Who'll Buy My Wares?

The Cunarder Parthia, tied up at a Manhattan dock last week, had "hot cargo" in her hold. A.F.L. longshoremen put the label on 2,500 packing cases marked "Chatka, Fancy." The cases held 88 tons of Russian crab meat.

In Boston, a few days later, dockers refused to put a second shipment of crab meat into the unloading nets. On a third ship in New York, the workers left $138,888 worth of Russian furs in the hold.

It didn't matter to the longshoremen that it was the British, not the Russians, who stood to lose on the crab meat (which had been foisted on the British by Russia in place of promised timber). Similarly, the furs had already been bought by U.S. furriers; Russia wouldn't lose a kopeck on them. To the A.F.L. longshoremen the issue was simple: they were all Russian goods. Said a dockers' spokesman: "Let them send their crab meat ... to the Reds in North Korea--that's where they are sending their tanks, guns [and] planes."

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