Activity

Bridges, Schmidt, and another Albion Hall militant won election to the local’s executive committee. In March 1934, as ILA locals all up and down the Pacific Coast moved toward a coastwise strike, the San Francisco local elected a large strike committee that then elected Bridges as chair. On May 9 t…

In July, Darcy encouraged radicals among the longshoremen to join the newly chartered local of the International Longshoremen’s Association and to form a militant, but not exclusively CP, caucus there. The caucus included Harry Bridges, Henry Schmidt, and other militants who were neither CP members…

The second and third issues of the Waterfront Worker, in February and March 1933, apparently also Hynes’s work, hinted at some new organization on the docks but provided no further information. The fourth issue, in April 1933, acknowledged the MWIU. The fifth issue, in May 1933, cited the MWIU as t…

Hynes’s most important project in San Francisco seems to have been launch-
ing the Waterfront Worker, a mimeographed newsletter, part of the plan adopted
in March 1932 to “immediately . . . issue the West Coast Bulletin for the marine
workers.” The first issue was less than immediate, perhaps on…

As of March 1932 in all of California there were only five CP members in the marine industry—all of them, apparently, MWIU functionaries. In his memoirs, Darcy recalled that in early 1932, District 13 leaders met for several days, examined the San Francisco waterfront, studied a failed longshore st…