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Neylan had no trouble convincing General Johnson to denounce the general strike. Johnson recalled (not without some dramatic license) that he had been "physically" shocked by his introduction to the general strike-transportation paralyzed, food supply "practically shut off," "the economic life of the city was being strangled. There was fear that the power, light and water supply would be shut off. A foreign enemy could scarcely threaten more than that." But Johnson also insisted, apparently as a result of his talks with some of the general strike leaders, on including a vigorous defense of the workers' rights to collective bargaining, and specifically in the shipping industry.
Labor is entitled to bargain collectively, he told the "almost full" Greek Theatre audience Tuesday afternoon; "the employer who denies or even obstructs that right is anti-social." In the shipping industry, he went on, "the right has not been justly accorded." "These things" cannot be evaded by "legal cavil. They are necessary to humanity in this age and they will prevail. The whole force of American opinion is behind them .... If the shipping industry does not fully and freely accord these rights, then on its head will lie every ounce of responsibility for whatever may happen here. I think that their personal position is extreme and unreasonable and must be tempered if we are to have peace."
John Francis Neylan, Hearst lawyer and UC regent
Hugh S. Johnson (general, NRA command, coincidentally in town i guess
Few useful recollections and even fewer records remain of those marathon conversations but, extrapolated from events and recall, something like a meeting of the minds plainly emerged. It was never reduced to writing; it may not have been voiced as such; it may have been no more than the parties' educated estimates of what was in the other parties' minds. It bore some resemblance to the patterns of settlements sometimes engineered in local labor relations. It paralleled the good faith relationship that existed between Mike Casey and Neylan, or between other labor representatives and some San Francisco businessmen. However the consensus came about, its elements included an end to the general strike; arbitration of all issues (including the hiring halls) by the longshoremen; an agreement by the shipowners to deal with the unions chosen by the seamen in representation elections; and, not least of all, agreement by the shipowners to arbitrate all unresolved issues if bargaining with the seafaring unions deadlocked. It did not materialize in one piece but unfolded in a series of steps. However it came about, that is how it was finally resolved.
UNDER INTENSE PRESSURE and in the face of vigorous opposition and prolonged debate, the General Strike Committee moved still further on the third day (Wednesday, July 18) to ease the crunch of the strike. The executive committee authorized all union restaurants and butcher shops to reopen. Hugo Ernst, head of the culinary workers, voted against reopening the restaurants, he said, but, if the committee ordered it, they would return to work. Hotels that had closed their restaurants to all but guests announced they were again open to the public. Butchers returned to work and meat deliveries began almost at once. The strike embargo on gasoline and oil was lifted. C. T. Dixon, representing the taxi drivers, resigned his vice chairmanship, saying he was absolutely against raising it. He did not want to "to tell his men to go back to work; he did not want to be crucified." The oil companies, organized into an emergency committee, had announced earlier they would reject union permits and operate under police protection. They claimed only some forty deliveries in the preceding week but now, full service allowed service stations to reopen. Samuel Kahn, president of the Market Street Railway, with a vice president as conductor, took out the first of a string of four cars in defiance of the striking carmen. He promised more cars the next day and restoration of night runs soon. The strikers, though, renewed their demand for arbitration. Normal service did not return until the following week when the company reluctantly agreed.
"San Francisco business has suffered a 65 per cent loss on account of the general strike," the Chronicle reported. Department stores were empty, it said; restaurants and shops, closed because of the strike, took "staggering" losses. "San Francisco was in no shopping mood." "Lady Teazle" reported in the Chronicle that "society" had been "staying at home and being very, very quiet." Some "lucky ones" have gone traveling, but at home "entertaining has ceased .... no matinees, no afternoon teas ... going places and doing things have been suspended for a lack of places to go and things to do." The municipal golf course, though, reported lines of golfers waiting to tee off. Attendance at Pacific Coast League baseball games jumped. Sporting goods stores reported brisk sales.
Some of the raid victims -- members of the Marine Workers Industrial Union, many identified as communists, and many who asked for jury trials -- were held as "$1,000 vags." The vagrancy charge and inordinate bail, used by police for "tough" cases-drug peddlers and addicts, hardened professional criminals, and habitual criminals -- had been invoked frequently during the strike against those the police identified as "radicals and Communists." Bail for vagrancy cases was usually $20. An Industrial Association attorney said the $1,000 bail was intended as a deterrent to requests for jury trials, since, to virtually penniless defendants, the bail meant they would have to await their jury trials in jail. Defendants were held, in lieu of bail, from three to four days to several weeks, as Andersen's attempts to have bail reduced were repeatedly rebuffed, as in Judge Steiger's court.
ON THE FOURTH day (Thursday, July 20), the General Strike Committee voted to end the general walkout. Through more than seventy hours of the general strike, the unending, day-and-night, round-robin of talks had gone on. Repeatedly and emphatically the union leaders were told the general strike must be called off before settlement of the underlying disputes could be seriously discussed, even though a clear pattern for settlement was, by now, in plain sight. Both the General Strike Committee and the National Longshoremen's Board had proposed arbitration of all issues by all parties-longshoremen and seamen, longshore employers and shipowners. But the general walkout had to be ended before the proposals could be put to work and the threat of martial law ended. The efforts to persuade Mayor Rossi to ask Governor Merriam for martial law appeared intended less to insure public order than to crush the general walkout and force labor into a broad retreat. The governor was willing but the mayor was stubbornly resisting. Edward Vandeleur and the strike committee leaders were faced with the insistent demand to end the general strike that barred the way to a settlement of the waterfront strikes.
[...] Mayor Rossi, for his part, congratulated the "real leaders" of the union forces on their decision. San Francisco, he said (in a statement probably drafted by John Francis Neylan), had stamped out "the very real danger of revolt." But, Rossi added, "The crushing of this strike cannot be allowed to be used "to destroy union labor or its rights." He pledged his efforts to "secure justice" and defend "his fellow citizens" against "unfair aggression." To the Committee of Five Hundred he pledged: "I will, to the full extent of my authority, run out of San Francisco every communistic agitator."
haha fuck u
Even as these developments began to break out, on the morning of August 8, the National Longshoremen's Board, O. K. Cushing presiding, opened formal arbitration hearings on the disputed issues in the longshore strike. On October 12, after some two months of hearings in the four major ports, scores of witnesses, thousands of pages of testimony and exhibits, it handed down its award. Its formula for governing labor relations on the docks opened new per- spectives for the longshoremen and their employers, even while attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. It fell short of the longshoremen's pre-strike demands, as it did of the employers' propos- als. It borrowed generously from earlier unsuccessful attempts to write an agreement and from the innumerable suggestions and proposals that had been bruited about. Its final prescription, though, was of its own compounding. It proposed the machinery for a working relationship, but it also planted contradictions that could-and did-give rise to seemingly interminable disputes.
On what had been the most bitterly contested issue, the award called for jointly operated hiring halls in each of the major ports. Employers originally had insisted on controlling the halls; the ILA had insisted on union control. The board cut the knot by requiring joint control, but allowing the union to select the job dispatcher, who would be required to dispatch all longshoremen "without favoritism or discrimination, regardless of union or non-union mem- bership." (Ironically, this particular proposal had first been publicly suggested by the ILA's totally discredited national president, Joe Ryan.)