-publicized strikes against two can companies, American Can and Continental Can. Assisting in these various endeavors gave me the feeling that I was helping some workers to do better, even while failing among those I was supposed to be organizing. It salved my conscience somewhat. If AFL President Green had become aware of the time that I spent assisting CIO affiliates, he would have revoked that credential and have fired me summarily and without recourse, undoubtedly. For all that, there was much more cooperation and mutual assistance given by one group to the other in the Houston vicinity than the pronouncements of high-up officers indicated was tolerable. There were occasions when land-based unions were given time to the neglect of the marine field that was my primary assignment, if the truth must out. That fact would nag at me every now and then. I wasn't exactly a self-satisfied performer. A deeper hurt: my old Wobbly friends weren't being that friendly any more. Rather, they

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were looking at me like-to use an impeccable colloquialism-like a bull eyeing a misbegotten calf. I was surprised and dismayed. I had counted on their being in strong support of the SUP and Harry Lundeberg. Well, the Houston members were not in support. West Coast Wobs stayed supportive, as far as I ever learned. Not the Houston group. Then a personal problem compounded things. Wife Thelma had had her fill of it. She took off. Airing that domestic problem here would serve no good purpose that I can see. In late May, as heretofore indicated, I severed my connection with SIU. Back to Corpus Christi and the workaday world.

CHAPTERS

THE WAR YEARS AND UNION

GROWTH

I

N THE EARLY DAYS our Corpus Christi local had a "character," one Red Webb. Red was the workingman's iconoclast. He had a saying, "Never look back." One morning Red sat on his bunk in his rented cabin, placed the business end of a Colt .45 against his cranium, squeezed, and left his brains spattered against the wall behind. He must have stopped and looked back. We all look back at some time or other, I think. Looking back at SIU beginnings, I have mixed feelings. It seemed the right move at the time. I had great faith in Harry Lundeberg, in spite of his refusal to take any part in the NMU founding convention. The National Maritime Union was in turmoil, sometimes violent. I have already pointed out that it was fashionable in those times to paint everybody on your side as totally righteous and everybody on the opposing side as totally wicked, so I never learned and do not know the merits on either side of the infighting that took place. It was my opinion, and remains so, that NMU officers and their backers were maneuvering to bring their membership under officer control. In doing this, they were aiming at making the NMU a "responsible union" by employer definition, and so betraying the principle of rank and file control that had inspired the revolt against the International Seamen's Union. They were being irresponsible to the needs of the members. I envisioned an emerging Seafarers International Union, imbued with the SUP tradition of solidarity, direct action, and membership control, that would win the hearts and minds of American seamen, unify them under one banner, then become the standard-bearer for worker solidarity in the maritime industry the world over. Leave writing the history of the NMU and SIU to someone qualified. As this is written, almost fifty years after SIU's founding, sources that I consider impartial advise that both unions' members are supporting a well-entrenched officer structure and are not being asked for much input about how the union should be run. The world

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maritime industry has come upon economic hard times, with US flag shipping especially hard hit. Union membership is down. Members lucky enough to be working are not poorly paid, but wages, working conditions, manning scales, fringe benefits are all being hacked at by the operators. There is talk that the two unions may yet merge. Well, even if the merger dreamed about those forty-odd years ago should materialize, the ideal is long since shattered. Looking back at the broken dream, old Red Webb comes to mind. But I wouldn't do what Red did-because of a physical deficiency. I would lack the guts. Hardly six weeks after I had quit the SIU assignment, those finicky, fickle Wobblies had turned against the NMU and were backing the SIU. History buffs might wish to check on that. The time was the summer of 1939. Perhaps that was when the NMU purged "dual unionists," which meant that IWW members must forswear that union or get out of NMU. What I do remember, there were two attempts in the port of Corpus Christi to swing the crews of (two) Lykes coastwise ships from NMU to SIU. Actions elsewhere? I couldn't say. A Wobbly named Eddie Metrose was a leader in the Corpus Christi actions, having been in the crew of the first ship involved, as I remember it. On the first ship, most of the crew staged a sitdown, were fired, set up a picket line. The NMU sent replacements. The picket line remained. We longshoremen respected the picket line. The ship sailed without delivering or lifting cargo. The second action was in the pattern of the first, but the response was weaker. The NMU dissidents removed their picket line after a couple of days. Picket line removed, longshoremen worked the ship. Those actions had to have been taken more out of sentiment than hard sense. Realistically, chances of success were next to none. In this same time period the white longshoremen's local in Beaumont attempted to switch to a CIO affiliation. Net result: a reorganization of the local with ringleader CIO proponents left out. White fruit handlers in Galveston tried the same. A new ILA work force took over. There was a lot of political agitation going on in Houston then that could be described broadly as left of center. The United Front was big at the time. Meetings of these liberal-progressive-radical groups were in session somewhere in the city almost every night, and some days. Perhaps they represented the classical proletariatintellectual-petty bourgeoisie rapprochement, I don't know. It was in this setting that I met Kenyon Houchins and his sister Lonalee. Both are dead now. We became fast friends and remained so until

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death removed them from the scene. Ken was a Teamster member, delivering fresh eggs to retail outlets. They both studied and became lawyers in later years. Lonalee married a gentleman named Tasker and used that name professionally throughout her career. She headed the child support division of the Harris County district attorney's office for a long span of years. It was Ken Houchins who told me that I could better understand the maneuverings of the Communist Party USA if I would remember that the prime function of the Party was to further the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. I subscribe to that. What the Party's function may be today, I wouldn't know. I remember how it was then. In early June 1939 the US House of Representatives rejected the Townsend Plan for old-age pensions. In August the Stalin-Hitler pact was signed. It triggered a mass exodus from the CPUSA and the falling apart of many of the United Fronts. The Party line became pacifist: peace everywhere. On September 1 Germany invaded Poland from the west. England and France had mutual defense pacts with Poland. On September 3 they declared war on Germany. Russia invaded Poland from the east September 17. In early October Germany and Russia arrived at a partnership partition of that country, Stalin and Hitler still embracing a verbal rapport. On the Western Front, France was soon out of it, surrendering to Germany in June 1940. That's about the time that the Corpus Christi Teamsters asked me to act as their business agent in my spare time. The Teamsters were not doing well (else they'd have had a business agent). We began to do what we could. The Teamsters belonged to the local Building Trades Council. Leading the Plumbers' delegation was their business agent L. G. Wandless. The Hod Carriers and Common Laborers were in a negotiations deadlock with the building contractors. "The hod carriers and laborers have won a hundred strikes for the skilled crafts," Wandless told a council meeting. "The skilled crafts still have their first to win for the laborers." It caught on. The laborers struck. No skilled craftsman crossed their picket lines at any jobsite in the city. The skilled had won one for the unskilled. We Teamsters gained a member here and there. The backbone of our local was actually a group of independent dump truck operators favored by the directors of various public works programs. Taxicab drivers began to join. So did drivers employed by building contractors. With building materials suppliers it was a different story, though. Those employers opposed us with vigor. The freight lines were not loving us. It was a slow go.

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The Corpus Christi Naval Air Training Station was under construction, a part of the government's defense program, a big project. Some forty cement mixer trucks were employed. Encouraged by union building tradesmen working on the project, we decided to make a bid to unionize the mixer drivers. A Commander Mueller was Navy labor liaison officer for the base. For all practical purposes, he was the negotiator for the contractors. He was not opposed to seeing the mixer drivers organized. (The government encouraged unionization, after all.) But he wouldn't give me or any Teamster representative a pass to enter the base. "I'm not going to organize your union for you," he said. Issuing the pass would hardly have been organizing the union for us, although it would have assisted, surely. Denying the pass impeded organizing, sure as the devil. However, he was issuing the orders. We were stuck with them. Organizing naval base drivers became a one-by-one endeavor, then, the same as elsewhere. With "jawbone" support by union workers where the drivers delivered their loads, some prodding by union representatives who were allowed on the base, talking to individuals at their homes, we began to gain converts, until all the mixer drivers had signed up. The naval base mixer drivers joined the union in a body early in 1941. Commander Mueller played coy about recognition and negotiation. The mixer men elected their own negotiating committee. We notified the commander in writing over their signatures that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represented them, and wished to be recognized by contract. Mueller stalled. Meanwhile, I was stalling a growing resolution on the part of the men to strike the job before we had firm commitments from the building trades to respect our picket lines. Wandless was open in his support, declaring that his men would not cross a drivers' picket line. We didn't have that strong a commitment from the other trades, though. The pipe trades and the drivers could have paralyzed construction for a time. It was not the most prudent thing to cut it that thin, however. Go for full solidarity if it could be attained. At that propitious time, shortly after America's first peacetime draft had been installed in September, I received my "invitation" from Uncle Sam to join his armed forces. Whose side was Selective Service on, anyway? I sure hated to leave without seeing those mixer drivers rewarded with recognition and a contract. In those Houston left-of-center political confabulations the imminence of US participation in the hostilities engulfing Europe and parts of Asia and Africa had been mulled over and kicked around many times.

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What to do when the time would come? Well, the German and Japanese drives for conquest were indisputably, unconscionably evil. Without any great hypocrisy, a man could say that he was opposing the greater evil, assuming that the United States would oppose the Axis powers. I had decided to answer the call. A salute here though, to those real heroes who, as a matter of conscience, objected to taking, and refused to take, human life. Commander Mueller's dilly-dallying was steering us toward the slow, tedious alternative of applying for an NLRB election and certification of our drivers to bargain for themselves. Then a message from the commander: He would see me in his office at a certain time and date. Would you like to know the date? The day before I was to report for induction. I wouldn't say that he set that date just to gloat, but one can feel that way. I dutifully drove to the naval base, presented the commander's letter to the gate guard, was escorted to his office. He was affable, but still unready to recognize our drivers for negotiations. Nor was he going to argue with me on my last day as a civilian, he told me. I got a little hot. The commander stayed cool. There was no meeting of the minds. The drivers were granted a pay raise soon after, but I think they never did achieve union recognition. Pshaw! The military career lasted from late March 1941 until late November 1945. Our Corpus Christi contingent of draftees was sent to Dodd Field, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, for rookie training, where regular army noncoms toiled and sweated to teach us to distinguish the right foot from the left foot. In the early part of training, a platoon or two at a time would be marched to a spot on the parade ground where we would stand at attention, parade rest, or at easethe option ofthe one in charge-while a member of the military, either a commissioned or a noncommissioned officer, delivered a short lecture concerning our state of being. Usually the lectures touched variations of a central theme: what an incalculable burden we slewfoots were putting on the military establishment generally and the officers and noncoms of Dodd Field particularly, as they tried to make us into something remotely resembling soldiers. None ever offered a solution to the problem, like sending us home, though. One of those lectures sticks with me. It differed from the general run. This cocky, belligerent sergeant addressed us something like this: "We're preparing you jokers to fight a war. Yes, the country is going to war, and you're going to fight it. War ain't pretty. War is mass murder. You mama's boys are going to learn to be killers. That's what you'll be when we get through with you, specialists in mass murder. So get your sights set right. Make up your minds to

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learn what you're taught." I hated that cocky jackass's guts at that moment, but, before the war was over, although I didn't love him, I agreed that he had been the one to tell it like it was. One day rookie training was abruptly interrupted. One hundred seventeen of us were placed together and told that we were about to receive intensive training to become military police. Police!! Ah, yes, the military seldom asks you, it mostly tells you what you'll be and do. We entered a brief spell of training for that service. In due course we were delivered by army trucks to Camp Bowie, outside Brownwood, Texas, to become members of the 208th Military Police Company, attached to Headquarters, Eighth Army Corps. A word about the 208th: As army units go-or went at that time-I rate the 208th an unusually fine body of men. With the rarest exceptions, they were neither gung-ho nor foul-up. They performed their assigned duties without abusing their authority at the same time that they exercised it with judgment. The same can't be said for every outfit. A goodly number of our men went into other outfits or branches of service as time went on, some to become officers. A cluster of us, as many as can be reached and can reach our meeting place in tum, hold a reunion in Houston on occasion, as often as biennially in late years. Training continued in the new milieu, of course. We served whatever duty we were assigned: security of Corps Headquarters, some traffic control, a minor amount of police work in Brownwood, called "provost duty." We had participated in army maneuvers in Louisiana, returned to camp, then loaded our gear again to go on maneuvers in South Carolina, and had again returned to camp on the first Friday in December, to hear the broadcasts of the Pearl Harbor attack on Sunday. We were at war. Little changed for the 208th in 1942. We performed the same domestic duties, went on Louisiana maneuvers again. The one great sentimental memory of those 1942 Louisiana maneuvers occurred when Carl Mehner, working in the company orderly room, wangled the two of us a three-day pass to New Orleans! The greatest thing for me was batting the breeze with old union friends again. Organized labor, with the exception of only one or two unions, had signed a wartime no-strike pledge. I'll never forget how Charles Vosburgh, still business agent of the marine engineers, sat and told us about its practical application. "We approach our employers about bettering a condition or rectifying a wrong, and their attitude is one of simply don't give a damn. All we get from them is, 'You can't strike, you know. What are you

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going to do about it?' And they snicker in our faces. I thought the pledge was the patriotic thing to do. Our members felt that way. But this patriotism is all one-sided. It works out, everything for the employer and nothing for us." It was an experience to listen to Vosburgh, a most conservative and temperate, even cautious type, vent his anger at the system. Vosburgh, with all his conservatism, was a thoroughly honest person. What was going on was not honest, and Charlie Vosburgh was incensed over it. Also of interest to maritime workers, I learned that the Seafarers International Union, resisting government pressure, refused to change a practice that prohibited mixing Negroes and whites in the same department aboard ship. (The practical effect of this was that Negroes were confined to the steward's department.) It was not until 1945, when the Fair Employment Practices Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, that the SIU backed away from that stand. That was not exactly the way that I had visualized it would be when the SIU charter was granted back in 1938. As for the NMU, that union never practiced racial discrimination, that I know of. Shipping orders for the 208th came in February 1943. We boarded a passenger train that took us to Camp Stoneman, California, a staging area for overseas embarkation. After the usual processing we boarded a troop transport, the USS Republic (confiscated from Germany in World War 1), which deposited us in Noumea, New Caledonia, in the month of March. In Noumea we were assigned security duty on the Army Docks. By then I was a platoon sergeant (the third platoon). There I bumped into Charlie Borison from Corpus Christi and Sam Betts from Houston, civilian employees of the Army Transport Service. Sam was stevedore superintendent on the night shift. Charlie was an assistant. With their influence, they wangled me a transfer to the port operation. I transferred into Port Headquarters Company, assigned duty the equivalent of a walking foreman in civilian operations. So what do I tell? One incident: I was on the night shift. One night on a Liberty ship the gang in Number 2 hatch, from an all-black quartermaster outfit, wasn't producing enough to sneeze at. They were discharging cargo from ship to dock. I got after the sergeant in charge. They felt that they had been unfairly ordered into this assignment, he said. Neither threats nor begging could move them. I walked away scratching my head. An idea came. It was near night suppertime. I went back to the sergeant.

