The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 27, 1930, Page 3

DAILY WORKER, NEW IMBER 27, 1930 Page Three LONGSHOREMEN WILL FIGHT BOSSES, ILA, WW FOR DECENT CONDITIONS Longshoremen In Baltimore, Philadelphia and) Other Ports Organizing Into M. W. I. U. | I.L.A. Company Union Gang Wants to Sell Out} Men for the Graft They Get Editor, Daily Worker: The longshoremen’s conditions in the port of Baltimore have gone from bad to worse. LL.A. trying to enforce the rotten agreement given us by the | ship-owners, they are openly working for. the bosses. draw big salaries, live in fine homes, and besides the big salaries | we pay them the graft they get THE STRUGGLE TO ORGANIZE LONGSHOREMEN MWIU Fighting Many Shortcomings Philadelphia, Pa. Daily Worker:— The struggle of the Marine Work- ers’ Industrial Union to organize the longshoremen on the Philadel- phia waterfront, to be properly un-| suspicious as to the intentions and| purpose of our organizers. They have been fooled so many times by various outfits of various shades Baltimore, Md. Instead of the officials of the They | Speeded Up to t ee by cutting down the gangs. © ‘Where we are supposed to have| 21-22 men in a gang we now have} 17 and 18 and on some docks as| |low as 15 men in a gang. If any man has the nerve to demand his| rights he is dropped out of the gang. And not a_ stevedore bo: \ jon the waterfront will give him| job. | Jobless Must Pay Dues Too. } If we do not work we have to pay dues anyway. Just recently 115 men were kicked out of the] Locus Point local (Jim Crow lo-} cal) for non-payment of dues.) If we don’t work the officials! don’t care. With thousands of | dollars in the treasury (what they} tell us) we never see any of it. They are doing nothing for the| | unemployed. The work there is to ee had is not divided equally} derstood and appreciated, is a strug-|@mong us. A. few favorites get all gle one must have participated in.| A multitude of obstacles have had| to be overcome, | The longshoremen at first were) a the work and the ones that do| not cater to the gang carriers and stevedore bosses, buying them drinks, are left out in the cold. | The longshoremen in Baltimore are waking up and preparing to! fight these conditions under the |leadership of the Marine Work- }ers Industrial Union, a real union and colors. They have had the Woe the workers and not a few of-| W. W. and now last, but not least, the L L. be overcome. The confidence of the men had to be gained. How suc- cessful our union has been in this respect the membership figures show. In the month of May there was a membership of less than 100. Now, five months later, the membership register shows the 900 mark has been reached and we are on the road of reaching the 1,000 mark, Bitter Fight. To reach this. stage, the union and its organizers have had to fight many obstacles. It has been a fight all the way. Gangsters and police have been used by the bosses and their allied unions. Meetings have been broken up, jailed. Gangsters and gorillas have! had to be fought on their own) ground and have been met and| given the same medicine they in- tended for our union and our or- ganizers. Stool-pigeons and agent provoca- teurs had to be dealt with and isolated. Our enemies were every- where, but the workers gradually came over to our side and today the majority of the 6,000 longshore- men on the Philadelphia water- front have learned who are their friends and who are their enemies. Fighting Shortcomings. Many were the shortcomings and mistakes made by our union, but we have gradually learned to over- come the more serious of these and we are now on the eve of entering a struggle which will mean, if suc- cessfully fought and won, complete control of the waterfront by the Fatigue-soaked after the them, these longshoremen are their lunch hour. man-killing speed-up of the bosses got trying to snatch a dit of sleep during Up and down the coast longshoremen are organizing into the Marine Workers’ Industrial Union. At their conference in Philadelphia on September 20th, they've mapped out a program of fight for decent living and working conditions. The I. L. A. and the I. W. W. both company union outfits, are today campaigning for the bosses against the men. But the longshoremen are going to kick them into a cocked hat, just watch them. Hamburg Longshoremen Go On Strike; Seamen Jobless International Seamen’s Club at Hamburg Very Busy Seamen Have Defense Corps at All Meets Along Waterfront; Doing Fine Work Hamburg, Germany. Dear Comrade: Have been on the beach in Hamburg a couple of weeks now, but with over 8,000 German seamen idle, and dozens of Americans, Swedes, etc. hanging around for months now, there isn’t much chance of shipping | co -—_—___ out now. “4 he Killing Point — They'll Fight! | —Photo Ewlng Galloway ck Workers TROLLERS MAKE BARE EXISTENCE Bosses Buy Cheap and| Sell Dear JUNEAU, Alaska Dear Comrade: I am one of the many fishermen in Alaska. I have followed salmon trolling for six years. This is the prices they give us| for the large red king salmon 14 cents, the small red king salmon, 