Full text of "Organizing and reporting on labor in the East Bay, California and the West, 1925-1987 : oral history transcript / 1987"

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Estolv Ethan Ward

ORGANIZING AND REPORTING ON LABOR
IN THE EAST BAY, CALIFORNIA AND THE WEST, 1925-1987

With an Introduction by
Norman Leonard

An Interview Conducted by

Lisa Rubens

in 1987

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing
leading participants in or well -placed witnesses to major events in the
development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is
a modern research technique involving an interviewee and an informed
interviewer in spontaneous conversation. The taped record is transcribed,
lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee.
The resulting manuscript is typed in final form, indexed, bound with
photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at
the University of California, Berkeley, and other research collections for
scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended
to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a
spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as
such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

************************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal
agreement between the University of California and Estolv
Ethan Ward dated 29 September, 1988. The manuscript is
thereby made available for research purposes. All literary
rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish,
are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be
quoted for publication without the written permission of the
Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California, Berkeley.

Request for permission to quote for publication should
be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486
Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and
should include identification of the specific passages to be
quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification
of the user. The legal agreement with Estolv Ethan Ward
requires that he be notified of the request and allowed
thirty days in which to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as
follows:

Estolv Ethan Ward, "Organizing and
Reporting on Labor in the East Bay,
California and the West, 1925-1987," an
oral history conducted in 1987 by Lisa
Rubens, the Regional Oral History Office,
The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 1989.

Copy No.

ESTOLV ETHAN WARD
ca. 1937

Acknowledgments

On behalf of all future users of this oral history, the Regional Oral
History Office thanks those persons who made it possible. We particularly
thank Norman Leonard who raised the necessary funds from Estolv Ward's many
friends and admirers .

Barbara Baroway

Neil Basen

Willa K. Baum

Beth and Ben Berkov

Germain and Helen Bulcke

James H. Burford

Sidney and Shirley Burkett

Norman and Margery Canright

Paul and Miriam B. Chown

Muriel B. Citret
George and Irene M. Curran

Patrick Curran

Terrence and Nancy Curran

Lincoln and Bertha Fairley

Frances Foster, M.D.

L. Stephen and Judy Gizzi

Maria Gizzi

Marion Gizzi

Caroline Decker Gladstein

Theresa J . Goldblatt

Hazel and Aubrey Grossman

David and Edith A. Jenkins

Elinor Kamath

Morris Krantz

Dorothy and Henry Kraus

ILWU International

ILWU Local 6 , Warehouse Union

Alvin and Pearl Leonard

Eric Leonard

Norman and Marjorie Leonard
Stephen M. Leonard

Betty W. Maas

Eva and Bill Maas

Harry and Mae K. Millstone

Paul and Sara Pinsky

Bill and Sylvia Powell

Sidney and Mae Durham Roger

Richard and Lucille Sasuly

Professor Alexander Saxton

Ruby Silver stone

Ruth M. Slade

Walter J. and Marcella Stack
Norma R. Starobin In Memory of
Professors Robert S. and Joseph R. Starobin

Gloria Stuart

Gwen B. Tompkins

Eugenia Ward Trorey

Barry and Sharon Uzel

Doris Brin Walker

David Ward

Roger E. Ward, M.D.

Julia and Dick Werthimer

TABLE OF CONTENTS Estolv Ward

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE i

INTRODUCTION by Norman Leonard iv

INTERVIEW HISTORY ix

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY xi

I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD: INFLUENCES ON WARD'S

POLITICAL SENSITIVITY 1

A Feminist Mother 5

A Socialist Father 7

Travels in the Pacific and Far East 16

II TRYING TO BE A CONSERVATIVE 23

Military Academy and World War I 21

Marriage and Bourgeois Family Life in Berkeley, 1920' s 26

An Oakland Tribune Reporter, 1925 31

Encounters with Berkeley Bohemianism 36

III THE DIVORCE, THE DEPRESSION, AND THE LEFT TURN 39

The 1931 San Francisco Maritime and General Strike 13

Joining the Newspaper Guild 117

More on the Exiled Left 231

On John XXIII, The Liberal Pontiff 239

Working with Quakers in Algeria 213
Return to San Francisco to Write about Tom Mooney:

The Gentle Dynamiter 219

XIII RECENT ACTIVITIES AND SOME BACKWARD GLANCES 255

Conducting an Oral History Interview with Louis Goldblatt 255
Fear of a Revived Right Wing in America, and the

Prospects for Communism 261

An Oral History Interview with Norman Leonard 266

Cycles of History 267

Never Truly a Conservative 268

Continued Support for Liberal Causes 269

TAPE GUIDE 271

APPENDICES

Estolv E. Ward "How Organized Labor Views the Problems of
Transition," Annals of the American Academy of Political

and Social Science Vol . 2 .22, July 19^2

273

Estolv Ethan Ward, "Looking Back on the Labor Wars:

Lewis (sic) Goldblatt Remembers," The Califomians,

Nov/Dec 1983 279

INDEX 289

PREFACE

For almost a century, San Francisco has been known as a union town, and
the International Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union (ILWU) as its most
active, progressive, and unique union.

Back in the 1950s, when the University of California still funded most
of the research conducted by its faculty and staff, the University's newly
established oral history program interviewed a number of San Francisco Bay
Area's labor leaders; for example, Paul Scharrenberg (Sailor's Union), Jennie
Matyas (ILGWU) , Mary Gallagher (1WW) , a variety of Teamster Union officials,
and J. Paul St. Sure, representative par excellence of the employers in many
collective bargainings. But in the following decades, as institutional
research funds shrank and foundation funds became more limited to direct
action projects, the oral history program of necessity focused more and more
on fields that could fund their own historic preservation. A few brief labor
history interviews were conducted, but only when they fitted in with another
funded project such as the Earl Warren Era Project. The resulting lopsided
documentation was noted and deplored by library officials, faculty, and
scholars in search of research materials, but it took two private citizens,
recently retired from labor union- related work and research to turn the
situation around by their own volunteer efforts. They are Estolv and Angela
Ward.

First, Angela Ward volunteered her secretarial skills to The Bancroft
Library to transcribe a taped but untranscribed lengthy interview with Henry
Schmidt which had been donated to the office several years earlier. Her
husband, Estolv Ward, reading each page as it came off the typewriter,
realized that his background had fortuitously qualified him to do labor oral
histories. A newspaper reporter and court reporter in the 1930s, his
sympathies had led him to throw in his lot with organized labor after the 1934
General Strike. He had worked for various unions and union-related agencies,
and had researched and written on labor topics, including a book on Harry
Bridges and one on Tom Mooney. He knew the Bay Area labor scene personally
and through research, and realized that his reportorial and editorial skills
would help at the editing level.

And so Estolv and Angela began a ten-year team effort to preserve a piece
of California's labor history, he researching, interviewing, editing; she,
transcribing and final typing. They began in 1978 with Louis Goldblatt's oral
history, a two-volume history of some forty interviews that took three years
to complete. Their fourth and final oral history was with labor attorney
Norman Leonard, completed in 1986. The Regional Oral History Office provided
format and procedures and all the finding aid requirements , including
launching of the finished oral histories into the network of scholarly
research. Such funding as was needed came from unions, mostly the waterfront
unions, workers and attorneys in the organized labor community, and from
families and friends of the interviewees.

Estolv hung up his interviewer's shingle in 1986, pleading his eighty-
seven years as excuse to step down to a less pressured job. He continues to

offer his time to the oral history office as proofreader and copy editor.

But this partial retirement was the signal the Regional Oral History
Office had been waiting for, its chance to capture this long- experienced and
thoughtful observer's own recollections of the many historic events and
persons he had seen and dealt with. His close friend and colleague, Norman
Leonard, volunteered to raise the necessary funds. Lisa Rubens, a California
historian with a specialty in labor history, was engaged to take over Estolv's
job of labor history interviewer, and Estolv and Angela were back at work,
this time with Estolv on the speaking side of the microphone and Angela
filling in with her own recollections when the memory trail grew faint.

As Estolv's oral history approaches completion, and Estolv approaches his
ninetieth birthday, I take this opportunity to thank both Estolv and Angela
for their service to history, and, by their documentation of labor history,
for helping preserve the Regional Oral History Office's reputation for
balanced coverage of California history. With the impetus they have provided,
we look forward to our collection of labor oral histories continuing to grow,
and, though he claims to be retired, we also look forward to many more years
of copy editing and proofing by Estolv Ward.

Willa K. Baum
Division Head
Regional Oral History Office

March 1989

iii

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union
Oral History Series

Goldblatt, Louis, The ILWU in California and Hawaii. 1934-1977. 1980.
Schmidt, Henry, Secondary Leadership in the ILWU. 1933-1966. 1983.

Bulcke, Germain, Longshore Leader and ILWU- Pacific Maritime Association
Arbitrator. 1984.

Leonard, Norman, Life of a Leftist Lawer. 1986.

Ward, Estolv Ethan, Organizing and Reporting on Labor in the East Bay.
California and the West. 1925-1987. 1989.

LEONARD, CARDER & ZUCKERMAN

A PARTNERSHIP OP PROFESSIONAL CORPORATIONS
ATTORNEYS

WILLIAM H. CARDER M 68 FRANKLIN STREET. SUITE 2O I OT COUNSEL

RICHARD S. ZUCKERMAN SAN FR AN C! SCO, CALI FOKN 1 A 94 1 O9-6 839 NORMAN LEONARD

ROBERT REMAR TELEPHONE (415) 771-840O

LORRIE A. ORAY

PLEASE REPIR TO OUR PILE NO.

INTRODUCTION by Norman Leonard

In his "Interview History" to nv oral history, Estolv
Ward states that he and his wife Angela have known me and my wife
Marjorie for nearly half a century and in that time we became
neighbors, friends and companions. It is through the eyes of
that companionship that this introduction is now being written.

My first memory of Estolv in the flesh is in early 1946
shortly after I had been discharged from the Navy and had
commenced again my work in labor law. A struggle was then going
on in California over the decision of the Brewery Workers
International Union to join the CIO. The California locals - or
at least some of them - were for staying with the AFL and probably
affiliating with the Teamsters. Paul Schnur, as leader of the San
Francisco CIO Council, had designated Estolv as the CIO person to
head up the effort to bring the California locals into the CIO with
their International. There were legal ramifications in this
struggle suits over local union funds, trusteeships imposed by th;

LEONARD, CARDER & ZUCKERMAN

International on the recalcitrant locals and the like. And I was
the person assigned by my firm to handle such legal problems. So
Estolv and I began to work very closely together.

I had, of course, been aware of him before that I had
known of him as an official of the CIO in the East Bay and of his
interest in the Tom Mooney case. My wife and I had been deeply
impressed by his book "Harry Bridges On Trial", which dealt with
the 1939 Angel Island hearing before Judge Landis. We also were
aware of Angela's efforts to organize the employees of the Bank of
America. But I don't recall that we ever actually met the Wards
until this Brewery Workers contact.

We soon became friends and the relationship has lasted
and deepened. I still remember with great warmth now with
nostalgia how for many years the four of us met almost every
Sunday at Mountain Home on Mount Tamalpais and hiked the
mountain's beautiful trails. Although the hiking tapered off,
Estolv 's feeling for natural beauty has been evidenced through the
years by his enthusiastic hard labor on the beautiful garden he
created at the back of their Berkeley home.

We and the Wards still carry on a happy tradition.
Angela and my wife have the same birthday, and for more years than
I can count for sure we four have celebrated it together.

There have been professional connections as well. I was
Angela's attorney before the House Committee on Un-American

vi
LEONARD, CARDER & ZUCKERMAN

Activities. And I handled a grand jury problem for Estolv when
he was subpoenaed to a Texas inquiry into the affairs of the Mine
Mill and Smelter Workers International Union. Through it all I
found them both to be concerned, committed and courageous people.
But this is an introduction to Estolv 's Oral History, so I must
concentrate on him.

I think the most outstanding feature of my friend is his
uncompromising honesty. At no time in the years I have known him
has he ever dissembled or hedged about anything particularly
about where he stood politically. Although this introduction is
being written before I have had a chance to read his Oral History,
I have not the slightest doubt that he tells it as it was and is,
without any equivocation.

Further, he always wants to know what is going on all
about him. He is immensely curious about the world and its
people. This curiosity, this desire to know led him and Angela
to become great travellers both at home and abroad. Late in the
1950s they travelled slowly around the world. For about two
years in the '60s they lived in Europe, then Turkey and North
Africa, most of the time in the camper in which they travelled.
Angela's command of several languages made it easier for them
really to communicate with the people around them.

Several times after that the Wards were back in Europe,
living for months at a time in small communities in different

vii
LEONARD, CARDER & ZUCKERMAN

countries. With the passage of time it became more difficult to
travel. But their interest in the world has not lessened.

Estolv's curiosity about people has manifested itself in
another way in recent years. He has been a volunteer
interviewer, editor and general factotum for the Oral History
Office of the Bancroft Library. This brings him into contact with
all types of people and situations: not only labor people,^/ but
others from many different walks of life and varied fields of
interest and activity.

Estolv has continued to do this work and so to keep
himself involved with the world despite the frailty that comes
with advancing years and despite several recent heartwrenching
losses in his family. In this he is a very courageous man.

As he gets older he is occasionally a bit cranky and
cantankerous (as are we all) . But this does not negate his
genuine warmth and feeling for people, a trait he shares with
Angela. It has made them a beloved and admired center of a wide
circle of friends, and children of friends.

Indeed it is that feeling for people that made Estolv the
radical activist that he was and is. He left what probably would
have been a comfortable professional life as a newspaperman

I/ In addition to my Oral History, he has done Oral Histories
of three leaders of the ILWU: Louis Goldblatt, Germain- Bulcke and
Henry Schmidt.

Vlll

LEONARD, CARDER & ZUCKERMAN

because he felt the need to fight for workers and their causes,
because he believed they were entitled to a decent life and he
wanted to play a part in bringing that about. In all of his
life, in his trade union work, in his political work, in his
writing, he has striven to make the world a more just and a more
secure and a more peaceful place for its inhabitants.

I count myself lucky to have known Estolv Ward so closely
for all these years. 2/

September 14, 1988

2j Marjorie Leonard has contributed significantly to this
introduction.

ix
INTERVIEW HISTORY

I prepared to conduct Estolv Ward's oral history with enormous respect
and a good amount of awe. After all, I was a somewhat presupposing young
historian coming to interview the man whose books and oral histories I had
devoured, and whose views had influenced some of mine. I considered this work
a privilege rather than a job; but nevertheless it was no easy task: I had my
own research and curiosity questions, yet I needed to retain my professional
stance by questioning Ward's assumptions, actions, and memory.

From the beginning, Estolv Ward was encouraging, twinkly, kindly, and
gracious. At the first meeting we sat in the living room of his and Angela's
charming Berkeley home- -not far from where he had been raised as a boy. I
admired his own photography that hung throughout the room; we exchanged
pleasantries; and he clearly, by some measure, tested my mettle- -did I have a
sense of humor; did I really know the difference between a Socialist and a
Communist; what did LNPL stand for: I obviously passed the test, because
Estolv then suggested we begin, and I was escorted into the room where he had
conducted several interviews, including those of Louis Goldblatt and Norman
Leonard. This time he sat on the hot-history seat and I posed the questions.

Yet Ward, ever the writer, publicist, and intellectual, was a man who had
a story to tell. And among his many talents is that of telling a good tale.
Ward knew what he wanted to say, and how he would have structured the
interviews. I often came to a session for which he had already written out
what he wanted to say- -a "no no" in the oral history business as he would
readily say. And sometimes he became rather annoyed when I'd push him on a
point or try to move to a subject that he had not intended to be opened. But
he did yield and the interview grew into what I think- -as an historian and
writer- -is more complex and rich than would seem by merely glancing at the
table of contents.

It was not the best of times for Ward or his family. One blow after
another befell them- -particularly sorrowful and sudden deaths; Ward's own
health failed and one interview was even conducted in his room at Kaiser
Hospital. Although he rallied, by the tenth interview he declared he was
finished with this enterprise. He had more stories to tell and there was
probing and follow ups to be done, particularly on several aspects of his
political and labor history. I especially regret not taping his recollections
of the anti-Vietnam War movement --including his trip to Kent State after the
four students were killed in 1970.

I became very fond of Estolv and Angela. Angela began to sit in on the
later interviews and she was a marvelous addition: She helped Estolv recall
certain events; more importantly, since their life together has always been a
loving partnership and productive collaboration in every way, it was only
fitting that they would join on this project. (Angela was interviewed for the
Women in California Collection, of the California Historical Society, a
collaborative project with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. There are copies of her history in the two
sponsoring institutions, also in Labor Archives, Wayne State University,

Detroit, Michigan, and at The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley. We were able to augment Angela's oral history and update it in this
interview.) Both Angela and I were eager to have Estolv continue his oral
history; but we have not prevailed. I have continued to ask him about my own
research projects.

Estolv had served as ROHO's labor history interviewer for a decade and I
did not presume to impose my own editing on his oral history, nor would he
have stood for any tampering with his own way of organizing and stating his
life story. Aside from adding chapter headings and subheadings to the
transcript, I turned over the editing and final review to Estolv. The
transcribing, final typing, and indexing was done by Judy Smith, a longtime
ROHO staff member who has worked most closely with Estolv and Angela in their
oral history work.

All in all this is a delightful, informative, rich oral history. There
is much to learn about social, political, radical, and Bay Area history; and
there are little gems tucked away that include a wide range of useful
information- -for example, descriptions of the nuts and bolts of a host of
jobs (reporter, labor organizer, photographer) and about various industrial
processes; there are asides on the value of nudism and odes to specific
aesthetic traditions.

This oral history reflects the life of a thoughtful and active man who
lived through and contributed to the extraordinary history of the United
States in the twentieth century.

Lisa Rubens
Interviewer -Editor

March 1989

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

Regional Oral His:.-ry Office
Room -i36 The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley, 'California 94720

Your full name

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)

Date of birth

Birthplace

Father's full name

Occupation A.

Mother's full name A

>/<U. Jot, r 6/.

Occupation

Your spouse
Your children

Where did you grow up?
Present community
Education

Areas of expertise

Other interests or activities
v

/ JL*-*o f yt-CjrfJu,

Organizations in which you are active

C*0

xii

Estolv Ethar. Ward

Bore 1899 ir. Los Angeles: father a Socialist lawyer
out of Rhode island; mother an ardent feminist, daughter of a
San Francisco Quaker merchant, and possessor of a Ph.D. from
Swarthmore and an M.D. from Boston Medical School. The
infant was removed to San Francisco at age two weeks, and with
lacunae has lived in the Bay Region, mostly Berkeley, ever
since.

Three and a half years of institutionalized instruction;
otherwise his education came through tutors, travel, and daily
family discussions.

Became campus reporter at U.C. Berkeley for the Oakland
Tribune, proceeding to top rewrite, general assignment, and
assistant city editor. Covere'd the San Francisco general strike
in 1934 and in those three days learned things that changed
his life. Became a founder of the local chapter of the News
paper Guild and was fired and blacklisted by his publisher,
Joseph R. Knowland. Became bailiff and court reporter for the
California Supreme Court, meanwhile being active on his leisure
time in the burgeoning CIO labor movement. Resigned his court
Job to become founding executive secretary of the Alameda
County CIO Council.

In the next eleven years, he became successively first
vice-president, California State CIO Council; CIO legislative
representative, Sacramento, 1939; executive secretary, Harry
Bridges Defense Committee, Angel Island trial, 1939; executive
vice-president, California Labor's Non-Partisan League, 1940;
radio writer, Los Angeles CIO News. 1940-41; organizer, Mine
Mill and Smelter Workers' Union, in Los Angeles and Southern
Nevada, 1942-44; San Francisco CIO radio writer, 1944; CIO-PAC
director, San Francisco CIO Council, 1945-48. Following that,
odd Jobs and labor journalism.

Author, Harry Bridges On Trial. Modern Age, 1940; a
labor novel published only in Polish translation, Renegat.
1953? The Gentle Dynamiter; A Biography of Tom Moonev.
Ramparts Press, 1983; numerous labor and travel articles.

Interviewer-editor, Louis Goldblatt, "Working Class
Leader In the ILWU, 1935-1977," two volumes, Regional Oral
History Office, 1980; Henry Schmidt, "Secondary Leadership in
the ILWU, 1933-1966," Regional Oral History Office, 1983.
Germain Bulcke, "Longshoreman's Leader & ILWU-Pacific Maritime Assoc
Arbitrator/' 1984; Norman Leonard, "Life of a Leftist Labor Lawyer ,"'l986.

xiii

Angela Gizzi Ward

Born 1910 in San Francisco; eldest child of immigrants
from Italy who became prominent citizens in the North Beach
district. Graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.

Worked at Bank of America until fired "for attempting
to organize a union among bank and insurance employees through
out the Bay Region. President and organizer of United Office
and Professional Workers Local 3^4-f San Francisco.

Later became secretary-treasurer of Local 700, Mine,
Mill, and Smelter Workers, in Los Angeles; joined her husband
in a dramatic but unsuccessful effort to organize workers
for Mine Mill in war plants in Southern Nevada, 1943*

Returning to San Francisco, she became an organizer of
clerical workers at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company,
achieving a first major victory in the local office-worker
field, with equal pay for equal work for women.

On retirement she has assisted her husband in the
preparation of oral history and other manuscripts.

I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD: INFLUENCES ON WARD'S
POLITICAL SENSIBILITY

[Interview 1: 8 June 19873**

Rubens: We are going to spend this first session talking about your

childhood and background, with the focus on how you developed
political consciousness.

Ward: I have a rather unusual parentage and birth and upbringing, my
parents both being radicals, flaming radicals, for the nineties.
My father was a socialist and a bit of a Theosophist. My father
ran on the Populist ticket for district attorney of Multnomah
County, Oregon, which was Portland, and he lost by thirty-four
votes.

Rubens: Your father was a lawyer, is that right, from Rhode Island?

Ward: Yes. And my mother was an ardent feminist who believed that

marriage was a dirty trick conceived by men to enslave women. I
was her second child. She had been involved before.

Rubens: Let me ask you, then, a couple of key questions. Where was your
mother born?

Ward: I think she was born in San Francisco. Her father was the owner
of a store which you may or may not have heard of, Smith's Cash
Grocery.

Rubens: What was your mother's name?

Ward: My mother's name was Laura Mae Smith. She was known as Laura;
that's the name she used.

ffThis symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes, see page 271 .

Ward: My father, Louis Artemas Ward,* was born and brought up in Rhode
Island in a house so old that parts of it, nobody knows when they
were built.

My grandfather was George Hazzard Mumford Perry Ward, and my
grandmother was Celia Perry. My grandfather, as soon as he got
married he was a whaler, a whaling captain he took off on a
voyage around the Horn to the Bering Straits and got home three
years later to find out that he had a three-year-old daughter, or
thereabouts. So he quit whaling and became a farmer.

Rubens: This is your father's father?

Ward: Yes, that's right. Many stories were told about life on the

farm, how this house had the widow's peak widow's watchplace.
It also had between the first and second floors a railing which
resounded when pounded.

When they needed fertilizer, they would wait till the tide
in Long Island Sound was very low, and that usually occurred at
two or three in the morning. The boys, my father included, slept
upstairs, and my grandfather slept downstairs. He didn't need a
clock. There was, I guess, no such thing as an alarm clock. He
knew when it was time to get up, and he'd pound on that railing
and holler, "Jump up, boys, and hook on your j ibhalyards . " The
boys would do that, and they would get into special carts with
ribs instead of solid bodies, and the horses, and go down and get
seaweed. That's how they fertilized the rocky New England soil.

Rubens: How did your father get from Rhode Island to Oregon?
Ward: I'm coming to that.

There were many, many stories about life on the farm as the
children grew up. There were many children.

The weather was foggy and miserable, and many people died of
what was then called consumption, including my grandmother
(Celia) and my father's younger sister, whose name I don't
remember. My father was told at the age of nineteen that he also
was a consumptive and had two years to live, and nothing much
could be done for him about it.

Well, in town, the tiny little hamlet there, was a man known
as Welcome Tucker. He got the name of "Welcome" because his
father and mother, when he was born, got into a fight over what
his name should be and didn't name him anything but "Hey, you."
So at the age of ten he named himself "Welcome."

Now, he was known as Welc Tucker. He was the village
handyman, and he took care of everybody's little odd jobs and all

My father never used the name "Louis." He was known as "Art."

Paternal Grandfather, George Hazzard
Mumford Perry Ward.
Portland, Oregon

Paternal Grandmother, Celia Church

Ward.

Rhode Island

Cousin Lizzie Hoxsie

Ward: the old maids and widows and so on, and he liked my father. My
father left home and went to live with Welc Tucker.

My father noticed that he got a terrible cold every time he
got a haircut and conceived the idea that if his hair were left
to grow as nature intended, the back of his neck would always be
of an even temperature. So he let his hair grow long, and he
also went on a fast and took nothing but water for three weeks.

Welc was beginning to get a little bit anxious about the
boy. He didn't want him to die. It was spring, and the peaches
were ripe in the orchard. Welc took a bowl full of ripe peaches
and set them on the dining room table and went on about his
business. When he came back, the peaches were all eaten. That
ended the fast, and from that day on my father never tasted
anything except fruit and vegetables all his life. He lived to
eighty-six.