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"Sergeant, when you come back from night lunch, tell your hold men to go down the ladder, but don't turn to. Find a comfortable place on the cargo or wherever, and wait for me." Supper over, I saw the rest of the ship resume work. After things were moving, I went to Number 2. The work was in the 'tween deck. I dropped down the ladder and began speaking, turning to first one man and then another. I'll not unload the whole frazzlin' speech on you. In part: "Maybe you feel that you don't really have any stake in this damned war. I can see how you would. I'm from Texas. I know how people of your race are mistreated. I know I'm partly guilty, just by the fact of being white. But I'd like for you to believe that I have never laid a hand intending harm on any colored person. I do this work for a living in civilian life, where we divide the work between white and colored longshoremen. There we belong to the same union ... "Anyway, I think that things are gradually improving for colored people. Maybe that's not what's bothering you right now. But I know that it does bother you. Let me ask you to think about it this way. However bad it is in the USA, it beats being out here on a strange island in the middle of the ocean. Just one day sooner getting this war over with and getting home is worth working for ... Maybe I've said something right; maybe I haven't. I'll not say another word. You choose any pace that suits you. It's in your hands. Thanks for listening." I shinned up that ladder before anybody could say a word back, went to the aft end of the ship and stayed out of sight for a full twenty minutes. When I eased back forward to sneak a peek at Number 2, cargo was fairly flying out of that hatch. I approached the gang sergeant again. "Sergeant, slow your men down. I wanted more than they were doing, but this is ridiculous. They're making it a racetrack." "They're working the way they want to work," he answered. I climbed into the 'tween deck the second time. "Hey, fellas, I didn't mean you could win the war tonight and go home in the morning. Slow it down." "It's all right, Sarge. You treat us like men, we treat you the same. We know what we doin'." "All right, I surrender. But don't rush so much that somebody gets hurt." "You don't worry about us, Sarge. Worry about the rest of the ship." So-who exploits labor? A lot could be said about New Caledonia and the people there, but our space is not limitless. Time marched on. One day I was relieved

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of duty and assigned to a cadre "going north." On the day before Christmas, 1943, from the deck of an LST (landing ship, tank), I watched the mountains of New Caledonia fade in the distance. In Noumea the army operation was shutting down for Christmas Day. Our section of Port Headquarters Company had planned a boisterous day. Now I wouldn't be there. War is hell. The LST delivered us and equipment to Bougainville, northernmost of the Solomon Islands. We had paused briefly at some beautiful islands in between. On Bougainville I was in the port section of a service command group. A Seabee stevedore battalion discharged cargo from ships in the stream (offshore) into LCT's (landing craft, tank) mostly, and some into amphibious vehicles. Army labor unloaded the LCT's on the beach. The beachhead had already been secured by US forces. After our arrival, Japanese forces back in the hills, cut off from supplies by US naval action, made a suicide attack on American lines, to be slaughtered by our forces. The Japanese airforce had been almost eliminated from the Solomons by the time our Service Command reached Bougainville. One or two planes came over us at night, dropping nothing heavier than anti-personnel bombs, as far as I could learn. The alert would come ahead of the planes. The sirens would wail. We'd bounce from our cots and take cover. Searchlights would probe the skies. When these beamed on an enemy plane, the chunk-chunk of the anti-aircraft batteries would be heard. There was only one death in our company from enemy attack, but for several weeks "Washing Machine Charlie" would visit us almost nightly once or twice a night. The appellation was hung on that aircraft by some imaginative GI because of its engine sound. That particular type of plane's engine really did sound very much like the sound made by standard automatic washing machines of that time. Charlie's raids weren't anywhere near as unsettling as being under a severe and sustained attack, but they robbed us all of sleep and made duties considerably more arduous. They interrupted the night · beach operation, to be sure, and all supply operations functioning at night. There was no nightly blackout, lights on until an alert would sound. Then lights out, to be turned on again when "all clear" sounded. I came in greater danger from our own equipment. Once, when landing an auxiliary ramp to supplement an LCT's own ramp, the crane boom buckled just about its middle as I made my grab to release its wire bridles from the hook. The top of the boom, sheaves, blocks, and all, came to rest in the middle of our ramp. Such a buckling of a boom will happen less than once in a million times. It hap-

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pened then. Some part of it-I'll never be sure just what-grazed the back of my head in passing. Eyewitnesses told me later that I straightened erect almost to "attention," then crumpled. In collapsing, I stuck my face into that boom. The face was a bloody mess, and the head had a concussion, so the next four or five days were spent in a field hospital. Much could be said about Bougainville and people met there. Again, space is limited. I was awarded the bronze star medal for "meritorious achievement"-for working hell out of those unlucky soldiers sent to us for working parties, mostly. To be brutally honest, earning the medal was something like having the right people in the grandstand when you make a play on the field. So our commanding officer was a discerning person, huh? But I have to say that I was proud of it. And am. It doesn't rank high on the medals' scale, but not many medals were awarded the Army Transportation Corps, either. In early June 1944 a friend sent a clipping from the Corpus Christi Caller. Bob McCracken, the assistant editor, wrote a column he called "The Crow's Nest." He called himself"The Lookout." Local building crafts were striking. They were being bashful with the press, not giving out any clear statements on the issues involved. McCracken was impatient with it. He wrote: "The Lookout, in behalfofthe local press, has a beef, too. Very seldom, since the days when Gilbert Mers was about the only organized labor spokesman operating in Corpus Christi, has a local union been ready and willing, the same day a strike is called, to state labor's case. And, often as not, and with increasing frequency, the spokesman for management refuses to say anything at all. "Yet any labor controversy that results in a strike or walkout, regardless of what else it may be called, is deserving of public notice, and will get it. No strike is a private affair." A little ego balm, there in the jungle, and welcome. Openings for Transportation Corps Officer Candidate School were announced. I put in and was accepted, soon was stateside bound, with a stopover on Guadalcanal, and saw more interesting people there. On to San Francisco and more things of interest. A brief furlough home, and so to OCS, on Lake Ponchartrain, outside New Orleans, where I survived the 120-day ordeal, graduated, and received my little ol' second lieutenant's bar in January 1945. Duty assignment, New York Port of Embarkation. We are speaking frankly, aren't we? Frankly, the OCS chapter is one I'd wipe out if it could be done over. I've wished I'd stayed as I

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was. I think I'd have been ordered to go to Japan. Looking back, OCS was a bit like deserting. Easy to say, you say? Yes, it's easy to say. In New York I was assigned first to Brooklyn Army Base, later to Caven Point on the New Jersey side, fighting the "Battle of the Subways" through it all, for we lived out of quarters in civilian housing. The secret of where the army had kept all of its superior stevedore officers was revealed. They were in the Port of New York, most commissioned directly from their civilian jobs. What their collective brains didn't know about waterborne commerce hadn't been discovered yet. I was overawed. Pertinent to the labor theme, the New York ILA rank and file revolted and engaged in an outlaw strike while I was on the Jersey side. New York longshoremen had not been on strike in twentythree years, one Sunday newspaper stated, as it congratulated ILA President Joe Ryan editorially for his labor statesmanship. The contract that Ryan had just signed at the end of September 1945, without membership ratification, proved unsatisfactory. On Monday following, gangs walked off a ship at a Manhattan pier, triggering a walkout that spread over the whole harbor. The strike lasted roughly three weeks, during which time Ryan and conservatives cried "Foul" and "Communist" and "Un-American," and during which a certain amount of folderol entered the picture. A bit of a surprise to me: the majority of the pickets with whom I spoke at Caven Point were angry about the terms of the contract, but not angry at Joe Ryan. "Good old Joe, he just doesn't understand," they would say. The strike ended with a statement by the employers that they would renegotiate. Secretary of Labor Lewis B. Schwellenbach appointed one W. H. Davis to arbitrate the labor dispute. That was the first of November. It was about the first of1946 when Davis' ruling, to be known as "the Davis Award," was announced. It provided a wage increase and other gains and produced a ripple effect that benefitted longshoremen all the way to us in Texas. Germany had surrendered in May, Japan in August. The United States began to reduce the size of its armed forces. By late November I had my release from service and was on the way to Texas with a few days' terminal leave and a pregnant wife. Elmerita Hunley and I had married following OCS graduation. We arrived in Corpus Christi to find shipping activity next to none at all. All but a fraction of the port's space had been turned into a Navy warehouse facility in wartime and was still being so used. I set my sights on Houston, began working there in early January 1946,

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stayed there three years, then spent eight years in Corpus Christi, after which I returned to Houston and finished my working career there, retiring in 1971. During that time two sons were born: Michael, in Houston in 1946, and Kenneth, in Corpus Christi in 1948. Some years later, that marriage went sour. We couldn't agree on a definition of union activity, among other differences. After a year's separation and no reconciliation, we divorced. A while later I married again-the "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" syndrome, I guess. Pauline Coward was a sweet lady, but that marriage soured in the early 1960s, in Houston. In 1966 Sally Jo Follmar and I were married. Both of us in the "mature" years ("September Song"), neither of us expecting too much, we found a lot. The odds on this one lasting the course are positive. Sally has a daughter here in Texas; my two sons are in Michigan; two grandchildren in Texas, two in Michigan. Let that suffice for the purely personal part. All right? As I recall, the first fingerlift-or forklift truck, if you prefercame to use on the Corpus Christi waterfront in 1939. There was one, and only that one, for quite a spell. There was a clause in the labor agreement that said, when any new method of stevedoring might be introduced, either party to the contract could call for reopening said contract. The first time I saw that dratted machine I began hollering for our local to prevail upon our district officers to exercise the reopening clause. The response was less than enthusiastic. "One fool machine shows up, and he wants to start a revolution over it," one wag expressed himself. After these years, I think it would be generally agreed that the party poking fun spoke uncannily precisely when he used the word "revolution." The fingerlift was the forerunner of an industrial revolution in stevedoring. None of us, certainly not I, had in mind even a vague picture of the extent to which mechanization, automation, and containerization would revolutionize our industry. We should have begun negotiating the future then and there. Instead, we waited for years, until the revolution in cargo handling had engulfed us. Somebody has said that progress is always out ahead of politics. So it has been with labor. The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union and its employers, the Pacific Coast Maritime Association, began operating under a "Mechanization and Modernization" labor agreement in 1961. They issued a book describing the new work methods called Men and Machines. It contained many photographs and a text by Louis Goldblatt. In one paragraph he states the traditional function of the trade union so literally that, if it isn't perfect, it will do

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until perfection takes over. It deserves to be engraved in stone. He writes: "Much of trade union organization is primarily defensive. This is the origin of unionism, developed under the force of circumstances: the employer acts and the union reacts. In the main, unions are geared to remedy past grievances and to take care of present problems. They rarely prepare to meet the future-let alone anticipate it. There is always the temptation to drift, hoping for the best and meeting problems as they arise." It might be added that unions, in the main, when they have addressed the problem of the machine in the workplace, have acted in a manner that only intensifies an evil inherent in capitalism: They have negotiated a higher wage for the machine operator than other workers receive, thus compounding the evil that the person doing the easiest or least work receives the highest reward. During the war the military introduced the fingerlift and some related machines to great numbers of servicemen and women. Industrial plants and warehouses began employing these cargo movers. They were not a strange contrivance any longer. They had not come to the Houston waterfront in great numbers in 1946, but the number was growing. I'm screaming to the Houston crowd about how I'd tried to draw attention to these machines before the war-and nobody listened. So we had better get together and do something now. And nobody much listened in 1946. Shipbuilding was winding down. Longshoremen who had worked in the shipyards through the war were returning to the waterfront. The year 1945 had seen a steadily increasing commercial use of Houston docks, the docks that had been idled during the early part of the war. The union members present at the time had felt that more members were necessary, so had accepted some seventy-odd workers into membership, some of whom had not worked long years on the docks. This was an affront to some of the returning ex-shipbuilding oldtimers. They tended to look on the "45's," as the new members came to be called, as interlopers who had slipped into the local while they were away building ships and their sons were away fighting a war. The outcome was a motion in meeting, which carried, providing that all members' sons still in military service should automatically become members of the local upon discharge from service, provided each made application to join within a set time limit. It was not the best thing for the union nor the industry, in my candid opinion. It made it possible for a number of youngsters to acquire all the benefits accruing to union membership without ever having served even

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a token apprenticeship. It points up what has been said before about unions coping with the capitalist system by excluding from membership those who might make job competition acute. In this case the father wanted to pass what he considered his property interest in the union on to his son ahead of outside competition. It served to remind me of what I'd seen in Corpus Christi. From time to time the members would decide that the local could stand a few more members. They'd take in a handful, then close the books. Would you believe that a new member, sworn in only last night, who had been arguing long and loud that the union was discriminating against him and other qualified men, would say, "We need to close the books. We got too many members now!"? Believe it. Houston Local1273 accepted me as a member in March 1946. Our president, Dave McGovern, resigned his office in May. Ralph Landgrebe was elected to fill the unexpired term, the office he had held in those turbulent thirties. He was reelected in December to serve for the year 194 7. The spirit of union solidarity that had bloomed in the late 1930s was alive and well. In 1947 telephone workers conducted the first nation-wide strike ever against the Bell System. There had been a company union in Bell. The employees had requested better conditions of employment through their company representation plan. The company had refused the requests, whereupon the company union rebelled and struck, a rare occurrence on the American labor scene. That was certainly not the way the company's scenario had been written. The strike was a success for the workers. The Bell System union evolved into a regular trade union and became the Communications Workers of America. In Houston one of the strikers was a niece of Bill Follett's. The local strike force had next to none among its numbers who had ever participated in or been associated with a strike. There was indecision about a course to take, about the mechanics of conducting a strike. Well, the niece knew that Uncle Bill had been involved in a number of strikes in rather prominent roles. Moreover, the longshoremen had a reputation of being a formidable strike force. So she approached Bill for advice and help. Bill told the young lady to ask the phone workers' leaders to invite a committee of longshoremen to advise with them. This was done. A half-dozen of us Local 1273 members accompanied President Landgrebe and Bill to a session with the telephone workers' strike committee. That session brought invitations for one or more of us to speak to meetings of the strikers. They had organized their strike activity into sections centered around the several exchanges in the

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city, an effective measure taken instinctively that strike experience couldn't have improved on. We were able to assist them with practical suggestions having to do with arranging picket shifts, strike relief, and publicity. Public opinion was favorable to the strikers and the labor movement was supportive. Let me say here, if I've made it seem that we ILA members were the only ones active in their strike, I apologize. The strikers had advice and assistance from many union sources. We were first on the scene. We recommended organization and tactics that had worked for us-and worked for them, as it turned out. The telephone workers showed considerable resourcefulness among themselves. It was decided to hold a mass meeting to rally public support for the strike. The place was Houston's Music Hall, probably the most prestigious public gathering place in the city at that time. Rental was financed by popular subscription. Speakers were invited from the AFL, CIO, and ~ailroad Brotherhoods. Three prominent public figures sympathetic to the strike also spoke. Those good, staid, conservative officers of the AFL, although urging their memberships to support the strike, couldn't make up their minds whether to "officially" endorse a strike by a group not affiliated with anything. Well, trust Ralph Landgrebe to step into the breach in a case like that one. He talked the strike committee into inviting me, billed as "representing the rank and file of the American Federation of Labor." The meeting was a huge success. It built up a tremendous public support for the strikers. Houston newspapers gave the meeting and the speakers good write-ups in the next day's editions. I personally felt that an attorney for the Railroad Brotherhoods made the best speech of the evening. I think the reporters and editors seized on the chance given them to throw a veiled barb or two at those ultraconservative AFL union leaders. My friend Bob Oliver, who had become a CIO field representative, spoke for the CIO. He made a straight-out recruitment speech! I was miffed. Damn! The thing now was to see that the strike would be won. The question of affiliation could, should be taken up later, as I saw it. But when I jumped Bob out about it after the meeting he was in no degree apologetic. He wanted 'em in the CIO. He had let 'em know he wanted 'em in the CIO. That was his mission, So, another of our old rebel group had become a practical labor statesman. I couldn't decree that his behavior was wrong, but I felt that it was. The telephone workers formed a national union and affiliated with the CIO. The City of Houston's service and maintenance workers also struck

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in 1947. In this one the labor council took a stand, a very progressive stand. (The strikers were represented by AFL affiliates.) The labor council called a special session out of which came a call for a labor holiday in Houston, with members of organized labor to mass at City Hall on the morning of the holiday. The call for the work stoppage was jumped up in a hurry, with short notice to the affiliated unions. Maybe that's the best way to do it, spur of the moment. We longshoremen gathered at the hiring hall as usual that morning. President Landgrebe summoned us all on the outside where he could address the entire labor force, union members and outsiders. Good unionism called for us to take the day off and join the demonstration at the city hall, he told us. There was some opposition from conservative members: honor the labor contract, that sort of thing; but preponderant sentiment to join the demonstration soon showed itself. (The outsiders appeared to be all for it.) The waterfront shut down for the day. The labor council had requested bus drivers to continue working, so that the demonstrators could get to and from downtown. There were no taxicabs on the streets. Did I say it before? For a good many years the cab drivers were among the most militant union men in the city-cab drivers and ice handlers. Progess, in the form of automatic icemaking units, was soon to thin the ranks of the ice handlers. We combined to make an impressive crowd at City Hall, we unionists taking the day off. As best I remember, the AFL skates had not invited the CIO, but there were a lot of CIO people there, just the same. Restaurant workers were asked to remain at work. We labor demonstrators streamed into the city hall area from all directions. Shortly after 10:00 prominent labor officials began making speeches to the crowd, partly just to hold the crowd's attention. Members of a crowd can become mischievous if their minds go wandering. From time to time a speaker would exhort us to shout our enthusiasm, and we would roar it out. Somewhere around 11:30 an announcement came that the city manager, mayor, and a committee of city council members empowered to negotiate would meet with an AFL committee. The labor bigwigs who had been speechmaking elected a committee from among themselves, took a couple of strikers' representatives, and entered City Hall. It wasn't very long until they came outside again and announced that an agreement had been reached which the officers of the striking city employees would recommend that the strikers accept. We dispersed, feeling pretty good about ourselves. The strikers accepted the committee's proposed settlement, overriding subdued rumblings that the committee had been "soft" on a point or two that the strikers

