Violence, Struggle, Victory: San Pedro In 1934

The Dispatcher, December 1994
Edited by HARVEY SCHWARTZ

PETE GRASSI

My dad was in that ’23 strike they lost. He was a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He used to talk to me about your rights to sell your labor, equalize the work, have a hiring hall, guys rotating instead of that steady stuff. In the ‘23 strike they couldn’t get it. Then you had to suck ass to get jobs through the ‘20s all the way up to ‘34. What was wrong with the ’23 strike was one port would be out, the other ports were working. So when the ’34 strike came, you gotta give Harry credit, it was unified.

Between 1928, when I started hustling jobs off the docks, and 1933 there was union talk, but you couldn’t say much. When the labor bill came out in 1933 [Sect. 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act], it gave you the rights to organize, to join a union to bargain. My father said, “The day is gonna come, you gonna have rights.” He passed away in 1929; he didn’t live to see it, but it came through.

When the ’33 law came out they started to organize strongly; even guys who were working steady felt what the hell, you’ll be left out lookin’ in if you don’t join. I got my book from Joe Simons, an old Finn and a Wobbly. I was initiated July 26, 1933. Then I hustled, talked to guys: “Join, get a book; dollar to join and 50 cents a month dues; they’ve cut your wages; you know how you’ve been treated.” We talked a lot of them guys in who were here during the ’23 strike. When the ’34 trike came off, 90 percent came out.

During the strike I got rousted around; that’s kicked around by the law. If you was more than three persons they’d roust ya, take you to “7th heaven” at 7th and Front in San Pedro. That used to be the jail house. Up the elevator to the top floor—they’d work you over.

After the strike I became active on the docks in “job actions” quickie strikes over load limits. Before the ’34 strike you was building loads two and three tons on the board. We cut it down to 2100 pounds. Little by little, and after the ’37 strike, it was all written out what the load limit was.

How we broke the steady gang system down here is we got the dispatch hall after the strike; we had the rights to elect our own dispatchers. We set it up so if you wasn’t working a steady gang, check in the hall. If there was work for them gangs, the dispatcher would send them out. So when the stevedoring companies would call over, “We’d like to have our gang back.” the dispatcher would say, “They’re working.” He’d send a group out of the hall using a rotating system. That broke it up in six months. Then our guys’d say, “Jesus I never thought it’d be this good; you don’t have to take no horseshit.”

That dispatch hall was the greatest thing that ever happened. If I didn’t want to go to work, I replace myself for one day; I didn’t have to ask the boss. Before the union he’d say, “You can’t take off, if you don’t show up somebody else’ll be in your place.”

CORKY WILSON

During the strike I done my picket duty with the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific. That’s who I went on strike with; I had worked longshoring, but that wasn’t my bread and butter until 1935. I was to go around these bars with a couple of other guys—longshoremen did the same thing—to where the sailors hung out. These broads on Beacon Street in San Pedro was working for us. They would get these strike­breakers, then get away to make a phone call to our headquarters: “I got three finks in here, come and get ’em.”

Those women knew we made our bread and butter here. This was a workingman’s town, and the strikebreakers was taking that away from us. If the scabs came ashore at the harbor they got beat up. There’s always one or two longshoremen and sailors around where anybody comes in on a boat. There’s somebody there to tell somebody else because most everybody grew up together. San Pedro was a little town in 1934, about 25,000 people. So any time a guy come in here and took bread and butter away from somebody in this town—look out!

ARCHIE (JUMBO) ROYAL

I was a miner in Colorado and then a longshoreman way before ‘34. During the strike I was watching for a guy who owned a taxi to bring a bunch of cab longshoremen by. This policeman come up, “What the hell you doing there, Jumbo?” They had a ball field there; I said, “We’re going to play ball!”·He said, “No, we know every move you make before you leave that hall.” I said, “You got the hall tapped?” He said, “I don’t know, but you got stool pigeons.”

We were to make a raid on the scab bull pen across the bay, and one at pier 145. But the rumor was out. So we had a meeting at White Point out in the open so there won’t be no wires. They agreed to attack the bull pen at 11:30 at night. This guy who connected the lights at the harbor said “I’ll pull the switch.” We went down by the railroad track, facing the bull pen; no light went out. Then I said, “What the heck we standing here for? Come on, boys, they won’t get all of us, let’s go.” So we did, and hell turned loose then; there was tear gas bombs and everything else. The guy who was supposed to throw the light switch never did; I don’t know why. We never caught the stool pigeon, either.