Rubens: What year did he die?

Ward: Nineteen fifty-seven. The family, in the meantime, was moving
west to Portland, Oregon. This was because of my grandfather's
brother, Uncle John. The two of them, George and John, had
crossed the Isthmus of Panama and got to California in the Gold
Rush.

When they arrived in San Francisco Bay they had no money,
but they had shotguns and ammunition. They stole a boat from one
of the many vessels which had been abandoned in the bay. They
got a good-sized longboat and rowed across the bay to what is now
Alameda. At that time it was a haven for wild ducks. They shot
wild ducks until that boat was loaded down just to danger's edge,
got back with them, and sold the ducks to the San Francisco
restaurant people at five dollars apiece. So they were in
business.

They went up to the gold fields and didn't find much of any
gold. My grandfather got scurvy and lost all his teeth. He was
so sick that to save his life John had to get him home somehow.

But John didn't stay home. He was next heard of in what is
now northern Mexico and New Mexico. He somehow or other enlisted
the assistance of some Indian vaqueros, and they rounded up a
great herd of wild horses left from the Spanish adventures in
Mexico. They rounded up this herd, and with the Indian vaqueros
John drove them west to the coast of California, starting at San
Diego, selling wild horses to the ranchers up the coast, up the
coast, up the coast, to what is now Portland, Oregon, and
beyond. About where Vancouver is, he ran out of horses.

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:
Rubens:
Ward:

So he and his vaqueros rounded up a herd of wild elk and drove
them south, selling them for meat. They ran out of elk at what
is now Portland, Oregon, on the banks of the Willamette River.
John by that time had a lot of money, and he bought about a
fourth of what is now the Portland, Oregon, waterfront, and he
lived there the rest of his life. He became "Mr. Republican" of
the state of Oregon.

I remember him when I was a small boy, coming down to visit
us on his way; he spent every winter in Santa Monica and the rest
of the time in Portland. He smoked vile cigars and stunk up our
house, [chuckles] We put up with him because he was rich.

So we're talking about how your father got to Oregon,
because of John?

Was that

Well, John started a family there, and the rest of the family
began to come from Rhode Island.

What year was this?
The early nineties.
Your father went to Oregon in the early nineties?

Well, he didn't go with the rest of the family. He was about the
last among them. In those days it took ten days by train from
Rhode Island, or Boston, to Portland, Oregon. There was no such
thing as sleeping cars. You sat up. And they burned wood, you
know, and they were just as dirty as the engine [chuckles] by the
time they got there. Anyway, he got there and went to work as a
longshoreman.

But he was of a slight, slender build, and the first thing
he did was to lift a load wrong and he tore the ligaments out of
the small of his back around into his testicles, and he had that
hole under his skin in his back all the rest of his life.

So he went to work as a clerk in a law office, and at the
age of twenty-one he went down to Salem and took the bar
examination. He tells the story that he had become friendly with
another young fellow who was also taking the exam. The night
before the exam this other fellow suggested that they sit up all
night and cram. My father said no; he was going to get a good
night's sleep. So he got a good night's sleep, the other fellow
sat up all night and worked, and they both passed.

My father bacame a lawyer. His clients were always indigent
or nearly so. He had a great problem: he could charge a fee,
but he couldn't collect it. The result was that he was very
poor. He then met my mother.

A Feminist Mother

Rubens: Where did your father meet your mother?

Ward: In Portland, although she was, I think, San Francisco born. She,
as I say, didn't believe in marriage.

Rubens: Had she already been to college when she met your father?

Ward: She had a Ph.D. from Swarthmore and an M.D. from Boston Medical.

Rubens: That was very unusual for a woman at that time.

Ward: Very, very. She was the valedictorian when she graduated from
Boston Med, and her topic was Yosemite. She was an outdoor
person, very much so. In the summertimes, when she'd come back
from college in the East, the first thing she would do would be
to hire a donkey and find a dog somewhere that liked her and take
off for Yosemite.

Rubens: By herself?
Ward: By herself.

She was a very dear and close friend of John Muir. There is
a story of a night, of some sort of a romance between the two, at
the head of Waterwheel Falls on the Tuolumne, if you know where
that is.

Rubens: Who told the story? Your mother?

Ward: No. I think my aunt had [chuckles]. Well, anyway, they were
unquestionably very good friends.

Rubens: And what were her parents like, that they sent her to Swartluaore
and then to medical school?

Ward: I have this memory of her father: I remember being taken I must
have been somewhere between three and four years of age into
this big store. It was on the gore of Market, Drumm, and
California Streets, and the building was thirteen stories high.
I don't know how much of it they occupied, but they certainly
occupied a great deal.

And I remember going down the aisle, hanging onto my
mother's hand, and the clerks bowing and scraping, way down to
the back to a little tiny office, rather dark and gloomy and
crowded, and this man with a beard down to here [gestures], I
don't know what the talk was about, but anyhow he stood up, and
he was six-foot-seven. My mother was five-ten.

Rubens: This was your grandfather who was six-foot-seven with a beard to
his waist?

Ward: This was my grandfather. I remember her saying that we were
going to see grandma, but I don't remember grandma at all.

Rubens: Your mother got her degree from Boston Medical School but never
practiced medicine?

Ward: Never practiced.

Rubens: And you believe your parents met in Portland?

Ward: Yes, I know they did.

Rubens: But you were born in Los Angeles.

Ward: Well, as I say, my father was

Rubens: Struggling.

Ward: He couldn't collect a fee. His big pride was that he defended a
man for murder and got him off that sort of thing. But no
money.

He heard of a law job opening in the little town of Los
Angeles, which was nothing but a hamlet then. So he and my
mother, she very pregnant oh, wait a minute; I'm getting ahead
of the story.

Since she didn't believe in marriage and she was in love
with my father, she was willing to live with him right then and
there. Nothing doing! No, sir! He was a New England Puritan,
and you did not have sex except when you intended to have
offspring; that was the only purpose of sex. Anyway, it was a
standoff for quite a while until finally she gave in under the
promise that all right, she would marry him, and as soon as there
was an offspring they would get a divorce and live happily ever
afterward.

So here they were in Los Angeles, and the job that he was
looking for did not materialize. They were living in a little
old white house, so I've been told, right close to the corner of
Figueroa and Broadway. My mother, who had had a child
previously

Rubens: She had already had a child?
Ward: Oh, yes. I was her second child.

Mother, Laura Mae Smith Ward

Fragments of

My Soul and Winter's,

Laura n. Smith

A Slffht That Lived.
A cliff; deep snow; a moonlight night;
A pair of long, slim Norway skis;
A figure kneeling ; peering far over the icy ledge.

Down, down below, deep in the canon'* white
There lay a curious thing.
There lay a mimir city in the snow,
A tiny little mining, mountain city
With ont- long straggling street.
And dancing lights from under low log roofs
Where Joe and Mary ate their l>oiled potatoes
And gave the haby some.

And gaudy signs nnd yellow lights from ten saloons,
And one red light, laying a warm, slim finger on the

snow the drug store.
And little hurrying spots, all black, a-moving to and fro

from butcher shop to store.
I bent again and listened and took my breath in

small

Ah yts! with muffled, mellow notes
Yet clear and faint and sweet
The hotel supper-bell !

Silent I gazed

There was a curious something thus watching above
at men's dear doings that held me very still.

And when I moved away on my Norwegian skis, there

was a white hush in my heart

Made of the moonlight, of the snow, and of that other
Something, on its height, that watched, with luminous

light, o'er everything.

Perhaps.

I think I must be the wild-child of the Norsemen.
I think I must be the offspring of those fierce men who

rode the northern etas .
I think I must l>e akin to the Newfoundlander, to the

Esquimaux, the Laps and Fins.
I think I must be the young of all of these.

An Ecstasy.

Oh, I have not lived half enough !

Oh, I have not breathed half enough !

Oh, I have not climbed half enough !

I have not leaped and danced and strode the earth one-
half enough !

I am crazy with the fierce energythat burns through
all my veins!

Oh, there is a snapping, crackling lift and force within
my brain !

Oh, I am exultant in the keen joy of bounding, glowing
health!

Oh, let me never die

I am so glad to live!

A small poetry book written by Estolv Ward's mother
and presented as Christmas gifts, 1896.

Rubens: Your father's child?

Ward: Oh, no, no. More about that later.

She told my father what to do they had no money and he
did, and I got born at 6:20 in the morning.

Rubens: Eighteen ninety-nine.
Ward: Yes, March 29, 1899.

Then somehow or other they got back to San Francisco.

A Socialist Father

Rubens: Was your father a socialist by now?

Ward: Oh, he had been a socialist for

Rubens: When did he join the Socialist Party?

Ward: Who knows? I don't know.

Rubens: Did he belong to the Socialist Party?

Ward: I don't know that he ever belonged, but I know that he considered
himself to be a socialist, and his friends were all socialists.

Rubens: And did your mother ever actually belong to the Socialist Party?
Ward: Oh, I don't think she-
Rubens: She was not a joiner?

Ward: I have the impression that she was apolitical. Her big thing was
women's rights, and she was anti-marriage and all that sort of
thing.

Rubens: But she never wanted to work while the children were young, or
she didn't find--?

Ward: Well, no. They got back to San Francisco. I was two weeks old,
they tell me, when I arrived in San Francisco.

My father landed a job at ten dollars a week at a little
exporting /importing firm down on California Street, and they
lived in the highest-up cottage on Bernal Heights. My father's

Ward:

Rubens:

allowance was ten cents a day. He walked to work and back from
work, and his lunch cost ten cents.

My first memory was of lying in a tent by my mother's side,
with the rain pattering on the tent in the morning, and I
remember her tickling the soles of my feet to make me laugh.
Then I remember getting old enough to go up on the hill to play
with the nanny goats on the top of the hill and to go down a
block to meet my father coming home from work. It was a lovely
little house, just covered with flowering roses and bushes and
things.

Who lived in this house?
child?

The two boys? What was the first

Ward: Well, I never saw him. I'll tell you about that.

Rubens: All right. But we want to just establish who was living there:
it was your father, your mother, and you in this house.

Waard: That's right.

You see, my mother liked everything about having children
except taking care of them after infancy.

My father got fired because this little company joined
forces with another little exporting and importing company, and
their work forces they had a few too many. He was the last
hired, so he was let go. But in a few days they had to come
after him, because in the short time he had been there he'd gone
through their contract files and they discovered that he knew
more about their contracts than anybody else.

Ward: So he got his job back, and things picked up. We moved to

Berkeley, to an old white house even then it was old on what
is now Hilgard Street, but it hadn't been cut through at that
time. The streetcar ran to the bottom of the Euclid Street hill,
and we had to walk up Euclid to Cedar, turn up Cedar, and then go
through the field down to this old house. I used to play in that
field.

One morning my father woke up and he'd been bitten on the
hip, apparently, he thought, by a tarantula. Anyway, he was all
swollen. He went to work, but he couldn't last all day. He had
to come home. He was in great pain, and he came home early in
the afternoon; and The Stranger was there.

I was always told to go out and play when The Stranger came,
so I saw The Stranger running through the field down towards

Father with Estolv, age three.
Heights, San Francisco.

March 1902. Bernal

Louis A. Ward, Attorney. Portland Oregon,
bookcase is still in Estolv Ward's home.)

(The revolving legal

Ward: Euclid, pulling on his clothes as he ran; and my father with a
very strange look on his face; and my mother weeping in the
bedroom.

After a couple of days, late one evening, the three of us
went down to the Oakland Mole and he put my mother on the train;
she was wearing a white tarn o'shanter. I remember that white tarn
o'shanter as the train pulled out, and her waving good-bye. I
never saw her again until I was twenty-one. How I got home that
night I don't know, because I fell asleep on my father's
shoulder.

So we moved to 17^3 Delaware Street. It was a one-story
cottage, to which my father added a high basement. The first
person who took care of me was an elderly Seventh Day Adventist
woman named Auntie Plowman. I hated Saturdays because from
Friday night till Saturday night I couldn't go out and play. I
had to just sit there and be a good boy all day.

Well, anyway, I got smallpox, so my father laid off work. I
don't know where Auntie Plowman was, but she disappeared and he
took care of me. My face was covered with these big pustules all
over, and he told me to keep my hands away from them. "They'll
itch, but don't scratch because if you scratch your face will be
pock-marked for life." And I didn't. But as these pustules were
getting ripe, I woke up from a nap one afternoon and the cover
had taken off one of the scabs out of the corner of my nose,
right where the nostril joins the forehead. I was very
apologetic, and I think I cried or wept about it. But he told me
it was an accident and I couldn't help it. I had the scar there
until I was up in my twenties. It gradually disappeared. So I
recovered. He prospered.

Rubens: What was he doing?

Ward: He worked for this export/import company. It was a company with
branches all over the world, and this was just the West Coast
branch. A man named Shainwald was the manager. The treasurer
was Milton Morse, who was the brother of James R. Morse, the man
who founded the company and who lived and operated out of the
headquarters in New York.

Rubens: What was the name of the company?

Ward: The American Trading company. Milton Morse was the treasurer in
San Francisco, but he was almost blind. This man Shainwald, the
manager, was stealing from the company and my father caught him.
So Shainwald was fired and my father was appointed manager. The
next day the earthquake and fire happened. So here he was, the
manager of a firm where the office was on fire.

Ward: I remember him walking with me from 17^3 Delaware Street to the

waterfront that night, watching San Francisco burn. He and other
businessmen had gone down to the Oakland estuary and rented a
ferryboat to try to get to San Francisco to save their documents
and things, to do what they could. They got to the waterfront
but were turned back by the National Guard; they were not allowed
to land. That night he took me down, and we watched it burn.

When he could get to San Francisco, the safe was in the
basement of the remains of the building, and when they opened the
safe there was nothing but char. So he had to go with his hat in
his hand to all the firms with whom he had contracts and ask them
to please give him copies of them and to honor those contracts.
They all did.

I was brought up I don't think I ever wore such a thing as
a pair of socks.

Rubens: You had long hair, also.

Ward: Long hair, down to here [gestures], longer than these haircuts
now.

Rubens: Your house was a vegetarian household?

Ward: Oh, yes. My father persuaded his older sister, Nettie, who had
become a teacher in a normal school in eastern Oregon, to come
down and run the house and take care of me and teach me, which
she did. I didn't go to school till I was about thirteen or
fourteen.

Rubens: During this time did you receive letters from your mother?

Ward: My father did.

Rubens: What did your father tell you about where your mother was?

Ward: I have the impression I don't think that he told me much.

Rubens: Did he speak ill of her?

Ward: I think maybe Aunt Nettie told me more than I believe my mother
spent much of her time around Coos Bay, Oregon; and she had other
children: a boy who also had an odd name like mine. She had
Eilla. He later renamed himself Phillip. And she had a girl.
Truth, who I believe, so far as I know, is still alive and lives
in Vacaville.

Aunt Nettie made my clothes; I wore little khaki pants above
the knee, and I forget what kind of a shirt. She made all my
clothes.

Ward: I was an oddball. I didn't mingle much with the neighboring
children. When I did to some extent, I was a little bit too
farfetched for most of them.

My father took care of old Socialist friends, including a
man whose name I can't now recall who came down with typhoid
while visiting us and died at our home. And Aunt Nettie got sick
with it. The result was that something had to be done, so I was
sent up to friends named Van der Linden in Santa Rosa, and I
stayed there for about a month.

There were several Socialists in Santa Rosa, including old
Cornelius "Daddy" Van der Linden, and his son Peter and wife.
Also the owner of the Neilsen Furniture company, which is still a
name, I think, in the trucking business in that part of
California.

I got my first kiss from a girl, one of the Neilsen family.
I know it was very exciting! [laughs] And I got locked in the
Santa Rosa Public Library. This happened when I was eight years
old, and I was in a corner of the shelves reading a travel book
about "darkest Africa" when the librarian locked up to go to
dinner. Peter came and got me out, a very scared kid.

Anyhow, Aunt Nettie recovered, and I went back home.

Let's go back to the earthquake and fire for a moment. I
remember the earthquake; I was seven years old then. My father
and I slept in twin beds in the same room. I woke up one
morning, and the chimney was tumbling down on the roof over our
heads, the dishes were crashing in the pantry, and the beds were
like this [gestures]. For some reason or other, I couldn't open
my mouth, and it stopped. I was just about to say, "Daddy, what
is it?" when it began again. I wet the bed. [laughs] But we
all survived.

At the time of the earthquake, just after the earthquake, my
father felt that he wanted a basement. This house on Delaware
street where we lived had no basement, so he had it raised to
what was virtually a two-story house with a big, high basement.
It was up on blocks. It had been raised, but it hadn't been
built under yet. When the aftershocks of the earthquake came,
the house rocked and wiggled and shook, but nothing happened.

One of the Socialist friends had an old biplane that was

stored in our basement this was after the earthquake and fire

and people passing by could see in the basement windows, and if
they looked they could see the wings of this plane. Why we had
it there, who left it there, I haven't the faintest idea. But
when I was in my early teens we left the plane and the house and

Ward: everything and moved up to 1512 Oxford Street in Berkeley. The
house is still there; I pass it every day when I go down that
way.

There were two boys who lived next door who went to
Waashington School, and I got friendly with them. About that
time, not only did they suggest that I might like to go to
school they thought that would be nice but also my aunt was
running out of her ability to teach me, because she only had a
normal school education herself. So she took me down to the
school and I met the principal, whose name was H. P. Glessner.
He used to be known as "Horsepower," but not to his face. He
later became principal of Berkeley High. I ran into him again
when he was ninety.

But, anyway, he was very much concerned. Here was this boy
with these funny-looking clothes and long hair and so forth.
Also, he had no idea of what grade I belonged in; nobody did. He
was very concerned about it. He said, "It would be terrible to
have to demote him, so let's start him low and see what
happens." So I was put in the high sixth grade. I lasted there
one week.

These boys, the friends of mine, were in the high seventh.
I was with them for two weeks, and then the next thing I knew I
was in the high eighth. A month later I graduated from grammar
school.

In high school I changed my ways. I decided I would
conform. I got a haircut, and bought kneepants and all, and I
even wore socks for a change.

Rubens: In high school you still wore kneepants?

Ward: Oh, of course. Everybody did. I conformed, became a conformist.

In high school, in the Latin class, the teacher, Miss Webb,
seated us alphabetically. The result was that the girl who sat
in front of me was Jean Waste. She was blonde, and I thought she
was very pretty. I learned somehow or other that she was the
daughter of a local judge, a superior court judge.

It was somehow managed that we should meet, but it had to be
very formal. Another girl whom I knew agreed to hold a party to
which Miss Waste and Mr. Ward would be invited. By that time I
was getting a little bit worldly in my ways. I went out nights.
I think I sneaked out and ran around with the boys.

Rubens: Were you interested in politics? Stitt Wilson was mayor of
Berkeley in 1912. Here you have a Socialist mayor.

Ward: Oh, yes. Stitt Wilson and my father could have been twin

brothers, not only in looks but in hairdo and all that sort of
thing. In fact, my father was sometimes mistaken for him.

Rubens: Did your father know him?

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:
Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

I don't think so, not personally. My father was so deeply
engrossed in his business affairs. He came home from work and
brought his briefcase full. He worked in the evenings, always in
the evening. He was a very hard worker.

From the beginning, as soon as he reached the stage where he
didn't have to get to the office at nine o'clock, every morning
we went running. We walked up to at least as high as the "Big
C." Do you know where that is?

The "Big C" ( "C" for California) on the hillside behind the
campus?

Yes. The Greek Theater was just being built then. Every morning
when my father could do it we went up at least as high as the
"Big C" and ran down^ walked up and ran down.

Oh, politics. Every polling booth was surrounded by
suffragettes. My father wouldn't even tell anybody how he
voted. I knew how he voted, but he wouldn't tell. You had to
find out.

How did you know?

You knew what he believed in.

Was he for women's suffrage?

Yes. But would he give those women out there at the polling
place a tumble? No, sir!

He'd refuse to

What do you mean, "a tumble"?

He wouldn't say, "Yes, I'm for you," or anything,
take their literature.

What happened to his Socialist politics?

He voted Socialist, but I knew it because I knew him, not because
of anything he'd said or told me. And he wouldn't tell them, but
he voted for them, I'm quite sure. Oh, no! The vote was sacred,
because when he was a boy growing up in Rhode Island there was no
such thing as a secret ballot. On voting day the politicians
came to town and passed out free liquor, let everybody come, made

Ward: their speeches, and then they voted by a show of hands. The

Australian secret ballot, my father was brought up to believe,
was something wonderful.

Rubens: Well, it was an achievement. It was a progressive
Ward: Yes!

Rubens: And so just the last question: was he particularly respectful of
Wilson, or was he impressed with him, or do you know his opinoin
about Stitt Wilson?

Ward: Well, I have no recollection of a particular
Rubens: Or whether he voted for [Eugene] Debs?

Ward: I know that all his friends were Socialists. People came, as I
say; one man died at our place. All his friends were old
Socialists.

Rubens: He didn't talk about Debs particularly, who ran in 1912?

Ward: No. But Debs' "Appeal to Reason" was always on our living room
table.

Anyway, in school I began to sneak out at night and run
around with the boys. In San Francisco the Panama Pacific
International Exposition came along.

Rubens: Nineteen fifteen.

Ward: Yes. If I could get five dollars somehow, I could go over there
all day to take all the rides and do everything, and I'd still
have a dime left to get home, because I learned how. There was a
nickel streetcar, and then I learned that if you walked down to
the south end of the Ferry Building to the trade entrance where
the horse truckers came in, if you'd come just as a cart was
coming in the door, you didn't have to pay.

I had my first beer there. I thought it must have spoiled;
it tasted awful. I didn't understand why anybody

Rubens: Was your father a teetotaler?

Ward: So far as I know, he never tasted alcohol.

Rubens: Was he a prohibitionist, do you know?

Ward: Well, he didn't believe in alcohol. He must have been a

prohibitionist because, as I say, he never well, never any meat
or fish even.

Rubens: There was such a closeness between the Socialists and the
prohibitionists at the turn of the century.

Ward: That's right, yes. I think that was probably the case.

Well, to get back to this party: as I was saying, this was
on a Saturday afternoon, and I should think it was somewhere up
towards Euclid Avenue, this house. It was to be a garden party.
So as the day, Saturday, wore on, I ate lunch. This party was to
be at three o'clock or something like that, and I sat down in my
father's easy chair after lunch and fell asleep,
the party on time. I had to be called by phone,
boy!

I didn't get to
[laughs] Oh,

I went to the young lady's home, and Miss Waste invited me
to a party that night. I went to that party and met some of her
friends.

Ward: We went out a few times. There was nothing exclusive about it; I
knew she went out with other boys. She had quite a few enemies
among the girls in high school because, I guess, they considered
her a little bit snooty. So one of them told me that they had
heard that Jean was going out with a boy named Johnny Muir on
Saturday night. Johnny Muir had the reputation we didn't have
the term "womanizer," but he was the biggest girl chaser, the
most notorious girl chaser in high school. The thought of my
date going out with him was impossible!

So I went down to Oakland and got drunk. I came back on the
streetcar and got off at the Waste's house. They lived at
2222 Durant Avenue, an old double house. I waited to see what
would happen when this awful Johnny Muir brought her home. I
wanted to see the homecoming. I sat across the street, but
realized that I couldn't hear what they would be saying. So I
went down the driveway alongside the house and sneaked up so I
could hear any conversation that took place on the porch.

Lo and behold, her older brother drove in, and the
headlights were right on me, and I ran. After I got tired
running [chuckles], I came back and sat down on the lawn across
the street and waited. She came home at a reasonable hour with
some young man. He went up the stairs, told her goodnight, no
monkey business at all, and he left. That was it.

I found out it wasn't Johnny Muir at all.
Ewer, a man I had never heard of.

It was Johnny

Ward: The Wastes were alarmed. What was I doing down there? So they
called the police. I was arrested the next day. I told my
story, and whether the police believed it or not, they told it to
the Wastes. A day or so later I was home. The phone rang, and
it was Mrs. Waste. She was upset that they had caused my
arrest, and would I come down and see her?

Well, at that time, among my father's old Socialist friends
was this old Hollander, Cornelius Van der Linden, who had come
down from Santa Rosa and was living with us. Daddy Van der
Linden told me that he thought my father was rich, and I said,
"Well, how rich do you think my father is?" He said, "Oh, at
least two million."

So I went down to see Mrs. Waste, and she was very kind and
sorry about the whole thing. I told her that I'd learned what
the young man's real name was, that it was someone I'd never
heard of. In the course of it, she asked about my father and his
business and so forth, and I told her that he was worth two
million.

She knew that I had been brought up by my aunt, that I had

no mother, and she elected herself to be my mother. This caused

quite an unhappiness for the Waste family. Everybody got into an
uproar about me. Jean told me to go fly a kite.

But my relationship with Mrs. Waste was very much that of a
mother and son. She taught me how to drive, and she did this,
and she did that. She was, no question about it, a very useful
person to me and helped me to straighten out my own ways very
quickly.

Travels in the Pacific and Far East

Ward: Then in 1916 my father was notified that he was to make a

personal survey of the company's Far East offices because there
were things going on there that they wanted him to investigate.
To do that he would have to have a confidential secretary. He
couldn't use the office help in the offices that he'd visit, you
know, to dictate letters, cablegrams, and so forth. He had six
months to prepare. So he told me that if I wanted to learn
shorthand, typing, and the Bentley code, which was the regular
cable code for business, I could have the job. So I did. I
went.