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would not have yielded on. Anyhow, the settlement served to lay a base for permanent organization of the city's service workers. While the phone workers' strike was in progress the event that we in these parts still call "the Texas City Disaster" occurred. There were two explosions: first, the French ship, the Grandcamp; then the US ship, the High Flyer. Both carried part cargoes of ammonium nitrate, the substance that exploded, authorities determined. Both had lifted that commodity in Houston. Deaths were in the hundreds, injuries in the thousands, property damage in the millions. Members of organized labor all over the surrounding Galveston-Houston area volunteered and distinguished themselves by the competence with which they performed the task of clearing away the debris (and removing the dead). This is not to downplay the part of any volunteer, but is a salute to the unions' teamwork. Our own Ralph Landgrebe played the key role in directing and coordinating the union volunteers' efforts with the overall relief effort. Striking Texas City phone workers turned to and restored communications disrupted by the explosion, then went back on strike. Perhaps the pinnacle of union solidarity around the Houston waterfront was reached during an action at Long Reach Terminal, which was privately owned and operated then. It began as some grievance involving seamen. Long Reach management went to court and found a judge who obligingly issued an anti-picketing injunction. The seamen removed their picket line, whereupon the ILA Carloaders discovered that they had an unresolved grievance against Long Reach. They put up their picket line. The same judge enjoined the carloaders from picketing. That evening a committee of carloaders went to every union hall in the turning basin area, informing everyone that Judge So-and-So had decreed an invisible picket line around Long Reach. Next morning longshoremen and others would not enter Long Reach gate. Management suddenly found a way to deal with the original grievance. That announcement was made. Normal work patterns resumed. It seemed to me that labor was in a state of ascendancy. But those who would curb the unions were not idle. During the war years various states had passed restrictive labor legislation, Texas prominent among them. In June Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman's veto. The act outlawed the closed shop and imposed other restrictions on union activity. The real stinger: where any state law differed from Taft-Hartley, the more restrictive should govern. While Taft-Hartley was in the legislative process, AFL President William Green threatened to call for a general strike if the law

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passed. With final passage, he backed away, declared that labor was law-abiding. He called on labor to muster its voting strength to unseat the anti-labor members of Congress, to elect legislators who would rectify the unfair disadvantage imposed on labor. Early in 1947 I joined the IWW. It was something to believe in, something that offered at least the vision of responsible working class goals beyond narrow trade unionism. That was my feeling. E. B. "Bud" Leared defeated Ralph Landgrebe for the local presidency in December that year. He was the son of Bill Leared, the man Ralph had beaten for the same office a little more than ten years before. West Coast longshoremen were on strike in 1948. The only memory of that action that comes clearly to mind: We were working one of the around-the-world ships when we came across cargo that quite plainly had been diverted from the West Coast. The ILWU chose not to raise any hot cargo issue when told of it, so we didn't have our shot at contesting a provision of Taft-Hartley. We had visited several days in Corpus Christi in July 1948 on the occasion of my brother's death. Members, including the president, John Morgan, who had sworn me in as a member back in 1929, began urging me to return there. In November we made the move. In December I was elected president of Local 1224 again, with John Morgan's blessing and nomination. I held that office three one-year terms, through 1951, when I declined nomination for reelection on the valid IWW principle that three consecutive one-year or two twoyear terms in a salaried office-or an office concerned in policy making or implementation-are all that a person should serve, for the good of the union. The president's office was unsalaried, but the policy part applied. The forefront issue when I took office: the navy was still occupying a large share of the port when military concerns no longer justified it. My job was to be spokesman for the port's longshoremen in a campaign to have that changed and to prod the port authority to let the shipping interests know that the port was back in business. It was a task that we accomplished in fair fashion after a year or two. Another venture in the same time span turned out disastrously. The young Corpus Christi local of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union was contending against an intrenched and hostile restaurant association. I agreed to represent them as best I could in spare time. There really wasn't always that much spare time, and my best, handicapped by ignorance of how the hotel and restaurant industry operated, wasn't that good.

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Eventually the local union died away. The restaurant association didn't. If there's a lesson to be drawn, I think it is that any union will do better to rely on the brainpower within its ranks, someone who knows the trade, rather than on some outsider, to represent it. Advice on general procedure from an outside source, sure, if you weigh it carefully. But I think it is a mistake, in the long run, to make an outsider your official representative. At this point I've been asked, "How did the ILA members feel about your Wobbly membership? Did anyone accuse you of dual unionism or radicalism?" Well, I'd been accused of dual unionism and radicalism long before I decided to join the IWW, remember. The majority of Houston and Corpus Christi ILA members had no quarrel with IWW standards of unionism, even though they remained pro-capitalism in their thinking. A Wobbly was considered to be unquestionably a good union man. A handful of Houston ILA members joined the IWW, less than a lifetime commitment for most. Even Joe Ryan praised the Wobblies' unionism, while calling their idealism impractical. Philadelphia longshoremen were IWW for some twelve years, 1913 to 1925, when they joined the ILA. Whether anybody was ever expelled from any ILA group because of IWW membership, I simply don't know. Blackie Vaughan, known to be a Wobbly up and down the coast, joined the Houston ILA Carloaders and served on some contract committees over the years. I have been present on more than one occasion during District President Frank Yeager's tenure when Yeager singled out Blackie for comment, saying to the committee, "Let's hear from Brother Vaughan; what is the Wobbly viewpoint?" So there was no overt animosity toward the IWW in our vicinity. For my part, I joined the IWW because I wanted to identify with a higher union principle than the business unions practiced. It made me feel better. As an IWW member, I didn't hide my membership. Shamefully, you could say, neither did I flaunt it. To say that I did not proselytize would be a fair statement. About the only times when I would bring the IWW into an ILA meeting would be when management-labor relations were under discussion and some one or more members would express unhappiness about the one-sidedness of the struggle. Then I'd use that opening to rise and say that "us Wobblies believe that labor collectively is the only one fit to manage in any industry." My activity stayed pretty much straight trade union. So much, in fact, that, during our Corpus Christi "reopen the port to commerce"

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campaign we went so far as to dabble in the bourgeois politics of the locality, an activity that IWW "orthodoxy" frowns on, sort of. Finally, to answer the question after all this rambling: I was never penalized for my IWW membership or expressions-specifically on the IWW issue, at any rate.

CHAPTERS

LABOR ON THE DEFENSIVE

U

NITED STATES Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy, addressing a Republican Ladies Club meeting in West Virginia in February 1950, waved a sheet of paper in front of his audience. The paper, he told them, contained a secret list of Communists employed in US government offices. It made Joe McCarthy a national sensation, the nation's premier Communist hunter. For almost five years thereafter he held countless people in a kind of terror. He used the same format throughout, in Senate speeches and public ones. He would hold up his sheet of paper, rattle off one name or a dozen, claiming to have hundreds. Challenged many times in the Senate and in public to bring his paper within reading distance, he never complied. McCarthy's manner of attack was devastating. He would name a name, and that person was smeared with guilt. He cared not what harm he inflicted nor whom he hurt, justifying every move in the name of patriotism. Thousands of teachers, actors, and public figures found themselves unemployed, careers seriously damaged, some ended. The five years came to be called "the McCarthy years" or "McCarthy era." Actually, the game of Communist-baiting was being played before Joe McCarthy took center stage. I have already mentioned how Joe Curran turned on his old CP comrades and kicked them out of the National Maritime Union. That happened, or began happening, about 1947. They called it a "Communist purge," whether any or all were or had ever been CP members or not. The CIO expelled eleven unions in 1949 for being "Communist-dominated." Various pieces of "anti-subversive" legislation had been passed by state legislatures and by Congress. McCarthy had the knack of combining the scariest features of the Red Scare. Although many people in high places deplored his doings, none challenged him head-on-even Presidents Truman and Eisenhower backed off, or chose not to come on-until he attacked the military in 1954.

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He had discovered Russian agents in high places in the military, he claimed. That brought him more publicity than he had enjoyed before; but he had overreached himself. The military fought back. The military demanded hard proof. The McCarthy balloon was punctured. His bullying style failed to intimidate the military. Television exposed his tactics to the public, and the public disapproved. In December the United States Senate, by a 67 to 22 vote, condemned McCarthy for conduct "contrary to Senate traditions." That was the end, no comeback trail. Joe McCarthy died in 1957. It is my impression that not many in the labor field were crucified directly by the McCarthy campaign. It was most damaging to the intellectual community, but the chill hung over everybody. Early in 1951 Paul C. Sparks, the secretary of the Texas State Federation of Labor, sent a statewide call for all local unions that could afford it to send delegates to Austin to lobby against a measure known as the "Parkhouse Bill." Introduced in the State Senate by Senator George Parkhouse, the bill would make it a felony for an employer or worker to make any sort of agreement that only union members could be employed in a job. The idea was to kill the hiring halls maintained by maritime and construction unions. Local 1224 sent Vandever and me. Local 1273 had a delegation there, of course, headed by Bud Leared. Bud asked whether our local had the funds to keep sending a man back each week. It did not. "Houston can afford it," Bud said. "Here's what I'm going to do. You're a Houston member. I'm going to ask for a delegation of five, you to be one of them. I'll tell 'em that we'll have extra influence that way. If I can get you four days' pay and expenses each week, will you come? You stand your travel expense." Bud pulled it off. Expression of solidarity? I took it that way. So began weekly trips to Austin, Monday through Thursday, the days the legislators usually spent there. Other Texas local unions that could afford it kept sending their delegations also. The art of lobbying was strange to all of us, it appeared. Little by little we collectively learned some of the mechanics. It was a field in which AFL and CIO collaborated. There was one conspicuous missing link in our chain. The trucking lobby was pushing for a higher load limit. Teamster representatives were in there pushing for the higher limit with their employers, but lending us none of their muscle whatever in fighting the Parkhouse Bill. A comment on that later, perhaps. The Parkhouse Bill passed the Senate handily. Sent over to the House, it ran into opposition from pro-labor members. It became a football, kicked around, back and forth, and finally passed.

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Secretary Sparks and I had no previous acquaintance. He appreciated some of my effort, I guess, because he asked me to work in his office, a sort of Man Friday capacity. His regular man was Jerry Holleman. An army reserve officer, Jerry had been called to a tour of duty. With the blessings of Locals 1224 and 1273, I accepted the position. I served that office until September. Paul told me that I could stay on until Holleman's return, but I had committed myself to attend a couple of night classes that the University of Corpus Christi was offering, so begged off. Passed the classes, incidentally. That is the sum of my higher education. I returned home to find the restaurant employees' local in a shambles. No one had collected any dues during my absence, let alone attended to any other business. I never made any honest effort to revive the local. A word here about the AFL and its state and central bodies: They are the political arms of the movement. They do not commit either affiliated unions or members to economic (strike) action, although they may ask members to boycott certain products from time to time. It was AFL versus CIO back then, AFL-hyphen-CIO now. Same difference, that's how it works, or is meant to work. Here I was, a member of the IWW, whose stance is apolitical and whose doctrine is economic action, working for an AFL body founded to act politically. Well, I never asked the Wobblies to put me on trial, nor did I harangue the State Federation to drop politics and call for the general strike. If you want to call me a double hypocrite, you may. The fact is that I went through a period there that might have been Fabian Socialism, I don't know. As for labor political action within the Texas Democratic Party, I made statements such as, "Let the working people wade in up to the waist, and get a bellyful of it, and come to find out that a pound of direct action outweighs a ton of political manure." Labor in our part of the country was still militant in early 1951. Employers were being open-minded toward improvement of conditions, in large part. I really thought-hoped is the better word-that we might achieve a society free from want without engaging in a capital-labor donnybrook. For the next few years I stayed on in the Central Labor Union as a delegate from the longshore local. I always advocated united action wherever an opening to discuss it occurred. Aside from that, my union activity was fragile. I tended bar part time for a short spell, then full time for a shorter spell. Mostly, I just foundered. Mike Shamoun, a comrade-in-arms from the Military Police days, with a knack for acquiring property and money, offered backing in a business venture. I turned him down. In mid-1953 the AFL executive council suspended the ILA from

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the "family of labor" because of racketeering charges. The convention that fall voted expulsion. The AFL chartered a new longshoremen's union (actually from existing ILA locals) called the International Brotherhood of Longshoremen (IBL). The ILA, now the ILA-Independent, elected William V. Bradley, a New York tugboat captain, president to replace Joseph P. Ryan, who had been elected "for life" a couple of conventions earlier. Ryan was retired with the title "president emeritus" and given a pension. He was under indictment at the time for misappropriation of union funds and later spent some months in prison. The AFL chose New York as the place to engage the ILA in a make-or-break contest for survival. After a lot of seesawing and a couple of elections the NLRB certified the ILA as bargaining agent. The IDL continued to operate in spots. It is my impression that they represented everything on the Great Lakes. Whatever the case, the IDL existed into the year 1959, when the final convention voted to disband and rejoin the ILA, and that was accomplished. The ILA was readmitted into the AFL that same year. In 1955 the AFL and CIO merged, to become the AFL-CIO. They couldn't agree on a unified name! Teamsters President Dave Beck sold his house to the Teamsters Union for $160,000, with the right to live there for life, rent-free. And Rosa Parks, a Negro, refused to give up her seat in the "white" section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1956 I was restless and ill at ease. Things were rocky within the household. To let off steam-as good an excuse as any-I began to run to Houston to work for a few days or a week at a time. Work opportunities there were plentiful and inviting-you could say, tempting. Besides that, the change of scenery might calm disturbed marital differences. We moved there in 1957. Houston became my permanent residence, then to the present. The marriage went kaput, anyhow, short years later. In 1946-or was it '47?-Local 1273 had acquired property on Harrisburg Boulevard at 78th Street, a church building vacated by its congregation. The local moved away from the old 75th Street location. A decade later they purchased a parcel of adjoining property and contracted for a new hall at 7811 Harrisburg. The church was demolished, to become a parking area. The local occupied the new building in 1958. That building was chosen to house the combined ILA Locals 872 and 1273 after their integration in 1983, and renumbered to be ILA Local24. This is as good a place as any to apologize for the scant mention of black longshoremen's activities throughout this account. Segrega-

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tion was a fact oflife. Black and white worked the same vessel, true, but the blacks did their work and we did ours. There was little intercourse, unless a grievance arose that became a cause for joint action. White and black delegates met in local and district Dock and Marine Councils, in conventions, and in contract committees. We went on strike together. Each local union conducted its affairs in its own manner. The Landrum-Griffin Act was passed in 1959. It was titled "LaborManagement Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959." The catch was-read it for yourself-it required a heck of a lot more reporting from labor than from management. In 1951 Paul Sparks had warned his Texas AFL affiliates that the quantity of paperwork imposed on unions at that time was discouraging the activity and even the existence of our smaller locals. His forewarning stirred little excitement or concern among the bigger locals, as far as I could see. Big has a way of being satisfied with itself. Landrum-Griffin increased the load of paper to the point of commanding the big unions' attention, too. Not to say that taking up the cudgel in defense of the small locals eight years before would have staved off Landrum-Griffin, but you'll never know if you've never tried, will you? Unions, local, state, and national, squirmed. The District ILA called for delegates to meet in New Orleans to be briefed on the new law. I was a member of the 1273 delegation. A small array of lawyer people were there. Mr. Sewall Meyer of Houston gave the summation: The ILA's South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District would not challenge the law as a district nor through any individual local or port. "Let other unions be the ones to test the law," he said. Not a great display of solidarity. It would appear that the whole AFL-CIO family acted as our district did. We had retreated a long way from the militancy and the willingness to gamble that characterized the late thirties and the late forties. Management, in similar circumstances, would have built a war chest, selected the company or combination with the apparent best chance to defy or beat the law, and so have challenged it. At that same time, some ILA locals, Local 1273 especially, were under fire from the NLRB to revise their hiring systems. As described earlier, it was the practice for each local to set its membership at a total decided on by its members. When extra hands were needed during a rush or peak season, they came from among "outsiders," hired after all union members had been hired. To put it bluntly, the outsider enjoyed no employment privilege beyond pleasing the foreman who hired him that day. Unions have not been cradles of righteousness, unfortunately.