9 cents, the white king salmon, 5 cents, and for one cowhoe they pay us 25 cents. While the Juneau) market price for the same fish is: | pound, white king salmon, 40 cents a pound. Get Lew Prices We get low prices for our fish and must pay high prices for our living expenses. | 35 to We in the power troller, if we |have a break down on our machine we take it to the shop and we are | charged with 3 or 4 hours work for Jonly one hour should do it, For which they charge $2.50 an hour so |how can we save enough for our | winter expenses with everything so | high. Troll in the Mornings We trollers start trolling at ja. m. in the morning and quit about 8 or 9 p. m. in the evening. | Some days we catch from five to| ten fish and some days we only get one or two or three and so on,| and when it is bad weather we have to stay in for two or three days and sometimes a week or two. Buyers Are the Bosses. | Then the buyers put up the signs} of the prices to 18 cents. | 2 Then | when we start fishing again and) get a few fish the prices have dropped again to fourteen cents. We have to keep trolling to live here in Alaska for other work is not to be had. | The canneries do not give the people of Alaska the work for they ALASKA SALMON Sh _|under this “lump sum’ ipowners et oss Gov't Sub- sidy and Help |But Seamen Get Wage Cuts, Speed-up on High Seas and Bad Conditions Generally | Marine Workers Must Vote Communist to Fight the Government of the Shipowners (By a Worker Correspondent) MEDFORD, Mass.—The U. S. Government is now playing ers of all U. Shipping Board sum of American taxpayers money to thes red king salmon, 45 to 50 cents a/the role of Santa Claus to the operating managers or ship-own- vessels, by handing out large ship-owners. This contract is known as the operating agreement of 1930. all eeme Before the end of the Get Heavy Jack. © In having this contract the oper- ators receive between $10,000 and $15,000 per trip to help pay ex- penses, On top of this the govern- ment is throwing in fat mail con- tracts which is causing a large growing deficit in the post office department, which the American people must pay for while the operators and shipowners are mak- ing a nice profit. While thousands of seamen are on the beach, the operators are helping to increase unemployment and hunger among the ranks of| the seamen, by carrying smaller crews since they have accepted the “lump sum” agreement. Cut Down on Crews. | The American Republic Line, for example, operated by C. H. Spra- gue, Inc., which is allowed $10,000 a trip, have already cut down on} the crew. These ships are carrying two AB’s and OS, two wipers, one| messman less. The Yankee Line} and American Hampton Roads Line} have also made a cut in the crew, |and all other shipping board lines A, This suspicion had to! organizers | | Selves, The longshoremen’s confer- ficials. Hold Meeting. . When the “America” was slated At an open air meeting at| to leave at 4 P. M. yesterday, there Locus Point, September 12, the|Were at least a hundred of us hang- speakers from the Marine Work-|ing around in the hope that some) ers Industrial Union were cheer-;Seamen would get drunk on} ed and the program for the con-| Shore and one of us would be taken ference in Philadelphia Septem-| °"- : nate ber 20-21 approved of, And plans| Strike for Conditions. made to call a mass meeting to| The situation for longshoremen! elect rank and file members to| here is also bad, there being about the conference. In contrast with) ten thousand jobless, or working| the fake wage agreement now Me or two days a week, The long- going on in New York of the|Shoremen went on strike last week} I. L. A. where every delegate ‘is| (under the leadership of the Ger- an official and not one actally/™an T.U.U.L.), and the strike is works on the docks. spreading. They demand: Into M. W. L. UL! 1—Elimination of street hiring. When the meeting was finished| 2—Restoration of strict number the police tried to chase the speak-|SYStem, whereby each worker gets er away from the corner but the| his term, with no “playing favor- jlongshoremen showed their solida-| ites rity by refusing to let the cops drive the organizers away. | Fellow longshoremen, seamen and| harbor workers. The time has come| for us to unite and show a solid} front to the bosses. The time has| come when the workers must leave the rotten fake A. F. of L. unions and build real industrial unions, | controlled by the workers them- 3—No discrimination against T. U. U. L. and Party members. The strike is spreading, and to- morrow the seamen are to have a meeting to decide on a solidarity strike with their brother workers. If the Hamburg seamen go out, it will be up to us to show our) solidarity by sending funds and| expressions of solidarity. With revolutionary greetings, ence in Philadelphia shows the| #7 M. ALEXANDER. way! | us E | P.S.—The International Seamen’s| are the conditions the M. W. I. U.