I was in Manila when World War I broke out. Almost
instantly La Luneta (The Spectacle Lens), a massive greensward

the size of six or eight football fields, came to life at six
o'clock every morning: young Americans, flags flying, a military
band playing, going "hup, two, three, four," on the vast stretch
of green grass, training to go to Europe and fight that German,
Kaiser Wilhelm, and all his "krauts." All of them, I suspected,
hoping to become officers right away.

Whistles blew, and everyone, the bandsmen too, stacked arms
and instruments and dashed for the bar of the Manila Hotel. Time
was allowed for one quick drink. Then the whistle blew again and
everybody dashed back to La Luneta for another go at Army drill.

I got on the boat with my father to go from Manila to Hong
Kong, but the boat didn't sail on time. There was a girl,
Dolores Lichauco, with whom I'd become friendly. Oh, yes, that's
another story.

Years before, a Spanish-speaking Filipino boy who had not a
word of English, nothing, no money, appeared in my father's
office in San Francisco with a letter from the manager of the
American Trading Company's Manila office, saying that this boy
was from a good family and so forth, and could my father help
him. So my father immediately gave him a job in the Spanish
American department and brought him home to stay with us.

That was Fernando Grey, whose grandfather had been a
Scotsman. He stayed with us until he got on his feet, and he
taught me Spanish and I taught him English. Then he went his
way, did a hitch in the American Navy, and went back home. He
had been home a year or so when we arrived there, and he met us
at the dock with his Renault machine and his chauffeur,
[laughs] It was quite a change.

So I got a taste of Filipino society, which consisted mainly
of wealthy mestizos (half-breeds). My father made a business
call on Teodoro Yangco, who was the major buyer for the
Philippine government (it was the American government at that
time). And first thing we knew, we got a dinner invitation to
the Yangco home. At the appointed hour the Yangco limousine, or
at least one of them, arrived for us at the Manila Hotel. We
were driven up into the hills behind Manila and eventually
arrived at a porte cochere complete with uniformed gate tender.
Our chauffeur and the gateman exchanged greetings and we began a
drive that seemed to be about two miles in length before the
Yangco mansion came into view. You can imagine how huge that
estate must have been.

The entrance of the house was opened by a butler in tails,
exposing a glitter of ladies literally covered with jewels. As
time permitted, I counted the number of ruby and diamond rings on

Ward: all the digits of the women's hands except thumbs and little

fingers, to say nothing of more jewels and tiaras on their heads,
rings in their ears, and more jewels around their necks. The men
were in the usual tuxedos. I can't say for my father, but I felt
embarrassed for us both, like hicks to cone to such a scene in
ordinary business attire.

I guess our host had been warned that their American guests
were teetotalers, for there were no cocktails before dinner, and
if I remember correctly, no wines at the table. The conversation
switched easily from Spanish to English, depending on who was
talking to whom. Mrs. Yangco, his wife, was English, "veddy"
English; so was Yangco' s mother-in-law. I must admit that
although the food was good (for me), I felt rather dazzled and
confused all that evening.

Then came a Sunday when Dading (Fernando Grey's nickname)
plus touring car and driver came to take us for a sightseeing
ride around Manila. But a rainstorm came up and the nearest
place to find shelter was a downtown movie house. In those days
(very probably even now) the "swells" sat only in the balcony,
and the masses in the ground floor seats. So we went to the
balcony. Immediately a chatter erupted between Dading and two
young Filipina girls seated behind us. I could hear the girls
saying excitedly to Dading, "Su pelo! Su pelo!" So I turned and
took a look. One of the girls I thought was very beautiful, and
the other was quite homely. I butted in. At that time I was
well aware that my hair was extremely light blonde, so I said to
the girls in Spanish, "What about my hair?" Much giggling.

Thus began my acquaintance with Dolores and Faustina
Lichauco. From then on things in Manila became very interesting
for me. I played tennis with Dolores on her family's tennis
court. I was taken through her house, including Dolores'
bedroom, where everything was lace and ruffles. Of course, this
tour of home and bedroom was chaperoned by Dolores' mother, the
sister, a brother, and another relative or two. I found myself
spending as much time as possible with Dolores, and somehow she
managed to impart to me that she had a dowry of 750,000 pesos (at
that time two pesos equalled one American dollar).

Did you ever hear of Manuel Quezon? He became the first
president of the Philippines when they left the umbrella of the
United States. Well, Manuel Quezon must have felt that he had
some rights where Dolores was concerned, with a rather dramatic
result. On the Fourth of July I went with Dolores' brother and a
couple of other boys to a dance at the opposite end of La
Luneta. In between dances my hosts and I were standing in the
foyer just off the dance floor, when a man came at me with a
knife. But my hosts were watching: I found out later that they

Louis A. Ward and his secretary, Lillian Versalovich, later his second wife, in
his office at 244 California Street, San Francisco. Manager, West Coast, The
America's and Australian Division, American Trading Company.

Louis Artemas Ward with his "confidential
private secretary," Estolv Ward (right)
and Fernando "Dading" Grey, Manila, 1917.

Ward: had found out that Quezon had a killer out looking for me. They
nabbed him, took his knife away, and kicked him out of there;
he'd been sent back to his own hut.

Our time in Manila was all too short,, and one night we said
our goodbyes and got on the boat to go to Hong Kong. But it
didn't sail. When my father and I woke up the next morning, we
were still docked at Manila. They told me that we'd have time
enough to go ashore, so I went ashore again and went to see
Dolores. When I got back at the time I figured the boat would
still be there, it wasn't there, and I had nothing but the
clothes I stood in. My father was on his way to Hong Kong.

But I stayed with the Greys for a couple of days. Of
course, white linen suits on a tramp steamer [laughs] I was a
pretty dirty-looking boy by the time I got to Hong Kong!

I was warned in Hong Kong that I would be entertained by
people who were important for business reasons but who were
looked down upon by the British colony because they were
half-breeds, part Chinese and part British or Scotch or whatever.

Rubens: Quadroons, they may have said, too.

Ward: That's Mexican. It's something like that.

Anyway, they took me out the usual, the standard after-work
swimming junket behind Stonecutter's Island. They had a yacht,
and we would go out yachting. We were diving off the yacht, and
one of the guys dived through a jellyfish. He was, oh, stung all
over!

They were always very curious to find out when we were
leaving Hong Kong, because our departure date would be a matter
of some business importance. I was warned not to tell them, and
I didn't tell them. They'd point to some ship and say, "Are you
going on the ship with the shipment?"

We left Hong Kong, and then we began to hear reports. We
knew, of course, the Czar had been arrested and taken to the
prison at Ekaterinburg. We heard stories that he and the royal
family had been executed, which was all right by everybody
because the Russian revolutionaries were very popular in America
at that time the 1905ers, or the people who had fled Russia in
the 1905 aborted revolution. That was fine. And we heard that a
man named Kerenski was in charge and everything was lovely.

We went up the Yangtze River as far as Hankow. That's where
I read Jack London, on a little British river steamer books by
Jack London that I never heard of in the United States. And then

Ward: I had a memorable experience walking around the Nanking city

wall. This was planted with fruits and vegetables, because it
wasn't used as a defense anymore. And people driving their pigs
along with a stick in the streets.

I was going through a corn field on top of the city wall in
Nanking with one of the men from the American Trading Company
office, who was our interpreter. We heard a sound like somebody
weeping, and there in the corn field was a woman on the ground
sobbing, and a man bending over her looking very concerned, with
two little children peeking out in terror from the next row of
corn. Our guide told us that the woman was saying, "I don't love
you anymore. I don't love you anymore. Please go away."

Rubens: A Chinese domestic quarrel.
Ward: Yes. It's a small world.

We got to Peking at the time that Henry Pu Yi was on the
throne for four days. He was the boy emperor, and they put him
on the throne because the warlords were well, that was before
Chiang Kai-shek had ever been heard of.

Rubens: Well, Sun Yat-sen's revolution had been in 1910.
Ward: Sun Yat-sen he was the big boy then.

A young man named Fred Edmundsen, who had lived as a boy a
block away from us in West Berkeley, and who was with the
American Trading Company in the Far East, was in Peking just
then. He had a roadster of a make that I can't recall now; it
isn't made anymore, anyway. He knew a place in the Peking city
wall where he could get that roadster up on the wall, and we
drove up there. We got shot at and had a grand time. Of course,
nobody ever got hit. [laughs]

We went by rail to the Great Wall, took a ride on a
dromedary, and then couldn't get a passenger train back to
Peking. But we rode back on a "gondola" freight train with a
load of sheep.

In those days, prudent souls did not travel from Shanghai to
Peking (or Pekin) by land. You went by a small sea and river
vessel, stopping at coastal towns such as Chefoo and Wei-hei-wei.
At the mouth of the river which led up to Tientsin, our little
ship had to wait for high tide to get across the bar. And up
the river a way we came to a turn so sharp that it could not
be navigated with one turn of the elbow. At this turn the
skipper rammed the bow of his boat up the steep mud bank, leaving
its bow pointing skyward while the flowing current slowly swung

Ward: the stern around. Then the bow swung back into the river

and we proceeded up, chugging along between high dirt levees,
looking down on farmlands and huge piles of salt (only for the
tables of the wealthy) until we arrived at Tientsin.

Then we took a train for the capital of China, and in due
course the conductor came along, chanting in pidgin English,
"Peching have got, Peching have got."

We went to the Russian embassy to get our passports stamped
to go to Petrograd. I remember no problem getting the visas, but
the clerk who waited on us looked at us very strangely. Oh, yes,
everything seemed fine from where we were. Kerenski was fine.
But there was this something Bolsheviki, a word we'd never heard
before. We thought we knew all about the Russian revolution how
the Czar and his family had been seized, taken to Ekaterinburg
and executed. And we liked the new leader, Kerenski, and the
fact that he was trying to establish Western style democracy;
also the fact that he was demanding that the exhausted and
discredited Russian army continue to fight the German Kaiser.
But now we were getting some strange and disturbing rumbles the
name of somebody named Lenin and some weird outfit called
Bolsheviki.

We got by small ship, again, to the Manchurian port of
Dairen, and started by train up that peninsula expecting to catch
the Trans-Siberian for the ten-day journey to Petrograd.
Surprise! Surprise! There were plenty of surprises in this part
of the world. The fields alongside the train were filled with
army camps Japanese long before the Japanese began their
attempt to capture China; more than twenty years before Pearl
Harbor.

Then, about eleven o'clock at night, our train arrived in
Mudken. We got out, expecting to board the Trans-Siberian for
the trip to Vladivostok and on to Petrograd. That train came in,
covered with soot and people. Even the couplings of the cars
were jammed with women loaded with jewelry, coats of mink and
sable and soot. Jewels and soot, all over everything, inside
and outside the cars. The White Russians were getting out!
Good! I thought, "Well, if those are the people who are leaving,
there must be something good going on." But we were forty-eight
hours too late. In other words, there were no trains going
back. I missed the "Ten Days that Shook the World" by
forty-eight hours.

Rubens: Where did you go after China?

Ward: Australia, two years later, with my father in the same capacity.
I worked, too. I had a lot of things to do.

Ward: In Australia, for the first time in my life, I drove a car on the
lefthand side of the road. I forget the name of the car, but you
cranked it from the side, not from the front. We drove it in
Sydney.

Rubens: Was this all one trip, or did you come back to the United States?
Ward: We came back.

II TRYING TO BE A CONSERVATIVE

Rubens: Had you completed high school?

Ward: No.

Rubens: Never finished high school?

Ward: No, between one thing or another, and then travelling, and just
no interest in high school. Did you ever take advanced algebra?
I tried four times to do the binomial theorem, but they all
amounted to binomial zero. I never could do that! Oh! When I
went to V.M.I. [Virginia Military Institute] I only went there
one year because I found out that I was not a military man at
heart.

Rubens: Why would you even go there?

Ward: Well, this was after I got back from Australia. I couldn't go to
college very easily, and I wanted some more education. There had
been a friend of my father's who had a son who had gone to
Virginia Military Institute and who had liked it, and it had been
good for him. I decided I wanted to go, and so I went.

Rubens: Your father was not a pacifist?

Ward: By that time, after all, remember, I was twenty years old. He
didn't mind. I guess he thought a little discipline wouldn't
hurt me. As a matter of fact, I left him in Australia and came
home in order to get there in time for the opening of the fall
term. So I lived through it and hated it.

By the time I got back, things had straightened out with
Jean. I had another girlfriend, but Jean wrote me a letter and
indicated that she was now interested in me. So I got rid of the
other girlfriend and came back.

I was twenty-one that year at V.M.I., and my roommates were
all seventeen and eighteen. In my class I was sixth in
scholastic standing and would have done better than that except
for the math, which was an awful problem.

Ward: So I got married.

Rubens: At twenty-one.

Ward: At twenty-one. December 18, 1920.

Rubens: How had you planned to support your wife?

Ward: Oh, I found out a lot of things during the course of that

engagement. I found out that my father was in love, too, with
his secretary, and had been for many years. She was quitting to
come and marry him, and I could have the job as his secretary
because I had done a lot of that before. So I had a job at a
hundred dollars a month, and we got married.

Rubens: Was Jean interested in women's rights or anything like that at
the time?

Ward: Not particularly.

Rubens: She planned to stay home, not work?

Ward: Jean? Well, there was no thought of her working! Oh! It wasn't
even discussed.

It was a big wedding at St. John's Presbyterian on College
Avenue, very fancy, and then back to the Waste's home. I was
changing from full dress clothes to going-away clothes, and Mrs.
Waste came in and let me know that I had lost a mother and gained
a mother-in-law, [tape off briefly]

Rubens: Your mother was two years older than your father?

Ward: Yes. She had been living pretty much as she pleased for well,
as I said, this Yosemite and John Muir, and eastern colleges and
all that. I think if there had been another school she could
have attended, she'd have done that, too.

Military Academy and World War I
[Interview 2: 15 June 198?]##

Rubens: Let's talk about World War I.

Ward: I was very eager to go fight the Huns. I can't remember the name
of the movie, but it had the two Gish sisters in it; it was a war

Ward: picture. It was very pro-allied and pro-war. My future wife,

Jean, and I went to see that movie in Oakland. I remember we got
so excited when we came out of that movie of course, girls all
wore hats then that she couldn't find her gloves; they were on
top of her hat on top of her head.

The next morning I got up early and went to the City to the
Marine recruiting office. They were glad to see me and sent me
right to the doctor. He poked around my groin and said,
"Oh-oh". Hernia ten feet of hernia in the left groin. So I
went to the hospital and had the left groin repaired, took quite
a while to recover, went back to the same Marine recruiting
office, got the same doctor, and told him what I'd done. He said
that was good, fine. Then he felt the right side and said,
"Oh-oh." I went back to the hospital and got that side patched
up [laughs]. We were in the war all during this period already.

Rubens: I think you had already been to Virginia Military Institute.

Ward: Oh, no. This experience is one of the reasons why I went to

V.M.I, later; because I was a frustrated militarist at the time.

So I got .patched up again, and it took some time to
recover. It was September or October of 1918. By that time I
was drafted. I went up against the examining physician for the
Army, and I told him my sad story. He looked me over, and he
says, "Well, you won't be called for a month or so, and by that
time maybe maybe you could get by, we hope. If you want to go,
I think maybe they'll let you."

Ward: It was the end of October, and we were called. We lined up in a
vacant lot across from the Berkeley YMCA, on a lot that is now
occupied by the seat of Berkeley's government, a big building. I
remember there were two or three California football players in
the group of young fellows. We were all very happy about it.
Pesky Sprott do you remember him? He was a famous fullback. He
was one of the guys, and he said he if he was going to carry a
suitcase, it would be nothing but liquor that sort of thing.
They said we would be called in a few days. Then the armistice
was signed. I got a check for three dollars.

Rubens: Had many of your friends gone to war?

Ward: Some, I think, but I don't remember exactly. Oh, yes, a lot of
people: Charlie Bowman had become a lieutenant, and other
kids Ernie Neilsen from Santa Rosa, friends of my father's.

Rubens: Were you aware of any debate over whether the U.S. should

participate or not? You said you were a frustrated militarist; a
lot of Socialists, of course, opposed the war.

Ward: Well, I don't think Socialism at that moment was very high on my
mind. I hadn't done so well, as I think I think I told you
earlier. I wasn't interested in getting educated, and I wasn't
this and I wasn't that. He thought maybe it might be a good
thing that I go to military school, but that came later. In the
meantime I traveled with my father, a year later when I was
twenty. Did I tell you about Max Valentine?

Rubens: No.

Ward: I left Australia before my father did so I could get to V.M.I,
for the fall term, 1919. I had a cabin mate on the trip home
named Max Valentine, an Australian boy who was within two or
three days of being exactly my age. He was coming to this
country with the very ambitious idea of learning how to grow
tobacco and introducing the growing of tobacco to Australia,
which was importing all smoking stuff at the time. We got here,
and I introduced him around. Then we took the train back in
those days getting on a train, right after the war, and even a
year after, was a problem. We had to share an upper birth to
Chicago; we were lucky to get that much of an accommodation. I
saw him again later, after I had married Jean Waste.

Rubens: The trains were crowded because of the troops coming home?

Ward: Well, there weren't many trains. In the first place, a good half
of our transportation system had been moved to Europe during that
war, I guess. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but what trains
you could find were very crowded.

We kept in contact for years. He started to grow tobacco in
Australia, and then came on two straight years of draught.
Ruined him. When I last heard of him he was in the Fiji Islands
representing some oil company. Nothing further. But it was a
very pleasant relationship; we liked each other very much.

Marriage and Bourgeoise Family Life in Berkeley During the 1920s

Rubens:

Ward:

Why don't we pick up where we left off last week,
married man, you're living in Berkeley.

You're a

Ah, yes. Well, as I think I may have said, by that time I had a
job. My father gave me a job. It developed that I found out on
my wedding day that my father was also in love (I think I've said

Estolv Ward, a cadet at
Virgina Military Institute, 1919

Estolv Ward, ca. 1921

Ward: that before) with his secretary. So she quit her job and I took
that job, but not with as much money as she had been getting.
And I held it for six months. But in the meantime, a physical
problem developed. I found out that in China I had caught an
intestinal bug. My father did, too, but his erupted in Yokohama
on the way home from that trip in '17; he was very sick and
recovered, and that was it. I thought I didn't have any
problems, and here along came a bowel disruption that got worse
and worse and worse, till a doctor said I couldn't work. In
fact, I'd get home from work and I'd be so tired I'd eat two or
three times as much as any normal young fellow, and slept right
after dinner. I was just no good.

I've spoken before about my father's ranch. My wife and I
went up to the ranch and spent a year there. We had an old
Ford. She made a little money giving music lessons around Monte
Rio, Guerneville, Duncan's Mills, and places like that. After
medical treatment I gradually conquered the problem. What I had
was amoebic dysentary.

We came back to Berkeley. Our first home was simply in the
Waste residence. It was an old double house, what they called a
duplex. One side of it was just used as a storage place. Judge
Waste moved out of his bedroom and into that place. We had the
front, fancy bedroom. That continued for a while. I went to
work in a real estate firm, selling real estate. In those days,
you didn't have to pass an examination or anything, you just said
you wanted to sell real estate and if you could find anybody that
would hire you, why but there was no salary, just straight
commission.

One of the things I did was to sell a property right across
from where International House now is, on Piedmont Avenue, to a
fraternity. There was a big to-do: the old widow had a
prominent Oakland lawyer who felt that she was being gypped. I
think the price for the property, probably about a fifty-foot
lot I think what we sold it for was ten thousand dollars, which
was a lot of money in those days. Anyway, we had a battle, but
it came out all right, and the sale went through, and a couple of
other sales. But I wasn't getting rich, by any means. In
selling I found, as in other endeavors, if people came into the
store or office looking for something, I could be very useful.
But to go out and find buyers, no good.

In this real estate office in September of 1923, I saw a
cloud of smoke coming over the hills from the east. Just before
that my father had taken his early Sunday morning walk in the
Berkeley hills, and he had come upon a sale of lots in what is
now the five hundred block of Spruce Street. He bought three of
them, and gave them to me. During this time he put up the money
for the house, and I hired an old German boss carpenter. He got

Ward: his crew together, and I went to work with them and built the

house. They had finished the work, and the house was conditioned
for occupancy to some extent. It was a cross between my father's
idea of architecture and Bernard Maybeck's. The living room was
21x38, and the peak of the ceiling was eighteen feet high.

Rubens: Was this to be your and your wife's home?

Ward: Yes. I had not figured, in placing the house it was over a

ravine, rather steep, and I didn't realize the actual angle of
the steepness. I wanted to start the foundation from the back
and move out to the front; and I wanted a chimney in front to
start from the ground, and have two fireplaces, one for a
possible room down below and another for the higher living room.
And I wanted the chimney to slope up its sides from the base to
the top. But it was a longer journey from the ground to the top
when we got it up there than I had figured, with the result that
when we came to building the fireplace on the living room level
there wasn't enough width for the smoke to pass from the
fireplace below. So the upstairs fireplace had to be skewed up a
little made four feet wide in front and only two and a half feet
in back.

Rubens: Did you know Maybeck well enough to consult with him on this?

Ward: I think that that relationship had cooled off by that time, but I
was influenced a great deal by what I had seen of his work.

The living room was paneled in twenty-four inch-wide redwood
throughout. And if I say so myself, it was beautiful. The roof
was held up by triangular beamings, each eight by eight inches
square, that went this way and that way, and so forth.

Rubens: Did you think of yourself as being a part of the crafts movement?

Ward: A craftsman? No, but I figured I could do quite a lot of the
lugging and lifting and general work around there. But I
couldn't work as fast as a carpenter. I remember a little
competition in the laying of the front porch floor: I couldn't
nail those planks down anywhere near as fast as a regular
carpenter.

Rubens: So you were still selling real estate at the time?

Ward: No. Then the carpenters were gone, but there was still the floor
to be laid. The floors in the living room, bedroom, and hallway
were all just the open underplanking. I got cross-cut sawn
oak not like this [pointing to the random-width planking in
present home]; it was the two inch-wide stuff and I laid those

Ward: floors myself, on my hands and knees. It took a month. And it
was many months before my knees forgave me. Then I think the
finishing, polishing, and sanding were done professionally.

We moved in. By that time my first child had been born. I
was in attendance at the birth of all my children. It was
something that I felt very deeply involved in, and I was able to
assure the doctors that I wouldn't faint; I didn't.

Rubens: Were they born in a hospital?

Ward: Alta Bates.

Rubens: Who was your first child?

Ward: She will be sixty-four. Her name is Eugenia Trorey.* She was

born July 9, 1923. It was just after that she was a month or so
old when the great Berkeley fire came on. I saw the smoke
coming over the hill, and dashed up there. I saw that the way
the wind was blowing, it was coming over the hill south of this
house (where we now live). It was the furthest house out in the
North Berkeley hills by quite a ways at that time, so far out
that you couldn't get gas, and I had quite a fight to get water
piped up there.

I saw that men were fighting desperately up on the ridge
just right up here, so I figured that the best thing I could do
was to help them. I went up there and fought the fire, more or
Ward: less over on the other side, to keep it from going north. We

seemed to have that licked, and I came over to the Bay side and
looked down, and there was Berkeley burning. The Waste home was
at 2222 Durant Avenue, and I had to go clear down to San Pablo to
get around to it. The fire burned four hundred houses, and it
got down to Delaware and Shattuck. It would have gone right to
the waterfront, except the wind changed. And then it burned the
houses that it had skipped on the way down.

Rubens: You were lucky.

Ward: We were lucky. We moved up there, and I had gotten a job in a
stationary store, Harms and Morse, on Shattuck Avenue.

Rubens: You didn't like real estate any more?
Ward: I didn't think I was really too good at it.

Rubens: Did you have any social conscience? Were you aware of the Anita
Whitney trial, for instance?

* Died August 19, 1988, of cancer.

Ward: I was too occupied with my married life and my own problems. I
can't honestly say that my social conscience was worth a damn at
that time. That was something that was laid to one side during
much of that period.

Rubens: You figure so much in waterfront politics later. There was the
big waterfront strike in '21. Did that impinge on you, or did
you have an opinion about it?

Ward: I have no recollection of it. I'm sure I had so many problems of

Rubens;
Ward:

my own; well, in '21 I was on the ranch,
the ranch my mother died.

Also while we were on

Did I tell you about visiting her when I was twenty-one,
shortly before I was married? She had had two children, by whom
I have no idea. She was living in Oakland, and she told my
father that she wanted to see me. I didn't want to go, but he
insisted, so I went.

You weren't curious?

Not at all. Well, I had been telling people almost all my life
that my mother was dead.

Ward: We wouldn't have known each other if we had met on the street.
Rubens: But you did go to see her.

Ward: I did go to see her. She wanted to take right up and be all

motherly and so forth. I wasn't having any of that. I used to
peek at my father's correspondence, and I saw the letters she
wrote him after that. She said some nice things about me, but
she thought I was a little bit snooty which I certainly was.
That's the only time I saw her. She died a couple of years
later. We were on the ranch, and my father insisted we come down
to the funeral. But I didn't take a look in the casket. I
didn't want to; I was there under duress.

Rubens: You went to work in a stationery store.