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Abuses crept in. Two flagrant examples: An outsider could spend years at the trade without any guarantee of job security. JohnnyCome-Lately, without a day's experience, could be hired ahead of him any day of the week. Or, he could work for a foreman on Friday, then watch that gang go to work on Saturday with the foreman's schoolboy son (or any hand from anywhere, for that matter) going in the place he had held Friday. Complaints had reached the NLRB which that board had determined were valid. The local was ordered to set up a more equitable hiring system. There's a pattern that we union members fall into, I'm afraid. We tend to defend past practices, right or wrong. It has cost us, I think. I would venture that there have been many times when some cool thinking, unhindered by selfishness, emotion, or false pride, would have saved us long-run costs. The majority sentiment was not to give up the "outsider" system that had prevailed so long, this in spite of the fact that some members-Norris Lawson, Blackie Williams, and Maxwell Whitley prominent among themhad begged them from years back to put fair play into the hiring. Whitley had left the waterfront for a career in the Houston Fire Department, so was not present when the NLRB cracked down. Bud Leared had been in the president's office, out a while, then was back in when the NLRB pressure was applied. A system of preferred hiring to apply to outsiders according to length of time worked was set up under Leared's administration. It soon came under NLRB fire. Leared was succeeded in office by Willie C. Wells. A seniority hiring plan worked out and put into practice about 1962 during Wells' tenure set the pattern for hiring to the present. In 1964 the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the US Constitution banned payment of poll tax as a requirement for voting in any election for national office. Texas continued to make payment of poll tax a requirement for voting in state, county, and municipal elections until1966. Longshoremen on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts began negotiations to renew contracts expiring September 30, 1964. ILA President Teddy Gleason, elected in 1963, put emphasis on coordinating the bargaining that the North Atlantic District and the South Atlantic and Gulf District would conduct. It was the first time within my memory that any gesture of that sort had been initiated by an international president. Accordingly, District President Ralph Massey called on all district locals to send their contract committees to a conference in Mobile. There we sat (I was on the Local1273 committee) and worked out a proposed uniform agreement to cover longshore work from North Carolina to Texas. The sad aftermath to

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that: The employers rejected our proposal in adamant terms, and we backed off without a contest. Gleason's espousal of united endeavor had fired things up though, even if it failed to bear hoped-for fruit. Under Gleason's leadership we submitted demands for uniform gang sizes and uniform wages to apply to both Atlantic and Gulf coasts, together with conditions to apply to handling containers. Under prodding by Gleason we also negotiated for our first dues checkoff. That last is anathema to many fair-thinking union people. Paying your dues in cash from your own pocket is a matter of honor and pride, they contend. I never held strong feelings about checkoff one way or the other. I would side with those who opposed it if it were to become a salient issue. Here in Texas it had long been local practice to withhold a percentage of earnings from the individual worker for local union upkeep, commonly called "percentage," or sometimes "gang dues" or "service charge." The union member also paid dues monthly, or as set by the local union. The checkoff eliminated that last. We went through the Taft-Hartley ritual: strike in October, back to work under the eighty-day cooling-offperiod, back on strike at the end of cooling-off. We would be striking for fifty-five days in Texas. North Atlantic negotiators arrived at an agreement short of that time. The ILA side attached a rider that work would resume when settlements in all Atlantic and Gulf ports were reached. The employer negotiators signed the document "in good faith"(?), then immediately carried it to court, where the judge ruled that the rider was illegal and of no effect because it was "against the public interest." He ordered North Atlantic longshoremen to go to work. Gleason complied, ordered the men back to work. We arrived at a settlement here in Texas "in due course." We had not achieved the uniformity nor the united action that we had talked about at the start of negotiations, but the outcome had seen the first steps toward a master contract to cover both Atlantic and Gulf coasts. East and Gulf coast longshoremen were again on strike in late 1968, one that lasted into early April1969 for West Gulf ports. It was my decision not to serve on the 1968 contract committee. I stayed away from the nomination meeting, a sure way to keep from being nominated. It sounds egotistical to claim that one would have been elected, if nominated, doesn't it? That aside, I was past sixty years of age, vain enough to believe that I had rendered fair service to the 1964 negotiations, but conscious also that a smart young man can outdo a smart old man; so I gave way. I retired from the waterfront July 1, 1971. Back in 1966 Houston's coastwise locals were merged into the deep

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sea locals, creating two general longshoremen's locals with the old deep sea numbers, 872 and 1273, black and white. In 1983 the white and black ILA locals were merged by federal court order. Houston longshore locals became ILA Local 24. The order applied to West Gulf ports. If it covered a wider area, I'm not aware of it. The Texas locals had used legal maneuvering for over twenty years to avoid the inevitable. Meanwhile, in the 1980s working conditions are under attack on almost every front. The Gulf ILA, after enjoying forty years of progressive contractual improvement in wages and conditions, is suffering non-union and Teamster incursions into many local jurisdictions, and is making givebacks to employers on wages, gang sizes, and some working conditions. I believe that erosion of worker solidarity since the middle of this century has been a main contributor to the union movement's present vulnerability to employer assault against job conditions and pay. There is no one thing you can put a finger on and say, "This is it." There is always a combination of things, usually little things, little noticed, until a time comes when they have combined into a sum that gets attention. For one thing, working people in 1950, the organized segment at any rate, were being paid enough to have a dollar left over for small luxuries after needs were satisfied. Large numbers were looking at enjoying "the good life" and having fun. Erich Fromm phrased it this way in an oft-quoted observation: "Karl Marx was wrong a hundred years ago when he predicted that more leisure would make the worker more radical; the history of the last quarter century has shown just the opposite; more leisure has made him more conformist. Marx believed that if a worker had more time to himself he would study social science and become a rebel. What has happened is that the worker has used his extra time not to study ... but to play. He caters to the child in himself rather than the mature adult, so that in formulating his political views he is guided by the 'conventional wisdom' of the period rather than by his own self-analysis." If we could set a date, I'd pick the year 1947 and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act as one landmark in labor solidarity erosion. Tacitus, that great Roman, said, "When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied." (Now whatever caused me to think of that?) Taft-Hartley drove a nail by saying that any more restrictive state law should supersede the federal statute. It clothed state legislation with the mantle of federal majesty, in effect. A general strike, as threatened by William Green, might not have

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been a wise undertaking for labor, although millions of us were ready to try it. It was Green's about-face, away from economic action to dependence on political action, that hurt labor most, I think. We had reached where we were by using the muscle of economic action and our determination. So, when you quit using your muscle, what do you get? You get flabby. We were entering an era of worker and management prosperity. With worker prosperity came union prosperity. Unfortunately, the unions did not use the fruits of their prosperity to organize those lower on the economic ladder-nor those in foreign lands, it could be added. There were sporadic efforts by a few, but no concerted, organized campaigns by the House of Labor (still divided in 1947). Put bluntly, the unions did not concern themselves any hell of a lot with the condition of people not doing as well as they were doing. A sense of solidarity remained for some years, but that was more between union and union than any shared involvement with the whole working class. The combination of union prosperity and emphasis on political action brought the legal profession into the picture. In our struggling, unmoneyed days, very few lawyers would touch a union issue of less than national importance. Those who did defend us took our cases because of idealism, and for negligible fees or no fee at all. In this age of union prosperity the corporation lawyer was still fatter than the labor lawyer, but the latter didn't go around looking seedy any longer. The tenor of lawyer advice to client (labor) changed. Back when, the lawyer had said, "Be careful. Stay out of trouble if you can; but if you do get in trouble, I'll defend you to the best of my ability." That changed in the 1950s to: "The statutes prohibit it. Don't do it." Translated, that says, "I'm doing fine on the money I make taking care of your day-to-day business. Don't bring me into a hostile courtroom where I have to work for my fee." A new pattern of labor relations emerged. The one-year contract we had known lengthened to two, then three years (coincident with the purchase of an automobile on the installment plan). We were involved in strikes, but employers made few attempts to bring in scabs. Capital and labor stared at one another while work was idled, until one party blinked, then settled the strike. As machinery-technology enabled management to build up production reserves, some strikes lasted an awfully long time. Houston Shell Oil refinery employees weathered two strikes of approximately one year each during those years oflabor-capital, mostly nonviolent, confrontations. In place of the gunmen and plug-uglies who used to glare from in-

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side at pickets patrolling outside company gates, watchmen became friendly. They might have the coffeepot on, and invite pickets to share with them. One year that I remember, picket signs used in the strike were made in a stevedore company's gear room. In other instances we were given the option of picketing at shipside at certain terminals, where we were welcome to use the comfort of the dock office. There were instances where manufacturing plants, mostly in the north, built snug housing at entrance gates to protect pickets from winter weather. In the 1930s they had turned fire hoses on freezing pickets. The merger of the CIO back into the AFL in 1955 didn't do much to further labor solidarity. The skilled crafts and the industrial unions continued fighting over definitions of"new construction" (jurisdiction of the building trades unions) and "maintenance" (the province of the plant unions). Those same plant maintenance men served notice on the Auto Workers one year that they expected a wage increase above what production workers would receive. Walter Reuther gave in to them, thus recreating that "aristocracy oflabor" that we starry-eyed ones thought the CIO had rejected. If Reuther had been the believer in socialism he was cracked up to be, he'd have opposed that bid, to the risk of his presidency, if need be. And if it had cost him the presidency, what was the loss? He still had his job on the assembly line waiting, union-protected and seniority intactand more, his integrity. He made a choice. The two seamen's unions sent delegates to the AFL-CIO councils, naturally, but continued to operate as separate entities, competing in ways that were reprehensible (each said of the other). Most other unions with identical jurisdictions have merged. In the early 1950s the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, funded by the Ford Foundation, was publishing projections on the future impact of automation and cybernetics on the industrial world. Those thinkers recommended that the captains of industry put their wits together to work out patterns of production, distribution, and employment that would spread the potential bounty throughout the general population. The captains of industry didn't buy the package. As an army travels at the pace of the slowest, so capitalism travels at the pace of the greediest. Spreading the bounty throughout the general population is a job for labor. Union labor, as described by author Goldblatt, waited for management to act. Something called a "construction gate" entered our labor scene. A plant employing union labor, including the Port of Houston, would make an opening into the plant area at a distance from its regularly used entrances, then employ or contract for non-union labor to con-

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struct new facilities, using the construction gate coming and going. Union building trades then picketed the construction gate but not the other gates, the regular entrances into the plant. Some kind of legal hocus-pocus was involved. I never learned those details. So union plant and dock workers continued working, their (our) union honor unsullied by the fact that persons scabbing on union conditions were constructing facilities that we would use later-because we hadn't crossed a picket line. An erosion of solidarity? A demolition of solidarity! At the other end of the seesaw, while plant employees were on strike, union building tradesmen would enter through the construction gate to hammer away at new construction as striking plant employees picketed the regular entrances. To aggravate the situation, there were charges that these union builders sometimes fudged over into "renewing" old construction: maintenance belonging to plant workers. The incident most hurtful to the ideal of union solidarity that happened in our ILA jurisdiction-this is my own personal opinion, of course-came in the 1964-1965 strike. The port kept a number of crane operators steadily employed. When the strike idled the port, these men were not laid off but were kept employed, doing upkeep on equipment and so on-until a misunderstanding occurred. A supervisor told an operator to fire up his rig, a locomotive crane, and switch a short string of gondola cars from one track to another. In normal port operation, switching cars into and out of the docks was a railroaders' function. Spotting cars for loading or unloading and putting finished cars on designated tracks for railroad handling was done by a longshoreman tractor driver. Railroaders were not crossing ILA picket lines. There was no ILA tractor driver, it goes without saying. The crane operator refused the order, claiming that it would be scabbing on the strike. Arguably, the crane hand was maximizing a small issue. He could have said, "How about calling the strike committee on that? You don't want to get me in trouble with the longshoremen, do you?" It seems likely that the supervisor would have agreed. We never learned exactly what happened. It's possible that some mastermind in port operation was deliberately setting the man up. The story seemed to say that the employee summarily refused the order and the supervisor summarily fired him. The other operators demanded that he be rehired. They were fired. With the longshore strike settled we returned to work-with nonunion operators on the cranes. We never received a clear report from our officers. Bear in mind that this is one man's best memory. Our

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officers decided to settle the matter instead of placing it in the hands of the contract committee. The issue was fogged by rumors that the Operating Engineers Union was fumbling the ball, along with rumblings that our colored union brothers felt no obligation to support the union operators (all white men). Sad to relate, there was less than solid enthusiasm in our own ranks. There were spurts of union spirit on the job. Several new operators found working conditions not to their liking and departed. Union operators were not excluded by the port. The job was not declared unfair by the union. Some new union operators hired on in the course of time and one or two of the old ones returned, but it stayed an open shop operation. Whither solidarity? Back in the rank and file days when I was young and somewhat cocky I became more than a little bitter at the combination of timidity and blatant unconcern shown by so many labor skates (all aged forty and upward). I vented my feelings in a wisecrack: "Any officer, when he reaches age thirty-five in the labor movement, they ought to take 'im out and shoot 'im." It sounded so good to me that I repeated it on several occasions. About this time (1965) a bout of introspection said to me that chickens were coming home to roost. At age fifty-seven, I was twenty-two years past my own vocal thirty-five-years deadline, looking back at some past performances: A conference was called in New Orleans in 1953 following ILA's expulsion from AFL. We were told we'd hear representatives of the ILA-Independent and ofthe newly chartered International Brotherhood of Longshoremen-AFL present the merits of their respective unions. No IBL representatives were there. (The ILA people had done some unadvertised shortstopping, actually.) I sat on my butt and didn't demand to know why they weren't there, excusing myself on grounds that I really had no preference in the matter. That wasn't the issue. The issue was free speech. Why weren't they speaking? I didn't rise up. This wasn't the young dude who confounded Mike Dwyer to the verge of apoplexy in 1935. This 1953 fellow was an impostor, timid, unconcerned about truth, and past thirty-five years of age. The Landrum-Griffin briefing, also in New Orleans in 1959, begged somebody to rise and tear into that gaggle of quisling lawyers, living off the labor movement and engaged in selling it out. So I sat on my butt, dodging being the vocal minority on an unpopular issue, timid, lacking concern-and past thirty-five years of age. Then, the fired crane operator. He may not have acted in the most

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intelligent fashion, but he acted according to his lights, dammit, undeniably union lights. I suggested weakly that it should be a contract committee matter, backed down when the administration chose to make it an officer matter, then failed to expend the energy it would take to run down and interview those operators. Timid, lazy, and not enough concerned. Or dead after thirty-five, without being shot? Before you decide that I turned tail and ran from every issue, let me say that I made some fair efforts, according to my lights, during the long, raucous, and tedious scramble toward a Local 1273 Seniority Hiring Plan. First, the traditional freedom of the local member to leave the waterfront and return with hiring privileges intact was going to be wiped out. Contending that we owed our absent union brothers the right to be informed, so that each could decide whether to continue another occupation or come back to the waterfront, I offered to mail a card to each, to save the office staff the work, if the office would let me have their addresses. Amazingly, officers and members together showed little interest. I couldn't believe that they would treat so cavalierly these men with whom they had worked and to whom they were pledged in brotherhood. Let the absentees find out for themselves, was the attitude. I never got the addresses. Whither solidarity? It had been a practice, for as long as two ports had existed, I suppose, for men from one port to visit (work in) another port from time to time, especially in peak seasons. It was not unknown for one port to appeal to another to send some hands to help in a rush. I found myself among a minuscule minority speaking to preserve that bit of fellowship. I proposed that we recognize our members in other ports with some kind of hiring status. It could have been done easily within NLRB allowable limits, I was sure. My proposition was scuttled without ceremony. Now a brother union member from one port rates a big zero in any other. The old comradery is gone. It meant a lot to fools like me. Another institution to be pulled down in the hiring plan finally adopted was the regular gang system. That system was described early in this writing. Longshore work must necessarily be done by gangs of men. In being a member of a regular gang you had the advantage of coming to know the men you worked with most regularly. You worked as a team. To me, it was the way to go. It was replaced by a system where the man with the most years of service can grab what he considers to be the best job offer each day, or hiring time, regardless of where or whether he worked the day before. Under the gang system the gang began a job and finished it, sweet or sour,

