Messrs. B.

"Brother chairman! I don't give a damn how important this is. It's hot as hell in here. Will someone open some windows?"

It was the cry of a woman, one of 500 sweltering delegates who met one evening last week in San Francisco's musty old Labor Temple. They had met before 8 p. m. They did not adjourn until 5:25 next morning. Their business was indeed important: Harry Bridges, the lean little Australian-born leader of San Francisco's 4,000 International Longshoremen--the John L. Lewis of the West--was trying to snitch the San Francisco Labor Council clean away from the A. F. of L. Under William Green's orders the Central Labor Councils of Seattle and Portland had expelled the International Longshoremen. A similar order was expected by wire at this San Francisco Council meeting,* and Harry Bridges was out to vote defiance, to order a referendum on joining C. I. 0. He failed for the time being because William Green quietly went to bed without sending the telegram, and Bridges could not muster the three-fourths vote necessary to carry his motion in committee-of- the whole.

After that set-back Harry Bridges shook the dust of San Francisco from his feet and hurried up to Portland to play for bigger stakes. Leader Bridges cared little about far-off William Green. His real opponent was right there in San Francisco, chubby, red-faced Dave Beck, boss of Seattle's labor, for some months leader of the Teamsters Union on the whole coast-- the Bill Green of the West but an aggressive, two-fisted Bill Green. The Longshoremen and the Teamsters are the two strongest unions west of the Rockies, their leaders the two bitterest enemies. The warehouses, which lie between the docks and the teamsters loading platforms, are their present battleground.

If Leader Bridges could organize the warehousemen, he would drive a wedge inland and stand a good chance of becoming the biggest Labor figure in the West. If Leader Beck could organize the warehousemen he would pin Bridges to the waterfront. No holds have been barred in this battle for supremacy. And to fight Leader Beck who has the A. F. of L. behind him, Leader Bridges has turned to aid from C. I. 0.

In Portland this week meet two important conventions where C. I. 0. will be the issue. As Messrs. Beck and Bridges prepared to go there last week, the deputies of William Green and John L. Lewis were on their way. For Green came President William Hutcheson of the Carpenters Union. Subsidiary of the Carpenters in the Northwest is the Federation of Woodworkers, Lumberjacks and Sawmill Workers, 130,000 strong. Always radical, the Woodworkers have definite leanings to the C. I. 0. and Bill Hutcheson hoped to prevent their defection. For Lewis came his lieutenant John Brophy "to explain" C. I. O. not only to the Woodworkers but to the Maritime Federation of the Pacific (which includes not only longshoremen but sailors, engineers, radiomen, cooks, firemen --40,000 strong". In both meetings, held simultaneously in different rooms of Portland's brown brick Labor Temple, diagonally across from the city hall, the fight between C. I. O. and A. F. of L. will be fought out. The outcome may provide an answer to the question whether Mr. Bridges or Mr. Beck is going to be Mr. Big on the Pacific Coast.

*Last week on orders from William Green, New York City's Central Trades & Labor Council ousted 46 C. I. O. unions with 250,000 members. Early this week Chicago's Federation of Labor ousted 27 C. I. O. unions with 20,000 members.

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