Ward: There again I discovered that if I got ahold of people who came

into the store, they usually bought what they were thinking about
when they came in. We were selling second-hand typewriters,
among other things, for a man named Perkins Perkins Typewriter
Company who had his workshop right upstairs. Within a day or so
of my starting work there I had sold a typewriter. From then on,
all the time I worked there, I sold an average of one typewriter

Ward: a day. This so impressed my bosses that they sent me out to get
business at various firms. I was no good at all. I was all
right in the store, but not otherwise.

An Oakland Tribune Reporter, 1925

Ward: However, I wasn't really happy there. I was making a little

money, not a good living, but a living. But I didn't want to be
a store clerk all my life. And my father-in-law, Judge Waste,
knew that. I had the express desire I wanted to be a writer.
In fact, in questionnaires I had to make out for various
employments, when asked what was my ambition, it was to be a
writer. My father-in-law had worked his way through college
years before as the campus reporter for the Examiner. He got to
know people here and there, and he knew Roy Danforth, who was
then the city editor of the Oakland Tribune. He told Roy about
me. At the Berkeley office of the Tribune at that time was a
woman named Rose Glavinovich (Yugoslav name), and she needed a
campus assistant. So I got the job.

Ruben: Is this 1924?

Ward: Twenty-five. I went to work there, I think, in the first week in
January, 1925. And I worked for the Tribune until the second
week in November, 1934, just about ten years, the first two or
three on the Berkeley campus.

Rubens: Do you remember what your starting salary was?

Ward: I don't remember, but it wasn't as much as I'd been making
before. I know what it was at the end; my highest one was
fifty-five a week, which was good money in those days. A local
warehouseman in those days was happy if he could make thirty
dollars a week.

On the campus I made some friends. I admired Professor Ira
Cross greatly, and interviewed him several times.

Rubens: Did you know of him before your work?

Ward: I had attended one of his classes very briefly. The big problem
there was that I was one of eleven hundred kids in Wheeler Hall.
That was twice as many as the whole student body at V.M.I., and I
couldn't take Cal. Although I had always thought that I would go
there before. Too big, too big.

Ward: One of the people on the campus that I liked very much was

Professor Herbert M. Evans. Did you ever hear of vitamin X? Now
I believe it's known as vitamin E. At that time they hadn't
discovered as many vitamins, and he discovered this vitamin
which, for lack of an official name, he called vitamin X. The
story was broken by the California Monthly alumni magazine. I
had numerous interviews with Herbert Evans. We got along very
nicely. He was enraged because he was offered a lifetime job,
with his own laboratory, his own office, as many assistants as he
wanted, plus an enormous salary, if only he would say for
publication that Lipton's Tea contained vitamin X. Ha! Oh, that
just offended his sense of propriety. He said, "Almost
everything you eat in the vegetable world contains vitamin X."

Rubens: Was Ira Cross influential on your thinking?

Ward: No, not particularly.

Rubens: He was the great labor historian of the period.

Ward: Yes, I know. I liked him, and I think that was one of the

reasons why I liked him, because of his decent approach to the
labor problems of the day. But I can't remember specifically
anything.

I was, of course, very much beholden to Judge Waste for all
sorts of favors: getting the job, financial assistance. At one
stage of the game my father had bought the three lots and our
house sat on two of them. One went back to Cragmont Avenue from
Spruce. The lot next door, up the hill, was for sale and Judge
Waste bought it and gave it to us; so we had four lots. You know
where the little school is on Spruce Street up there? This was
just two doors down below, right on the bend of Spruce Street
there.

Rubens: Can you say something about your work at the Tribune?

Ward: After about two years on the campus did you ever hear of the

Dole flight? It was right after Lindbergh made the famous solo
flight to Paris. The Dole Pineapple people in Honolulu conceived
the idea of tremendous publicity value to be gained by offering
prizes for a flight from the mainland to Honolulu. The only
field capable of having a runway long enough for a plane loaded
with enough gasoline to make that flight was what is now the
Oakland Airport.

At that time it was nothing but a plowed field on Bay Farm
Island. You went through Alameda, crossed the bridge, and
another bridge, and you got to Bay Farm Island. There was a tiny
little one-room shack for the so-called manager of the field. We

Ward: reporters just lived in our cars around there. These planes came
in from all over a triplane, yet; one biplane, the "Flying
School Marm." The lady in this case didn't fly, but she had two
friends, and their idea of publicity was to take a woman along.
Here was this young school teacher who said sure, she was crazy
to go, and these two friends of hers. They came in the only
biplane. The triplane never got off the ground. There were
previous flights with a half load, which they all made all right,
but of course a half load's a lot different from a full load.

The estimate was, I think, that there were a hundred
thousand people around the edges of that field that day; so it
was a great crowd. One flyer, who had some relationship to a
former mayor of Berkeley, was flying a monoplane. He got off the
ground just above the field, just cleared the fence. Everybody
gasped. He got far enough away, but he never really got
anywhere; he soon came back. The other fliers there were seven,
I think, who got off the ground, including the biplane were so
loaded that they couldn't get much altitude. They didn't fly
over the Golden Gate, or over San Francisco; they flew through
the Gate, just off the water.

Ruben: Did any plane make it to Honolulu?

Ward: Two out of the seven. One of them, the "Flying School Marm"

biplane there was a big to-do. Our Tribune reporters kidnapped
the flying school marm and her buddies as they arrived by short
hops in California and kept her away from all the other reporters
for a couple of days all that jazz, you know. But anyway, the
flying school marm plane came back. You could see one of the
guys out on the fuselage trying to do something with the motor,
and it coasted in to the airport. But they didn't quit. They
thought they'd fixed whatever the motor's trouble was and took
off again. They were never heard from, just disappeared. The
other two got down.

Rubens: So you covered this kind of thing, not just campus events?

Ward: I was a reporter there, but I was more or less the leg man. I

ran the errands, and took the film back to the office, and helped
observe here and there. Oh, there were half a dozen of us
reporters from the Tribune there.

Rubens: Because this was such a big event.
Ward: Oh, yes.

Rubens: I wanted you to decribe a little about your work life. Did you
work nine to five? Did you choose what you were going to copy?
Did you have an editor?

Ward: Let me do it this way: The Dole flight meant that I became more
and more familiar with the main office. It wasn't long after
that before I was brought into the main office on a regular
basis, and then I hit the ball at seven in the morning seven to
three-thirty, i it was a normal working day. There were not
many normal working days. I reached the point where I was
assistant city editor, which meant that then I worked nine to
five and did very little writing or reporting, mostly answering
the telephone, telling other people what to do, and helping the
city editor. When he got sick I was the acting city editor. I
got so that I did a lot of things: if the drama editor was
incapacitated or too busy, I covered the plays; if the political
editor was sick, I wrote the political columns.

Rubens: Was the Trib growing at that time? What was the circulation?

Ward: I don't remember the circulation; that was for those guys
downstairs [laughs],

Rubens: Hierarchy.

Ward: You get the idea.

Rubens: About how many were in the city room?

Ward: About sixty, I guess. I was back in the city room a couple of
years ago, and there was all the difference in the world union
shop!

Rubens: And a black owner. Did you know Delilah Beasley, a black woman
reporter at the Tribune?

Ward: I don't believe there was a black person, male or female, in any
part of the Tribune. The owner was Joseph R. Knowland, of whom
you may have heard.

Rubens: Backbone of the Republican Party.

Ward: Oh, he was Mr. Republican of Alameda County. Oh, he had

competition: Joseph R. Knowland represented the silk stocking
Republican. A character named Mike Kelley represented the cotton
sock Republican. Mike Kelley became director of the mint in San
Francisco. I soon learned to look out for Mike Kelley. If he
was seen visiting So-and-So I caught him visiting a guy that I
thought was a Knowland man, and buzz, buzz, all of this silly
business about who was who and what was what.

There were the two sons. Russ was the oldest, and William
F. was the younger, and he was the favorite of his father because
Russ had made a terrible mistake; he had married the daughter of
an Italian grocer. Well!

Rubens: Did you know Know land at this time?

Ward: Of course I knew the old man; he walked through the office every
day, looking like that [demonstrates] all around. I didn't
almost bow, but The sons, Russ and Bill, I knew very well.

Rubens: Were they involved in the paper?

Ward: Russ was the assistant city editor for a time when I was just
beginning to get around in there. He knew more about how the
actual editorial department worked than either his father or his
younger brother. Later Russ was put off in a front office by
himself, and then Bill came on with another front office by
himself. He was the political character. I knew both of them
well enough to feel that I was almost always short of money
before the end of the week I could go in and borrow a ten-spot
from either one of them, and that sort of thing.

Rubens: The Anita Whitney trial was going on in Oakland, and the Tribune
was excoriating her as one of these Communists.

Ward: The Whitney trial was before my time.
Rubens: She was pardoned in '27.

Ward: There's a story about that which might fit in here. My

predecessor as a campus reporter was a man, can't think of his
name-
Rubens: Oh, I know who you mean; he testified first at Whitney's trial,
Ed Condon. He wasn't your immediate predecessor, though.

Ward: That was before my time.

Rubens: The Tribune really was a force for conservatism.

Ward: Oh, yes. Well, that went along with my family surroundings at
the time.

Rubens: You were fitting in.

Ward: Yes, I was fitting in.

Rubens: Were you becoming a conservative?

Ward: Let's put it this way: in the presidential election of 1920,
which was my first election for president, I didn't vote for
anybody because I was so disgusted with both the Republican and
Democratic candidates. I just didn't vote for president. I ma
have voted for Cal [Calvin] Coolidge, I'm not sure; I may have.

Rubens: You just would not have voted for Smith, a Democrat, a Catholic?

Ward: I know this: in '32 I voted for Norman Thomas. My marriage was
getting pretty bad, and that sort of thing.

Rubens: Let's get to there. You were moving up in the Tribune, you could
borrow money from the Knowlands, your mother described you as
"snooty." Did you dress well and have affected ways?

Ward: Dress well? Nobody dressed well in the city room.
Rubens: Did you smoke and drink a lot?

Ward: I was told that I was one of the more respectable of the boys
because I didn't get drunk very often.

Encounters with Berkeley Bohemianism

Ward: Oh yes, during the early part of that period, because I was a

family man, I had Christmas day off, but I had to work New Year's
day. It was the other way around for the guys who weren't family
men; they had to work Christmas. On New Year's eve, Rose
Glavinovich and I and a young photographer named McAllister Mac,
everybody called him and his wife, who was a very beautiful
young woman (they had what we now call an open marriage, which I
thought was delightfully shocking), were having dinner at an
Italian restaurant, Bertola's, on the gore of Telegraph and
Shattuck. Along came and sat in with us a young man who's name I
remember only as John. He knew the McAllisters, I think. All of
a sudden he was eating with us, and he said that he knew of a
party in the Berkeley hills that we could go to if we felt like
it, and he thought it would be a lot of fun. So we went.

You know where Cragmont rock is? Well, this great big house
behind Cragmont rock was the home of a man who became very
well-known on the campus, Jaime D'Angulo (I think it was either
Spanish or Portuguese). Jaime D'Angulo was a famous
anthropologist.

Rubens: A professor on the campus?

Ward: No. He was a famous anthropologist who's personal reputation was
so bad that he could not get a job at UC Berkeley; but money was
apparently no problem.

Ward: I guess we got there sometime around midnight. It was a costume
party, and people were already pretty tight. I was half-way
reclining on a couch everything was crowded and people were
close together. Rose Glavinovich was a very capable and pleasant
woman, but very homely and cross-eyed. I couldn't help but
overhear a man on the other side of her trying to get next to
her, and then the phrase, "Let your body tremble with lust." It
was that kind of an affair. Robert Lowie was there, and he did a
naked belly dance, D'Angulo played the drums, and people did all
sorts of things.

It was important not only because it was my first and only
adventure in what I guess you would call "high" University
society I don't think there was such a thing as a student
there but I met there for the first time a man who became a very
dear friend, Haakon Chevalier. He was in costume, and if I
remember he was dressed as an ancient Grecian poet with a laurel
wreath in his hair. He was a very handsome young man, and he had
a very handsome reputation as the dashing professor of French,
you know.

Well, anyway, I got to work somehow the next morning, and
that was that; my wife forgave me for not being home

Rubens: Oh, she didn't go with you?

Ward: She wasn't there, oh, no. She wasn't that kind of a girl; she

wouldn't have set foot in such a thing. And then there were the
children; they were growing up.

When I was a very small boy, after dinner in the evening
when my father was home, I was allowed a half hour of freedom
before I had to go to bed. I would take off my clothes and dance
naked all around the room. Freedom from clothes was a joy to
me. So we did the same thing with my children; they danced
around our living room naked before they had to put on their
nighties and go to bed, and I played "Polly Wolly Doodle" on the
piano for them while they danced.

Rubens: Why don't you say who your next two children were.

Ward: Four years after Eugenia was born, David was born. I thought
there were only going to be two children, and I had a lot of
family names, so he was named David Perry Artemas Ward. Artemas
is probably not spelled the way you've heard it, because the
story there was that one of that branch of the Wards was a
General Artemas Ward who almost won the battle of Bunker Hill.
He later became chief justice of the Massachusetts supreme court,
and that's where the Artemas came from. But a writer, a

Ward: humorist, came along, who liked the name, but misspelled it

Artemus. This, at least was the story that had come down in my
family.

Rubens: And after David?

Ward: After David, Roger Ewing Ward. He was a romantic mistake, one of
those things that happened. He was born a year and two months
after David.

Rubens: So your wife had her hands full. Was there help in the house?

Ward: Along about that time things began to go wrong. In the first

place, she was under the weather a good deal of the time. I used
to wonder whether it was legitimate or not, but it turned out
later that she had to have her whole uterus and everything
removed; that was after the divorce, though. We had help. Judge
Waste paid for a gardener, and I think he paid for a housekeeper.

III THE DIVORCE, THE DEPRESSION, AND THE LEFT TURN

Rubens: So you were living in a style and a class

Ward: I really didn't belong. I remember, when I was the assistant
city editor, Judge Waste one time taking me to a Republican
dinner party in Oakland. He introduced me as the assistant city
editor of the Oakland Tribune and his son-in-law. The
Republicans, many of whom I knew by name because of my work on
the paper, were very polite and attentive and so forth. It
turned out that our managing editor was at this affair, Leo Levy,
and he almost bowed to me the next morning and said they hadn't
planned on reporting it, but since I was there would I write a
story about it. I said, "Mr. Levy, I haven't taken any notes; I
wasn't there as a reporter." He said, "Well, do it anyway." So
I wrote a story and was thanked by the front office and all that
stuff.

Then Jean, among other things, became interested in the
drama. A friend named Jean Scott and the wife of a San Francisco
businessman (the name will come to me later) the three of them
thought they were going to go places, and they kidded Jean into
thinking One of the reasons for her belief that she might
become something in the movies was that her father, Judge Waste,
was a friend of Louis B. Meyer of Metro Goldwyn Meyer. I went
along with it to a certain extent; I got one of our photographers
to come out to the house and take pictures of her for a show they
put on at the Women's City Club of Berkeley for these three young
women. But I knew, when I saw those pictures, that she would
never get anywhere in the movies. Because although she was a
nice-looking woman, her facial structure was such that pictures
fattened her. While she didn't look bad, she didn't look pretty
by any means in the pictures; pictures could not be made to do
her justice. I knew enough about pictures, photographers, that
that was something that no amount of makeup could overcome.

In the course of these adventures I found the house full of
young drama students from Cal and other places, mostly young
men. You never knew where she was night or day, and all that
sort of thing. So I just walked out. Jeannie went down to
Hollywood, and this is all hearsay from now on.

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:
Rubens:

What year was this?

We had agreed that we were through, and that I would leave after

And sometime after New Year's I said goodbye

Christmas of '32.
and walked out.

She would have the children?

At first I just assumed that she would have the children. But as
I found out, I didn't miss her so much, but I sure missed those
children. So in the divorce proceedings I got myself a lawyer
and tried to get custody. But Judge Waste wrote a letter saying
that while it was true that her adventures in Hollywood might or
might not whatever the case was, he would see that the children
were well taken care of, so of course that was the end of that.

She had moved to Los Angeles with the children?

She did eventually, yes. There was quite a time after she went
to Los Angeles even before she left; oh, yes, quite a
time where I would go to the house to see the children and find
strange men playing with them in the bedrooms.

Sounds reminiscent of your mother. This was 1932 did the
Depression affect you, Judge Waste, the Tribune?

I got a salary of fifty dollars a week plus a five dollar
automatic expense account, which practically meant that my salary
was fifty-five.

When was this?

Before the Depression, up until '30 or '31, somewhere in there.
I remember Joseph R. Know land's message on the bulletin board,
stating (he had just become chairman of the East Bay charities
thing) that he hoped we would all give because, he reminded us,
nobody had received a pay cut. Everybody gave as generously as
they could, and immediately thereafter we got a pay cut. And
then another, so by the time I was fired I was getting $40.50.

So the pay cuts didn't start until '32, the depths of the
Depression?

About '31.

In terms of your married life, did the Depression of '29, '30
affect you? Could the judge still afford the gardener?

Ward:

No, it didn't affect him; oh, it squeezed, but

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:
Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

You weren't like a factory worker.

Oh, no. Even $40.50 in '32 whether you were a longshoreman or a
warehouseman, you'd be damned happy to make thirty.

So you would say the Depression did not significantly affect your
family.

At that time. I wasn't a particularly good city editor.

You voted for Thomas in '32; how did you get to that position?

I was leaving the influence of the Waste family and had pretty
well decided that it was not for me. As I say, when the divorce
came on I got the final divorce papers and started to turn left
almost immediately.

Your marriage was dissolving, you were disillusioned with your
marriage; the Depression had beset the country. What else was
turning you to the left? Were you upset with the Tribune's
coverage of the Depression?

I was just simply reverting to the lifestyle in which I had been
brought up. I look back now upon the association with the right
as more or less a momentary aberration, influenced by the fact
that I was in love with this gal and married her. Although I had
two problems: I missed the children terribly, but somehow or
other I managed. I was very depressed about the children, but I
had a feeling of freedom all of a sudden.

Were you dissatisfied with your job, or was that the one stable
factor in your life?

It was the one stable thing in my life. In '34

I'm trying to keep you at this period in '32, and discover why

you voted for Thomas,
editorial policies?

Were you upset with the Tribune for their

I had come to the conclusion that Herbert Hoover was one of the
worst presidents I had ever heard of.

Why?

Well, the Depression, and his going along as though nothing had
happened, and everything would be all right. I knew damned well
he didn't know what he was talking about. And the other guy

Rubens: Roosevelt didn't sound much different than Hoover in '28.

Ward: Right. In '32, at the Democratic convention (I think it was held
in Detroit, and FDR was then governor of Massachusetts), FDR was
the candidate supported by William Randolph Hearst. And I hated
Hearst. So I couldn't have voted for Roosevelt.

Rubens: And Roosevelt's platform wasn't that different from Hoover's.

Ward: I don't remember about the platform, but the support, which I

knew if he were elected would dictate his actions as president,
didn't appeal to me. So I couldn't vote for either of them, and
I found it very easy to vote for Norman Thomas. Although I could
have voted for the Communist candidate.

In '3 1 * I hadn't been demoted in money, because as assistant
city editor I didn't get a cent more than I got as a reporter.
But we changed signals there, and in '3 1 * Remember I was
telling you about the nude dancing in the evening before the kids
went to bed? Well, it was quite natural that I should read books
about German nudist colonies. One day there was a little
one-paragraph thing in the paper about how a nudist colony had
started up in a suburb of Santa Cruz, in the hills. I had a
week's vacation coming, and no wife, no family, and no money. So
I went to Russ Knowland and said that I would go down and try to
spend a week in that colony and write a series about it if they
would pay for the cost of my staying down there. Russ fell for
it, and I went.

I got down there to Soquel, I found the place, and I found
myself talking to a young couple in their thirties and a reporter
and photographer from the Santa Cruz paper who arrived almost
simultaneously with me. They just wanted to come in and take
pictures and interview people, and they got turned down. I said
that I was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, but I would like
to join them and spend a week with them. That was a different
story; I was taken in. The next thing I knew they had gotten
another young couple, a man and a wife, and the two couples and I
went to the swimming pool. All of a sudden here were nice
looking women taking off their clothes, and I was taking off my
clothes, too. I was afraid I was going to be embarrassed, but I
jumped quickly into that ice-cold water and solved that problem.
From then on I was a nudist for a week, although I had to go home
to see my girlfriend; I couldn't wait through the week. I took
some friends down there, including a woman who worked in the
library department of the Tribune's editorial department. I had
a series of nine pieces on it and got a lot of praise for it,
because although nobody or almost nobody wanted to be a nudist,
they all thought it was very interesting material.

Rubens: Have you kept a scrapbook of your articles in the Tribune?

Ward:

No, you'd have to go look them up.

Rubens: Can I ask you a little more about the Tribune? The Tribune

supported Hoover. Did you find yourself coming to a juncture
with how the Tribune was covering issues?

Ward: I was just about to get to that.
Rubens: Before '3 1 *.

Ward: I was becoming more and more unhappy about the Tribune's
editorial policy before '3 1 *.

Rubens: Did they know you had voted for Thomas?

Ward: I wouldn't think so. However, they were very much aware that I
campaigned for Upton Sinclair that year.

The 193^ San Francisco Maritime and General Strike

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:

Can you think of any other examples where your life as a
conservative or the son of a big Republican judge caused you
difficulty prior to your divorce? Were there other examples of
your being uncomfortable?

I can't think of anything specific,
that grew little by little.

It was a general feeling

And it was made more rapid when your wife took this different

Oh, yes, very much so. And then, spring of '3 1 *: May of '3 1 * I
went to the nudist colony for a week. Then in July came Bloody
Thursday. I'd heard about this man Harry Bridges a little, and I
had heard about the strike of the longshoreman; it was already
several months old.

Yes, since March.

Came Bloody Thursday, and that evening I found myself the head of
a seven-man crew for the Tribune going with Major General David
Prescott Barrows and the National Guard on a ferry boat to San
Francisco and interviewing General Barrows in the captain's cabin
up in the pilot house. And I was thinking to myself, "This
so-and-so," while I dutifully took down what he had to say, what
he was trying to do and so forth. I was antagonistic right off,
but not openly.

Had you been sympathetic to the strikers prior to Bloody
Thursday?

Ward: Yes, in a general way, but not specifically. We got to San

Francisco and we holed up at the Pickwick Hotel, most of us. I
was so happy because I had to have a car, and although everything
was closed, being a reporter I could get gas at the police
department. I got the police department gas for twelve cents a
gallon; I remember that made me very happy.

I learned a great deal in a few days. The first time I saw
Harry Bridges, he was on the witness stand at the federal
building at Seventh and Market talking about the reasons for the
strike, giving testimony before the presidential commission sent
out by FDR. What he said it was strange, his appearance: his
clothes were neat and pressed, but they were obviously very old;
there were patches on the elbows, and you could tell the suit had
been worn a long, long time. His attitude and everything
impressed me.

Ward: He obviously was not a rich labor leader, and he obviously knew
what he was talking about, and his cause made sense to me.

Remember, in those days there were four parallel street car
lines running up Market Street, and two lines running across
Market at Third to Kearny. I parked my car at ten o'clock in the
morning in the middle, in the Geary Street line where if there
had been any cars there I would have stopped all car traffic,
right in the middle of Market Street. I parked there and got out
and looked around. I saw one other automobile.

Rubens: This was during the General Strike?

Ward: Yes. One other automobile, somewhere up the street, and I heard
a noise click, click, click, click. It was the high heels of
women who were stenographers and so forth, crossing the Bay,
trying to get to their offices and walking up the middle of
Market street. Imagine being able to hear that.

I got a tip that something was going to happen regarding the
Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU). I think it was the
corner of Jackson and something, down close to the waterfront.
The entrance to this hall of the MWIU people was on Jackson, and
then there was an alley in back. I approached this intersection,
and there was a young national guardsman on duty he must have
been all of eighteen years old and nobody else. Around the
corner from the alley dashed a man in civilian clothes carrying a
rifle. The national guardsman came up with his gun. I thought,
"Oh, boy." I don't think the running man ever saw that guard; he
dashed around the corner. I knew instantly it was a cop in plain
clothes.

Ward: There were no further signs of action, so I went around in back
to the alley, and there was a whole string of five or six paddy
wagons and about fifty cops lined up double length. They were
driving these poor devils from the MWIU hall I don't think any
of them could speak English; they were all foreigners. Their
ships were anchored in the bay; they were immobilized by the
strike. And there they were huddled, about two hundred of them,
in this hall. They were being driven out and being beaten over
the head; they ran the gauntlet to the paddy wagons, being beaten
over the head and shoulders, whacked as hard as the cops could
whack. Doc Rogers, my cameraman, was with me, and he shot
picture after picture after picture of all this, and sent it back
to the Tribune for processing.

I was told afterwards what happened: nothing of the sort was
ever published. And I was the only reporter there. The Examiner
and the Chronicle weren't there. One reason I was peeved about
that, just as a reporter, was that I had a scoop and they didn't
make use of it. What happened was that when Doc Rogers' film was
processed and the wet proof sheets were laid out on the counter
for wet prints, the managing editor, Leo Levy, took one look at
them and gathered them up. They were never seen again.
Furthermore, Levy went into the darkroom, found the negatives,
and they were never seen anymore.