| Club is a very active one. They} are out to smash and change. have a bar and a big reading room There is a murmur of discontent,| down-stairs, with papers and ma-| a murmur of revolt all along the| gazines from all countries. Up-| waterfront. Men are grumbling,| stairs there are two meeting halls, men are cursing, men are kicking. This grumbling and this kicking is about to manifest itself in an or- ganized struggle. An organized, where the longshoremen party unit | (of seamen) holds meetings, etc. There is also an evening each week | for rifle practice. One evening is walls, statues, churches, ete. This work is done best, of course, in the early morning hours, for rea-| , sons of “health.” | All strength to our Hantarg| comrades! They deserve a hand,| too, for the swell reception. They gave our R. I. L. U. delegates, in- cluding Thomas Ray and Mack Toussaint, a real reception. More and more dock workers of the type shown above are rallying ers’ Industrial Union for fight |against the conditions the bosses are forcing on them. Picture taken by American sailor at Gigant Farm, VOTE COMMUNIST! Studebaker Co. Circularizes Seamen to Sell Overstock of Used Cars New York. | sleep out in the parks and every- where they can, and the sailors are very busy with ¢ish-hooks at five o'clock in the morning trying to catch coffee, much less buy an automobile. I will agree with the boss that he knows where to find his saps, not counting myself out. Seamen’s Church Institute is where he drops his mail. Now, it stands to reason that somebody is going to the wall | somewhere, when advertising leaf- lets are distributed to seamen as their last resort. But don’t get it into your mind that the boss goes to the wall by himself. The workers go to the Daily Worker: Dear Comrades and Friends:—| Now is your chance to have some- thing in common with your boss.} I am a marine worker and have a mail box at the Seamen’s Church Institute and to my great surprise found news coming from the Stude- baker Corp. of America, one of the auto manufacturers in this country since automobiles were made. Jsed Car Market Glutted. Their used cars have ben turned back owing to the prosperity here in the good old United States of America. Now, as competition is so great, these cars are up on sale, all makes, for the price of $29.59) wall of starvation. Workers, wake and $59.59. | up, how long are you going to stay It is an old saying that a sailor| at this wall of starvation. Are you spends his money when he is full) afraid of being black-balled by join- of booze, so to beat the bootlegger| ing an organization to fight for to that money they are putting| your stomach. Let me tell you their fish-hooks out to see if there| something. All workers who are |to the banner of the Marine Work- | members of our union. We are preparing to enter this struggle | with a clean-cut program of action, cates, the fakers and all that goes) A program that has been unani- with it. A strike under the leader- mously accepted and endorsed by |ship of the M. W. I. U., a fight the recent rank and file conference.| to the end, a fight from which the definite strike against the rotten! conditions, the graft, the syndi- ‘sanctioned by the I. L. A. A program that demands equal pay for equal work all along the water- front, We demand that the hiring | of men be done out of the union hall on the rotary system, thereby insuring an equal d‘stribution of work and doing away with the pre- vailing system of “syndicate” sales of work. can only cease when all graft hay been done away with, a fight that can only cease when Polly Baker and his allies, the I. W. W. have been swept off the waterfront for good. Let each and all understand that the Marine Workers’ Indus- trial Union is on the Philadelphia waterfront to stay and there is room for that union and that union only. Polly Baker, Boss Tool. The conditions sanctioned by the I, L. A. today are unbearable. Men “shape up” in the morning for work. Polly Baker is well pro- tected by police and gorillas. The boss picks his men. One here, one there. Polly works in close collab- oration with the boss. The few favored ones get the jobs, the rest are left to starve. Those that are picked are now loaded on to trucks like so many heads of cattle. Packed like sardines and shipped, off to the various docks and piers.' The pay, however, does not com- mence until the arrival at the place of work. A ship may move from one pier to another, taking three or four hours doing so, All this time the longshoremen must stay on board, but they receive no pay for doing so, Those are some of the conditions under which they work, Those are the conditions, Those} In short, this must be a! fight to the bitter end, a fight that | All others must go. | | longshoremen and seamen of Phila- delphia, Negro and white, shall emerge triumphantly. This is a fight that shall once and for all sweep the waterfront clean and establish the Philadelphia branch of the Marine Workers Industrial Union. JACK SODERBERG. are any fis’ left in the sea. a known fact that at present here devoted to political discussions, gen-| on the waterfront that the sailors| erally led by a comrade from Party headquarters. One evening is It is| out of a job now at present have} an inv! head. ible