AL LANGLEY

The day the strike was called some guy from Bethlehem Shipyards where I was working said, “Hey, you want a good job? Go longshoring.” I said, “Are you nuts? See them guys walking out there? Them is pickets. Go through there, you’re gonna get your head knocked off. Besides, them are union men, you don’t go through union pickets.” He said, “I just thought you wanted a good job.” I said, “Not that bad!”

After the longshoremen went on strike we organized in the Bethlehem Shipyards. The president of the longshore local asked us for men for picket duty. I was with the first ones; there was ten of us went. In some places you would see the trucks come up with scabs. They would drive right through your picket line. If you was lucky you had some rocks to throw at ‘em. If you didn’t get out of the way you’d get run over. They had policemen, armed guards and motorcycle cops with them all the time.

During the strike we used to go uptown to these employment offices. From there the scabs would go to the steamship company office and get money to come down to the dock. We’d follow ’em, take that money away, and say, “There’s a strike down there, don’t you come down.” I seen one guy that came down and made the mistake of asking some of the guys where a certain ship was. They took every stitch of his clothes, beat him, hung his clothes on the trolley wire and sent him down the street, naked. The cops picked him up, put a blanket around him and took him uptown again. He never come back.

A year or so after the strike I quit the shipyard; I worked out of the longshore permit hall from early ‘36 until I was initiated in August ‘38. All of my friends were longshoremen; in ‘34 I’d worked in the strikers’ soup kitchen from five in the morning ’til noon—I used to wash dishes until my finger nails come off. I wanted to be a longshoreman anyway, because after the strike there wasn’t a job in the world to equal longshoring, although it was hard, hard work. Every job I had before, if I wasn’t there I was fired. As a longshoreman, you could work when you wanted to. You had freedom of choice of jobs. If you didn’t like a job you could get somebody else to take it. All this added up to my idea of freedom, of what a union actually meant to a group of people.

JOE STAHL

In ’34 I was working steady, driving jitney for Banning Co., and I was never contacted to join the union. If I’d been around the fink hall I’d probably have signed up. I worked nine days in that strike. I needed the money. I’d just got married not too long before that, and we had a baby boy.

Well, after nine days, Art Lawback and this other guy Caldwell come down and said, “Joe, when you get through tonight, you’re gonna come out.” I got to thinkin’—I’d sooner be out there with my friends than what I was doing. After I came out, Caldwell—he was a tough guy—Johnny Vassey Tom Ressler, and Skipper said, “Joe we’re gonna take you over to the hall and we’re going to get you in the union.”

I went to the hall with these guys the next day and all the longshoremen go, “There’s that God damn finky Joe Stahl,” but they didn’t tackle us ’cause I was with four tough guys. They took me in and said they were going to have a meeting in a couple of nights. “What are you willing to do, Joe?” they asked. I said, “I’ll do anything, run down scabs, whatever I want to get into the union.” “OK,” they said, “we’re going to put you in front of the meeting.”

I had to get up in front of all those longshoremen. I told them what I’d do. The only way they’d take me in was if I’d help run down scabs. I said I want these four guys who are tough; I’ll do the driving. We dumped 23 carloads of scabs in one night. We’d watch them come out of the bull pen to drive home, find a good spot and just run them right into the curb.

I was down there when the longshoremen raided that big tent bull pen, when longshoreman Dick Parker was shot to death. They wounded another striker, John Knudsen and he died later. You know, the police were for the scabs. The scabs could go in the bull pen with pick handles and everything else and come out with them in their cars. We got caught with them and they put us right in jail. We had to go at ‘em bare handed.

After the ‘34 strike there were two full gangs of guys who had stayed in. So the longshoremen decided to run them off the waterfront. There were 20 guys to work over and 50 or 60 longshoremen to do it. I was with the union men but I never touched one of those guys. I did the same thing they did, only they stayed in. They broke up the two gangs and that was the end of those guys. Now I could have been one of them, but I came out, and am I glad I came out, ’cause I made good on the waterfront, worked there all my life, and retired when I was 63.