Rubens: Why at this point in the struggle? They had published pictures
of Bloody Thursday; I assume they covered the funeral. Did you
cover the funeral?

Ward: Oh, yes.

Rubens: Why do you think this incident was ?

Ward: Police brutality? Huh! The Oakland Tribune never heard of such
a thing. Here these men were utterly defenseless and innocent of
anything; they weren't even strikers. Of course, they were all
released in a day or so; there was nothing they could be charged
with.

Those incidents made me feel more and more that way, to the
left. Then I don't remember how the first feeler came, but I
learned somehow from contacts I had made with San Francisco
reporters during the General Strike that there was such a thing
as the Newspaper Guild, and that one of my heroes, Heywood Broun,
was the leader of it. I immediately became interested, and very
shortly I had a small group like the editorial librarian, a
couple of guys from the copy desk, and several reporters who
were meeting to form a chapter of the Guild. I remember somebody
from San Jose, where they had formed a chapter of the Guild, was
the first speaker from outside who came to talk to us.

Ruben: Were there other people organizing in the Trib, or were you the
only one?

Ward: I was the moving factor at that time. As I said, within a few

days I had people who were doing some talking, too, and who were
helpful. But I was the initiator. Of course, we formed a
chapter of the Guild. Oh, there were guys there from the
Post-Enquirer, too. That's right, probably the move came from
there; one of the moves came from the Enquirer. Anyway, I became
the head of the Tribune end of it.

Rubens: The Post-Enquirer was the other East Bay newspaper?

Ward: It was the Hearst paper in Oakland. There was another paper at
that time. The Examiner had opened a morning East Bay paper
called The Oakland Times; it was very short-lived.

So we met, and the night after our first meeting, what did I
do but walk into Bill Knowland's office and start to tell him
about the meeting. I can't imagine why. His face changed, and I
never saw a man glare like he did. He looked daggers, and he
said, "Now, you know, if you want to have a union here " I
said, "No! But everybody else is unionized the printers, the
pressmen, the engravers; why do you object?" He said, "If you
want a union, remember that these guys that you're talking about
who have their unions don't get paid vacations like you do.
That's your advantage." He said, "A union, and no more paid
vacations." We dropped the subject. I didn't go in to see Bill
Know land anymore.

Then the November election of '31 was coming on just about
that time. There was a man named Jorgenson who was second in
command on the copy desk. He was a rather noisy character around
the office, and he mentioned that something was going to be done
about the Guild after the election. I campaigned a little for
and voted for Upton Sinclair. That was on a Tuesday. The
following Saturday noon I was called in by the city editor, whom
I felt was a good friend of mine, Stanley Norton. He called me
into a little conference cubbyhole, and he pulled out a check,
gave it to me, and said goodbye.

Ruben: Just like that.

Ward: Just like that. He told me that I was being discharged for
overstaff .

Ruben: Did you understand why you were being fired?

Ward: Of course. And I was told immediately afterward that they hired
two guys to take my place.

Rubens: No severance pay? You'd been there ten years.

Ward: Well, I think they gave me a few days extra, or something like
that. Anyhow, I walked around that block of Thirteenth and
Franklin, Broadway and Twelfth, for an hour or two in a daze. I
was not paying alimony, but I was paying child support, so it was
my duty to call my former father-in-law and tell him. He told me
that the bailiff at the supreme court he was an old man; it was
a cush job, a political plum, a job of some old faithful
follower had just died and I could have the job if I wanted it.
I said, oh, no, I wanted to be a newspaper man.

The next thing I knew Spike Kelley, head of the Oakland
branch of the Examiner, called me up and said come to work. I
did. I didn't work days, I worked nights. It was really
something to go running around the street, running into the
Tribune leg men, the young fellows. It was a very emotional
time. I lasted two days. Of course, I knew how I had gotten
that job; Stan Norton had told Spike Kelley. Norton had come
originally from the Examiner, so he tried to fix me up on the
side, you see. But Joe Knowland was seen going to every
editorial office of every newspaper office in San Francisco and
around the bay telling them not to hire that son of a bitch
because he's a union guy. So I was fired.

Rubens: And blacklisted.

Ward: And blacklisted. So then I called up the judge and said, "I'll
take it." The next day I went to work at the court.

Joining the Newspaper Guild

Rubens: Had you officially become a Guild member?

Ward: Oh, yes.

Rubens: How many of you from the Trib joined?

Ward: I would say we had about a dozen at that time out of sixty; not
right away, but pretty early.

Rubens: I know that Joe Rosenthal with the San Francisco News was very
instrumental in the Guild in San Francisco. Did you have any
relationship with him?

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Ruben s :
Ward:

Ruben:
Ward:

He was a Chronicle photographer.*

Before that, in '3 1 *, he was organizing the Guild.

That name rings no bell.

Did you work with anyone in San Francisco?

Later.

I'm talking about the early days of the Guild.
Heywood Broun?

Did you ever meet

I'll tell you about that in due course. It was the next week
after the '31 election, mid-November, that I went to work for the
California supreme court. For two or three weeks I just kind of
sat back and did nothing. I guess I kind of panted and rested;
it was quite a strain, the whole thing. One day I got a call
from Betty Ballentine, the daughter of Henry Ballentine, who was
a famous professor of law at Boalt Hall. Betty was on the San
Francisco News, and we had met because I had gotten to know her
slightly during the General Strike. She was also one of the
prominent Guild members. The News was not as antagonistic to the
Guild as the other papers.

That's where Joe Rosenthal was.

That may be. I didn't know him, though; I knew Betty
Ballentine. There are two or three guys I knew from the guild;
I'll come to one name later, George Something. Betty says,
"Estolv, what's the matter? You pooping out on us?" I said,
"Well, I'm just kind of taking it easy for a while." She said,
"You come down to the meeting next Sunday; we need you." It was
nice to feel I was needed. I came down to the meeting, and so
on.

They also fired a copy desk man and the head of the
editorial library at the Tribune.

All union people?

They were among my friends there. Wally Something, the
librarian, I never heard of again. I think he went to one Guild
meeting in San Francisco, but then he just disappeared; I'm not
sure. And Ron Schofield of the copy desk went to the Sacramento

Later he joined Life Magazine.
San Francisco News. Ed.

During 193^ he worked for the

Ward: Press Democrat and later on to the main Santa Barbara paper. I
saw him again sometimes over the years until he became editor
emeritus of the paper.

Rubens: Of these twelve that were organized, about five of them were
fired?

Ward: Three myself and two others.

Rubens: Did the Guild hold on at the Tribune for the next few years, or
did it disappear?

Ward: No, that washed it out. It was replaced by a company union which
was headed by my original boss, Rose Glavinovich.

Rubens: I was going to ask you if she supported you.

Ward: As you can see, I was beginning to turn left at that time. The
left turn began at the end of my marriage.

Rubens: Was you father still alive at this point?

Ward: Oh, yes.

Rubens: Did you feel closer to him?

Ward: Very much so. I wasn't on unfriendly terms with Judge Waste,
just that the Wastes were distant, of course, but perfectly
friendly. No, my father, I think, was quite proud of me.

Rubens: Did you find yourself discussing the '31 General Strike with your
father?

Ward: Oh, at times. I'll come to that later escorting my father
around the waterfront.

Rubens: I meant right here in '31, were you talking more politically with
him?

Ward: I don't remember specifically, but I'm sure I remember during
the '31 strike I wasn't in the East Bay; I was working night and
day in San Francisco for quite a while. I probably talked to him
on the phone, but I don't specifically recall.

Rubens: When Levy destroyed the prints and the negatives, did you ever
ask him why directly?

Ward: No. I had enough trouble on my hands at that time without asking
the obvious.

Rubens: Why didn't they pull you off of that story? Why did they send
you to cover it?

Ward: Well, I had done nothing wrong; I'd been doing my job as a
reporter in having my cameraman take those pictures.

Rubens: But afterwards, did they

Ward: In the interim, between the '34 strike and my firing, I also got
married. I married a girl whom I will identify only by her first
name, Norma. She was the first girl that smiled at me.

Rubens: You were lonely.

Ward: And I was lonely. That was it. And she had a good job, which
came in handy during the skimpy periods such as I had later on.

Rubens: So you life was very full.

Ward: Oh, there was something doing every minute.

Rubens: Your children were in Los Angeles?

Ward: By that time they were in Los Angeles, by '34, and grew up there,
to my sorrow. Later on there's a scene I want to describe, when
they were teenagers.

Rubens: Let me ask you a few fill-ins: do you want to tell me who Haakon
Chevalier is, a friend of Oppenheimer?

Ward: He was a professor of French at Cal. He was very handsome. He
and his wife well, he had several wives. The one that we knew
best was his second wife, Barbara (she came from an old Jewish
family in San Francisco). They had a lovely home at Stinson
Beach.

Rubens: What was his significance to you?

Ward: Left. I first met Haakon Chevalier at that party. I didn't see
him again until several years later when I was a delegate to the
Alameda County Central Labor Council; there was Haakon. I met
Haakon and Oppie, but that was much later.

Rubens: I'm trying to ask you the significance of this party. I think it
is that you were attracted to a certain Bohemianism that is not
part of your married life and being the good conservative. Would
you say that was true?

Ward: I can't say Chevalier was people I met there, like Haakon, I was
attracted to; some of the things I saw there I think were pretty
shocking. After all, I was pretty much a straitlaced kid. Well,
I can describe the dance that Lowie did, but I don't think you
want to put that on the record; he didn't even have his underwear
on, and he was painted

Rubens: The anthropologist. But in general, in '28, '29, '30, you were
not covering labor issues, is that right?

Ward: No. I think it was somewhere in '33 or '3^ there was some kind
of a Communist demonstration down near the estuary in Oakland,
and I was sent to cover it. There was a woman who was attempting
to speak from a balcony overlooking the street, and the cops were
down below trying to shout her out, crowded around. The cops
were cracking guys over the head now and then, and things like
that. I remember feeling sympathetic to the woman: well, they
at least ought to let her say her piece. Years later she brought
her union committee to me for guidance in negotiations. She was
a leader for the textile union.

[Interview 3: 22 June 198?]##

Rubens: I have two questions from last week: you described the incident
of the attack on the Marine Workers Industrial Union. You told
me you had a tip to cover that. That was a notorious assault on
that union; do you know who informed you that this was going to
happen?

Ward: I haven't the faintest idea. I got a tip, but I don't remember.

Rubens: One other question: Do you remember any articles that you wrote,
during your ten years at the Tribune, that you were particularly
proud of, that you particularly felt were exempletive of your
craft?

Ward: There were two, particularly. One was the story of Ruth Julia
Slenezynski (it's a Polish name). My then wife was a music
teacher herself, but she took piano lessons from a woman named
Alma Smith-Kennedy, who lived in a Maybeck house on the corner of
Buena Vista and Euclid. To this teacher came a Polish man with
his four-and-a-half-year-old daughter. He was a frustrated
violinist; he was on his way to being a concert performer during
World War I, and in war service he was shot through the left
wrist with the result that his fingering became impossible. When
his first child was born and he married specifically a sturdy,
stocky woman to give balance to this child who was going to be
his prodigy he tried to teach little Ruth Julia the violin. No
go; she just wept. But she liked the piano, so he got her a

Ward: piano, learned the piano himself, and tried to teach her. He

brought her to Mrs. Alma Smith-Kennedy, and she told my wife, my
wife told me, and I had a story.

That story was built around the little girl's first
performance at Mills College; she gave a concert at the age of
four and a half. She couldn't reach the pedals. It was
something by Beethoven, I'm sure. She played two or three
things, a little Chopin and a little Beethoven, but simplified,
of course, because she couldn't stretch an octave her hands were
too small and her feet would not reach the pedals. But
nevertheless, it was quite a performance. I've lost track of her
now, but she performed for years. Then I think in her teens or
twenties she sort of blew up over the whole pressure of her lost
childhood and everything else. I don't know what became of her.

The other story was in the spring of '3 1 *, when, as I think I
told you, I wrote a series about a nudist colony. That ran in
the paper for nine days.

Rubens: When did the piece on the piano player run?
Ward: It must have been around 1929 or '30.

Rubens: I think it's important to include some of your articles, and
these are the two top ones?

Ward: Those are the two that stick out; there were others, of course.
Rubens: How often did you have a by-line?

Ward: Things were different then; by-lines were precious and scarce.

My by-line was usually E. Ward, when it ran. Then I got tired of
being E. Ward and I became E. E. Ward. And that's as far as I
got. In those days you wouldn't put a by-line with my real first
name on it, anyway.

Rubens: Were you turning out a story a week?

Ward: I hit the ball at seven in the morning. I and a fellow named
Carleton (Andy) Anderson were the two top rewrite men. They
usually told me to write in general assignment. And usually the
first edition rolled at 8:10, so there was an hour. During that
hour usually the front page was divided eight columns wide; the
columns were narrower than they are now. Usually the page was
four columns of local news, Bay region news, and four columns of
wire stuff. Between the two of us, Andy and I turned out those

Ward: four columns in an hour. Part of it would simply be rewrite from
the morning paper, and part of it would be new stories being

Ruben s :
Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:
Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

phoned in; and I'd take notes. That meant that as eight o'clock
neared you were writing in takes of a paragraph or a sentence
with a copy boy standing right there and rushing them over to the
city desk.

Then everybody breathed a sigh of relief and went into the
men's toilet, which was not as big as this room, and had a
smoke. We were not permitted to smoke elsewhere, and that was
because of an old German so-an-so who represented Mrs. Dargee,
the widow of the original owner of the paper, who sold it to the
Know lands. On account of fire insurance he frowned heavily on
smoking in the building.

After your cigarette you'd come back?

It would begin slowly to pick up for the next edition. There was
the first home, second home, third home, and then around four
o' clock the final night.

Six editions a day?

Oh, at least six.

When would you leave the office?

If I got there at seven, my day ended at three-thirty. But
frequently I didn't get out at three-thirty; and frequently I got
out before three-thirty because the city editor lived right down
here on Euclid, not too far from where I lived up on Spruce.
He'd been there since five in the morning, and it saved him taxi
fare if I'd take him home.

That was another question I wanted to ask you.
the Tribune? How did you get to work?

Did you drive to

I had a Chevy with what they called a California top, which
doesn't exist now. They built a top with sliding windows;
instead of rolling up and down, they slid. That's what I had.

Was it unusual to own a car?

I was one of the few. Well, it was unusual for a reporter to own
a car, yes.

Was that because of your father-in-law?

I don't know what it was because of. My wife had a car, too.
Not always, but most of the time. Because wherever we lived, it
was a mile from the nearest streetcar. It was virtually
impossible without cars, and she with three small children and
the shopping and whatnot. It was pretty necessary, and so I
guess her father helped on that.

More on the Exiled Left

Ward: We had a reunion with Haakon and Carol and their daughter,

Karen. We had a letter of introduction from Alvah Bessie, a
black-listed Hollywood screen writer, one of the Hollywood Ten.
He was at that time a rather good friend of ours. In fact, he
had been in Angela's group in the Party at that time, up to just
a few years before.

Rubens: Did he leave the country when he was blacklisted?
Angela: No. He had a hell of a time getting work.

Ward: He had worked for Bridges at one time, for the ILWU. And then he
had worked for the Hungry i. Through a letter from Alvah Bessie
we came to call up Lee and Tammy Gold, who were blacklisted
Hollywood screenwriters living in Paris. We met them and were
invited to a party where we met a number of people: Edita
Morris, author of Flowers of Hiroshima, and her husband, Ira;
Sylvia Jerico, wife of Paul Jerico, and their son, William;

235

Ward: Vladimir Pozner, who was then recovering from wounds he had
suffered during the recent Paris OAS terror.

Angela: The Algerian war period.

Ward: William Marshall, a very handsome Negro actor; and a couple named
Peritosh Sen from Calcutta.

Angela: These were all exiles from Hollywood.

Ward: Adrian Scott, a movie director; and also quite a few people we'd
known before. Then we met a gal from Berkeley, Barbara Shuey.
Did you ever hear of the Shuey Creamery? When I was a little boy
in Berkeley the Shuey Creamery delivered our milk to our house;
you left the previous day's empty bottle out and you got your
bottle of milk in it's place. This was done in the night hours,
and so when I got to be a bigger boy I and other rascals would go
around stealing milk whenever we felt the need.

On our previous trip we had met an English woman named Ella
Moody, who took us with her to visit some Russian people. Well,
we went to see her, and she gave us a Christmas party at her
home. We also met Kay and Lester Cole at their home in
Hampstead.

Rubens: Had you known them before?
Ward: I don't think so.

Rubens: When you said you were close with Alvah Bessie, did you mean as
social friends?

Ward: Yes.

Angela: We had them over for dinner, and that sort of thing.

Ward: After Christmas we returned to Paris, and a little later Kay Cole
and her daughter came to visit us in Paris.

We went to our old hotel, where we had stayed the first time
we were in Paris, and got a room there. We looked around and
found all the places that catered to American tourists had
nothing for rent for less than six months.

Angela: We were looking for an apartment.

Ward: Yes. Of course, we couldn't afford to stay in a hotel all the
time, and we didn't want to. It was simply impossible. The
rents were high for Americans, and this six months or more
business was not to our liking. We had prepared for this by
going to French school in San Francisco.

236

Angela: I took French lessons for a long time.

Ward: Angela's French was pretty good, so she tried the French papers.
This put us in touch with a French businessman who had recently
split up with his mistress. I guess he owned the apartment that
she had occupied, and he had it up for rent for a reasonable
sum. He had his secretary take us out to look at the place, and
it would do. It was just down the street, at 68 Rue Butot, from
the Institute Pasteur in a very nice part of Montmartre. So we
took it, cleaned it up, and moved in. Our first big affair there
we had the Van Dyckes and the Chevaliers -to dinner. Angela had
oysters on watercress, soup and so forth they thought it was
wonderful.

Rubens: I heard you are both cooks.

Angela: No, he's no cook. I'm a good cook, if I do say so myself.

Ward: On February 6 we went with Tom and Liz to a Beethoven concert
which was the first concert for Piet Veenstra, a Dutch pianist
and student of Rudolf Serkin. He played exactly like Rudolf.
Later that night we went to La Coupola with Tom and Liz and met
Piet and his date, a luscious Portuguese fada singer. Fada is
the saddest thing, a mourning for the days of glory of Portugal.

I failed in my French class; I couldn't understand the
French very well.

Angela: We went to school in Paris.

Rubens: Why were you drawn to France? The rich community of friends who
were political as well?

Ward: It was a good starting point.
Angela: We loved France.

Ward: Yes. Fundamentally, you might call it the base of our operations
for that two years. We were in and out of Paris several times.

Rubens: Give me a very simple, quick overview of where you went in two
years.

Ward: There are two or three details that I think you'll want. In the
first place, it took time to get a camper. We wanted a camper;
we wanted to travel that way. By the time we got a camper it was
Spring and we'd been studying French all this time.

Angela: We had planned this. For three months I went to the Alliance

Francaise, I don't know about you. You went part time and then
you lost interest. And you were writing all the time.

237

Rubens: What were you writing?

Ward: Damned if I know.
Angela: Short stories.

Rubens: Why don't you remember what you were writing? Why is your
writing less important to you than other things?

Ward: Something about the Puritan in Italy.

Rubens: About your earlier travels?

Angela: Yes, your first contact in Italy where you met all my relatives.

Rubens: What happened to that story?

Ward: I sent it to my agent in New York and didn't get anywhere.

Rubens: Who was your agent?

Ward: A woman named Toni Strassman.

Rubens: How did you get that agent?

Angela: Referred by someone, probably the Van Dyckes.

Rubens: So it was another goal of yours to write, and you did keep
writing.

Ward: I was writing all the time, one way or another.

Rubens: Were these fictional pieces, life stories, political

assessments? Did you write about the exile community in Paris?

Ward: I can only remember the one about a Puritan in Italy.

Angela: Actually, you worked on that for a long time. You had revised it
time and again at her suggestion. It was something that you
really worked hard on, and when we got to Marrakesh, after we'd
been there a while, you got a letter from Toni Strassman saying
that she was so sorry that she couldn't do anything with the
short story (which was actually a novella). It Just missed
being it was sad.

Ward: At the Van Dyckes we met a man named Elliot Sullivan, a Hollywood
actor. He was very witty.

Rubens: What did you think of this exile community? Did they seem like
heroes?

238

Ward: I felt very warm towards them. I thought they were victims of
rotten politics. I felt sympathetic. But I must say that they
all seemed to be very comfortable, very happy. At these parties
we went to occasionally here and there, the surroundings were
magnificent, the apartments were large. They were very
prosperous and very pleasant.

Rubens: Did you find yourselves talking about what politics in the
thirties and forties had meant?

Ward: Oh, yes, of course.

Rubens: Were these people bitter about their Party experience? Were they
the type of people who would have written in The God that Failed?

Ward: I don't think bitterness is quite the right word. Regretful,
understanding, hopeful not so much of returning. Well, there
were people there who were still writing for Hollywood under pen
names. There was one man, Wilson, who was selling stuff to
Hollywood all the time.

Finally we got a loan camper because ours wasn't ready, and
when we went back to get our real camper, it was the day before
the Van Dyckes. were giving their big party. There was a mob of
people there, theatrical people, painters, writers, and even a
few musicians. A very lively affair, a couple of scandals and
whatnot.

Angela:
Ward:

Then we met Elinor Kahn, one of the wheels in the Bridges
trial, for the defense. She was the gal who made the trip to
Scotland to find the Marine Firemen's official who had retired
from San Francisco somebody named Ferguson. She got an
affadafit from him denying that he had ever seen Bridges'
Communist membership card.

She was Elinor Kamath in her own right.

She had married a man named Mahdav Kamath, a Hindu. Elinor had

been some kind of a representative at the United Nations in New

York, and there she had met Mahdav Kamath, who was a journalist
for the Times of India.

Angela: The important thing about Elinor is that she was writing for the
World Medical News, and she was one of the first people who
spotted thalidamide, the terrible drug that they gave pregnant
women to induce them to sleep at night. She was the one who
alerted the U.S. Drug Administration. In fact, she has a letter
from them, lauding her efforts. She was very prominent in
exposing the use of that drug.

239

Ward: At a dinner party at the Kamath's we met Julio Alvarez del Vayo,
who was the exiled Republican foreign minister of Spain. There
was much talk about Franco and what he was doing, and how soon
the people were going to throw him out.

Angela: He also said something interesting. We had come back from
Spain

Rubens: You didn't avoid it because of Franco?

Angela: No. Some people thought we shouldn't go, and others felt we
should. Del Vayo said, "Yes, you should go!"

Ward: I remember his parting words that night: "See you in Madrid."
Rubens: Did you experience Fascism in Spain?

Angela: No, because it had loosened up somewhat. But we observed police
all over the place.

Ward: We had our camper, vacated our Paris apartment.

On John XXIII, The Liberal Pontiff

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

What major countries did you visit in a two-year period?

We headed for Italy, among other places. One of the reasons we
were particularly anxious to get to Rome was because John XXIII
had just died. Everybody was saddened, and we were, too, because
in our previous visit we had seen John XXIII about as far as from
here to the hallway, on his throne.

Was he the one under whom Vatican II took place?
first liberal pope.

He was the

Yes. We went to a Good Friday thing in Rome, where by priestly
error we got tickets right up there in front and saw Papa real
close and watched him taking a snooze in between acts.

He died, and we hurried to Rome to see who was going to be
the next pope. I have found in reading my diary that my
description of the day when the pope was chosen is good enough to
quote directly [reads from journal]: "We were in camp in a
suburb of Rome. We made it to San Pietro's by 10:50 a.m. The
traffic jam going to San Pietro's was terrific. We walked the
last quarter mile. When we got into Piazza San Pietro we hugged
the shady side of the street, the sun being that hot. At

240

Ward: 11:20 a.m. there was a puff of white smoke. False alarm, thought
many, including many young seminarians. Another puff of white
smoke, and another. The crowds, excited now, and

Ward: " beginning to believe a new pope had indeed been chosen, surged
out from the shade of the colonnades into the blistering heat of
the piazza. Now the smoke was coming in puffs, white, white,
white. Men could be seen running along a flat roof near the
papal apartments, high above the crowd. The rattle of
hand-clapping came, and cheers and shouts. Many seminarians felt
the early decision meant Montini, the progressive cardinal from
Milan who had pledged to carry out Pope John's program, had been
chosen.

"Half an hour passed. An army band marched into the square,
past the battery of photographers, and into the inner square
directly in front of the basilica. This square had been fenced
off to the public. Then two platoons of soldiers marched out of
the basilica. They were in uniforms of dark blue with
red-tassled cockades in their hats, and scads of gold braid laid
on. The band tootled neatly. The soldiers marched and
counter-marched and saluted in a glorified version of guard
mount. Finally the soldiers lined up across the front of the
basilica and did an about-face, looking straight at the center
balcony over the main entrance to the church. The bells tolled
softly, and all eyes were fixed on that balcony. People were
pouring through the colonnades and into the square, a thousand a
minute or more.

