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"This latest move of the Shipowners, San Francisco Industrial Association and the police has been definitely taken to break the strike through intimidation and terror,'' the Joint Marine Strike Committee declared. It called on all AFL local unions to send delegates to a conference in Eagles Hall on Saturday, July 7, "to discuss and prepare for a general strike of the workers in the Bay Region."
this was on tues jul 3
No one was exempt who came within range of the battle. Joe Rosenthal, a newspaper photographer who later won worldwide fame for his World War II photo of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, was beaten on the Embarcadero. He told Bridges biographer Charles P. Larrowe he had been "stoned by strikers, tear gassed by police, and beaten so badly that he was hospitalized for a week." Two passengers on a Market Street streetcar were wounded by stray bullets. Many injured were treated at ILA headquarters (where a doctor was on duty) but, when it came under police attack, were removed to a number of places, including headquarters of the Communist Party on Haight Street. George Hedley, an official of the Pacific School of Religion, had spent some ten days at this point on the waterfront talking with union officers, strikers, passersby. He insisted that the police were invariably the aggressors; he never saw a weapon in the hands of a striker. "Such rioting as occurred," he argued, "was the direct product of their own aggression." Chief Quinn said later that "at times it looked quite bad . . . we were faced by from five to seven thousand infuriated men bent on" wreaking havoc with the nonunion men, then the steamship companies' property; "after that, only the imagination can determine what they would have done in the way of sacking San Francisco."
"Are you willing to work under present conditions?" a printed ballot asked some fifteen hundred teamsters who jammed Dreamland Auditorium Sunday. The wording was somewhat vague and indirect but the intent was plain. They voted no, 1220 to 271. They also decided they would no longer work under those conditions starting Thursday morning Ouly 12) unless the strike was definitely settled or was on the way to a settlement. They would meet again Wednesday evening to confirm their strike vote.
You have no grievances of your own, Mike Casey had told the teamsters. Your contract with your employers runs to next May, and you will probably lose the $10 a week strike benefits usually paid by the international union. Afterward, Casey said, "the men feel very strongly about the final demands of the marine strikers, for the control of hiring halls and the recognition of certain of the unions, and also about strikebreaking truck drivers being used to break the deadlock." He added: "In all my thirty years of leading these men, I have never seen them so worked up, so determined to walk out. I don't believe any power on earth can prevent their going on strike unless the marine strike is settled by Thursday."
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As the morning waned, crowds began gathering at the ILA hall on Steuart Street, where the bodies of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise had been lying in state, and where at 11:00 A.M. funeral services for the two victims of Bloody Thursday would be held. Alex Walthers, who had been a longshoreman in the 1919 strike and whose brother was working on the waterfront, spoke a simple sermon. In the distance the bell of a Belt Line locomotive could be heard. Bridges, asked if he would say something, shook his head, a reporter noted, "too distraught to utter his feelings." After the brief ceremony, the caskets were placed on black-draped flatbed trucks, and flowers were loaded on three more trucks. As the trucks moved along Steuart Street, then turned into Market Street, thousands-strikers and strike leaders, honor guard, families, sympathizersfollowed to the slow step of a funeral march. "That strange, silent march,'' as George Hedley described it, a march without banners but with a profound moral surge powerfully impressed a city still deeply shaken by the bloody violence of July 3 and 5 and the occupation of the waterfront by the National Guard. It heated the angers of many, reinforced the sympathies of the sympathizers, and converted the sympathies of many more. It put the "riots" and the "mobs" of the port opening, the tortured turns of the strike, as pictured in the daily press, in a different light. Events had made a general protest likely; now this grim, silent parade made it inevitable
july 9
Cushing asked him if a union hiring hall means a closed shop. Bridges's discursive answer added up to an argument for preferential hiring for ILA members. But he conceded, given the membership of the union and the amount of work, it would result in assignment of union men only.
On the third and final day, Plant once again restated the shipowners' case. Two agreements and one proposal had been repudiated by the men "under the domination of radicals and communists." Picketing by "longshoremen, sailors, and Communists" practically closed the ports of Portland and Seattle; intimida- tion and threats of teamsters had blockaded San Francisco, although loading and unloading cargo on the docks and by freight car were handled readily. Plant listed the violence that had resulted. The employers offered to agree to a jointly controlled hiring hall, to hire only registered men, and to spread work through job distribution. They would even accept government supervision of the halls. But a union hall and union dispatcher would not only mean a closed shop (contrary to law), they would also end the employer's right to select his own employees.
Hundreds of longshoremen, Bridges included, waited outside the hall when the teamsters went into session that Wednesday night July 11). Mike Casey, O'Connell, and Kidwell backed a plea from the board to delay their walkout until Monday, at least. A noisy and determined audience listened impatiently, clamoring insistently to hear Bridges. When he was finally brought in, the teamsters gave him a rousing ovation. Casey introduced him: "I give you the man of the hour." Bridges reminded the men of past defeats and warned, "The entire labor movement faces collapse if we maritime workers are defeated. If you fellows join us, you will double our power." Casey asked for questions. Had he (Bridges) been run out of Australia, identified with a red organization there? If he had, Bridges replied, he would have been found out long ago. What about arbitration? He personally opposed it, but the members will vote on it. When Casey called for the yes votes, thousands of hands went up; only a few responded to the call for no votes. John O'Connell announced the vote: "The ayes have it and the no's know it." Casey told the teamsters: "You'll go out like gentlemen with nothing to be ashamed of. Of course, you'll be allowed to do the decent thing. Don't worry, the children can eat and have their milk. Retail food deliveries won't be affected. And bless you, San Francisco may have its beer. The brewery drivers are a separate group." Casey later told Eliel that the union "was out of control," blaming it on communists unsympathetic with the traditional labor viewpoint, some wanting a change in leadership, some who saw it as a lark.
