The "real union" some of the editors had in mind was not a revival of the "Red Book" union, that is, the ILA, but the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), a small, active, but ineffective branch of the Red International affiliate, the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). It pursued the TUUL policy of separate indus- trial unions, overlapping, duplicating, and competing with the mainstream AFL organizations, in this case calling for one union of longshoremen and seamen-of all marine workers. Later issues of the Waterfront Worker acknowledged MWIU help in publishing the paper. For about the first six months the paper touted-sometimes loudly, sometimes subtly-the MWIU as the union for longshoremen, but the longshoremen never responded. Sam Darcy, regional head of the Communist Party, later explained its failures. It had "not a single worker on the docks." As outsiders, the party fell victim to agitation "against our Union and our Party." "Militant phra- seology," though mouthed by "reactionaries . . . succeeded in turning the minds of the men."

In midsummer, 1933, the ILA was reborn on the San Francisco waterfront when ILA President Joseph P. Ryan appointed Lee]. Holman organizer. Henry Schmidt recalled, "We sort of streamed into the office and put down the so-called initiation fee, which was fifty cents, got a book, and it was the right time and the right place. It also had something to do with that thing that was called the National Recovery Act, NRA, Section 7a." 17