"The white drapes were snatched aside from the huge glass
doors which gave access to the balcony. The doors swung open to
the tune of a mass groan of exultation from the thousands in the
square. At first nothing could be seen except the glitter of a
golden crucifix. Then the cross was brought out onto the
balcony, held aloft by one of three cardinals in purple robes.
Cardinal Ottoviani spoke into a microphone, his voice booming
over the hushed square: 'Habemus Papem, ' plus the additional
words for which the crowd had waited a full hour in the merciless
noontime sun. It was Montini, and he had taken the name of
Paul VI. Seminarians and others noted immediately that the name
Paul V appears in huge letters on the church front, right above
the balcony where Paul VI would soon appear.

"The balcony was vacated. Men in mufti placed the papal
flag, draping it from the side balcony filled with cardinals. At
a distance they looked like purple toys with pink faces. The
crucifix came forward again, and out onto the balcony a
protective screen of cardinals parted, and there stood Paul VI.

2U1

Ward: "He raised his arms to bless the crowd. Many dropped to their

knees, others genuflected. But a full half of the audience stood
erect, looking straight at the pope. He raised his voice into a
chant of Latin prayer: 'Urbi et orbi' (which means 'city and
world.'), singing a line and then receiving a response, sung loud
and clear by many voices in the audience. As the last 'amen' of
the chant died away, the pope spoke a brief message of greeting
in Italian, blessing those before him, those listening on the
radio and television, and all people everywhere. Then he was
gone.

"The bells burst forth in joy and the crowd slowly streamed
away, faces filled with happiness as mass emotion drained away
and each person slowly returned to normal."

Rubens: Did you just write this out like this, or did you rewrite it?

Ward: It's just a diary. But it was quite a moment. He didn't turn
out to be a very good pope, either.

Rubens: Does your diary record what other writings you were working on?

Angela: Yes. He wrote a book, Money on the Floor, a real long novella
type thing.

Ward: I'll tell you what Money on the Floor was all about. We had

driven our camper up to as near the petrol station as possible.

I think we'd gone on to the Van Dyckes, and when we came back
found that the window had been broken. For some reason or other
I had spilled some small change out of my pocket on the floor,
and that was the only thing that was stolen. That's the "money
on the floor." It was really a story of our adventures in the
camper.

Rubens: Do you have a copy of that?
Ward: I don't think so.

Angela: I spent a lot of yesterday looking for this stuff. It's odd
which things he kept and which things he didn't keep.

Rubens: This was a very important two years for you, wasn't it?

Ward: Oh, yes.

Rubens: Tell me where else you went.

Ward: The furthest north we went was Warsaw, Poland; our furthest south
was an outpost at the northwestern edge of the Sahara desert. We

2M2

Ward: went as far east as Tlemcen in the mountains of Algeria, where
there is a Quaker establishment where we stayed. We had
credentials from Quakers I think I told you had taken pictures
for the Quakers.

Angela: We went to Greece you went to Athos while I lived in the camper.
Rubens: How did you determine when to come home?

Angela: There were some interesting interludes. We were in Marrakesh
when [John F.] Kennedy was assassinated.

Ward: We saw things there that most people don't see when they go to
Marrakesh because we had a letter of introduction from our
brother-in-law, George Curran, who was then one of the four
foreign vice-presidents of Bank of America. We had a letter to
the bank manager in Paris. From the bank manager in Paris we got
a letter of introduction to the head of the Bank of Morocco in
Casablanca. In Casablanca the head of the bank there called in
all his subheads to say that here was this nice couple from the
United States, and he wondered where they thought we ought to
spend the winter in Morocco. They unanimously said we had to go
to Marrakesh. They didn't have a bank branch of their own in
Marrakesh, but they had a representative who was the head of the
Marrakesh branch of the Le Credit Lyonnaise. So this banker
called Marrakesh and told him that we were coming, and to please
take care of us. That was done; we drove to Marrakesh.
Mr. Petrucci (he was from Marseilles, I think) and his wife
showed us the ropes, got us an apartment right across the street
from the estate where Winston Churchill used to go when he was
feeling poorly during the war.

Angela: He still went there, painting and so forth.

Ward: I was writing something there I think it was Money on the
Floor and finished the first draft and part of the second.
Marrakesh in the wintertime was a favorite jumping-off spot for
the mountains.

Angela: For the High Atlas the Haute Atlas mountains.

Ward: They were a little behind and to the east of us, up thirteen or

fourteen thousand feet, and we were full of ski enthusiasts going
there. In January sometime we decided we'd see some of the back
country, which we'd heard a lot about. So we went up over the
ridge I think we climbed up to about seven or eight thousand
feet (about like Donner Summit). At the peak there we were
stoned by children because we had French license plates. We were
stoned a couple of times because of that. But we made it to a
small town which was a good stopping place. Somewhere along the

243

Ward:

Rubens:

Angela:

line we had picked up some kids from the Peace Corps, and we were
pleasantly entertained by these people. We went from that town
up into the Haute Atlas, and we came to a town where we wanted to
spend the night. It was the sort of town that had three or four
hotels.

We stayed at a place that was a combined bar, restaurarnt,
and hotel. The bartender-owner and general facto tern was a Greek
who had been in the French foreign legion. He had a friend who
stayed there who as a child had been a page boy to Emperor Franz
Josef of Austria. He himself had been a priest, and he had shed
his priestly talk and priestly robes. These two old boys were
raconteurs and buddies and heavy drinkers. We left our stuff
there and took off to someplace further up the line that we
wanted to visit, and said we'd be back that night for dinner. At
the bar we met a French woman

I love this story, but I
history.

don't think it belongs in your oral

Some of these stories are very illuminative, but we have to be
selective. The Algerian trip was very important because we were
doing work with and for the Quakers, and we stopped at these work
camps. This was really significant, much more so than the pope,
for instance.

Working with Quakers in Algeria

Rubens: What were you doing for the Quakers?

Angela: He was taking photographs of their work camps. In fact, they

used that picture [pointing to the wall] of the woman lifting her
veil for a Christmas card nationally. They blew it out so the
faces wouldn't show, because she would have been killed if they
found out she had allowed somebody to photograph her face.

Rubens: It would be good to have a copy of this photograph for the oral
history. We need to have some of your photographs. How many
work camps did you go to?

Angela: We went to three: Tlemcen was the first one, the second was
Skidka, and the third one was at Phillipsville but it has
another name now. That's the one where Camus was born.

Rubens: Did you write about the work camps?

Angela: You wrote in your diary, but you weren't writing for any papers.
You didn't have any assignment.

Rubens: Do you have some descriptions of the work camps?

Angela: I think we have some somewhere.

Rubens: When did you come home?

Ward: We were gone, almost to the day, two years.

Angela: October, 196H.

Ward: We have more diaries than you can shake a stick at.

Angela: We have about five.

Rubens: When you came back did you start on the Mooney book?

Ward: Not quite that fast.

Angela: We went to Turkey, too. And Bulgaria.

Ward: We got as far east as Istanbul. Rumania.

Angela: Czechoslovakia, Poland.

Ward: Warsaw, yes. And Krakow. We met a man from San Francisco on the
second highest peak in Poland. We were hiking right near one of
the famous concentration camps. We went to Dachau and
Auschwitz. So we got around. One winter we spent in Paris
trying to learn French, and one winter in Marrakesh. We really
should talk about some of the things we learned about the customs
there.

Angela: The Algerian trip was important, politically and otherwise. We
can pull out some of that material.

Rubens: Were you ready to come home?

Ward: We'd had enough of it for a little while.

Rubens: Did you come home with some vision of what you wanted to do?

Ward: Yes. Because before we came home, very close to our last stop,
again in Paris, a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Tom Van Dycke's
garden, I began telling stories about Tom Mooney. Tom says,
"Estolv, that's it; you've got to write that book." That started

245

Ward: it. So when I came home I knew exactly what I was going to do.
Then I spent three and a half years in The Bancroft Library and
other places in order to write it.

That was our most rewarding trip, I think.
[Interview 11: 7 September 198?]**

Ward: We marched in several Labor Day parades, in the days when labor
did that sort of thing, and which I think is a mistake to have
dropped.

Rubens: Last time we were talking about your European trip, and how
unusual it was.

Ward: I have three volumes of diaries for that trip.

Rubens: We should make a note of that if people want to read them.

Ward: No, they're not available. I don't want people bothering me with
such things, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to read
them.

Angela: Let's get right into Marrakesh and the Kennedy assassination and
and all the political implications.

Ward: We had established these contacts through the letters of

introduction from our brother-in-law, and we got an apartment in
Marrakesh, and had some interesting neighbors. This was in what
was considered the French quarters. Every morning I used to
start the day by walking a few blocks up and around down the main
street and back home. One morning as I passed a newsstand, I
glanced idly at the headline, which was in French: "J. F. K.
Assassinee." I read it with shock and surprise, and got home and
told Angela. People who knew where we lived even came to the
door to gasp and weep about Kennedy. And on the street people
would come up to us, recognizing us as those two Americans:
"Kennedy, Kennedy," crying and so forth.

We headed for the United States Information Service just in
time to see them hauling down the flag to half-staff. We had
previously met the manager, who was a Greek American, very
pleasant and very helpful. While we wre there, the caid, what
would be the mayor of Marrakesh, came in formal attire all his
robes and fancy fare to offer his sympathy. That established us
as regular visitors at the United States Information Service.

Angela: Which in Marrakesh was very good!

2M6

Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:

Angela:

Ward:

The manager's time in Marrakesh was coming to an end, and
Washington had sent out his replacement, a man whom I remember as
Mr. Rhodes, who was just fresh from Washington. The three of us
sat together in the office, and Mr. Rhodes told us the scoop, as
he knew it, of that assassination. On the night that Oswald
returned from a trip he had taken to Mexico, which was common
knowledge by that time, he spent his first night back in the
United States in a motel in Brownsville Texas, which is right at
the border. In the room next to him was Jack Ruby, the guy who
then killed Oswald. They said that everybody who was in the know
would like to find out whether it was just sheer coincidence, or
whether it was what it appeared to be.

Much later, when we got home, I called Herb Caen and told
him about it. He said he would try to get hold of this man
Rhodes. I never heard anything further. So that ended that.

What was your reaction to the assassination?
have been a hero to you.

Kennedy must not

It was a shock. I suppose I couldn't help but admire the guy. I
didn't think much of the Bay of Pigs adventure, but in many
ways Anyway, the assassination of a president is an unsettling
thing. With all these people coming up and crying at us and
expressing as best they could their sympathy, it wasn't a
pleasant experience, to say the least.

Yes, but be honest. We were very upset over the assassination of
Kennedy, and we could feel why the people felt that way. It was
entirely new to us, coming from a country where we were very
critical of him, his brothers, and everything. It was a surprise
to us to find that the population of Marrakesh, and subsequently
in other places, that Kennedy was a real hero and represented a
great deal to the people of Africa and Europe. The further we
traveled, the more we came upon this.

The banker who helped us when we got to Marrakesh was
Mr. Petrucci. He took us to the soukh to a rug merchant there
with whom he had done business. We bought some rugs, including
this one right here [pointing to the floor]. When it came to
closing the deal, I didn't try to bargain, and he didn't. When
the deal was closed, the merchant told me, "Because Mr. Petrucci
is here, I cannot cheat you."

Mr. Petrucci had a client, a man who used the bank to borrow
money when he needed it, who was a very wealthy Arab landowner a
few miles out into the country from Marrakesh. This guy invited
Petrucci to come out one Sunday and to bring any guest he would
like. So he invited us. It was quite unusual for a woman to go,
but Petrucci thought it would be all right.

247

Angela:
Ward:

Angela:

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

And his wife, too.

It was a nice home, and there was this pleasant middle-aged man,
and his sons; no women. We had roast lamb.

They cooked a whole lamb.

Oh, it was a very elaborate feast. The lamb was brought to the
table whole. It had been buried underground and cooked in an
underground fire. They didn't drink, but they gave us a Scotch
before dinner and wine with dinner. There was no sign of women.
I think he had three wives, or something like that. After dinner
he took us out to show us a new planting. He had just planted
16,000 acres in almonds. As we walked around looking at these
trees coming up, the tillers of the soil came running in their
robes to kneel and kiss his hand.

But we women were not allowed to go.
house.

We had to stay in the

To go back to the rug merchant: Petrucci arranged it so that we
were entertained at his home by this guy. This was the only
place where we saw a native woman of any class whatever without
her veil. The woman was pretty, but for my taste a little on the
plump side. Among other things, he told us he was about to take
a trip to New York, where he had not been before. He had been to
Paris and London and so forth. I asked if his wife was going
with him: oh, no, it was no concern of hers.

Tell me about the work camps.

I had taken pictures for the Quakers in Northern California. My
friend was the man who used to live right up the street here. I
think we later on rented the house he had owned. He gave us a
letter to Quaker establishments in Algeria, and we went to two or
three of them. The one that was most interesting was in the
little mountain town of Tlemcen. There was an old chateau, quite
a large building on spacious grounds, which had been taken over
by the Quakers. With this letter we met the people there and
were made very welcome. Incidentally, our friend here who gave
us that letter had gotten into trouble with Philadelphia Quaker
headquarters for giving me that letter.

Because of your past politics?

No, because that letter should have come from Philadelphia and
not San Francisco.

We lived in our camper, but we had our meals with the
Quakers. We made particular friends with an American doctor who
took us around the villages and showed us native life.

248

Rubens: Had you been assigned to take photographs of these work camps?

Ward: I hadn't been assigned to anything. I just did it. It was

assumed that I would take pictures, and I did. The doctor took
us into native huts with dirt floors. I remember meeting a
couple that the doctor had helped, and they described for us how
women gave birth standing up, held and helped by a couple of
other women doctors. He had seen a birth or two, but it was very
rare for a man to have anything to do with childbirth. One thing
I never figured out was that if a child was born while the mother
was standing up, what happened to his poor little head?

Rubens: In Mitla, Oaxaca, in Mexico, there are carvings of the Zapotec
women giving birth standing up and catching the baby. I always
thought there was a link between the design of North Africa and
Mexico. Why were the Quakers there in Algeria?

Ward: They had been on the fringes of the African countries. For

instance, they weren't permitted into Algeria during the French
Algerian war. They had to operate on the fringes of the country
and do what help they could at a distance. With this same
doctor, walking around on the little winding dirt roads and the
hills, we came upon a little boy, between eight and ten years
old, who had been leading his father's donkey. The donkey got
ideas of its own and somehow got away from the boy. Here we
found this boy screaming at the donkey and crying. I wouldn't
have known what it was all about, but the doctor understood. The
boy was afraid his father would beat him for losing hold of the
donkey. We were able to pass the donkey because he didn't know
us, so between the three of us we corralled the donkey and saved
the boy from a beating.

Rubens: Why were the Quakers there?
Ward: I don't know.
Angela: Of course you know.
ft

Angela: They had camps in Mexico they still do; our niece was there a
whole summer working at the Quaker camp. Sandy Saxton's
daughters worked at the Quaker camp. They have Quaker camps all
over the world, where they're permitted. I think they even have
some in Russia. During the Algerian war against France, the war
of liberation, they couldn't get in. But when that was over,
they permitted them to come back. The same way with the Peace
Corps.

Rubens: Did you encounter the Peace Corps?

249

Angela: Oh, yes. We encountered Peace Corps people quite a few times.

Ward: At Tlemcen they had a well-baby clinic, and we took a number of

pictures there. Because these women had babies on the average of
about once a year, and the new baby was breast-fed, when the next
baby came along the previous baby had to subsist on the native
food. Most of them died; only the sturdiest survived. There was
a baby that was literally starving to death, and they came to
this clinic and patched him up. [points to photo] There's one
of them there with a nice healthy baby, and I took a number of
pictures, of which this is the most graphic, and sent them
airmail to Philadelphia to be processed. They warned me not to
send pictures of native women with their veils off, or they would
be killed. Months later when we got to Philadelphia, it was late
September, we went to the photography person there, and they were
just planning to send that picture out worldwide on their
Christmas card. They had quite a to-do, but it was stopped in
time.

I remember one woman, an English nurse, and the American
doctor

Angela: And a whole corps of young people who were teaching the Algerian
peasants how to till the soil and how to irrigate. They were
Quaker agriculturally trained workers, who taught them how to
build irrigation canals and a whole system to water that land so
they could raise vegetables and improve their nutrition.

Rubens: So after two years you came home.

Ward: We landed in New York with our camper, and they unloaded it on
the dock. Then here came customs, and a young black man was
assigned to see if we had any taxable items or contraband in the
camper. He took one look the thing was stuffed with luggage,
edibles, and God knows what-all and just sighed and said it was
okay. I guess he went back and said he had inspected everything.

One incident I remember going cross-country was going though
the Amish country and seeing these people in their horse-and
buggies, their beards and so forth. They were very pleasant
people, very odd to me; very out of step with modern times.

We got home and took over our house again.

Return to San Francisco to Write about Tom Mooney:
The Gentle Dynamiter

Rubens: Were you still living in San Francisco?

250

Ward: Yes. We had rented the house during our absence, but it had been
vacated in time and we took right over. Within a few days I
began going to The Bancroft Library, to which Mooney had willed
his possessions. There were many things that I did there. The
first thing I found was that I was one of several people
proposing to write a book about Tom Mooney. All of them gave up
except one other man to whom I talked a little. He said he was
quite far along in his studies of the Mooney case and was writing
a book.

Rubens: Did he ever?

Ward: Oh, yes. He wrote the book and it was published.

Rubens: Who was that? I can't remember any other books besides yours.

Ward: Well, you wouldn't remember for good reason. It was not only, if
I may say so, a lousy book, but one important labor strike in his
version took place two years out of time, out of context, and out
of sense. And the name of Eddie Cunha, the prosecuting attorney
who got the conviction of Mooney, was misspelled every time it
was mentioned throughout the book. I didn't even try to count
the number of times. In all, I listed eighty-seven other obvious
errors.

Rubens: Did his book come out well before yours?
Angela: Oh, yes.

Ward: I sent a copy of my list of eighty-seven errors to him, to his
publisher, and to other interested parties. I never heard what
he thought of my efforts.

Angela: Then there was another book written that was very scholarly the

guy from Stanford.
Ward: Oh, yes, very dry and scholarly. Somebody connected with the

chamber of commerce.

Angela: It was pretty accurate.

Rubens: Why was there such an interest in Mooney in 1964?

Ward: As I found out to my sorrow, there was not such an interest in

Mooney by that time, because he had already been dead for twenty-
two years.

Rubens: But why were people writing books? Why were the scholars
interested?

Ward: You'd have to ask them; I don't know.

251

Rubens: I think part of the explanation is that it was the Kennedy era,
the aftermath; the end of McCarthyism. People were looking back
at the early labor days and the left.

Ward: Most of my research was done in The Bancroft Library, and in the
newspaper room on the fourth floor in the main library, and in
other libraries in the ILWU library and all sorts of places.

Rubens: Is that why you moved to Berkeley so you wouldn't have to
commute?

Ward: No, I commuted most of this time.

Rubens: Were you working, Angela?

Ward: Yes, I was working with him.

Rubens: You never went back to Pinsky?

Angela: Yes, I did, on and off; whenever I was needed they called me up.
But most of the time I was working with Estolv at The Bancroft
Library.

Rubens: So this was a real collaboration.

Ward: Oh, yes, she was very helpful. My main job was reading thirteen
thousand single-spaced typewritten pages of transcripts of
testimony in the Mooney trial, to which I had been sort of an
onlooker in the court years before. I read all of that, taking
notes. Then the job was to write it. My first attempt I got
absolutely nowhere. I can't even remember how I started it or
much about it. But I got enough criticism to make me realize I
hadn't found the right approach yet. It's a difficult story,
there's so much to it.

I took a second breather and wrote some other stuff, and
then in '68, I think it was, when we went to I wanted to go to
Crete; I had planned to go to Crete to write the next version.
But I went to the Greek consulate in San Francisco to get a visa,
which was necessary at that time. This was during the Greek
junta regime there, and when the consul found out what my purpose
was in going to Crete, he practically ran me out of the office.
The Greek junta was very fascist. So that ended Crete.

Angela: You also made very complimentary remarks about Melina Mercouri,
which kicked them off the wall. Don't you remember? They were
so angry at you.

Ward: I got a thank you note from Melina afterwards.

252

Ward: So we went to the Balearic Islands, to the island of Ibiza,
Spanish, about an overnight trip by ship from Valencia or
Barcelona.

Rubens: Wouldn't it have troubled you to have been in a fascist place
like Crete anyway? Of course, Spain wasn't much better.

Ward: Well, after all, when I had been in Spain, Franco and I hadn't
been to Crete. But in Ibiza we found several friends, the
British consul particularly. We were a little bit out of town,
maybe a mile, in what I would call the suburbs. In the mornings
I used to take a stroll before I went to work, and I found a
little corner store setting, sort of, where there was a barber
shop. I needed a haircut, so I went in and got one. The barber
was Spanish, but he also spoke French, and I had just enough
French that I could just figure out what he was talking about. I
took Angela over there, because her French was pretty good. We
learned that at the age of fourteen or fifteen he had joined the
Spanish republican army. I think he was a Communist.

Angela: He was a Communist; he showed you his Party card.

Ward: Oh, yes. He told stories about the Spanish republicans coming,
and then the anarchists. The Spanish republicans had imprisoned
all the leading fascist activists on the island of Ibiza, and had
jailed them in an old fortress on top of the town mountain peak.
Then the anarchists came and took charge, and they promptly
executed all the imprisoned fascists. That's the difference
between the anarchists and the republicans.

The barber was captured and spent several years in prisons.
But somehow during that time he got married and became a parent.
He and a couple of other guys escaped and rowed in a local boat
130 miles to Algeria, the nearest point you could get to. And
there he was a barber for a number of years. Some kind of an
amnesty was worked out, and he was under some kind of a
pledge that he could return provided he was not at all active in
any way against the Franco government. So he rejoined to his
wife and family.

Rubens: At this point in your life, you weren't hiding your politics when
you applied for the Greek visa; did you talk to him about your
roll in organizing anti-fascist

Ward: Yes, I guess we both did.

Angela: Oh, there's no question. We admitted that we were ex-Communists.

Ward: Well, we were buddies. We invited him to dinner, and the

earliest you could think of having dinner was eleven o'clock at

253

Ward: night. He came with his son men only at first. Then we got
invited to his home and met his wife. He looked much younger
than she, because she had had all these lonely years with the
kids, and all that. It had been very tough on her. We all
became close friends.

Angela: We still write to each other.
Rubens: Were you writing every day?

Ward: I wrote two other versions of the Mooney book there, and came

back to Paris eventually. We didn't have a camper this time; we
had a regular Volkswagen. I talked to Van Dycke again.

Rubens: Did he read it?

Ward: He read it, and he thought it was greatly improved. We tried to
peddle it but, again, nothing.

Did you ever hear of Al Richmond, the editor of The Peoples'
World? We knew him quite well. I showed the manuscript to him,
and he sat down and wrote me a nine-page, single-spaced critique
telling me how he thought I could make a better story out of it.
I let it soak mentally for two years, and all of a sudden it came
to me that it was always in my mind how I could do what he
suggested. So I wrote it.

This time I had a lively agent, but he couldn't sell it,
although he liked it.

Rubens: The version that was printed, then, was written basically in
1970?

Ward: The final version was written in the late seventies, I would say.
Rubens: So Al Richmond was the catalyst?
Ward: He was the man who really did it for me.
*#

Ward: It didn't take very long. Then we began to try to sell it, and
efforts were made by people who liked it. But, again, no dice.

Alvah Bessie had some dealings with an outfit up in Marin
County, a publisher, and I went to see them. They were two men
in a tiny little setup, struggling harder than we were, you might
say, trying to make a living in publishing. They said they could
do it, they liked the book, but for "$12,000, please," to get
started. That gave me pause.

254

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

Angela:

Rubens:
Ward:
Rubens:
Ward:

I'd heard of Ramparts Press in Palo Alto, and I showed it to
Larry Moore there, and in due course I went down to pick it up.
He said, "Wait a minute, I'd like to talk to you about it." And
he said he wanted to publish it. I put up some money, but not
any $12,000. He could do it that way because he had his own
printing press, and his wife was the printer. They were
middle-aged people, their children (I know they had one child at
least) were grown, and that's what they did.

Several months were taken up because there were some changes
that he wanted in my script, principally in the preface. Also,
the book had originally ended when Tom's lady friend picked up
the phone and called Herb Resner and said, "Herb, Tom just
died." But he wanted to go on with an epitaph. So I wrote that.

I like that ending.

The way Ramparts did it, this gal (the wife) had to find the time
to sit down at the machine and set the type. Eventually it got
done and it got published.

How was it reviewed, and how did it sell?

It hasn't sold much yet. I don't know what the situation is.
The Chronicle gave me a nice review.

And you got a good review in Publisher's Weekly and in legal
publications.

This was about 1983?

Yes.

Did you make your money back on it?
No. Some, but not by any means all.

The Oral History Decade, 1980s.

Louis Goldblatt receives his oral history,
April 4, 1981. House of Estolv and Angela
Ward, Berkeley.

Louis Goldblatt, Angela Ward, Estolv Ward,
Andrea Nakagawa, Willa Baum.

Interviewing session at the Ward home, 1986.

Norman and Marjorie Leonard, Estolv and Angela Ward.

255

Xin RECENT ACTIVITIES AND SOME BACKWARD GLANCES

Conducting an Oral History Interview with Louis Goldblatt*

Ward: Meanwhile, a friend of Angela's was doing some work in the

Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library. Angela had
quit her job and didn't have enough to do, so this friend
suggested she go down there and see if she could do a little
volunteer typing. So she did, and they gave her to finish typing
the Henry Schmidt oral history manuscript.** She said it was
kind of interesting, but all jumbled up and mixed up.