black-ball over their —O. B. devoted to school work on Com- munist subjects. Defense Corps. The seamen here have also formed a defense corps whose busi- ness it is to accompany ship and dock delegates in their propaganda) work along the water-front. Right now they are also very.busy get- ting election propaganda pasted and painted up on all possible i | Could Not Sta Daily Worker:— We want you to know about a case we have against the S. S. Broom Ports, one of the British ships chartered for the Munson Line. Five of the crew of said steamship joined in Baltimore, Md., to make a foreign trip and to be paid of north of Cape Hat- teras. By the time the ship ar- rived in New Orleans said crew wanted to get paid off because they could not stand the unsani- atry accommodations and rotten food and longer. The crew was even refused enough water to take water out of the steam pipes wash their bodies. They had to | on deck. If there was none there they had to take salt water from over the side, even when the crew required drinking water they would have to go on the bridge and ask the officer on watch for the key, because the GREW ON BRITISH SHIP REFUSED WASHING WATER: CHOW ROTTEN Captain Refused to Pay Off Crew When Men nd Conditions pump was locked a few days out of Baltimore and until the ship arrived in the mouth of the Mis- sissippi River. The ship left Venezuela, also Cuba without the captain buying water. In Venezuela the captain excused himself by the water be- ing bad. But the water in Cuba is as good as any, or better. The ship arrived in New Orleans and the crew wanted to be paid off. Thecaptain refused t opay the crew off. They went to the Brit- ish Consul, but got no satisfac- tion, The crew did not know where to go to look for sym- pathy. —H. B. B. ye Strike against wage-cuts; de- ism in the Soviet Union. mand social insurance! Vote Communist! bosses. Writing From the Worker correspondents in the U. ing the workers through the revolutionary press for fight against the Join your city worker correspondents group, Shops Worker Correspondents in a Soviet plant, writing to their work- ers paper, and helping mobilize for the great work of building social 8. A. have the task of mobiliz hire their help from Seattle or| wherever the company is from and} when the season is closed the help | returns back. | The season is from three to five | months and the help gets two hun- | dred and fity dollars for the sea-| |son. They work ten to twelve | |hours a day and if they are short of help they get it from here at| only thirty five cents an hour. | They do not get full time as it is} just when they are rushed with) lots of fish that they get in a day| or two and three then many don’t) get more than four or five hours a| day. How can the people make anything to say with everything so high and no sign of it getting bet- ter—Filipino Boy. CAL. AFL. MEET ‘OK's STARVATION Lay Down Attack on| Foreign Born San Francisco, To the Daily Worker: September in Northern California | has already seen many events of importance to the workers. | | In the steel and che | | Pittsburgh, 7,800 enthusi \ers heard the Party speakers at the | Unemployment Day demonstration, | | September Ist. This is the second | demonstration of our Party in this| town newly taken over United States Steel. The latter is carefully feeling out the workers with wage cuts, hours worked per day and days per week. The state convention of the A. F. of L, at Marysville ends today. The | capitalist press has devoted at least | a column near the front each day to reports and every day we read “Labor” does this or that. Among the following is what “labor” (I mean the filthy bunch of swindlers, the California state offi- cials of the A. F. of L.) did at the Cal. | by the will follow suit. This will mean between 1800 to ;2000 less jobs on shipping. board ships. These operators will also cut} expenses down on wages, food,| linen and ship equipment, etc. Which will bring discomforts and hardships to bear upon the work- rs. It also will bring dangerous working conditions through the use of worn out gear. There is still much work to be done aboard these ships. Yet with) smaller crews the operators will expect just as much work done as} before which will mean more speed-| ing up. | Must Organize. | The only solution the seamen on| these hungry workhouses have is to organize and support a militant] union. i That union is the Marine Work- | ers Industrial Union which all sea-| men should join. To fight for high-| er wages and a betterment of cun-| ditions, to fight against the black-| ball list, unemployment, crew cut-| ting and the fink halls. convention was: Resolved: 1. That abolished. 2. That the Soviet Union should not be recognized. 3. That the government should not pay’ unemployment insurance, 4. That companies should furnish uniforms for employees where re- quired. 5. That mechanical music be boy- | cotted to help the musicians. 6. That the A. F. of L, should have representation on the Board | of Regents of the University of | California. 