On the Embarcadero

If Frank Finley Merriam had stayed in Iowa where he was born 68 years ago he would have been spared a lot of trouble last week. He taught school, published a newspaper, gravitated from the Midwest to Long Beach. Calif., became a bank president, a realtor, a Knight of Pythias, a politician, and six weeks ago upon the death of James Rolph Jr., Governor of California just in time to face the best brand of California dynamite--a strike.

It was not big bald Frank Merriam's fault that strikes in California are not like strikes elsewhere in the U. S. The Pacific Coast is still generations closer to frontier days than any other part of the country. Its businessmen, not inoculated with the chronic malaria of labor trouble, see Red at every labor agitation. Some of them hate labor unions with the hate their trail-blazing fathers had for Indians on the warpath. And they do not flinch from rough & tumble with their enemies. Labor, too, has still something of the, devil-may-care spirit of the dance halls and the lumber camps.

Under such conditions Washington's polite formula of a three-man board to mediate a strike was not enough last week to avert several funerals in San Francisco. From early May, when 12,000 unionized longshoremen struck on the Pacific Coast, a grim state of siege has prevailed in all Pacific ports north of Los Angeles.

For a fortnight past Seattle and Portland shipping men had loaded and unloaded a handful of ships at a couple of docks under the menacing eyes of resentful strikers. In their ports close to 75 ocean ships lay helpless. At Los Angeles' well-defended port, shippers were masters of the situation and kept cargoes moving about as usual. But in San Francisco hardly a vessel could load or unload. Scores of freighters had dumped their cargoes on the docks and sailed away in water ballast. Out in the Bay 89 deep-water ships swung idly at anchor. The Dollar Line had diverted all its trans-Pacific passenger traffic to Los Angeles and the Grace Line had eliminated sailings north to Seattle. The steel doors of the 38 docks on San Francisco's five-mile Embarcadero (see map) had not opened for eight weeks to let a bale of silk, a bag of sugar or anything of the $50,000,000 worth of goods they held pass into commerce. When the first door opened last week, out surged something akin to War.

San Francisco's Industrial Association had warned that it would open the port. The spot chosen for the attempt was Norton, Lilly's Pier 38, opposite the tough warehouse district which is known to oldsters as "South of the Slot."-- Freight cars on the Belt Line Railroad which runs the full length of the broad brick and cobblestoned Embarcadero and is owned and operated by the State were spotted to screen the pier while police cars lined up to keep an open runway. Out of Pier 38 thundered five trucks bearing packaged birdseed, coffee, automobile tires. Before sundown 28 truckloads had been moved safely to a nearby warehouse. Strikers, 3,000 strong, failed to stop the movement. Police fought them off with tear gas, firemen with streams of water. Heads were broken, 26 men were injured, but the only trucks stopped were those of some non-combatants not plying to and from the docks.

The following day was July 4 and there was comparative peace. The Matson Line had ordered 14 freight cars from the Belt Line to move perishable freight. Strikers announced that they would not let the cars be moved. That brought the power and prestige of California into the conflict. Governor Merriam, who had kept neutral in spite of his Southern California nonUnionism, spoke: "I accept the defy offered by those in charge of the strike. ... I will call upon the National Guard, the citizens of San Francisco and every citizen of the Commonwealth to support the Government."

Next morning the Belt Line began moving cars and the Industrial Association sent in ten trucks instead of five. Three thousand strikers threw themselves fiercely into battle. At times the fighting extended as far north as Pacific Street, the old "Barbary Coast," but police, in pig-snouted gas masks, rounded up the rioters and drove them South of the Slot. Commuters to Oakland bound for the Ferry House and crossing the Embarcadero on the viaduct from Market Street saw the battle from above, felt the sting of tear gas, the impact of missiles.

The climax came in a second battle. Police closed in upon a crowd of 2,000 strikers from both ends of Steuart Street. In the van of the mob were Howard Sperry and Nicholas Bordloise, longshoremen. Police fired at the fleeing crowd. There was a wild pounding of feet. Police followed. The crowd rallied. Another volley scattered it but Sperry and Bordloise lay filled with shotgun slugs on the sidewalk of Steuart Street. The police charge drove the strikers up Rincon Hill, on which will rest one end of the $75,000,000 Oakland Bridge. Work on the bridge stopped as the battle line approached. Up the weedgrown slopes around dilapidated shanties the police fought their way. Amid much cursing, cuffing and clubbing the strikers were finally dislodged from the summit, sent sprawling down Rincon Hill. At 5 p. m. 1,700 guardsmen marched in, took possession of the piers, set up machine-guns on their roofs. Score for the day: 2 dead, 85 hospitalized.

Grim was the entry of the troops headed by Major General David P. Barrows, onetime president of the University of California, and Colonel R. E. Mittelstaedt. Said Colonel Mittelstaedt:

"In view of the fact that we are equipped with rifles, bayonets, automatic rifles and machine-guns, all high-powered weapons, the Embarcadero will not be a safe place for persons whose reasons for being there are not sufficient to run the risk of serious injury."

Next day and for three days thereafter there was peace. The Embarcadero became a No-Man's-Land for strikers. All the steel doors of the docks were flung wide; the Belt Line moved 203 cars; trucks ran back & forth with impunity. Only weapons used by the strikers were chalk and flowers. On the pavement where Sperry and Bordloise had fallen strikers chalked "POLICE MURDER. 2 I. L. A. MEN KILLED, SHOT IN THE BACK" and around the inscription they laid roses and wreaths. A few doors away at the headquarters of the International Longshoremen's Association the bodies of the victims lay in state.

Reason for the sudden peace was that Harry Bridges, Australian chairman of the strike committee, had told his followers that they could not fight machine-guns and bayonets. The President's strike board, Archbishop Hanna, Lawyer Cushing and Assistant Secretary of Labor Mcgrady sat powerless. Nominally the only issue between the employers and longshoremen was which of them should control the "hiring halls" where stevedores are given jobs. But some 15,000 other shipping workers -- stewards, sailors, cooks, pilots--had struck in sympathy. When joint control of the hiring halls had been proposed the longshoremen rejected it because it provided no settlement for the allied strikers.

Joseph P. Ryan. I. L. A. national president, was powerless as the Board to make a settlement. Said he:

"There are three elements which are preventing the settlement of the strike. One is that the Communist Party, led by Harry Bridges, is in control of the San Francisco situation. Secondly, our longshoremen . . . have had foisted on their shoulders a group of other marine craft, who did not have nerve enough to go on strike wIth the longshoremen. The third reason is that the employers have delegated their case to a small committee . . . dominated by the Industrial Association of San Francisco. . . ."

Meanwhile Leader Bridges demanded that San Francisco's 120 trade unions join a sympathetic strike. They put him off by electing a "strategy committee" to lend moral support, but San Francisco's toughest union, its teamsters, did not temporize. It voted 6-to-1 to strike unless the dock dispute was settled in three days time. A truck strike, as Minneapolis learned two months ago, can tie up a city's entire business. Moreover 3,400 striking teamsters might spread the strike warfare all through San Francisco's business district. The prospect looked grimmer and grimmer to San Franciscans and to Governor Merriam who soon might need thousands of guardsmen to keep the peace. It also looked grim to the President's special labor board which began open hearings to dig out the issues, line up public opinion.

*Market Street used to have slots in it for cables operating street-cars.

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