Irresistible v. Immovable

In Manhattan the S. S. Oriente was held at her pier for ten hours by a strike of 40 seamen and stewards demanding overtime pay. . . . On the Great Lakes, the American Radio Telegraphists Association struck for better labor conditions on four freight lines. ... In San Francisco, crew troubles tied up the President Hoover, San Anselmo, Maui and Willhilo. ... In San Juan, Puerto Rico, a crew strike held the freighter West Mahwah in port. . . .

Such scattered strikes as these in the past fortnight were the final sputters of a fuse which for two months has been burning slowly but inevitably toward a major charge of maritime dynamite. Last week the explosion finally came. Led by Longshoreman Harry Bridges, 37,000 men of seven unions affiliated with the powerful Maritime Federation of the Pacific started a general waterfront walkout on the Pacific Coast.

At once practically all maritime activity in all U. S. ports from Seattle to San Diego came to a stop. In San Francisco 47 vessels lay idle. Twenty-two were tied up in San Diego, six in Hawaii, 57 in Seattle, Tacoma, Portland. In San Francisco, a separate strike of 1,400 warehousemen further complicated matters. In the Northwest the lumber industry was hamstrung, began shutting down.

The strike virus spread fast. Along the Gulf, at Port Arthur, Houston. Mobile and New Orleans, rank & file groups started minor strikes. On the Atlantic, at Boston, Poughkeepsie, Providence there were similar troubles. In Baltimore, 600 seamen walked out. In Philadelphia, 16 ships were tied up. Generally, however, Atlantic maritime workers looked to New York Harbor for guidance. There the man who is nominally head of all U. S. longshore men, President Joseph P. Ryan, jockeyed with the man who would like to be the Harry Bridges of the Atlantic, Seaman Joseph Curran.

Longshoreman Ryan is a lethargic conservative who considers Harry Bridges a Red, resents losing to him the leadership of Pacific Longshoremen. Last week President Ryan bluntly refused to call out his Atlantic longshoremen in a sympathy strike. Last spring Seaman Curran was the leader of the "outlaw" seamen's strike in New York Harbor which failed to win higher wages but caused serious harbor hubbub for three months (TIME, May 25 et seq.). Last week 1,000 members of his insurgent Seamen's Defense Committee voted a strike in Manhattan, delayed several ships from sailing. Night later, 1,000 members of the International Seamen's Union pack-jammed Cooper Union, heard their officers refuse to strike. One read a telegram which he said was from Harry Bridges, warning that an Atlantic strike would only delay matters. "Fake! Boo!" yelled the men. "We want Curran!" Insurgent Curran had been barred admission, was waiting outside. Called in, he won a unanimous strike vote, declared that every U. S. Atlantic port would be tied up. In the next two days 91 ships were strike bound in Atlantic harbors, 35 in the Gulf.

Atlantic developments thus became a reversal of the situation in San Francisco, where there was no split in Labor, but the possibility of one in Capital. For two months before last week's blowup, negotiations had been going on to replace the agreement made between maritime labor and the shipowners after the gory 1934 general strike. That agreement expired Sept. 30, was continued by truces. Spokesman for Labor was Longshoreman Bridges. Spokesman for the shipowners was Chairman Tom G. Plant of the Waterfront Employers' Association. Bridges demanded higher pay, a six-hour day, recognition of the unity of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific. Chairman Plant demanded that control of hiring halls--the big issue in 1934--be put in neutral hands. Obscuring these prime issues were many other minor ones. When neither side would concede anything, the shipowners agreed to arbitrate. The longshoremen refused.

On the scene meanwhile appeared suave Assistant Secretary of Labor Edward F. McGrady and domineering Rear Admiral Harry Hamlet of the new Maritime Commission. Tactless Admiral Hamlet only made things worse, but Mediator McGrady was making real progress when the strike came. Last week there was a split in the shipowners' ranks, as 27 coastwise companies made separate overtures to the longshoremen, the chief Pacific union with which they were concerned since they hire almost all their seamen on the cheaper Atlantic. Deep-sea Pacific shippers still were obliged to consider all maritime unions. With this schism in sight, Harry Bridges would have preferred delaying strike action. But the Maritime Federation he had so carefully built up proved his Frankenstein. Standing to gain nothing by a compromise between coastwise shippers and Pacific longshoremen, the other unions in the Federation demanded a strike. They were led in this by the strong Sailors' Union of the Pacific, headed by loose-mouthed, hulking Harry Lundeberg who would like to steal Bridges' dominant position. To keep a united front, Bridges agreed on the strike.

The eventual result remained anyone's guess. The almost identical situation in San Francisco two years ago was a tense calm for two months before the tornado of the general strike. Last week, many a Russian Hill housewife began stocking canned food in readiness for another general strike, but Trouble-Shooters McGrady and Hamlet loudly proclaimed that negotiations would yet succeed. President Roosevelt kept mum, but Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins left a train at Buffalo to telephone a trite request for more negotiation. The unions agreed. The shipowners refused.

Said Chairman Plant: "The question of union recognition is not involved. We do not seek to abolish hiring halls. A major issue is that of selection of men-- that is, who shall have the right to say to whom American ship operators must entrust their ships. Employers believe that the owners should have this right. To resume negotiations under current circumstances would be useless." This attitude Harry Lundeberg termed "arbitrary and unreasonable." Thus last week the situation remained the old poser: what happens when the irresistible meets the immovable?

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