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which still seems right to me. I don't think I've ever been called a company man by anybody who meant it; but you owe the industry that much, a commitment to tackle a job and do it. Well, the industry has moved along without the regular gang. There are men who are already oldtimers who'll read this (Lawdy! I hope they will) who never saw the regular gang system in practice. The regular gang. She's gone, kaput. Took my enthusiasm with it. The regular gang system operated in a way to equalize or share earnings to a degree. When the 1980s shipping slump hit the industry, some in favored seniority brackets were making $50,000 per year while some in less favored brackets were applying for food stamps. The American Dream. In the many proposals and contentions as to what a fair hiring system ought to be, I lost every round. I thought my arguments were valid then. I still think so today. Justice will not come until those who are not hurt feel just as indignant as those who are hurt. (Solon of Athens, circa 595 B.c.) We've already mentioned that the American labor movement en masse has not exhibited a high level of indignation in behalf of the hurt worker when it didn't feel a hurt of its own. Let us theorize about the general union retreat of the 1980s. I'll offer opinions. They'll be ideas, not the final word on anything. One also sees a softening of some of the old union rules. The missmeeting fine, for one, though not universal union practice, was prevalent. Most locals during the 1930s union revival met twice a month. Most had a rule that a member missing both of those meetings without appropriate excuse would have a fine-say, a dollaradded to his dues. Payment of fines preceded payment of dues. "Take it and stick it," an unhappy, fined member would say, "It's worth a buck not to have to listen to all the yammer-yammer." But you want to know something? You could've kept yourself in drinking money if you'd bet on every occasion when that happened, that that unhappy member would attend the next meeting. Concurrent with dropping the miss-meeting fine came a slackening of officers' reminders to members that attendance at union meetings was a paramount consideration. Where and when did the slackening start? It's hard to say. A time comes when you realize that it has happened. The result was a drop in meeting attendance, to the point of occasional postponement of a meeting for lack of a quorum, that last answered in too many cases by eliminating one meeting a month. That, in turn, has led to union decision-making by a select

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body of officers, acting with tacit consent of the members, but, demonstrably, without their participation. It has done much to weaken solidarity. Another phenomenon of the times in our South Atlantic and Gulf ILA has been the trend away from holding conventions in one or another of the district's seaports and toward holding them in the resorts: Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, even Honolulu, amid the swank and the glitter. What do resorts like Vegas and Tahoe have to offer that coincides with shiploading in Miami or Mobile? You tell me, because I don't know. The use of the resorts has lessened the participation of the small locals with limited treasuries. And that is a weakening of union solidarity, in my opinion. The union label was a big item in the 1930s union revival. "Earn union; buy union" was the message. Local unions had their union label committees. Those committees would watch for and report on products that carried the union label. They would acquaint their members with the individual labels of the manufacturing and service trades. A general decline of that activity ensued. It is hard to put a finger on just how it gradually took place. In the strictly political arena, organized labor couldn't keep its act together. I mentioned earlier the Teamster lobbyists in Austin in 1951 who were so intent on helping the trucking industry pass a bill to increase load limits and truck sizes that they wouldn't help the rest of us lobby to defeat the Parkhouse Bill, the bill that would impose severe restrictions on union activity. They were so allied with the truck owners that they actually avoided the other labor groups. Here we had an issue that we could attack in whole solidarity-and we couldn't rally all the troops in the garrison. The AFL Teamsters chose not to join with us. Teamster doings then and since are a puzzlement to me. The AFLCIO expelled the Teamsters in 1957, the year Jimmy Hoffa was elected president, on charges of being racketeer-dominated, the same or similar charges on which the ILA had been expelled in 1953. The ILA was readmitted in 1959. The Teamsters remained unaffiliated until the fall of 1987. After a time they branched out into more than just driver and warehouse organizing. The trail seems to meander down many unexplained byways, until we find them encroaching physically on ILA jurisdiction, and cutting wages, as mentioned in Chapter 7. Perhaps that could be better put: encroaching on several unions' jurisdictions, including the !LA's. That's a long way from the driver-refinery worker-longshoreman alliance that Houston labor knew before World War II and a while after. In 1961 Jimmy Hoffa proposed to organize One Big Union of

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Transportation Workers: highway, rail, sea, and air. The proposal brought something of a stir in Texas ILA ranks as we negotiated for a new contract and then struck from late December 1962 into late January 1963, after the usual Taft-Hartley "cooling-off" period had been observed. Workers are uniformly receptive to such proposals while on strike. Once work resumes, many pull back into their shells, pulling their thinking caps in with them. The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers screamed like wounded catamounts. Such a combination of labor would lead to an intolerable concentration of power, they said. Just the point. I would change that to a desirable concentration of power, from a standpoint of treating the ills of society. Hoffa let the matter drop, soon after. Passage of Landrum-Griffin (1959) tended to clinch a nail that Taft-Hartley had driven. Champions of the act claimed it was necessary to protect union members from their officers' excesses and abuses, with some justification in fact. With all that avowed noble aim, though, the act does next to nothing toward curbing the powers of the national and international union executive boards. The underlying and real purpose of the act-you're listening to a prejudiced party, of course-was to put loads of paperwork on the unions, "reporting and disclosure," and to inflict penalties for engaging in secondary boycotts and other union activities. The Red Scare, the McCarthy days, the Cold War, automation, and just enough prosperity to keep hunger rumblings away from most organized workers' bellies, all combined to soften the urge to make the other fellow's hurt the cause of your righteous indignation. Passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act, with its threat of assessing money damages against unions and officers, and maybe members, for engaging in concerted actions, put a chill in the air. Individual unions differed on candidates and parties. Solidarity eroded on and off the job. Now and again one or another of us doomsayers would warn that we were letting ourselves become too soft. We failed to worry anybody much, very much. We were working a ship on the (Houston) turning basin's north side when we were told that we were coming to a lot of cargo that was to be discharged onto a barge that would be brought to the ship's offshore side. Then we learned that the tugboatmen who normally handled that line of barges were on strike. A scab tug would be bringing the barge alongside. Henry Raymer was the gang boss. "Henry," I said, "we've both seen the time when the gang would pick up whatever was loose on the deck and dare those scabs to come within throwing range."

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Henry agreed. "But I've talked to the president," he said, "and he says that the laws are such now that the local's treasury is at risk if we refuse to work for that reason. He says it's not just a case of the risk we'd take individually, but that it puts the union in danger, and we have to protect the union. It's all we have." About then the tug had appeared downstream, and an announcement came that added insult to injury: They wanted the gang to receive lines from the tugboat crew and moor the barge to the ship. "Just fire me now, boss," I told Henry. "I'm not touching those lines." After some confusion, it was decided that the (foreign) ship's crew would secure barge to ship. That's no absolution. We're still going to load the barge. You smell a little stink on yourself, even though you tell yourself that what you are doing is saving your union. A question arises: Saving the union from what, for what? If it doesn't act union any more, what are you saving? Would you believe that some union officers sort of liked the law? Witness: A member is in the union office complaining that a certain lack of action is poor unionism. The cocked-back swivel chair gives never a quiver. The crossed ankles on the edge of the desk, the same. "I agree with you," says a voice from the inert form, "but they got this law, you know ... " Is this to imply that the law should be challenged? Yes. It's called civil disobedience. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (the Mahatma) and his supporters used it to change the course of history in India. When the New York shippers signed that rider in 1965 providing that work would resume when the outports had settled, then rushed to court to have it nullified, ILA President Gleason should have stood firm to his commitment and let himself be jailed for contempt of court. It is well within the bounds of reality to suspect that those shippers had that judge paid for and waiting when they affixed their signatures. In that same New York City at about the same time, Mike Quill, president of the city employees' Transport Workers Union, then on strike, let himself be jailed for contempt when he refused to order his members back to work as a court injunction dictated. Then the court ordered all the union executive board jailed. To the credit of the officers and members, that union had an alive rank and file. A fresh set of officers replaced those jailed. The transit authority decided to negotiate. A settlement was reached, jailed officers released. Well, some are defiant, some are not. In the earlier days, on many, many occasions, some youngster had risen to propose that we do such and such, to hear some veteran an-

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swer, "We tried that thirty years ago, and it didn't work. Forget it, kid." In those times I told myself, "I want to last thirty years, so that I can say to the youngsters in the movement when that time comes, 'Kid, we tried that thirty years ago, and it didn't work; but, dammittohell, fella, you young guys get together and try it now, and make it work this time."' So, what was happening these thirty years later? The youngsters were more conservative than the oldtimers! They were going to make it work without working for it, would be one way to put it. The CIO, for all its inceptive revolutionary rhetoric, had shown in practice a tendency to become a federation of company unions, the Auto Workers being a prime example. The AFL was even more hopeless. The AFL-CIO merger solved nothing. Well, we said back a while that we would be frank with one another, didn't we? Truly solid industrial union action coupled with refusal by all labor to handle unfair products (the secondary boycott) would bring about a change in the way that goods are produced and, more important, distributed. In effect labor would become management. You may side with the USCC and NAM on that. I would hope not. At any rate, we know what we're talking about. We're not into flimflam. Even when the wave of outlaw strikes against company-imposed overtime and some related grievances hit in auto and some other industries in the 1970s, competent observers reported that there was minimal solidarity between groups striking, little plant-to-plant or area-to-area communication. Somewhere that sense of solidarity had faded. We were no longer indignant at the thought of another's hurt. Or maybe we simply didn't think about it. So now we're brushing current history. The most recent nationwide union disaster began with President Reagan's busting of the Air Traffic Controllers, by my calculation. If you go by cold, coldblooded reasoning, you could say that they set themselves up. Already in a high salary bracket, no wrinkles in their bellies, they received little "underdog" sympathy for their strike. Had they elected to forgo asking a pay raise to concentrate on demanding the employment of sufficient personnel to make their working conditions tolerable, I think they would have enjoyed broad public support-at least, sympathy. Then you can raise the pertinent question: suppose all air travel industry employees had been in one industrial union ... The controllers may have been a bit drunk with a power they thought they had, but didn't. They became grist for the mill to the old union-buster in the White House. An aside: Public support for the air controllers was lacking in large part because they were well paid. What psychology is it where

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people resent, or are jealous of, high-salaried persons who do at least some work (the controllers did a lot), while they don't seem to resent those with incomes into the millions who do from little to no work at all? I'll stand to be coached on that one. Whatever union falls, there's a little bit of you and me goes with it. After the controllers went down, the drive was on in earnest. Union after union took cuts, made givebacks; some crumbled. Union leaders and most other members found themselves unwilling to meet industry's challenge head-on. Then came the raids by capital on the pension and health funds, the fruits of labor supposed to be held in trust for the retired laborer, stolen from the producers, the stealing protected in some way by the laws and the courts. And you're telling me not to engage in civil disobedience? Is that what you're saying? YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK LOUDER. I'M NOT HEARING YOU.

Current history: By sheer accident, comes to hand an independent newsletter in the maritime field. The SIU is into stevedoring! The union that I dreamed was going to better the lot of maritime workers the world over is undercutting my trade! The House of Labor? A swarm of termites! In 1971 longshoremen on the West Coast and on the East Coast and into the Gulf as far as New Orleans were on strike. Texas and Lake Charles were working, citing the impeccable logic that President Nixon had invoked a wage and price freeze, so no contracts could be consummated at the time, anyhow. Texas longshoremen, the shock troops of the ILA for more than forty years, were working in the face of an ILA strike! The world turned upside down! John Henry "Buddy" Raspberry, president of the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District, ILA, at this writing, the president of ILA Local 1273 in 1971, would have been one of the architects of West Gulf policy. The Houston Junior Chamber of Commerce, I think it was, named him "man of the year" or some such for having kept the port open. The decision to keep West Gulf ports working while South Atlantic and East Gulf longshoremen were out had the blessing and backing of District President Ralph Massey. All accounts indicate that Massey and Raspberry worked in close collaboration in that period. How do you reconcile the obvious contradictions involved? I'm asking that question, not answering it. That there was another logic, that it could have been an opportune time for a striking labor force to be sending capital and the government a message, may or may not have been discussed. Neither ILA President Teddy Gleason nor ILWU President Harry Bridges was an ineffable dummy: there had to be some arguable reason for

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striking. Massey and Raspberry must surely have chosen to defy the international union's policy. I had retired in July that year, as aforementioned, well before the strike. Ifl had been still active, conscience would have dictated that I stay off the job during that period-as a number of the active brothers did. Shamefully, my uppermost feeling was one of relief to be out of it, not to be in the cast of characters for this one. By 1986 the word was out in Houston that Teamster and some unlabeled non-union elements had been' taking over sizable chunks of stevedoring work in various southern and Gulf ports over a period of some four years. Houston has not been left untouched, if more lightly so. The point I want to emphasize is the lack of communication. I have made it a point since retiring not to mess into local union affairs. However, my activities carry me by the union hall occasionally, and I am on speaking terms with the men and officers. In my mind, I know that I'd have been hearing something on the subject if the word had been spread to the rank and file as happenings occurred, as it should have been from the time that the very first job was lost to hostile elements. An informed rank and file is the heart and muscle of the union. Will those they call leaders ever learn that? When the ranks force them to, that's when. Nero fiddled ... There's a chance that the Longshoremen's contract stipulation that ILA labor stuff all containers whose contents originate within fifty miles of a seaport facility could have antagonized the Teamsters, who claim jurisdiction over inland warehouses. Did President Gleason consult with the Teamsters on those negotiations? I don't know, but it's doubtful. Then there is one instance where an ILA local set out to organize a city's garbage collectors, an obvious encroachment on either Teamster or State, County and Municipal Workers jurisdiction(s). I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. (Richard Rumbold, on the scaffold, 1685 A.D.) The Richard Rumbold story would rate applause from the law and order people. Rumbold, an English insurrectionist, was captured, severely wounded, following an engagement between rebel and royal forces. Fearing that his wounds might prove fatal before justice could be meted out, those in charge saw his wounds bound sufficiently to check the bleeding, dragged him into a hearing posthaste,

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found him guilty, and sent him to the gallows. He was so weak that he had to be helped by a man on either side to mount the steps, then had to be held erect while the noose was adjusted. At that point he was allowed last words (quite sporting of those blokes, what?), when he summoned enough strength to speak the words above. Then the trap was sprung. It is a fact that there are people on this earth who consider themselves to have been born to ride. Looking farther, it is possible to find among the millions being ridden some who actually consider themselves to have been born to be ridden. Between the two poles you can find millions of shades of opinion. A fact remains: there are the riders and there are those ridden. Under capitalism a mishmash of socioeconomic strata has been created that defies exact categorization. Staying within the Rumbold figure of speech, we might put it something like this: It has become possible for some few among the ridden to attain lower positions of a kind of ridership, where, although saddled and bridled themselves, they exercise a function of saddling and bridling coarser underlings. You could phrase it a hundred ways, perhaps. That is one way. It can apply roughly to foremen, superintendents, and supervisors generally: the weight they bear is a little lighter because they see to the saddling of others. Professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, and the like, bear a lesser weight and receive gentler spurring from the system. So there are, figuratively, many, many riders in many, many categories-and many millions being ridden, whatever Providence's intention. What I want now is to turn that comparison into the labor field, take a look at labor officialdom, a rider category of a sort. This is not to condemn officers or officeholding, or any officer per se, but to try to take a clear look at where we are, whether we like what we see, and what we want to do about it. What's the object of unionism, anyway? Does a high-sounding phrase such as "one for all and all for one" really state our aspirations? I believe it does. We have agreed to take a voyage together, all in the same boat, not a yacht for Robert and a rowboat for Roger. Yet most unions have set up an officer family high above the economic circumstances of their members. It is not obligatory for us to study the history of how it came about, as much as it is to determine whether the present state is a desirable one. If undesirable, then what do we do about it? Humankind has an immeasurable ability to adapt. Beset by sudden hardship, we can survive great suffering and austerity. Given a profusion of comforts, we will adapt to them. The union movement