In the East Bay, teamsters walked out at midnight, though a few retail deliveries continued until 7:00 A.M.; in San Francisco, they left their jobs at 7:00 A.M. the next morning.
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THE TEAMSTERS' WALKOUT on Thursday morning (July 12) marked the real start of San Francisco's general strike. The Strike Strategy Committee had made no report, proposed no plans, nor had the San Francisco Labor Council yet acted. But one local union after another followed the teamsters on strike, set dates to strike, or authorized a strike when and if the council or committee called for it. Sympathy, anger, and the determination to join the fight boiled up, finding unmistakable voice in the workers' many and independent decisions to act, with leaders or committees or without them. The general strike was clearly on and rapidly becoming more general, hour by hour.
Joining some 25,000 maritime workers on strike that morning were San Francisco and East Bay teamsters, numbering together over 4,000. Nearly 200 wholesale butchers on both sides of the bay had quit work; they would be joined the next morning by 1,500 retail and jobbing butchers, and on Sunday morning by 2,600 laundry drivers and workers and unknown numbers of culinary workers. Twenty-five San Francisco and six East Bay unions had voted to walk out if the Strike Strategy Committee recommended joint action. Thirteen unions were in the process of voting; the Building Trades Council was collecting the vote of forty-eight building trades locals. Cleaners and dyers walked out on behalf of their own demands. Boilermakers left their jobs in sixty shops. Labor Council President Vandeleur refused to comment on what actions the Strike
Strategy Committee might take at its meeting that afternoon, but
he did say: "Do you fellows have to see a hay-stack in the air before
you can see which way the straws are blowing?"
When the new General Strike Committee convened the next morning, it promptly ejected a delegation from the Marine Workers Industrial Union, since it was not affiliated with the AFL. The committee then voted to create an appointed executive committee of twenty-five (later fifty). Vandeleur was elected chairman by acclamation; Clyde W. Deal of the Ferryboatmen defeated Bridges for the vice chairman's post. After Bridges declined a nomination for secretary, Kidwell was chosen. The committee turned down by voice vote a move to defer a decision until Monday as well as a motion "to join in a General Strike immediately." It finally approved a motion asking "all unions that have voted in favor of a general strike to walk out Monday, July 16th at 8 a.m., and that all other unions which have not voted be asked to hold meetings immediately and take action." Roll call recorded 63 unions, voting as units (315 delegates), for the amendment, 3 (15 delegates) against (including the teamsters' 5 votes, cast by Casey, some said to protect the local against discipline by its international union; others saw it as his last-ditch stand against a general strike). Forty-nine unions (245 delegates) were recorded as not authorized to vote. "Radicals in Full Sway,'' the New York Times portrayed the decision. It was taken, the Chronicle reported, not without its usual slant, "amid scenes of wildest conditions, with hundreds of delegates shouting and scores of others in a condition approaching hysteria." It also reported that conservative labor leaders fought for four hours to avert the mass walkout, though their opposition was not reflected in the final vote. What seems clear is that the debate was focused less on averting a general strike, more on how to call it. Clearly, neither the "radicals" nor the "conservatives" were in full sway, but rather a broad, cross-section of the unions, left, right, and center, moved into action.
If the atmosphere around the Labor Temple that morning was confused and hysterical, it was nothing compared to the panic and confusion that welled up in the newspapers. The Chronicle reported that "While the rest of the city may go hungry, suffering privation and cold, every family of every man on strike in San Francisco will be provided with food, clothing, gasoline, and other necessities of life." It printed a one-sentence denial by "John F. Schelly" (actually Shelley, later head of the Labor Council and State Federation and San Francisco's congressman and mayor). Not until Monday did the Chronicle print (on an inside page) Vandeleur's and Kidwell's full-scale denial. To their denial, however, the Chronicle added it "DOES NOT" retract its original story. The Chronicle also reported that martial law would be invoked "within an hour after a general strike goes into effect." The Ninth Army Corps at the Presidio promptly denied it but the Chronicle insisted that "those claiming to know the facts" asserted plans were ready. Clarence S. Morrill, chief of the State Bureau of Identification, put a message on statewide teletype that "radical strikers and Communists were preparing to throw kerosene bombs on trucks carrying food." It was the Chronicle, too, that warned of a "communist army marching on San Francisco from the northwest." The "army" planned to destroy railroads and highways, paralyze transportation and communication. The invaders were reported near the state's northern border. In fact, neither martial law and bombs nor the army materialized.
Electrical workers had voted to defer a decision on joining the general strike. An official said its action was intended to avert the "widespread catastrophe" that would result from interruption of service. International Typographical Union President Charles P. Howard arrived to take part in the printers' last-minute negotiations with the publishers. A year earlier-in the spring of 193 3-the publishers had demanded a 10 percent wage cut from the printers. Publishers had reinforced their demand with three hundred professional strikebreakers, supplied by the American Newspaper Pub- lishers' Association's open shop department, and even then lounging around the corner in the posh Palace Hotel. Now, with the general strike due to start the next morning, the publishers quickly offered to restore the cut and make it effective at once. Howard carried the offer to the printers' meeting. Despite vigorous opposition, it was adopted by a three-to-one vote. The question of joining the general strike was not specifically raised but the new contract effectively insured uninterrupted publication of the Bay Area dailies.
ahhh too bad