Peace by Exhaustion

For three months, an insurgent strike led by Seaman Joseph Curran tried ineffectually to tie up Atlantic and Gulf ports. Last week the strikers, weary of futile picketing and fighting, voted on peace. Only in four of 14 ports was a majority for carrying on. Chief gain that Seaman Curran could claim in surrender was that "East Coast shipowners have been kept so busy they have not tried to break up the West Coast strike."

Three months old also, and far from ineffectual, was the Pacific Coast strike --with 240 ships and 40,000 men still idle, losing $7,000,000 a day -- but five days after the eastern strike collapsed Longshoreman Harry Bridges, leader of the western strike, announced : "There is a growing sentiment in the rank and file for settlement and nothing can change it now." A peace vote in the unions was set for this week. No empty settlement will this be for the strikers, however. Tentative agreements gave the unions their demands for 1) control of the hiring halls which pick men for jobs when employers call for seamen, 2) an eight-hour day (or less) with increased pay instead of time-off for overtime, 3) union recognition.

Licensed men (masters, mates, pilots, engineers) won pay increases and other benefits but conceded the right of shipowners to pick ships' officers and employ non-union men. Two of the seven striking unions had not yet reached agreements, but settlements were expected by arbitration or otherwise. Human nature in the West had grown just as weary as in the East.

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