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(AFL-CIO) has generally elevated its officers closer to the profusion of comforts than the hardship milieu. As a rule, the officers have chosen to remain in the profusion of comforts rather than return to the more austere surroundings of the members. Put another way: Having felt the fit of the boot and spur, they prefer them to the saddle and the bridle. If you follow the careers of the leaders that the labor movement has produced, a pattern emerges. The leader's prime concern becomes keeping himself in office. I'm using the male pronoun here. You won't find the female of the species diametrically different. The result has been a sort of private country club atmosphere among the "officer family" and a contingent result: the officer begins to feel more at home in the company of other labor leaders, lawyers, politicians, and employers than in the company of his own members. This is not to deny that many have such charisma that they can and do return to "the old neighborhood" on occasion, engage in the roughand-tumble with the old crowd, and enjoy it. Going back some years, Teamster Dave Beck was one who thoroughly enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle and flaunted it. He was finally exposed to have had his fingers in a lot of pies where they shouldn't have been. In the same union we find Jimmy Hoffa, an opposite of a sort, and Beck's successor, not addicted to luxury living. Attorney General Robert Kennedy engineered a personal vendetta against Hoffa, I think it fair to say, that ended in Hoffa's conviction for criminal activity. That aside, let me make this point: Had Jimmy Hoffa never hired his first thug to "take care of" a "troublemaker" member, Jimmy Hoffa might be a live man today. It all began and ended with a desire to hold union office, the boot and spur preferred to the saddle and bridle. Incidental to racketeer control of unions, I do not believe that gangsters can take over any union where an alert rank and file initiates the moves. The rank and file has to be lulled to sleep, into inactivity, for that to happen. I will contend-you be the judge-that the cause of unionism is not served by long tenure of office. Repeating what's been said: After the first term or two the officer's foremost goal is reelection. He has left the rowboat for the yacht. Repeating again and again that nothing is ever all of this and none of that, and agreeing that experience has value, in general the long-time officeholders use their experience to slough off working class responsibilities rather than attend to them. Here is a rough pattern for a suggested remedy. First, keep officer pay, from local to international, within the range of the worker's on the job. Not ten times greater, not five times greater, not two times

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greater, not one and one-halftimes greater, but in the range of what the job pays. Furnish the officer with the tools to do the job, including necessary travel and hostelry, and don't be stingy. Then, after three one-year terms or two two-year terms, retire the officer to the job-not to a political appointment, not to a company position, not to a vacation, but to the job held when first elected (accrued seniority respected, if such there be)-for a period of one year before again being eligible for nomination for any office in the union. Brainpower is not to be discounted offhandedly. But the idea that a union can pay a brainy officer so much that he won't be tempted by what a corporation would offer him just won't wash. (The offer that the corporation would be likely to make would be money under the table to take the steam out of workers' demands.) If he'd had the kind of brains the corporations were looking for, they'd have been after him before the union had a chance at him. Unions are not likely to elect an officer without any brains at all. Any officer with the ability to present a proposal in reasonably correct language without bluster, who has the backing of the rank and file, will give the union all the brainy representation it will ever need. That the union officer goes into negotiations and outsmarts the employer's team across the table with sheer mental superiority is another myth. The ideal would be for the officers-a raft of them-to embrace the pattern, to renounce the temptation to "succeed" on the backs of their fellows. That being unlikely, we have to wait until the rank and file of the working class do a lot of hard thinking and decide that the career union officer rider is the first one to pitch off their backs as they seek a society where there are no riders and no ridden. It is a slow and arduous process, persuading people to examine longheld beliefs critically. Nor can I promise you that it will come about; but I think it will, in the course of time. If the union officer doesn't want to be what he set out to be (a competent hand at his trade), then let him set out to be something else at the outset. I think it was Eugene Victor Debs who said, "I want to rise with the ranks, not from the ranks." Organizations and strikes may get a larger share for the members of an organization, but, if they do, they get it at the expense of the less powerful portion of the working mass. They do not create something out of nothing. It is only by divesting our minds of questions of ownership and other machinery of distribution, and by looking solely at the question of consumption-asking ourselves what is the annual product, who consumes it, and what changes would or could we make-that we keep in the world of

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realities. (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 1900, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, later Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States) Most American workers, of course, have never been members of a union, a fact at the turn of the century when Justice Holmes uttered those words, as it is now. If we keep in the world of realities almost nine decades later, we have to realize that the working man and woman we knew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are obsolete, replaced by a machine. Many Americans have no job at all, many of them idled because they were replaced by machines. The old cliche that "times will get better and jobs will be plentiful again" is a glaring fallacy now. As "times get better," all the employer needs is another machine. Idleness is a consumer. Enforced idleness consumes a person's pride and sense of self-worth. Maybe the unions have an obligation to make demands for the whole working class. I believe they do. Nowadays there is much concern about the crime of armed robbery, committed by the robber armed with knife, gun, or cudgel and most often willing to use it. The total losses suffered to these robbings are less than peanuts compared to white collar crime, but that's a different horse in a different pasture, sort of. Armed robbery is an item of concern, one of special concern to us working class citizens, because our neighborhoods bear the brunt of it, and it comes with the threat and/or actuality of physical harm. It is committed more often than not by young males, aged seventeen to thirty. My question: How many of these armed robbers are regularly employed, earning an income sufficient to support a comfortable life? Do I make a point? The year 1963 keeps coming to mind. At a labor convention that year the overriding theme was rehabilitation and retraining of those who had become unemployed, displaced by machinery and automation: to teach them to operate the machine that displaced them, to be skeptically simplistic. The standing joke of the day was about the ex-elevator operator telling "how stupid it makes you feel to be replaced by a blankety-blank button." Big shots from labor, management, and government held forth for two days expounding the subject: the technical aspects, economic impact, and so on. To be fair, they spread a lot of knowledge to the convention assemblage. Late in the afternoon of the last day of that speechmaking a union president was introduced. He spoke less than five minutes and, maybe, said more than the rest put together, about like this:

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"I have sat these two days and listened to the speakers here and have learned from them, and I heartily endorse what they are doing. But I would like to put in a word of caution. Not every one of these displaced workers will have the dexterity or perhaps the mentality to operate these complex machines we're talking about. For those who can, fine. Retrain them. But please don't forget the others. Friends and fellow unionists, what the country needs are jobs that people can do WITH THEIR HANDS." Jobs that are socially profitable, let me suggest. Protecting ourselves from ourselves would be a way of putting it. Socially profitable work is just as important and should be just as well compensated as producing for private profit. It takes imagination and compassion to admit it, but "from each according to ability, to each according to need" is a valid goal. The Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World claims that: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

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It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capital, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. Knowing, therefore, that such an organization is absolutely necessary for emancipation, we unite under the following constitution ...

There you have what might be called the "Pilot Light" of the IWW, the Wobblies. Since the IWW's heyday the organization has stayed alive through the efforts of its idealist participants, one could say, and not be far wrong. The IWW has never regained the numbers it had before the vicious persecutions suffered during and following World War I from local, state, and federal agencies-and from private parties, while government agencies looked the other way. You might say that present IWW members are the keepers of the flame. The idea and the ideal are there, battered, but intact. In the present day, when we are under constant exposure to slick advertising and catchwords, there comes now and again a question: Is the Preamble as attention-catching as it could be? Conceived eighty-plus years ago, is it due an update? I don't really think so. I think the real thrust of it is in the first two paragraphs and the last two paragraphs before the conclusion, if you like brevity. In the "take possession" part I can find myself wishing that they had added "and distribution" after the word "production." All in all, those who met in Chicago back then viewed the future of industry and capital through clear eyes. Today capital is global and industry is global, and labor is playing "catch-up." Or is labor asleep at the wheel? I believe that it is the mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. I believe that abolition of the wage system precedes or accompanies that mission. Had you ever thought how it would be to have goods in abundant supply, there for the taking, priceless? You think about that. Somehow, I never had the quality that it takes to be a True Believer, to believe that mine is the only path to The Truth and that all others are blind alleys. It seems to me that there could be two of us, or several, on parallel courses that could converge on the goal. I have an old friend who is an idealist-and no dummy-who persists in believing in the United Front. I have so far failed to bring my vision eye to eye with his; but who is to say? The pure in heart ... It is the mission of the working class to clear their heads of junk

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thinking, to look clear-eyed at the world around them and to believe that the power to change society is in themselves, to be indignant every time anybody is hurt. The problems of pollution, soil erosion, overpopulation (people pollution), hunger, joblessness, the threat of The Bomb should all be of deep concern to labor as a class. Labor could solve every one of them with well-targeted direct action. We have to switch from competition to cooperation, from taking to sharing, else we'll have a future society composed of a very few unimaginably rich at the top, a scattering of less rich just below; then, graduating downward until, at the bottom, millions of working poor and millions of idled live a cesspool existence. Is that compatible with your conscience? Scene: You've run your earthly course and you're Upstairs facing your Maker. "Greetings," says God. "You weathered the storm below and did well for yourself, and you did the right things. You sang a hosanna every week, and you told the people around you about the good life in the hereafter, so there was no point in their kicking over the traces in the earthly life. I have a mansion prepared for every last one of you-all. Welcome to the Kingdom." Can you honestly view that scenario in good conscience? Continuing: Then you say to God (or Jehovah, or Allah, or Buddha, or Whomever): "Now see here, God, I never had to live among the hoi polloi down on earth. See to it that my mansion up here is in one of your better neighborhoods. You dig me?" Can the ideal of plenty for all on earth come about gradually? I think it's possible, although not highly probable. I fear that the ones booted and spurred will not leave the saddle of their own will. They'll probably have to be bucked off. The Wobblies have proposed the General Strike. I think that would work. In a true general strike, labor would become management instanter. The state of affairs would be the "new society." The great intellectual, Lenin, did not trust workers to make their own decisions. That distrust set the stage for a great revolution to go down the drain. Lend that idea some thought. In our modern technological society almost everybody is labor, even if the better paid at the drawing boards like to think of themselves as something else, perhaps. So labor has the savvy to supply the world. As I take a break from this writing, the television news show 60 Minutes is on. The segment concerns processing of poultry for the

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market. It makes you wonder if you ever want to hoist another whole chicken from that bin in the supermarket. But then, not to worry, your chances are good. Not every bird will be poisoned, and even then it may not kill more than a few people out of each thousand. Chicken roulette. You could survive. The thing is this: The people who own/manage are glib in telling us that the machine is superior in workmanship to the worker it displaced. No doubt that is occasionally true. In this case, those machines that gouge the entrails from the birds are not only not removing all that a worker would be fired for in a hell of a hurry if he/she failed to remove it, but are tearing parts that seep poison into the edible parts. The lines-I don't know if you call them "assembly lines" in that industry-carry the birds by at such speed that human correction of machine error is impossible. And that brings to mind a story. In the early days in the Pacific Northwest forests the lumbeijacks joined the IWW in great numbers. They asked for an eight-hour day in the woods. Management said, "No." Ten suited management better. The lumbeijacks hit on a solution. Hands came in from the woods at a day's end at the sound of a quitting whistle. The workers sent a delegation to the engine house. The designated member of the delegation pulled the whistle cord when eight hours' work time had elapsed. The men knocked off and came to the bunkhouse. Management found out that their man at the engine house could pull the cord at the end of eight hours without the union delegation having to be present, and so instructed him. Those lumbeijacks were a determined lot. Make a note of that. Why don't the poultry workers do that, designate a committee to slow the gadget that regulates the speed of the line? Why didn't workers in the auto plants do that years ago? Maybe they're waiting on their lawyers to do it for them? Jay Gould said contemptuously years ago that he could "hire onehalf of the working class to kill the other half." With today's advanced weaponry, maybe he'd need only one-tenth to kill off the other nine-tenths. (Of course, Jay was banking on his belief that, if one of the ones he'd picked to be killed should wrest a weapon away from one of the killers, he'd not have brains enough to turn it against his real enemy.) What with all the hostile forces arrayed against them, not the least being the specter of nuclear obliteration, working people face a dangerous road. Still, standing up is better than cringing. The Spanish people said, "Better to die on your feet than to starve on your

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knees." And we had an expression down in these parts, "Shucks, 'tain't no hill fer a stepper." The ramifications of socially profitable work could be expanded into volumes. Allow me four paragraphs. (I've spent a volume arguing the need to change an economic system, and here I am, offering suggestions that could save it. But I doubt that capital will pay any more heed than it did the recommendations from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in the 1950s.) Private employment is not going to come even close to employing the available work force in the future. If there ever was such a thing as full private employment, it was before robotization of industry. There are overlapping areas, as in the poultry processing example, where employing the number of humans sufficient to correct machine error would demonstrably prove socially profitable, by saving consumers from death or long-term health loss from food poisoning. Other overlapping areas will come to mind if you give thought to the subject. In other avenues: Have you visited a nursing home lately, those edifices where bodies disabled by the infirmities of disease or aging are warehoused? The quality of life there could be improved many times over by having a host of people-instead of skeleton, overworked staffing-to see to the residents' simple needs and, most of all, just to furnish them company, pay them a lot of attention. What about epidemics, infestations? You've heard of the gypsy moth, the pine bark beetle, the fire ant, the killer bee, for starters. We have the toxins and the methods to deal with these baneful insects. If selectively applied by numbers of people hired for the task, they'll do the job, and we won't be saturating the entire plant life and soil with deadly poisons, thereby creating bigger problems than the ones we set out to solve. All these are jobs that you don't have to be a genius or an intellectual wizard to be trained to do, jobs that people can do WITH THEIR HANDS. And how about recycling? Also, in place of assigning chemists to develop the ultimate in toxic substances, assign biologists and geneticists to devising "population control" of these insects, as was done to control the screwworm fly that was depopulating the deer herds here in Texas. How do we support this army of researchers, applicators, and caretakers? Back to Justice Holmes:" ... by divesting our minds of questions of ownership and other machinery of distribution, and by looking directly at the question of consumption ..." As for ownership, do you want to keep in the world of realities? The only valid title to owner-

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ship in North America rests in the graves oflndians murdered years ago as whites acquired the land. Maybe we need to direct our major attention to the land-if we can do so before the agricorporations have denuded, poisoned, and destroyed it. The land begs to be taken back by the people for the people. That's my story, friend, a sort of average guy who lived to see some things happen. Wife Sally Jo and I enjoy Social Security payments and a pension that is superior to many, the fruit of unionmanagement negotiations over the years, and not vulnerable to the pension plan raiders so far. On our income we can afford to eat out at a modest-priced restaurant on occasion, keep the roof patched, and afford a week or two away once a year. We are not able to afford the opera, the symphony, or the theater. Whoa! I'm forgetting the active member of the family, Jonathan, the cat, a neutered male. If we can hold off those pension plan raiders, our future looks reasonably comfortable and secure, barring world-wide economic breakdown. A health care plan that was quite generous is being squeezed, because of lessening employer contributions in the face of dwindling ocean commerce. During the couple of decades when shipping tonnage showed steady increases while man-hours decreased, the union somehow failed to tie fringe benefits to tonnage in place of manhours. Overall, we are not haunted by the specter of poverty. We are lucky. All of which does not lessen my indignation when I see those who worked just as hard as I, in a less lucky industry, being hurt. It is so easy to become angry and to direct the anger toward some person. Let us be angry at the system we've created-and change it. God knows we'll be doing every human the greatest favor that one can bestow on another, even to those individuals whose spurs have dug us the deepest. Did you know that the American Federation of Labor once furnished a ritual that said in part that "wages can never be the true reward for labor performed" and "we pledge to push onward in our work until the laborer shall have been disenthralled from every species of injustice"? The exact words have long since slipped my mind, but that is the sense of it. I would suppose that that ritual lies in the AFL archives somewhere. I would suppose also that the organization never formally repudiated that language. At this point you find yourselfrestrospective, thinking, "Just anybody could have said it better. What did I leave out?" In earlier times, circa 1910, the Brotherhood of Timber Workers organized in the pine forests of Louisiana and East Texas. The Timber Workers

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brought black and white workers together, and they recruited farmers, preachers, merchants, and doctors into their ranks-and spouses of the members belonged to the union, and exercised full voice and vote in all union meetings. Perhaps the unionism practiced by those simple, unsophisticated idealists represented actually the unionism of the future. Perhaps our future is still ahead of us. If you are one who requires a detailed plan with built-in infallibility, maybe we had best stop the bus and let you off at the next comfort station. We will proceed by trial and error, and there will be defeats along the road to victory, I suspect. After victory, the test for a project will be: Will it benefit people? Is material available? Islabor available? If yes, then build it. Likewise, if a usable product is available, then use it. I use a letterhead that looks like this: PRODUCTION FOR USE Instead Of For Profit (]{You Don't Agree, You Must Have A Good Reason?) Well, if you don't agree, your reason is not such a good one that it denies me the privilege of asking the question, is it? I don't want to recruit you, I only want to persuade you to set your mind to doing some hard thinking.