In the meantime, this had attracted my interest, and I
thought of Lou Goldblatt. Of course, both he and Harry Bridges
were retired by that time. I happened to know that after having
been boon companions and fellow workers for many years, they had
become bitter enemies. And I knew that people had been after
Goldblatt to do his oral history, but he said he would be damned
if he would asking friends to put up money so he could blow his
own horn. I thought, well, we'll see.

I think it was at a Christmas eve party at Bill and Eva
Mass's, where most of the guests were old friends of ours. Lou
and Terry Goldblatt were there, so I spoke to Terry first about
it. She loved the idea, and thought he ought to tell his story.
Then I spoke to Lou. Of course he and I have been good friends
all along.

Louis Goldblatt, Working Class Leader in the ILWU, 1935-1977, an
oral history interview conducted 1978-1979, Regional Oral History
Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley,
1980.

"Henry Schmidt, Secondary Leadership in the ILWU, 1933-1966, an
oral history interview conducted 1974, 1975, 1981, Regional Oral
History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California
Berkeley, 1983.

256

Rubens: You have always been friends. It went back to the early days of
the CIO. He had offered you a job, which you didn't accept, but
you stayed friends.

Ward: Yes. Lou didn't say yes, but he didn't say no.
Rubens: What was he doing when he retired?

Angela: If you read the oral history, as Estolv described, he was like a
beached whale. He was so unhappy. He was in a terrible
psychological state.

Ward: Oh, yes. See, he had plenty of working life left in him if he'd
had an opportunity. Knowing quite a bit about him and his
affairs and activities, I sat down and wrote an outline and sent
it to him.

Rubens: What year was this?

Ward: In the seventies, before the Mooney book came out. I've been
active with the oral history outfit for at least ten years.

Rubens: It was right after he retired.

Angela: Yes, and the convention they both retired

Ward: Lou called me and said he would go for it, with two exceptions:

he would not talk about Harry Bridges and he would not talk about
the Communists. Well, the Communist part was easy; I quickly
showed him that since it was well known that he had been a
Communist, there was no secret, he could talk about himself. He
didn't necessarily have to name anybody but himself. So we
began, and met for fourteen months, once a week over at his
place. He didn't come here; I always went there.

Rubens: To Mill Valley. And by this time you had moved to Berkeley?
Angela: Yes.

Ward: We've lived in Berkeley nearly fourteen years now. Again, I had
to do considerable research, and this time most of it was at the
ILWU library. The librarian there, Carol Schwartz, I had known
since I had met her at six o'clock in the morning in the
plastics factory. One day I was digging away in the files of The
Dispatcher, and she said, "Estolv, I have something here that
might help you." It was a copy of an oral history given by

257

Ward: J. Paul St. Sure* in the late fifties. She told me that when
Harry and Lou resigned and left their offices, in cleaning up
Harry's office they had found a copy of this oral history, which
nobody in the ILWU knew existed except Harry.

I read it, and parts of it were very pertinent to what I was
doing with Lou, because it gave an analysis from the employer
point of view.

Rubens: For the historical record, who was St. Sure?

Ward: He was a management attorney specializing in labor contracts.

Rubens: In fact, he had been working with some of the cannery operators
when you were directing the CIO he was just coming out.

Ward: I had met J. Paul St. Sure in negotiations, and he was one

difficult and dangerous and smart cookie. He saw through my
little ploys and maneuvers before they were fully uttered,
sometimes. He was a difficult combattant to deal with.

In the meantime, I had seen the different J. Paul St. Sure
as a lecturer .at the California Labor School. He and I
collaborated, more or less, in a rather distant way, in teaching
classes there at one time or another. That was after he became
the attorney for the Pacific Coast Maritime Association, the PMA.

Rubens: Why would someone like St. Sure lecture at the labor school?

Angela: This was a period when the waterfront and the longshore union

became buddies. There was a name for it the "new look." When
the M and M agreement was worked out there came this period of
harmony.

Ward: Now they call it glasnost. [laughter]

Angela: That's why Paul St. Sure was teaching at the labor school.

Ward: Harry always thought the M and M was a wonderful agreement, or
said he did. You know St. Francis Square (the ILWU housing
project for workers)? St. Sure helped Lou raise the money for

Joseph Paul St. Sure, Some Comments On Employer Organizations
and Collective Bargaining in Northern California Since 193*1, an
interview conducted by Corinne Gilb for the Institute of
Industrial Relations Oral History Project on March 7, 21, 29;
April i, 11; June 13, 21, 1957. University of California
Berkeley, 1957.

258

Ward: that. And all sorts of things like that. On the other hand, in
the final analysis, Goldblatt came to the conclusion that
St. Sure had rooked the longshoremen again. They didn't get by
any means as much as they should have gotten of the M and M
agreement.

So weekly, every Tuesday, for fourteen months Lou and I met
for a couple of hours getting him to talk. Then when I got hold
of St. Sure's piece and read what St. Sure had to say about these
two men, Bridges and Goldblatt, and his relationship with them
and their relationship with each other, it was very interesting.
Frequently the three of them would get into battles, each against
the other. Goldblatt and Bridges would disagree; both of them
would of course disagree with St. Sure. The next morning they
had to break it off because they were all so upset and angry they
couldn't go on. Then they'd meet again the next day, and Bridges
and Goldblatt had unified their position and faced the employer
as a unit. And usually, according to St. Sure, it was the way
Goldblatt had wanted it in the first place. In other words,
whatever went on between those two after a meeting with
St. Sure, Goldblatt apparently almost always won.

Rubens: What was your conclusion from that? Why did it go that way?

Ward: I think St. Sure said it himself pretty succinctly: Bridges

fundamentally was an old-fashioned labor guy. He was interested
only in hours, wages, and working conditions. Goldblatt was of
course interested in those things, but he was also interested in
housing, dental care for children, health plans, and so forth.

Angela: I think St. Sure said Goldblatt had more of an overall vision,
rather than just meat and potatoes.

Ward: I told Lou that this document existed. Up to then he wouldn't

talk about Bridges. He ran, not walked, to the ILWU library and
got that thing and studied it. From then on he talked about
Bridges.

Rubens: Lou is dead now. When you look back on doing that oral history,
do you feel he still held back on what he could have said about
Harry and his relationship with him?

Ward: Lou may have pruned the sharpest edges of his sharpest thoughts,
but he was frank enough to do that I thought should have been
done, say what I hoped he would say.

Beginning with the Mooney book, I had come to know, first
very slightly, Andrea Peszewski at The Bancroft Library, who
became Jim Hart's secretary. I began the oral history with Lou,
and Angela began typing and keeping up with me to a considerable
extent. Our dining room table became full of the rough copy, an

259

Ward: enormous pile of paper. I called Andrea and said that I had
something that she might like to see. I suggested she and her
husband, Lech (a Pole), come by on their way home and have a
drink. So they came by, and I showed her this pile of
manuscript. She took it home and read it, and said, "Oh, yes."
Of course, The Bancroft never has money for ROHO [the Regional
Oral History Office].

Rubens: You were doing this as a volunteer.

Ward: Oh, sure. Almost all our work for ROHO has been volunteer.
Andrea found $3,000 someplace, and that helped.

Angela: She arranged a meeting with Hart and Lou Goldblatt and Estolv and
me. Because Hart wasn't too enthusiastic.

Rubens: Here is your opportunity to flesh out history. People ransack

that interview looking for an explanation, and I'm wondering what
your own conclusion is about the discord between Harry and Lou.

Ward: That is a very difficult question. I repeat again that the

difference began with Harry being an old-fashioned labor guy and
Lou being a new-fashioned labor guy.

Rubens: So you agree with St. Sure. But from your own experience you
lived through that period, you knew them both. Do you have
something further that you think should be added to the record?

Ward: Harry grew up as a sailor, sailing out of Melbourne, Australia.
His father was a wealthy man; he was a big shot. Harry's
mother's brother his uncle was a very pleasant, dashing, bit of
a ne'er-do-well seaman. He would come around and tell Harry
stories, and Harry ran away and went to sea very early, in his
late teens. And he did a little gun-running, particularly
regarding some one of the South American revolutions of those
days. That sort of thing. Harry didn't have much of an
education. He was brought up in a Catholic school; he was an
altar boy as a small child. Where other kids would be going to
high school or college, he was running around the world as a
seaman, listening to the forecastle tales.

Goldblatt, on the other hand, went to City College in New
York. He grew up in The Bronx. His parents were Russian
immigrants, 1905ers, who were childhood sweethearts in Russia.
The father was conscripted into the Czarist army and found
himself in charge of prisoners somewhere on the Black Sea. He
found a companion prisoner, and the two of them just walked off
together. He got to this country, where he re-met his childhood
sweetheart, who had come to New York also, and they got married.

260

Ward: Goldblatt, early in school, was classified as a gifted child.

Ward: He was interested in two things in City College: political

debates and playing the piano. He could play the piano quite
well. He temporarily thought of becoming a great pianist.

Rubens: You're basically saying that their backgrounds are very

different. Do you think there was any anti-Semitic ism on Harry's
part? Maybe unconscious?

Ward: Lou spoke about that. I don't think so. There's not the

slightest evidence in anything either of them has said, or that
other people have said about them, that would indicate that.

Rubens: Harry was much older. And there was a real contention for power;
they represented different industries.

Ward: I don't think it was a question of power. Both of them were men
who wished to be active and useful. That was certainly true of
Goldblatt, whom I knew much better than I knew Bridges. I think
there was disagreement about where goes the union, and what the
union should be doing. As I think you know, it reached the point
where for years whatever the one said, the other opposed.

Rubens: They literally did not speak to each other.
Ward: That's true.

Angela: Let me remind you what you said so many times when you were

arguing with people like Norm Leonard about Lou and Harry: that
the conclusions you reached were that after Lou did all this
great work in Hawaii, for example, and organized the whole thing
there and then his union, the warehouse union was a powerful
union, much larger that was when Harry got real scared. He
wanted to hang on to the leadership. That's what you always
said.

Ward: You see, the longshoremen were Harry's baby. The warehousemen

were Lou's baby, to a considerable extent on the mainland, and to
a ninety-nine percent in Hawaii. When Harry went over there and
tried to stick in his oar, in contravention of Lou, people didn't
pay much attention to him. So I think that must have annoyed the
old boy a good deal, too.

Angela: That's one of the reasons that Jack Hall and Harry were at such
loggerheads. Because Jack Hall sided with Lou in this whole
struggle.

261

Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

Lou found Jack Hall,
offered that job.

I'll tell you about it. Angela and I were

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:
Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:
Ward:

Rubens:

Ward:
Rubens:

When you came back from Basic Magnesium.

I came to know Jack Hall when he spent his last years in San
Francisco. But, of course, it was merely a social relationship,
and I really can't say what he would have been like. He
apparently was a very successful organizer.

Did you ever propose doing Harry's oral history?

I would know better. That would be the most foolish thing I
could do. When I got myself elected as the director of the
Alameda County CIO council, my first labor job, I was a green
pea. I was not stupid, but I was ignorant. If I do say so
myself, I was a quick learner. But in the beginning Harry must
have thought, "What the hell is this guy doing here?"

You never had a relationship with Harry.
Not a good one, no. Never.
He didn't like the book.

He made no bones about it at the first Landes trial: he wanted
Jim O'Neill to do his defense work. But he hadn't done anything
about it, and I was called upon to do the job, and I did it over
Harry's dead body.

So at no other point was there a relationship with him?

If we walked together down the street a block, I don't think ten
words were exchanged between us. We were not friends. And the
more I came to know of him, I admired him there's such a thing
as admiring but not liking him.

Would you apply that same analysis to Goldblatt? Was the
relationship something that ate him up, or did he just seem to
come to terms with it?

I don't see how I could apply the same analysis to two entirely
different relationships, two entirely different persons.

But in terms of how Goldblatt responded. By the time you were
interviewing Goldblatt, what was his emotional state regarding
his relationship with Harry?

He had been robbed of his occupation. He was left without a job.
Because he had agreed to step down at the same time?

262

Ward: It was the obvious thing if one stayed, both stayed. And if
they both stayed, the union was being torn apart. It was not
good for the union, not good for either of the individuals.

Angela: What ate Lou was the fact that he had ten more years to give to

that union and to the labor movement, and he was not permitted to
do it because Harry insisted that he wouldn't get out unless Lou
got out. In fact, he introduced a resolution at an ILWU
convention to get him out.

The thing that ate Lou and Terry said this many times was
that Lou was left stranded, and he was still so concerned about
the union. He wanted to be part of it and he wanted to continue
to make his contribution, and he couldn't do it in an official
way. It was tough even to do it unofficially. That was the big
thing that ate Lou up.

Ward: Harry did his best to get rid of Lou, but he couldn't do it

without a vote of the entire membership. Because the warehouse
was by far the biggest unit at one time in the ILWU. I don't
know, of course, but I bet there were many times when Harry
regretted the ideas that caused him to bring in the warehouse
people, which I'm pretty sure must have had some origins at
121 Haight Street (the local CP headquarters). It was the
cooperation between the inland workers and the dock workers. The
maritime federation didn't attempt unity between the seafaring
and dockside workers. The leftwing Communist-sponsored
organization, MWIU [Marine Workers Industrial Union] since Harry
listened to what the Communists had to say very attentively, it
must have had some effect upon his thinking.

Rubens: Did Lou every talk about the Party and evaluate it?

Ward: He talked about it. I was talking to Bill Schneiderman at his

home after he retired, years ago. We were talking about Lou, and
he claimed that Lou really never did leave the Party. That
because of the type of work he did, the job he held, it would be
advisable for him and them to say he left the Party. Lou doesn't
agree with that. Well, I don't know that Lou knows that
Schneiderman made that claim, because this was after Lou died.

Rubens: Do you know why Lou did not want to talk about the Party?
Ward: He talked about people Schneiderman, and Oleta.
Angela: Did Lou approve of the general role of the Party?

Ward: One point of disagreement he had was on super-seniority for

blacks, which was a Party position for quite a while. He said
that just wouldn't do. It just meant that the white unions

263

Ward: wouldn't take in blacks. The Party advanced the theory that
since blacks had been put upon for centuries that they should
have a better chance than the whites.

Rubens: When was this?

Angela: It was post-war.

Ward: In the late forties, I think.

Angela: Even in the fifties.

Ward: When I was still working at 150 Golden Gate, Lou and I once went
together to Party headquarters down Market Street. We talked
with Oleta about super-seniority for blacks. That would have
been before 1950.

Rubens: Lou doesn't talk about the Party pre-World War II. In your
evaluation, why didn't he want to discuss what influence the
Party had on the shaping of the union?

Ward: That's very simple: you don't ra't on your friends.

Rubens: Couldn't he do it without names?

Ward: That's what I told him. Then it was no problem.

Rubens: But he doesn't discuss the Party as an influence in the early
years.

Ward: I think the Communist Party had been a very useful and helpful
organization. He was a very happy and active part of it for a
long time. He didn't become a paid functionary of the ILWU until
19*12. However, he would have been Harry Bridges' assistant
director of the West Coast CIO, except for the story I told you.

Rubens: Which is not in Lou's oral history.
Ward: No, it is not talked about there.

Rubens: Were there any other political activities you and Angela were
involved in that we should talk about next time?

Ward: Well, we never went to Livermore; we have not participated

actively in any of the more lively struggles in recent years.
But we have gone on marches in San Francisco.

Rubens: For next time, why don't you think about the current meaning of
politics of the last ten or fifteen years how you see that
period and your evaluation of it.

Ward:

264

I have thought about that, and I'm pretty well prepared to
discuss events, in a very general way, of the last few years, and
my feelings about the immediate future.

Rubens: And there are some threads that should be tied up.

Fear of a Revived Right Wing in America, and the Prospects for
Communism

[Interview 12: 17 September 198?]##

Ward: I understand I am supposed to express my opinion on the past few
years and the prospects I see for the immediate future. Going
back eight or ten years, I have a feeling of growing concern for
the right-wing tendencies of the American public. They seem to
be increasing, although if we elect a Democratic president next
year that will indicate a slight turn to the left. However,
unless a Democratic administration is able to produce very
dramatic results in the improvement of the economy and the
standing of our country in regards to the rest of the world, that
moment of bliss will pass within four years.

I think it is possible that Americans will dip into a
strictly American form of fascism. It won't be called by that
name except by the leadership of some of the other countries,
particularly the Soviet Union. If such a tragedy should occur, I
think it will be very short-lived. In order for the tragedy to
occur, the right would be very strong in the presidency and in
the Supreme Court, and there would be a momentary willingness to
go along by the Congress. Commenting upon the briefness, I would
hope not more than two years, because Congress is re-elected
every two years. I'm sure that the fascist mood would be quickly
resented by the common people when they saw the rich oligarchy
taking over utterly and running everything to suit itself without
going through any democratic process.

I think the revolt I hope the revolt, if there has to be
one, will be purely political, and that the nature and intent of
both the Senate and the House will become open and grasping for
new ideas, new ways of getting out of the mess. If that hope
cannot be realized, then there would have to be a struggle. I
don't think that will happen. I think the American people have
enough latent good sense to settle their problems in a democratic
and peaceful way.

Rubens: You basically rest your hopes on the democratic process and free
dialogue?

265

Ward: Well, I think we're damn well accustomed to the democratic

process, and to this moment we are still the most democratic
important power in the world.

Rubens: If you look back over your political life, moving from a
conservative, apolitical

Ward: No! Moving from a left-wing start.

Rubens: Not a left-wing start.

Ward: Oh, my father was a socialist.

Rubens: Yes, but you talked about your early maturation as a conservative
and free spirit who converted to a left perspective.

Ward: Those formative years were the most important ones in my life.
The temporary few years of trying to adjust to a reverse set of
ideas did not work.

Rubens: Looking at those twenty years of being in the Communist Party,

how would you assess that organizational form as being successful
or not successful in terms of transforming the country?

Ward: The chances of anything bearing the name "Communist" getting very
far in the United States are nil, as far as I can see it. Nil.

Rubens: If you were to critique the Party strategy, what would it rest
on? On it's being undemocratic?

Ward: I can't answer that question directly, because I have no idea. I
would say this: that no American Communist that I know or knew
or know of could adjust because obviously, if America ever does
step into the socialist world, it will be under other names,
other forms, and decidedly of an American vintage.

Rubens: Do you look to any organization or sector of leadership that

gives you hope? Dorothy Healy left the Party and joined DSOC

Harrington's organization, the Democratic Socialist Organizing
Committee.

Ward: Well, in the recent past I haven't been able to read enough to

have any thought on that subject. My attention span and my

feelings about what I just told you would not lead me to form any

pinpoint of hope. I think it must be there somewhere, but I do

not know of it.

Rubens: Do you recall a time in your own history of feeling as
pessimistic as you feel now?

266

Ward: Of course, as a youngster there was no such thing as pessimistic
thought. Pessimism began to become noticeable in the years
immediately following the end of World War II, and have become
stronger, as I have indicated, in the past few years.

An Oral History Interview with Norman Leonard

Rubens: I want to ask you a question outside this topic. We didn't talk
about the other oral histories that you did. Is there one that
you enjoyed doing more than all the others, or that you learned
something more from?

Ward: I think it's unwise to answer that question.

Rubens: Do you have any observations to add about the oral history you
did with Norman Leonard?

Ward: I think that a great number of young legal scholars of the future
will want to read that book because, I would assume, up until now
legal scholars entered law with the hopes of making money. And
up until now the left has not been the easiest way in the law to
make money, by a good deal. So if the situation of right and
left were to be considerably reversed, there would be a rush of
young law students to the left. That would be easily
understandable.

Rubens: We certainly saw a lot of that in the sixties and seventies, with
young lawyers doing neighborhood legal work or becoming district
attorneys rather than corporate lawyers, more women entering the
field. I think there was a real push in that way.

Ward: Let me ask you: do you think young women lawyers will be more
inclined to go left than young men?

Rubens: No. But I think we have seen a real explosion of community
consciousness in the sixties and seventies.

Ward: In some phases of our society, but I have seen a real explosion
of the so-called "yuppie" consciousness.

Angela: But Lisa's talking about the sixties and seventies, when Norm

Leonard's son and all these young people were working down in the
farm groups and so forth.

267

Ward: I'm not quite sure I understand you, but remember that Norman

Leonard didn't start in the sixties and seventies; he started in
the twenties and thirties.

Angela: But Lisa is asking about the later generations of young lawyers.

Rubens: We never talked about your observations on the civil rights
movement or the environmental movement.

Ward: Of course I think there's hope. I am full of hope. I am simply
pointing out that it is possible not necessarily probable, but
quite possible that we will go through a pretty dim period in
this country.

Rubens: It seems to happen every twenty years or so, doesn't it? The

1920s was a very bleak period. That was one of your periods of
conservatism.

Cycles of History

Ward: I've lived through four cycles, I would say. My childhood, my

first marriage, my entrance into the Communist Party, and what's
happened after that.

Rubens: I'm just wondering if you'd like to look back over it all and
draw any conclusions or observations.

Ward: You must realize that in looking back, my memory of what I look
back at is colored by my thoughts of today. So whether it would
come out honest down to the final degree, I don't know. I don't
vouch for it, but I do say that my thoughts today, I think, are
based primarily on my parenthood and youth, as amended and
altered by all the experiences.

Rubens: I'm hoping you can find some of your photographs that could be

included. I thought particularly the one of the woman who lifted
her veil in the Quaker clinic.

Ward: I have to think of the warning. I doubt if my oral history would
ever reach Algeria, so I guess it would be safe.

Rubens: It would be nice to pick another photograph, too, that you think
is representative.

When did you stop being a vegetarian? Was that when you
went up to Santa Rosa?

268

Ward: It was when I went up to the ranch. That's when I got the forty-
two boils.

Rubens: From that time on you never went back to being a vegetarian?

Ward: Not completely. In the last two or three years I have come very
close to it. No red meat, to my wife's great distress.

Rubens: Was your father a vegetarian all his life?

Ward: From the age of nineteen on. I guess he wouldn't have lived that
long if he hadn't been. There's no question that heavy
meat-eating shortens the life, in my mind.

[tape off briefly]

Rubens: Your book on living in a camper for two years abroad sounded like
a good story. Did anything ever come of it?

Ward: My agent said it was rejected because our average daily expense
for the entire trip, outside the original cost of travel tickets
and so on, was about $14 a day. The publisher that took the
greatest interest in my book said that there were European travel
books out which listed expenses as low as $9.95 a day.

Rubens: I have a note here that says that during those years when you

were revising the Tom Mooney book, you wrote some other things.

Ward: It was mostly stuff in the Peoples' World.

Rubens: Angela, do you feel there's anything else that we should talk
about now?

Angela: The main writing he has done in the last period has been around
the Mooney book and the oral histories.

Never Truly a Conservative

Angela: There's one thing that disturbs me about your reference to his
conservative period. Having known his father and his
relationship to his father, who was anything but a
conservative even though his marriage was surrounded by
conservative people, basically he recognized the disparity. I
don't see how he could have been truly conservative for twenty
years; it seems an awful long time.

Rubens: I just meant in the twenties. Estolv has labeled that section
"the making of a conservative."

269

Angela: But even so, that's probably one of the reasons why the marriage
couldn't work out. He was close to his father all the time, and
his father had very little use for

Ward: What is this all for?

Angela: Honey, I'm trying to say that you were never truly a
conservative.

Ward: Oh, no. Even when I was under that influence I think I told you
that in at least one presidential election I didn't vote at all,
for anybody. Gradually, gradually, it began to swing further and
further left. For instance, I never voted for Herbert Hoover,
nor Calvin Coolidge. I don't remember who I voted for, but
probably the losing Democrat. Then it went further left; in '32
it went to Norman Thomas.

Rubens: We want to make clear that in summarizing your political path we
don't label you as a conservative, but rather someone who had
attempted to appear as one for a brief while. Then your true
self came out.

Ward: I often think of when we were trying to organize Basic Magnesium
in Nevada, how I used to pick up workers from the plant along the
highway and take them either into town, where I could use the
telephone without knowing that the company would hear every word
that I said; or on the way back from town to our office, out in
the middle of nowhere. The Negro cotton-picker (I picked up
quite a few of those; they scoured the South for them) when I
told him I was CIO organizer

Ward: he grinned and looked at me with shining eyes, and he says,

"Mister, my mammy done told me if I ever meets the CIO, j'in it!"

Continued Support for Liberal Causes

Rubens: Is there anything else we should add about the last ten or
fifteen years, any observations?

Angela: All I know is that in the period that he was writing the Mooney

book, and later the oral histories, our participation in politics
was mostly in demonstrations, going to meetings, and that sort of
thing. We were not affiliated to any organization as such, but
we supported all the causes.

270

Rubens: Anti-war

Angela: We continue to do that, too.

Rubens:
Angela:

Anti-nuclear activity?

I had some of it when we first came here, but when he started to
work on the oral histories I transferred my activities to doing
the transcribing and some of the editing and research.