7. And a host of smoke-screen resolutions like numbers one, four | and five that are intended to cover up the fact that the A. F. of L. offi- cials are not going to do a damn thing to keep workers from starving ———union or non-union. The convention officially ignored Tom Mooney rotting in jail. They called for statewide and nationwide discrimination against our brothers, the Filipino and Mexican workers. prohibition should be New York. Editor, Daily Worker: | Conditions on the Morgan line ships are rotten. The stewards | department are closely confined | in small quarters over the en- gine and the fire room on the Morgan liner I’m slaving on. There is no ventilation and the small toilet there is very in- sanitary and is right next to the steward’s department, often overflowing making an insanita- ry condition beyond imagination. The desk department is the same. Just imagine 13 sailors in a focastle—16 by 14 hy 17 feet high.. And this is where we have to sleep and live all of the time we aren't working. Chow Terrible. | The mess room is filthy and the chow terrible. The cook | sends you some soup with bugs | in it and declares he can’t see ROTTEN GRUB; OVERCROWDING ON ALL MORGAN LINE SHIPS Nine-Hour Workday With Officers Trained to Bully the Workers | men’s work. sels will be shipping board ve: nt. POLLY BAKER'S NEW AGREEMENT MEANS SLAVERY Longshoremen Turn to M.W.LU. Philadelphia, Pa. Daily Worker: The future of the Philadelphia longshoremen looks very bad, due to Polly Baker and his gang throw- ing us into another year of rotten conditions and miserable wages by signing the same old agreement with the bosses. The longshoremen are growling all over the water- front for we fully realize what an- other such agreement means for us. Conditions Worsen. During the last four years, under the I. L. A., the conditions have steadily grown worse and worse, until today the longshoremen are at the point of desperation. Some of the longshoremen who have worked on this waterfront for thirty years have been out of work for six and eight months, while the men on the job are forced to do two Many of them were laid off because they could not stand the intense speed-up caused by the larger drafts and decreasing size of the gangs, which has also been the direct cause of many acci- dents. We have to pull so hard with our hooks on the heavy loads that our fingers become cramped in one position so we can hardly let go of the hook. And if we stop long enough to work some circula- tion in our fingers we get a growl from the boss. Legs Get Knotted. Many of the men when they go home at night have to walk the floor most of the night to get the knots out of their legs before they can go to sleep, And they say this is not slavery. Agreement Enslayes. This agreement that Polly Baker has signed means only one thing for us longshoremen. It means that we will continue for another year to have short gangs, large drafts, graft and unemployment. It means speed-up, misery and starva- tion for us and our families. There is but one bright star shin- ing for us longshoremen and that is the Marine Workers’ Industrial Union, which we longshoremen have great confidence in. We are not going to be fooled any longer by Polly Baker and his drunken dele- gates, nor by the I. W. W., which has just appeared on the water- front after being away for five years, PHILADELPHIA PIER 5 LONGSHOREMAN. a P. S.—We have a good dock com- mittee working here and any time the Marine Workers’ Industrial Union says so we will bring out the whole dock. Organize and strike against wage-cuts! Boss Justice Means No Wages Daily Worker: New York. them when you take it back. The food is the poorest money can buy and to top it off is improper- ly prepared so much that at times you can’t even eat it as hungry as you are. There is a great gap between the officers and the men. They are taught the same as a child is taught its three R’s at school that the men are supposed to be on a lower scale than the offi- cers. All in all it is a tough life a seaman has ahead of him and he is one of the most ex- ploited of all workers. On a good many ships they work only eight _ hours but on the Morgan line | nine hours is the day’s work— and few ships are so insanitary as those on the Morgan line. There is only one way to better conditions and that is to get in- to a union with real militancy. A MORGAN LINE SEAMAN, Sometimes ago I worked for a | boss five days, and two days after I went to get pay and the boss |said he could do nothing for me. |He said to me that I never worked \for him, I went to a policeman and told {him all about it. The policeman ‘said to me he would not pay me. But I saw that the cop always gets free meals from the boss. Then I went to court. I said I want to sue that boss for my wages. The judge told me, you cannot sue your boss, you have not got enough money to sue your boss. I asked the judge what I should do. The judge said look for an- other job. I went to the labor department and took one and a half years to get my own money and two dollars |short. This is the way this gov- {ernment protects workers. —N. M. VOTE COMMUNIST!