AFTERWORD

O

NE PENALTY you pay for a work such as this: the publisher insists that you yourself read what you have written. Having complied with that, I'm prodded to shore up a couple of faults in the structure, as follows:

A Last Tribute to Si Borison Simon Borison, a dominating character in the early part of the book, was allowed to disappear without a trace. This does not do justice to the man nor to the account itself. So let's remedy that. In 1938 or 1939, Si, always his own man, became unhappy with his situation, quit his walking foreman's job, and went to hiring out through the hall. The fact is, he and I were members of the same regular gang, working for gang foreman Jack Gideon, when I was drafted into the army in early 1941. By the time of my next Corpus Christi "tour of duty" (1949-1956) Si had retired and was living on a piece ofland he had acquired near Aransas Pass. He paid a visit to the docks now and again. I was always glad to shake the old boy's hand. I'm going to be so brash as to say that he began to see things a little bit my way toward the end. I suspect that came hard, as deep-set in his convictions about work and working as he had been.

Houston Female "Longshoremen" This item deserves coverage. About 1970, Houston (black) ILA Local 872 hired its first female "longshoreman." In all, some ten women became regular hands, joined the union, and then became members of Local 24 in the 1983 merger of Locals 872 and 1273. I have it on good authority that those women were shown no favors. They "got down where the work was" and did it, the same as any man. However, as of late 1987, none were still working at the occupation, according to Local 24's business agent's office.

Afterword

261

Mixed Membership Black Local 872 had at least one white member, I am reliably informed. White Local 1273 never employed any female or any black worker, as my best memory goes.

Steamship Clerks and Checkers Clerking, checking, and timekeeping were jobs held exclusively by white males in earlier times. In later years, Houston ILA Clerks and Checkers Local1351 opened the door to blacks and females. In 1987, Local1351 had some forty black and some twenty-five female members, a few of those black and female.

To Batten Down Well, time to cover the hatch, batten down, and send this ship to sea. I hope that it has recounted some of the happenings of the time in other than dull fashion. I hold the belief that clever people were put on this earth to assist those less clever, not to exploit them. Ergo, our economy is geared to work backwards. If this book nudged you toward doing something about that, then it has been a whopping success. If you find yourself unconvinced, but the proposition continues to nag at your consciousness by spells, then the writing will by no means have been in vain. The power to change lies in the working class, in those at the drawing boards and in those digging ditches, the clever and the notso-clever. Well-wishers have said, as the manuscript neared its printing, "Just think! You're going to be a published author!"-as ifl should be ecstatic at the prospect. Well, it's a pleasant prospect. I would like to be remembered as a fellow who, in his time, was rated a fair-tomiddlin' cotton cutter. Bon Voyage G.M.

INDEX

Adamic, Louis, 156 AFL. See American Federation of Labor AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations), 110-111 n, 231, 232, 233,238,243,246,250 Aguirre, "Chico," 6 Air Traffic Controllers, 246 Alabama, 232 Allee, A. Y., 95-100, 106, 164 Allen, 0. K., 93 Allred, James V., 90, 99, 107, 164 American Can strike, 207 American Dream, 242 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 76, 84, 109, 126, 145, 154, 162, 233, 243, 246, 258; and antiCommunism, 89, 164, 181-182; and Bell strike, 223; and Biloxi fishermen, 184; and campaign against ILWU in New Orleans, 199-204; Communist support for, 122; conventions of, 164, 198-199; demands 30-hour week, 166; and dual unionism, 122-123; expels ILA, 231-232, 240; and Houston city workers' strike, 224; and independent unions, 130; and internal affairs of affiliates, 110; IWW compared to, 66; lack of solidarity in,80,121-122,139,192,238;and lobbying, 230-231; merges with CIO, 232, 238; Mers as organizer for, 204-208; and MFGC, 132144; and sanctity of contract, 8687; and seamen's union, 194

American labor movement, 156157,222,242 American Radio Telegraphists' Association (ARTA), 117, 120, 125, 126, 179, 201 "American Separation of Labor," 110,182 American workers, 16-17,252 American Workers Party, 78 Anderson, Albert E., 88 Antone, Leon, 162, 181 Arizona, 24, 29, 30, 48, 101, 185, 186 Arkansas, 107 Army, 33, 66, 146, 213-219 Army Transportation Corps, 53, 218 Army Transport Service, 215 Arnold, Bill, 131-134 ARTA. See American Radio Telegraphists' Association Ashby,Lynn,88 Atlanta, Ga., 204 Atlantic and Gulf Co., 37, 88 Atlantic Coast, 122, 162, 164, 171, 189,193, 194,199,234,235.See also East Coast Atlantic Seamen's Defense Committee, 194 Austin, Tex., 54, 230-231, 243 Auto-Lite strike, 78 automation, 238. See also mechanization Auto Workers, United (UAW), 238, 246 Baker, Hardie F., 118, 152-153 Baltimore, Md., 13,171-172

264

Index

Barker, D. D., 48 Barrow, Clyde, 107 Barton, Jess, 167 Barton, "Warhorse," 17 "Battle of Deputies Run," 79 Bay Area District Council, 188, 192 Baytown, Tex., 133 Beard, "Mom," 17 4 Beaumont, Tex., 44,115,116,117, 120,126,128,152,161,163,164, 166,169,176,179,210 Beck,Dave,232,250 Bell System strike, 222-223, 225 Bernstein, Irving, 88, 153 Betts, Sam, 31, 215 Biehl Groceries, 92 Bigelow, Raymond, 193 Billings, Warren K., 67, 180 Biloxi, Miss., 182-184 Bisbee, Ariz., 2-3, 4, 20, 25, 30, 66, 75, 90, 151, 193 Black, Hugo, 55 Black Bill, 55 blacks. See Negroes "Bloody Thursday," 85 Bonus Army, 50 Borison, Charlie, 54, 215 Borison, Mrs., 54 Borison, Simon, 22-24, 31-32, 3435,40,46-47,53-54,57,61-63, 64,71-72,75-7~77-78,260

Boston, Mass., 96 Bougainville, 217-218 Boyd, Tom, 22, 63-65, 69 Boyd-Campbell Co., 21, 22, 40, 48, 53, 57,60-65,68-70,73-74, 76, 77 Bradley, Jack, 104-105 Bradley, William V., 232 Brandt, Sam, 93 Breed, Harvey, 169 Bridges, Harry, xvi, 89, 124, 171172,186-189,191-193,199,203204, 247 Brooks, Homer, 122, 124 Brooklyn Army Base, 219 Brown, Bill, 61-64

Brown, Gus, 170 Brownsville, Tex., 74, 146 Brownwood, Tex., 214 "Buffaloes," 83, 89,112,117, 178 Building Trades Council, 211 Bull Line, 53, 61, 82, 84, 91, 94, 97, 180 Burroughs (longshoreman), 116 Butler, Horace, 91 Byne,Moe,155, 161 California. See Pacific Coast; West Coast California, SS, 130 California State Federation of Labor, 188 Cameron County, Tex., 146 Campbell, Steele, 22, 57-58, 69 Camp Bowie, Tex., 214 Camp Stoneman, Calif., 215 Carloaders, ILA, 225, 227 Carlson, Oscar, 155-156 Carpenters (Union), 48 Carter, Leo, 200-201, 203 Castle (Wobbly), 167 Caven Point, NJ, 219 CCC, 76,77 Cecil, Paul, 36-38, 42, 60-61, 63 Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 238, 257 Central Dock and Marine Council, ILA, 44, 65, 80 Central Labor Union, AFL, 76, 84, 85,116,121,131,134,231 Chase, C. P., 125, 126, 154,158-160, 180,181 Chicago, Ill., 121, 194, 254 "Chicago Speech," 197 "chicken roulette," 256 Christ, E. G., 93 Christmas, 173, 217 CIO. See Committee for Industrial Organization/Congress of Industrial Organizations Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 76, 77 Clark (radio operator), 167

Index class struggle, 67 class violence, 156 Clerks and Checkers, ILA, 261 CLU. See Central Labor Union coastwise work, 4, 5, 41, 83, 235 Cochran, Tom, 205 Cold War, 244 "Colored Only," 191 Committee for Industrial Organization/Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 110-111n, 121, 122,134,136,145,148,172,194, 197,198,199,201-204,207,210, 223,224,229,230,231,232,238, 246 Communications Workers of America (CWA), 222 Communism, accusations of, 89, 132, 138-139, 163, 164, 181-182, 190,229-230 Communist Party (CP), 51, 111, 128, 155,158,159,160,170,171,175, 181,182,188,189,190,191,198, 211; Mers and, 120, 122-125, 145, 153-155, 159-160 Conference for Progressive Labor Action, 51 Congress (US), 50, 55, 65, 87, 158, 179,193,225,226,229 Congress of Industrial Organizations. See Committee for Industrial Organization/Congress of Industrial Organizations "construction gate," 238-239 Continental Can strike, 207 Coolidge, Calvin, 50 Copeland Act, 158, 17 4 Corpus Christi, Tex., 1-148 passim, 162,164,178,185,193,196,200, 208-227 passim, 260; climate of, 29-30; CLU in, 76, 116, 121; cotton loading limit in, 56-57; Depression in, 51-53; hurricane in, 74-75; ILA locals in, 11, 20-21; Mers family moves to, 2; racial attitudes in, 25; strikes in, 8183,91-108

265

-Caller-Times, 82, 218 -Naval Air Training Station, 212213 -Port of, 9, 83 Costello, Dick, 5, 38, 42, 44, 57, 58, 77 Coward, Pauline, 220 CP. See Communist Party CPUSA (Communist Party, USA). See Communist Party Crescent City, The, 184 Croney,Jim,125,126,143,160, 179, 189,201 Crossland, John, 133 Cruz, Gabriel, 106-107 Curran,JosephR., 130-131,144145, 167' 180, 181, 189-191, 195, 229 CWA,222 cybernetics, 238 D'Arcy, Terence, 137,157-158, 187, 202 Davis, W. H., 219 Davis Award, 219 Dean, "Red," 204, 206 Debs, Eugene Victor, 251 deep sea work, 4, 5, 41, 83, 235 Democratic Party, 50-51,231 Democratic Primaries, 85 Depression, Great, 19, 39, 51-53, 76,79,153 DeVaughn, A. W., 93 Dickey, Wilbur, 161, 168 Dickson, Clark, 104, 118 Dickson, Everett, 101, 104, 200, 201 Dock and Marine Council, ILA, 44, 46,47,65,80,233 Dodd Field, 213 Donald, Tom, 65-68, 80-81, 85, 86-87, 89, 93-94, 96, 102 Dorothy, SS, 92-94,96, 108,115 double whip, 7 Downey, C. L. "Charlie," 53, 61, 65 dual unionism, 121, 122-123, 210, 227 Duffy, Adrian, 167

266

Index

Dunne, Maxwell P., 103 Dwyer, Michael J. "Mickey" I "Mike," 32, 45, 46, 47, 65, 73-74, 80, 88, 109, 110, 115-116, 127, 128, 136, 138, 140-141, 142, 143, 205, 240 Dynamite (Adamic), 156 East Coast, 108, 109, 110, 111, 117, 130,131,144,149,158,160,162, 163,171,177,178,189,190,191, 198, 199, 247. See also Atlantic Coast East Gulf, 89, 90, 108, 110, 119, 120, 136, 173, 195, 247 East Texas, 258 Eddy, Gaylord, 44, 4 7, 54, 65, 80, 88,102,110,112,114 Eden,Jack,l6,18,35 Edward VIII, King, 169 Eighth Army Corps, 214 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 50, 229 Eleven-State Area Agreement, 79 EI Paso, Tex., 2 Emergency Banking Relief Act, 55 Ericcson, Marvin, 99 Fabian Socialism, 231 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 215 Fall River, Mass., 96 Female "longshoremen," 260 Fischer, William, 187 Fluorspar, SS, 55, 161 Follett, J. B. (Joe), 129 Follett, William B. (Bill), 129, 164, 196,200,205,207,222 Follmar, Sally Jo, 220 Ford, J. C., 147 Ford Foundation, 238 Forrest, Captain, 201 Fort Sam Houston, Tex., 213 Franco, Francisco, 180, 197 French longshoremen, 166 Fromm, Erich, 236

Galveston, Tex., 9, 15, 17, 21, 38, 41-54 passim, 60, 61, 72, 80, 94, 102-185 passim, 193, 210, 225 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 245 Garner, John Nance, 51 Garnier, Marty, 167 General American, 206 general strike, 255 Georgia, 204 Gideon,Jack,260 Gleason, Teddy, 234-235, 245, 247, 248 Goldblatt, Louis, 220, 238 Googe, George, 201 Gorman, Francis, 80 Gorman (IWW member), 171 Goudge, E. (and Sons), 21-22 Gould, Jay, 256 Grandcamp,SS, 225 Grange,Dave,150,162,163 greaser, 7 Great Lakes, 122, 171, 232 Green, George N., 131, 134, 135 Green, William, 134-135, 205, 207, 225-226, 236-237 Gretna, La., 200 Greyhound Bus Lines, 179 Guadalcanal, 218 Gude,Joe,22,31,40,77 Gulf of Mexico, 18, 89, 96,108, 111, 117,122,136,144,148,164,171204 passim, 234, 235, 236, 24 7, 248 Gulf Coast, 29, 117, 125, 177 Gulfport, Miss., 88, 89, 120 Hall, Fred, 62, 65, 68, 112 Hall's Camp, 52 Hamer, Frank, 107, 164 Hamilton, "Doc," 141, 142 Hansen, Fred, Sr., 84 Harding, Warren G., 50 Harlingen, Tex., 100 Harris County, Tex., 211 Harrod, Thelma, 75

Index Hartley, George A., 33-34, 42, 46, 49, 57, 58,61-65,73-74,75-76, 77,78,80,83,85,93,94,114,116, 137 Hatcher, Carl, 193 Hatcher, Chloe, 193 Hatcher, John, 193 Hatcher, Mrs. C. E., 193 High Flyer, SS, 225 Hill, William F., 133, 135 hiring hall, 3 Hitler, Adolf, 156 Hobart, George "Blackie," 205-206 Hod Carriers and Common Laborers Union, 200, 211 Hoffa, James Riddle "Jimmy," 243244, 250 Holiman, David, 169 Holleman, Jerry, 231 Holley, Jim, 112 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 252, 257 Honea, Acting Chief of Police (Houston), 173 Honolulu, 243 Hoover, Herbert, 50, 53, 76 Hortman, Paul, 138, 157, 158 Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union, 226-227,231 Houchins, Kenyon, 210-211 Houchins, Lonalee, 210-211 Houghton, Charlie, 102 House of Representatives (Texas), 230 House of Representatives (US), 87, 211 Houston, Tex., 9, 15, 20, 21, 41, 44, 48,49,53,60,83,89,93,94,107248 passim; AFL convention in, 198-199; Joe Curran in, 144-145; labor council in, 172-173; Mers as AFL organizer in, 205-208, 210-213; Progressive Committee in, 128-129,144, 172; strikes in, 83, 93, 107' 155, 164, 168-169,

267

174-175, 222-225; TSFL convention in, 131-135 -Junior Chamber of Commerce, 247 -Post, 88 -Press, 173 "Hundred Days," 55 Hunley, Elmerita, 219 Hunt, Ernest, 55, 57, 91, 102-103 Hunter, C. N. "Preacher," 174 IBL,232,240 "idiot spoon," 5 ILA. See International Longshoremen's Association -Local24,232,236,260 -Local231,158,177 -Local307, 21, 61,126, 127, 136, 164 -Local872,83,108,232,236,261 -Local1224,11,18, 19,20,32,93, 105,107,134,162,226,230,231 -Local1225,11,20,32,56,63,65, 68,69,71,73,93 -Local1226,158,177 -Local1273,49,108,116,117,222, 230,231,232,233,234,236,241, 247,261 -Local1284, 158 -Local1300, 162 -Local1351, 261 -Local1409, 117 -Local1410,138,159 -Local1418, 119, 138 -Local1419,119,138 ILA-Independent, 232, 240 ILWU. See International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies), 51, 80, 94, 102, 110,122,123,126,139,154,167, 168,182,192,231,255,256;and Communists, 155; and maritime federation, 121, 129; Mers joins, 226-228; Preamble to Constitu-

268

Index

tion of, 253-254; and seamen's unions, 171,207-208, 210; and solidarity, 66-68, 84, 129, 148 Ingleside, Tex., 51 intercoastal work, 4, 60, 112, 117 International Brotherhood of Longshoremen (IBL), 232, 240 International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), 3, 9-19 passim, 32, 42-66 passim, 78, 81, 88-98 passim, 107-148 passim, 159-210 passim, 219-248 passim International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), 186-187, 197,199,200-204,220, 226, 247 International Seamen's Union (ISU), 84, 93,111,115,117,118, 120, 122, 127, 130-131, 132, 136, 144, 145,148, 150-175 passim, 178,181,190,191,194,201,204, 209 International Typographical Union (ITU), 134, 172 Iron Heel, The (London), 156 Isthmian Line, 205-206 ITU. See International Typographical Union IWW. See Industrial Workers of the World

