Waterfront War

For more than a month a creeping paralysis of West Coast shipping has tied up ports from Vancouver to Mexico. When 12,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association threatened to strike last March, President Roosevelt sent Mediator Henry Francis Grady to the West Coast to work for peace. Mr. Grady returned to Washington to declare : "We have a revolution on our hands." The longshoremen's strike hit early in May. Maritime workers joined them in sympathy. At San Pedro orange ship ments rotted in the docks. At San Fran cisco $40,000,000 worth of cargo stood unmoved in the dockyards while in the bay 61 loaded freighters lay idle and deserted. Ship owners were losing more than $100,000 a day. At Portland the docks creaked with unloaded steel, meat, fruit and vegetables. A Japanese silk ship waited ten days to unload its cargo, finally sailed back home. Along San Francisco's Embarcadero strikers picketed all day, all night, 1,000 at a time. To break the strike snipping companies hired college boys, paid them $15 a day. At Seattle 15 men boarded a tug, cornered the crew in the "glory hole," beat them senseless with hammers and clubs, took their money and scuttled the ship. Desperate, the Seattle Times splashed a full-page editorial across its front page : SEATTLE SHALL NOT DIE! To the West Coast went Joseph P. Ryan, big, hard-boiled president of I. L. A. He permitted a temporary lifting of the embargo on Alaskan shipping out of Seattle because of a threatened food short age. But no truce was extended to the Grace Line, to Luckenbach, Dollar or Pan ama Pacific. Freight had to be carried by rail from San Francisco to Seattle and Portland. The Japanese-owned N. Y. K. Line, with Japanese crews, was permitted to navigate at will, but striking longshore men would not touch its cargoes. Least affected city was Los Angeles, which consequently enjoyed an unprecedented ship ping boom. Last week San Francisco's Mayor Angelo Rossi stepped in as peacemaker. In his office Joe Ryan sat down with ship owners and representatives of the Mari time Workers' Union, signed an agreement under which the flow of commerce, stagnant for 39 days, was to be resumed. Main features of the agreement were : recognition of I. L. A. for collective bar gaining; joint control of employment by the union and employers; arbitration of the hour-wage dispute. But the agreement did not grant "closed shop," and was quickly rejected by the Portland and San Francisco locals. To be effective it must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of all West Coast I. L. A. members. Because such a majority still seemed to be in a fighting mood no one could yet say that the West Coast's biggest strike was over. In an open letter to Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins, the radical New Masses crowed : "You wanted a first-class strike. Come to the Pacific . . and you will see one."

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