Kane, John, 168-169 Kennedy, Robert, 250 Kertell, Charles, 125, 170

Labor Messenger (Houston), 172 Lake Charles, La., 44, 80, 81, 83, 88,89,93,108,112,113,115,116 , 125,146,161,179,247 Lake Ponchartrain, 218 Lake Tahoe, 243 Landgrebe, Ralph J., Sr., 83, 108, 109,112,116,129,137,176,196, 200,201,202,203-204,205,20 8, 222-226 Landrum-Griffin Act, 233, 240, 244 Las Vegas, Nev., 243 Lawson, Norris, 234 LCT (Landing Craft, Tank), 217 Leared, Bill, 116, 226 Leared, E. B. "Bud," 226, 230, 234 Lenin, V. 1., 255 Lewis, John L., 110 Liberty ship, 215 Lindgreen, C. A., 6 Lockwood (convention delegate), 134 Logan, Charles M., 137, 143, 156158,184 London, Jack, 156,188 London, Joan, 188 Long Reach Terminal (Houston), 225 Lord, Lester, 161 Louisiana, 214, 258 Louisiana Longshoremen's Association,88-89 Lowell, Ariz., 2 Lower Rio Grande Valley, 2, 9, 100 Lowry, Zene, 178 LST (Landing Ship, Tank), 217 Lucas County Unemployed League, 78 Lundeberg, Harry, 172, 188, 189191, 195, 198-199, 202, 204, 206, 208,209 Lykes Brothers, 71, 72, 96, 114-116, 161, 167-168, 210

Labor Day, 74, 79 Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 233

Maas, August, 92, 94 MacArthur, Douglas, 50 McCann, Charlie, 60, 61, 63

Jacobs, William States, 174 Japan, shipments to, 193 Japanese forces on Bougainville, 217 Jefferson County, Tex., 152, 166 Jim Crow, 185, 186 Johnson, "Catfish," 165 Jonathan (cat), 258

Index

McCarthy, Frank, 53, 82, 84, 91, 94 McCarthy, Joseph Raymond, 229230, 244 McCracken, Bob, 218 McGovern, Dave, 222 McGowen, Grant, 12, 13, 129 McGrady, Edward F., 112, 113 McKivett, Pat, 26 Madden, Ownie, 139 Maine, 166 Mandell, Arthur J., 93-94 Manhattan, 219 Mardi Gras, 178 Marine Cooks and Stewards (MCS), 148,150,162 Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association CMEBA), 120, 125, 126, 130, 163, 202 Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders (MFOW), 148, 155-156, 161,172 Marine Transport Workers (IWW), 168 Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast (MFGC), 117-122, 124129,131,133-140,14 3-144,146, 148, 151, 154, 157' 158, 162, 163165,170-171,175-17 9,183184, 193, 195-197 Maritime Federation, National, 122 Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast (MFPC), 111,117, 122, 136, 148,171,172,185,187 -188,191, 192 Maritime Trades Department, 121, 135 Marshall, J. K., 21, 24, 33, 38, 42, 43-44, 45, 55, 77, 85, 116 Marx, Karl, 236 Massey, Ralph, 234,247-248 Masters, Mates and Pilots, National Organization of (MM&P), 120, 122,125,126,201 Mayes,Barney,172, 188,198 Mayo, Walter, 146 MCS. See Marine Cooks and Stewards

269

Meat Cutters Union, 200 MEBA. See Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association mechanization, 220-221. See also automation Mehner, Carl, 214 Mellina, Frank, 32-34, 45, 49, 61, 64,65,88 Mellina, George, 61 Mellina, Tony, 61 Memorial Day Massacre, 194 Mers, Edna Mae, 1 Mers, James Clinton (Clint), 1-3, 52, 75 Mers, (John) Gilbert, 16, 46, 57, 58, 65,69,88,99, 109,112,118,131, 132, 134, 162, 218 Mers, Kenneth (author's brother), 1 Mers, Kenneth (author's son), 220 Mers, Michael, 220 Mers, Sally Jo, 220, 258 Mers, Thelma, 75, 99, 208 Metrose, Eddie, 210 Mexican Confederation of Labor, 166 "Mexican dragline," 5 Mexico, 29 Meyer, Sewall, 233 MFGC. See Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast MFOW. See Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders MFPC. See Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast Miami, Fla., 37, 243 Michigan, 220 Military Police, 214, 231 Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, 193 Minneapolis, Minn., 79 Mississippi, 109, 182-184 Missouri, 107 Mitchell, J. E., 21, 38, 42 MM&P. See Masters, Mates and Pilots Mobile, Ala., 88, 89, 118, 119-120, 126, 128, 137, 138, 146, 158-159, 162,167,175,178,181 ,234

270

Index

money panic, 39 Montgomery, Ala., 232 Moon, Joe, 62 Mooney, Thomas, J., 67, 180 Moran (convention delegate), 134 Morgan, John, 12,13,20,32,38,40, 226 Mueller, Commander, 212-213 Munson Line, 62, 66, 68, 70 Murray,J.E., 164,173 Mussolini, Benito, 156 Muste, A. J., 51, 78 Myers-Spalti Co., 155 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), 244,246 National Guard, 78 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 137, 156, 184, 199, 213, 232,233-234,241 National Maritime Federation, 171 National Maritime Union (NMU), 130,167,168-169,191,194-196 , 198-200, 202, 205, 209-210, 215, 229 National Recovery Act/Administration (NRA), 75, 79, 87 Naval Air Station (Corpus Christi), 212-213 Navy,53,212,219 Negroes, 25, 27-28, 68-69, 91, 130, 147-148, 182-184, 186, 191, 215, 232 Neutrality Act, 197 New Caledonia, 215-217 NewDeal,65,84,86,204,214,2 18, 233, 240, 247 New Jersey, 219 New Mexico, 186 New Orleans, La., 22, 88, 89, 110, 115, 118, 119, 121, 124-126, 128, 129,137,138,143,144,146,154155,156-157,162,167,177-179 , 180, 184-193, 195,199-204,214215,218,240 -Port of, 185 New York, NY, 37, 51, 78, 89, 109,

116,131,139,142,145,150,163, 164,166,171,194,218,232,245 -Port of, 36, 157, 219 -Port of Embarkation of, 218 Nixon, Richard, 24 7 NLRB. See National Labor Relations Board NMU. See National Maritime Union North, 108, 183 North Africa, 53 North America, 258 North American, 199 North Atlantic, 108, 235 North Atlantic District, ILA, 15, 51, 81,96,111,157,234 North Beach (Corpus Christi), 2, 30, 74 North Side (Houston), 244 Noumea, New Caledonia, 215-217 Novack, Robert, 132 NRA, 75, 79, 87 Nueces Bay, 30 Nueces County, Tex., 99 Officer Candidate School (OCS), 218-219 Ohio, 51 Oil Workers Union, 133, 166 Oliver, Bob, 133, 174,223 One Big Union, 87, 110; ofTransportation Workers, 243, 244 O'Neil, Jim, 188 Operating Engineers Union, 240 Orange, Tex., 44, 107, 115, 161 Orleans Parish, La., 155 Pacific Armed Services, 33 Pacific Coast. See Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast; West Coast Pacific Coast District, ILA, 89, 186 Pacific Coast Maritime Association, 220 Pacific Northwest, 13, 36, 189, 256 Paluggi, Joe ("Joe Palooka"), 119 Parker, Bonnie, 107 Parkhouse, George, 230

Index Parkhouse Bill, 230, 243 Parks, Rosa, 232 Patman, Wright, 86 Patton, Bill, 154-155, 201 Payne, B. W., 164 Pearlllarbor,214 Pensacola, Fla., 88, 89, 117,119, 120, 125,126,137,146,162,180 Perkins,Frances,112,130 Perry, Norma, 188, 189 Phelps-Dodge Corporation, 2 Philadelphia, Pa., 13, 227 Phillips (seaman), 167 Phillips, F. C., 155, 161 Pilot, (NMU newspaper), 169 Pittsburgh Plate Glass, 51 Plumbers Union, 211 Polinard, Grover, 56 Polinard, John, 56 Polinard, Rufus "Preacher," 56 poll tax, 24, 234 Ponca City, Okla., 1 Port Arthur, Tex., 44, 52, 115, 117118,128,133,135,145,146-147, 150-153, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 171,185 "Port Evacuation Day," 105 Port lleadquarters Company, 215, 217 Port Isabel, Tex., 146 Powers, Mattie, 1 Preamble (IWW), 253-254 "Preparedness Day," 67 Progressive Committees, 118, 119120,128-129,144,163,172,173 Prohibition, 29, 37, 76 "Project Port Clearance," 106 Quill, Mike, 245 Quinlan, Okla., 1 Raby, J. C., 71-72 Railroad Brotherhoods, 223 Rangers. See Texas Rangers rank and file, 117, 181, 194, 219 Rasmussen, llarold, 207

271

Raspberry, John II. "Buddy," 247248 Raymer, llenry, 112, 244-245 Reagan, Ronald, 246 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 50, 76 Red Cross, 41 Red Scare, 127,229,244 Reilly, Wallace C., 135-136 Republic, USS, 215 Republican Party, 50, 85, 229 Republic Steel strike, 194 Reuther, Walter, 238 Rhone,Ed,138,157,159 Rivette, George, 112, 116 Roberts, Lora, 1-2 Robstown, Tex., 104 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 194 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 50, 51, 53, 55,76,86,179,197 Ross, llolt, 89, 109-110, 133-135, 139-140, 141, 144, 199, 200, 201, 204-205 Ross, William "Scotty," 159 Rotary Club, 172 Rumbold, Richard, 248-249 Ryan, Joseph P., 78-79, 88, 89, 96, 108-111,116, 117' 119, 120, 134, 136144,148,156,157,158,159,162, 166,171,177,178,180,185,198, 199,200,202,205,219,227,232 SA&GC. See South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District Sabine District, ILA, 65, 80, 81, 88, 114-116,142,161 Sailors Union of the Pacific (SUP), 118,148,172,186-191,195,198199,202,205,208,209 Saint Joseph Island, 54 Salvation Army, 41 San Antonio, Tex., 91, 97, 213 San Francisco, Calif., 36, 37, 38, 67, 78-79, 85, 148, 185-193, 196, 218 San Pedro, Calif., 130, 186 Sayre, Frank C., 125,126, 159,170, 180

272

Index

Schilder, Paul "Cowboy," 92 Schmidt, Henry, 38, 188-189 Schofield Barracks, 33 Schrimpf, Henry, 192 Schwellenbach, Lewis B., 219 Scottsboro, SS, 19, 20 screwmen, 16, 18 Seabees,53,217 Seafarers International Union (SIU), 169, 204-210, 247 Seattle, Wash., 121 Selective Service, 212 Senate, US, 229, 230 Seniority Hiring Plan, 241 Service Command, 217 Shamoun, Mike, 231 Shell Oil, 237 Shely, William, 91 Ship Channel (Houston), 172 Ship Channel Progressive Committee, 128, 144, 172 Simon, Joe, 92 Simpson, Wally, 169 SIU, 169, 204-210, 247 Sloan, George, 79 Smith, Malcolm, 28, 45-46, 63, 71 Smith, S. Nathaniel, 125, 126, 146148,180,186,191,202 Socialist Party, 51 Socialists, 188 Social Security Act, 179 Soldiers' Bonus, 50 Solomon Islands, 217-218 Solon of Athens, 242 South,25,79,108-109,147-148 South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District, ILA, 32, 88, 136-143, 233, 234,243,247 South Carolina, 214 Southern Minerals, 51 Southern Stevedoring and Contracting Co., 53, 57, 65 SouthTexas,24,51,81 South Texas Labor Record, 85 Southwest, 66 Soviet Union, 211

Spanish Civil War, 146, 180, 193, 197 Sparks, Paul C., 230-231, 233 Spencer, Joseph, 137,157-158,185187,191,193,202 Spring Strike, 131 Stalin-Hitler Pact, 211 Stalinists, 188, 198 Stapp, Louis, 158 State, County and Municipal Workers, American Federation of (AFSCME), 248 State Health Department (Texas), 112 Steamship Clerks and Checkers, 261 Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC), 207 Stein, Charles, 158, 202 SUP. See Sailors Union of the Pacific Supreme Court (US), 75, 87, 179 Swayne and Hoyt Line, 178 SWOC, 207 Tacitus, 236 Tacoma, Wash., 186 Taft-Hartley Act, 225-226, 235, 236, 244 Tamez, Ralph, 97, 98 Tampa, Fla., 125 Tasker, Lonalee (Houchins), 210211 Teamsters, 79,206-207,211-213, 230,232,236,243-244,248,250 Texaco, 118 Texas,2,24,25,32,36,42-43,69, 85,124-125,126,173,181,185186,195,230-231,234,235,236 Texas Department of Corrections, 20 Texas City, Tex., 9, 15, 49, 56, 60, 117,225 Texas City Disaster, 225 Texas Company (Texaco), 118 Texas Hill Country, 54

Index Texas Rangers, 1, 90-91, 92,95100,103,105,106,107,108,113,164 Texas State Federation of Labor (TSFL), 131-136,144,230-231 Thanksgiving, 103, 104, 105, 166 "Theory of the Super Abundance," 123 Thibodeaux (Swayne and Hoyt representative), 178 Thomas, Arthur, 118, 151, 153, 180, 185,193,195,197,202 Thomas, Gussie, 19-20 Timber Workers, Brotherhood of, 258 Todd, Jack, 3-4, 12, 13, 75 Toledo, Ohio, 78 Towanda, Kans., 1-2 Townsend, Emmett, 127-128, 136137,142 Townsend, Francis, 87 Townsend, Tom, 127 Townsend Plan, 87, 211 Transport Workers Union, 245 Trotsky, Leon, 188 Trotskyites, 181, 188 True Believers, 116, 255 Truman, Harry S., 225,229 TSFL. See Texas State Federation of Labor Tujague,Leo,138,157,158 Turbulent Years, The (Bernstein), 88,153 Twenty-first Amendment, 76 Twenty-fourth Amendment, 234 208th Military Police Company, 214 Typographical Union International, 134,172 UAW (United Auto Workers), 238, 246 Ulcak, John, 81 un-Americanism, 132, 182, 219 Unemployed Leagues, 51, 78 union label, 243 Union Label Trades Department, 122

273

United Front, 210-211, 254 United Mine Workers, 111 United Textile Workers (UTW), 79-80 US Army, 33, 66, 146, 213-219 US Chamber of Commerce, 244, 246 US Labor Department, 130 University of Corpus Christi, 231 University of Texas at Arlington, 131 UTW, 79-80 Vandever, Clarence, 26, 27, 52, 74, 185,200,230 Van Ermen (organizer), 117-120, 127-128 Vassallo, "Babe," 164, 165 Vassallo, Charlie, 164, 165 Vaughan, Robert "Blackie," 227 Voice of the Federation, 172, 188 Vosburgh, Charles, 201, 214-215 Wagner Act, 179 Walker, Bryan, 103-106, 110, 118 Wall, Shannon, 169 Wandless, L. G., 211, 212 Warren, Ariz., 2, 66 "Washing Machine Charlie," 217 Washington, DC, 50, 158 Washington, SS, 166 Webb, "Red," 209, 210 Weir, Stanley, 93 Wells, Willie C., 234 West, 2,148 West Coast, 38, 60, 78, 108, 112, 115, 117,118,119,126,129,137,158, 159,162,167,172,177-178,185, 186-193,202,208,226,247 West Gulf, 44, 89, 110,113, 176, 195, 235,236,247 Wheeler, Harry, 66 Whitley, Maxwell, 234 Wilds, Oscar, 42 Wilds, Sam, 98 Williams, J. Z. "Blackie," 198, 234

274

Index

Williams, Leroy, 172 Williams, Walter, 72 Williford, Frank, 169 Wilson, A. J., 108, 176 Wilson, Arthur, 22, 31, 40, 77 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the World Wobbly Deportation, 66 Woodward, Elmo, 100 Workers Alliance of America, 51

World War (1), 1, 22, 37, 50, 215, 254 World War II, 15, 21, 30, 36, 53, 57, 66, 156, 167, 195, 201, 213-219, 243 Wright, Bob, 167 Wright, Herman, 94 Yeage~Frank,227

Youngstown, SS, 161