Transcribers: Marilyn White and Judy Smith
Final Typist: Judy Smith

271

TAPE GUIDE Estolv Ward

Interview 1: 8 June, 198?

tape 1 , side A

tape 1 , side B

tape 2, side A [side B not recorded]

Interview 2: 15 June 1987

tape 3, side A

tape 3, side B

tape 4, side A

tape 4, side B

Interview 3: 22 June 1987
tape 5, side A
tape 5, side B
tape 6, side A
tape 6, side B

Interview 4: 6 July 1987

tape 7, side A

tape 7, side B

tape 8, side A

tape 8, side B

tape 9, side A [side B not recorded]

Interview 5: 9 July 1987

tape 10, side A

tape 10, side B

tape 11 , side A

tape 11 , side B

Interview 6: 13 July 1987

tape 12, side A

tape 12, side B

tape 13, side A

tape 13, side B

Interview 7: 16 July 1987

tape 14, side A

tape 14, side B

tape 15, side A

tape 15, side B

24
30
36
44

51
58
66
72

77
83
90
96
99

100
107
114
123

125
131
138
146

150
157
163
171

272

Interview 8:
tape 16,
tape 16,
tape 17,

30 July 1987
side A
side B
side A

tape 17, side B

Interview 9: 20 August 1987

tape 18, side A

tape 18, side B

tape 19, side A

tape 19, side B

tape 20, side A [side B not recorded]

Interview 10: 24 August 1987

tape 21 , side A

tape 21 , side B

tape 22, side A

tape 22, side B

Interview 11 :
tape 23,
tape 23,

7 September 1987
side A
side B

tape 24, side A

tape 24, side B

Interview 12: 17 September 1987

tape 25, side A

tape 25, side B

172
176
181
188

193
198
206
213
219

220
226
234
240

245
248
253
259

264
269

APPENDICES

273
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Vol. 2.22, July 1942

How Organized Labor Views the Problems of Transition

By ESTOLV E. WABD

UNIONS in southern California af
filiated with the Congress of In
dustrial Organizations view the prob
lems of transition from war to peace
through a heavy screen of the pressing
emergencies which they face as partici
pants in the war itself. There is good
reason to believe that this attitude ex
tends to the other branches of the or
ganized labor movement in this area,
and, in fact, to all responsible labor
bodies throughout the United States.

Labor is reminded of a saying preva
lent among American soldiers during the
last World War, which philosophized
away the physical dangers of military
combat to its final climax: "... if you're
killed, you have nothing to worry
about." Labor is keenly conscious of
the fact that if Hitler and his Axis al
lies win this war, there will be "nothing
to worry about." Democratic America
ind its principal bulwark, democratic
American unions, will be killed. Labor
greatly fears the possibility of such vic
tory for fascism, and is straining every
muscle and nerve to forestall this
tragedy.

We also fear the possibility of a nego
tiated peace with Hitler. This would
mean only a partial postponement of
the Axis program of world enslavement.
Since this is a global war, with the po
litical, economic, and military forces of
toe entire world acting in close inter
relation, a stalemate, amounting to a

f-victory for Hitler, would strengthen
hand of reaction in all countries, in-
| eluding the United States. Further so-
ral progress, further reform, further
I Development of civilization, humanism,
tnd culture, would be effectively
eked. In fact, the onslaught of

*live fascism would gain such power

*' Americans would be in grave dan

ger of losing all the gains they have
made thus far.

Labor's attitude, therefore, is predi
cated upon the fact that the Axis must
be crushed militarily and politically, and
that the ruler-slave ideology upon which
fascism is based must be eradicated from
the face of the earth.

With the hope that these aims can be
accomplished, and with a united deter
mination to accomplish them, at what
ever -cost, labor then looks forward to
postwar problems.

EtTNDAMENTALS OF A PROGRAM

Leading executives, economists, and
publicists, in our national administra
tion and in the labor movement, wish to
avoid economic and political dislocations
which commonly follow the war. We
hear general expressions of fear that a
national collapse, more severe than any
heretofore, will occur in this country
when peace returns.

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt commented,
only the other day, that unless Ameri
can standards are maintained during the
war, our soldiers, should they return to
a wasteland which offers them no hope
of life and decency in return for their
sacrifices, may become a "dangerous
group."

If this be true, and the CIO firmly be
lieves it is, then part of our postwar
planning perhaps the most important
part must involve a definite program
geared to the present, to preserve
America especially in wartime. The
CIO has such a program and is doing
its part to secure its full adoption and
enforcement. The major fundamentals
of this program are:

1. Co-operation of government, labor,
and management in total war produc
tion;

179

274

180

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

2. Taxation on the basis of ability to
pay in order to meet both war and civil
ian expenditures;

3. Extension of full democracy and
equal economic opportunity to racial
minorities, particularly Negroes and
Mexicans;

4. Maintenance of wage stales and
working conditions, the mainstay of our
economic standards of living, and the
improvement of these scales and condi
tions in depressed areas;

5. Preservation of existing social and
labor legislation and stout resistance to
all who would endanger it.

We lay down these fundamentals as
an essential prerequisite to postwar
planning, believing that if the CIO pro
gram can be realized, transition from
war to peace economy will have been
greatly simplified.

PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT

The immediate shock of peace will be
the cessation of war industry and the
demobilization of millions of men in our
armed forces. These two operations
will create a glut in the labor market.
.In other words, we shall have with us
again the unemployed. CIO economists
estimated that at the depths of the last
depression there were 17,000,000 unem
ployed in the United States. Circula
tion of money was diminished, and mass
buying power, particularly for consumer
goods, was seriously crippled.

Not knowing how long the war will
last, how many men will be inducted
into the armed services, how many
women will be drafted into war indus
try, how complete will be the change
from a butter to a gun economy, no one
can accurately estimate the number of
Americans likely to join the postwar
army of the unemployed. The pros
pects, however, stagger the imagination.

The Los Angeles Basin and San Diego
are important centers of war industry
and war activities. An estimate of

400,000 engaged in war work
areas within the next year would
ably be conservative. Add to these fi?
ures the men who will have joined j
been inducted into the armed serviS
during the war from these areas v 2

jl_ _ . ._ ..i * .*"

the new recruits to the labor

Wrl

from among women, youth, and
inhabitants, and we can arrive "at
tentative estimate of something over
million persons who must be reabsorbed
into a peacetime economy in southern '
California.

To fail to make this readjustmenTJn'
southern California and the rest of fa
Nation would be immediately tottlje
problems of the most pressing nature
first economic, and then political, ^fc

Part of our hope that these problem
can be solved before they become disaj-'
trously acute arises from our conviction*
that mass buying power can be
tained. This means that public ''and
private employment must be provided,
at wages that will permit circulation *
among the people generally. Vf

In the field of private employment,
we look first to the questions of transl- 4
tion in the aircraft industry, the larg- >
est southern California war employer.
Air-borne transport should improve in 1
quality and quantity as a result of de-'jj
velopments made in wartime. Provided, j
the general state of the Nation permltv|
we can look for continuation of the,.?
aircraft industry, even though on a re- ^
duced basis, in peacetime. Thus, 'we *
have some feeling of stability in this ,.
industry.

In shipbuilding, the second largest ''
employer in this area, we face prospects .
of rapidly dwindling employment, be-
ginning six months after the end of the _
war and running down to a comparativt
zero in about eighteen months.

Most other forms of war employment
will end virtually immediately with the
peace. Some slack will be taken op
gradually by resumption of peacetin*

275

How ORGANIZED LABOR VIEWS THE PROBLEMS OF TRANSITION

181

consumption; how much we cannot tell
until we know what the wages of the
people will permit them to consume.

So, although by a considerable degree
of optimism in the field of private em
ployment we have reduced our problem,
we have by no means annihilated it.

SOCIAL SECURITY PROVISIONS

Before surveying the possibilities of
public employment, let us estimate the
assistance to be given by social legisla
tion now on the books. Unemployment
insurance and social security will serve
somewhat to cushion the shock. The
reserves now being built up should not
be dissipated, but should be driven
higher to take up the slack when the
crucial peed arises. Attempts by some
employers to reduce their contributions
to these Federal-state unemployment
and old-age insurance agencies should
be stanchly resisted. These social bene
fits should be increased, and the laws
under which they operate should be
liberalized to include seamen and all
classifications of American workers.

Because of the sacrifices they will
have made, we must first consider de-
'.- mobilized servicemen in taking up the
needs of the great residue of postwar
unemployed. The CIO has always in
sisted that complete protection must be
provided for the re-employment of those
who leave jobs to enlist or be drafted,
*nd is providing such protection in the
contracts it signs with employers.

Adequate guarantees must also be
iade for protection of job rights of
those workers who temporarily take the
place of the workers who go to war.
Strides toward the provision of protec
tion for men transferred from civilian to

r production have been taken by the
notably in the arrangement worked
^ l between the United Automobile
Corkers, the Office of Production Man-
nt, and General Motors Corpora-

' n > whereby these workers may trans-

fer back to their old jobs after the
emergency without loss of seniority.

There should be provisions for the
granting of either social security bene
fits or guaranteed work on public proj
ects for all men discharged from the
armed forces who are unable to procure
work.

Again taking time by the forelock, the
CIO also advocates that during the war,
full protection should be afforded the
families and dependents of our soldiers
and sailors. Such protection should be
provided by agencies vested with a pub
lic responsibility, rather than by private
organizations. The Soldiers' and Sail
ors' Relief Act should be greatly liberal
ized to protect the men and their fami
lies, during the period of military service
and for a reasonable period thereafter,
from foreclosures or eviction from
homes, the lapsing of life insurance poli
cies, and the seizure of chattels such as
cars, furniture, or household goods.

HOUSING

These steps in themselves will greatly
ease transition problems. During the
last depression, labor economists were
stating that the housing shortage in the
United States was so acute that, even
under a planned economy, it would take
ten years of producing and construction
to provide decent living quarters for
all our population. Nothing was done
about this shortage until the war. The
influx of war workers in southern Cali
fornia has created a housing crisis
which, if not solved, may seriously en
danger production and morale.

Federal housing agencies, stimulated
by labor, have begun action to relieve
the local housing shortage. The CIO
favors housing projects under the Mu
tual Ownership type, commonly referred
to as the Camden Plan. Such work as
is being accomplished toward the con
struction and occupancy of such proj
ects meets the bitter opposition of some

276

182

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

private real estate interests, which are
using political and economic pressure
to prevent or emasculate all public hous
ing projects. These private interests, in
their most recent maneuvers, seek sub
stitution of temporary defense housing
or barracks for single men for the genu
ine, permanent, public housing projects
the government contemplates and the
workers desire. The CIO is fighting
temporary housing and barracks because
they encourage instability and imperma-
nence, destroy the principle of personal
home ownership, and provide the breed
ing ground for a new type of slum where
vice and poverty may fester during the
postwar period.

If labor's fight for proper public hous
ing is successful during the war, the way
will be paved for much more of this
sorely needed construction work after
the war is over. The building and
democratic operation of home projects
along the lines of the Camden Plan will
provide the great mass of southern Cali-
fornians with work and with homes in
which they can take pride. Such proj
ects, with social centers, recreational fa
cilities, and educational and cultural
opportunities, on a group basis, will
preserve morale, maintain health, and
stimulate responsibility during the tran
sition period.

TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER
PUBLIC PROJECTS

The major curse of the Los Angeles
Basin has always been lack of proper
transportation. This great, sprawling,
decentralized community can never real
ize its full opportunities until trans-
portational lacks have been corrected.
A great program of road and rail build
ing should be launched under the aus
pices of government agencies at the
conclusion of the war. High-speed arte
rial highways and fast rail lines should
lace the basin from end to end. The
working out of such a program will re

quire an understanding on the partW;
local business that its immediate '
ests must be set aside for the
prosperity of Los Angeles and all
residents. Once this is done
comprehensive transportation
adopted, a virtual army of technicians^
skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborv
can be put to work for a period of sev'
eral years. > 3t v

Other public projects must be consid- 7
ered and developed to the point where 7 '
actual work can be commenced within^
a short time after peace is declared,^
The CIO suggests that the construction '
of more public hospitals and sanatoria,^
and improved operation of those exist- 1 ,"
ing, might constitute one highly desir-"
able project. Industrial health and hyl"
giene have been neglected to a serious '
degree, and if Los Angeles is to maintain ..
itself as a great industrial center after ( '
the war, we should be preparing now to
do the construction and hire the tech-,
nicians who can correct this situation.
Under this general beading we should
properly include preservation of the'
beaches, improvements in sewage and ,
garbage disposal, flood control, and fire
prevention.

Except for the privileged few, south-"
ern California is not the garden of the^
Hesperides. The possibilities of the
land and the sea and the climate have
not yet been given to the great working
mass of people in this area.

THE ALTERNATIVES FOR SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA

If America wins the war, southern
California will have a choice. Con
servatism, refusal to plan, failure to
absorb the unemployed, will condemn
this smiling section of the earth, these
great factories, to the degeneration of
despair and give the people over to the
first demagogue who comes along.
the other hand, a sturdy, realistic, pro
gressive spirit which insists on the con-

277

How ORGANIZED LABOR VIEWS THE PROBLEMS OF TRANSITION 183

tinued and improved function of democ
racy, which inspires co-operation rather
than individualism, can make of south
ern California a genuine land of milk
and honey more glorious than that de
picted in any Chamber of Commerce
tourist ad in a travel magazine.

To accomplish these things, there
must be more than the will of southern
Californians alone. Throughout the
Nation, there must be an atmosphere
of optimism, a determination to pro
gress. This atmosphere must permeate
the legislative halls, the administrative
offices, the judicial sanctums of our
Federal and state governments.

We must abolish the poll tax. We
must eradicate oppressive labor prac
tices by some employers. We must pre
serve and expand the civil liberties of
the people. Social security must be
come a fact and not a token. A rea
sonable system of health insurance must
be established. The incomes of the
common people must provide good liv
ing standards. There must be more
democracy not less.

To such a program, for an indivisible
Nation of which southern California
could well be the most favored part,
the CIO dedicates itself and urges the
support of all Americans.

Estolv E. Ward, Los Angeles, is an International
Representative oj the Casting Division, International
Union oj Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, 'CIO. He
was a newspaper reporter for ten years, and an attache
oj the Supreme Court oj the State oj California for two
and a half years. He has also been secretary oj the
Alameda County Industrial Union Council; vice-presi
dent oj the California State Industrial Union Council;
CIO State Legislative Representative; state secretary
oj Labor's N on-Partisan League; and executive secre
tary oj the Harry Bridges Defense Committee. He is
author oj "Harry Bridges on Trial."

OV./DEC. 1983

279

Lewis Goldblatt speaking at the San Francisco Civic Center

during the 1936 warehouse strike. The warehousemen

had been ignored by organizers until Goldblatt

and the "Young Turlu" uient to work. But eventually, their

numbers made them a force to be reckoned with in the

International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union.

All photos courtesy the ILWU and the Goldblatt family.

The Calif ornians, Nov/Dec 1983

Looking Back

on the Labor

Wars: Lewis

Goldblatt

Remembers

By Estolv Ethan Ward

Recently- deceased labor leader
Lewis Goldblatt left a legacy that
Dr. Clark Kerr (UC president
emeritus) has described as "a most valuable
. . contribution to the history of half a cen-
ury of great social change."

That legacy Goldblatt 's two-volume
>ral history vividly recreates the struggles,
riumphs and failures of Goldblatt 's 42 years
if active membership in the International
-ongshoremen's and Warehousemen's
Jnion (ILWU). As the union's secretary -
reasurer for 34 years, Goldblatt was right
x>wer to Harry Bridges.

Kerr first encountered Goldblatt in the
early '30s when both were graduate stu
dents, the former at Stanford University,
the latter at U. C. While visiting a friend
on the Berkeley campus, Kerr saw Goldblatt
leading a group known as the Social Prob
lems Club members, mostly, of the
Young Communist League calling on all
listeners to join them in opposing some
position the Board of Regents had taken.
Later, during his years as an arbitrator of
union-employer conflicts, Kerr frequently
met Goldblart and observed him in action,
often in situations of great tension. (Some of

these situations involved students versus the
university, during Kerr's regime as presi
dent.) And in the introduction to
Goldblatt's oral history, Kerr praised the
labor leader's accomplishments and com
mented on four specific points:

"The goodwill and respect of the
employer representatives with whom he
dealt.

"His sadness over the break with Harry
Bridges. I once asked Harry in the '70s
about Lou, and his only reply was That
Maoist!'

"The tremendous change from class war-

PAGE 24

280

THE CALIFORNIANS

NOV. /DEC. 1983

fare on the waterfront in the '30s and '40s
to the climate of peaceful co-existence
today; and from the violent enmity be
tween the ILWU and the Teamsters to
cooperation with Jimmy Hoffa.

"The development of stable labor-man
agement relations in Hawaii out of the
most nearly semi-feudal conditions that ever
existed on U. S. territory a transforma
tion of historic proportions."

Early in his long love affair with the
ILWU, Goldblatt's total immersion in
union affairs left him no time for radical
theorizing. Although he maintained contact
with Communists wherever common in
terests or personal friendship existed, and
although there was no resignation, no
expulsion, no formal break of any kind,
Goldblatt's official connection with the
Communist Party simply dwindled to
nothing. However, many disagreements
cropped up between Goldbiatt and the
Communists, largely stemming from the
difference between armchair-radical theoriz
ing and the stern realities of the everyday
workers' world.

Those differences leapt into sharp relief
in 1942, soon after Pearl Harbor, when
Goldbiatt was head of the California State
CIO Council. The times were difficult along
the Pacific Coast for anyone of Japanese
origin or ancestry. The Communist Parry
kept silent on this touchy subject, but not
Goldbiatt: he came forward on his own to
testify before the Tolan Committee in
opposition to the wartime internment of
Japanese-Americans. No one in the labor
movement either objected to or supported
his action. He and Al Wirin, an attorney for
the American Civil Liberties Union, were
among the few persons of any prominence
who took the Japanese part. Looking back
on his difficult hour in the Congressional
committee's witness chair, Goldbiatt said in
his oral history:

"It was just a gut feeling that you don't
kick people around. ... I said it would be a
dark chapter in American history, the
Hearst Press screaming about the Yellow
Peril, this attitude we were taking against
the Japanese. Actually, the only people who
showed any class in the situation were the
Japanese. Many of them said, 'The quicker
we can get into the army and defeat the
Emperor, the better.' " After the war, this
act of Goldblatt's stood him and the ILWU
in good stead with Japanese workers in the
Hawaiian Islands during the organizing cam
paigns there. Much later, returning from a
reunion of sorts at Manzanar, Goldbiatt dis
cussed why he had given such unpopular
testimony during wartime:

"My folks (Jewish Socialists and atheists)
felt that when a group of people like the

Jews were in struggle against what they
called the 'disabilities,' various forms of
discrimination, pogroms and what-have-you
somehow the Jews did not have the same
right to be sons-of -bitches that other people
have. It is something 1 have carried most of
my life. I feel the same way about the black
movement. It's gotten me into some hot
water, but it also made me some very warm
friends."

During the war the Communist Party
conceived the idea that because blacks had
for years been "the last to be hired and the
first to be fired," it would be only fair for
progressive unions like the ILWU to correct
that discriminatory situation by discriminat
ing the other way, in other words, giving
blacks super-seniority. But Goldbiatt dis
agreed sharply: "I felt, for one, that this was
a terribly mistaken policy. Eventually the
whole thing was dropped; somebody sits
down and works these things out on the
typewriter before they think them
through."

Goldbiatt disagreed
with Communists and
unionists who would
pull out large numbers
of workers to support a
small number of
strikers: "You don't ask
somebody else to put his
job on the line."

And just after WWII, when Lodge 68
of the Machinists Union in San Francisco
struck, those 4,000-5,000 strikers demanded
and received the support of 45,000 other
workers in factories and warehouses. The
result was 50,000 workers on the streets
observing the picket lines, including thou
sands upon thousands of ILWU members.
(The leadership of Lodge 68 had previously
been friendly with the ILWU leadership,
often serving as a "bridge" between the
AFL and the CIO in the Bay area.)
Goldbiatt was not happy: "You had the
anomalous situation of five machinists in a
place like Best Foods shutting down a place
with 500 workers; at Hills Brothers a half
dozen machinists shutting down a house
with a couple of hundred workers. I got into
some long discussions with Harry Hook and
Ed Dillon (Machinist leaders), and then the
Communist Party got into the act, too. I
thought they were terribly mistaken.

"At some points the argument got pretty
violent. There were a couple of Party guys
in the Machinists Union who felt that this
was the greatest thing since the wheel
the ability to pull out that many workers. I
said, 'It doesn't work that way. When you
go into battle the first thing you do is carry
the fight yourself. You don't ask somebody
else to put his job on the line unless, for
example, they (employers] try to run
strikebreakers. Then calling on the rest of
the labor movement to put their paychecks
on the line is perfectly sensible, and you'll
get that support.' "

During a hectic meeting at ILWU
Warehouse Local 6 (Goldblatt's home
local) , Goldblart was asked if he was saying
that his union members should go through
the Machinists' picket line. When he re
plied, "Absolutely no!", the retort was
"They're putting our members on the
bricks, aren't they?"

Goldbiatt argued, "There are several
things they could do. One, just let those
machinists stay in those jobs if you have a
commitment from the employers that they
will meet whatever the new (wage) scale is.
[Orl let them withhold their labor, but
don't picket the place with the commit
ment from us that none of us would do any
of their work, nor would we allow any fore
man or anybody else to do their work."

In retrospect, Goldbiatt observed that
"Although most of our members under
stood what I was talking about, some of
them didn't. A picket line is a picket line!
Here was one of the real weaknesses of craft
unionism, unless it is handled intelligently.
Of course you're going to be a good union
man and respect the picket line, but that's
not going to happen throughout every es
tablishment that is on strike, and sooner or
later a crisis occurs.

"This was the old craft idea that the
Wobblies had argued against years before.
Take one big industrial establishment and
carved them up into crafts, at most compris
ing only a few members; you'd have every
thing from the Janitors' Union to the
waitresses in the cafeteria, a moldmaker, a
plumber, an electrician, a carpenter. This
goes on endlessly; it is the fundamental
weakness of craft unions.

"Incidentally, that lesson is one we
learned pretty damn well when we were
organizing in Hawaii. . . . [Unquestionably!
the pecking order in American society and
the craft consciousness of some workers,
even when they belong to industrial unions,
is something you can't ignore."

Problems between the ILWU and the
Communist Party became particularly ran
corous in Hawaii. According to Goldblatt,
the Party leaders tried to pre-empt union

" *

GoUblatt, Secretary-Treasurer of the ILWU, addressing the 1948 meeting of Local 6. The Pacific Auditorium was the only hall in San Francisco big
enough ro uccommooate the members.

thinking on various matters. Essentially, the
Party people kept suggesting that although
the ILWU people might be pretty good
trade unionists they didn't, after all, know
the political scene the way the Communists
did. Discussing problems that arose when
ILWU and Communist leadership con
flicted, Goldblan philosophized a bit:

"The job of leadership means that you
reflect as best you can the reservations, the
reluctances, priorities of the people you rep
resent. . . . This did not mean in any way
compromising what I thought, or the right
of a Red to retain his opinion when he
became a union man. As a union we were
not trying to change anyone's religious opin
ion; we were not trying to change their poli
tical registration. Neither was it anybody
else's damn business how you as a leader felt
about issues or political opinions. [But a)
son of balance had to be achieved . . . any
relations with something like the Com
munist Party you would weigh constantly.
. - . The issue was how could a person in
leadership exercise judgment so as to move
the membership along with him; not to sit
blandly and flow with the tide, not to duck
all issues."

After stints as a student,
a teacher and a " Young
Turk" in the warehouse
branch of San
Francisco's Longshore
Union, Goldblatt got
his first paid union job
as Northern California's
CIO director.

Goldblatt was born in 1910 in the New
York Bronx, eldest son of Lithuanian
emigres who imbued their offspring with
their socialist and atheist beliefs. Classified
as a gifted child, higher education took
Lewis first to the City College of New York,
where he learned to break away from
"Toiry-Toid Street" New Yorkese and be
gan learning to become what some of his
associates have called an "electrifying" pub

lic speaker. Also at CCNY, the political line
he was to follow all his life, which was born
listening to his parents' discussions, har
dened and developed as he listened to and
participated in the debates "screaming
matches" he called them between left-
wingers of different slants in the famous
alcoves of New York's "streetcar college".

A family move took him to Los Angeles,
where he graduated in economics at UCLA
at age 21. Next he did graduate work in law,
economics and education at DC-Berkeley,
but dropped his law studies (although he
easily passed his examinations) when he
decided that he could see little or no con
nection "between law and justice."

During those early Depression years,
Goldblatt studied accounting and worked
part-time as an accountant, a "grip" in
Hollywood's movie studios, and a door-to-
door magazine salesman. At Berkeley he and
his friends worked weekends rustling crates
of farm produce at the Oakland Farmers'
Market. He put in strenuous stints body
building in the university gym and also
spent many nights practicing the piano to
advance his ambitions of becoming a con
cert pianist.

NOV. /DEC. 1983

' r ~N&itfl KhruscHev in the Kremlin in 1959. 77* ^incident was

sSESISsSSSsSBBs:

*"****"> = ' "This went quite well, and the supervis-

ing teacher didn't look particularly askance,
but latl one session the whole back row was
taken up by administrators, the principal,
some guys from the Board of Education -
everything but students. I suppose they had
a bit of the jumps and jitters about the
whole thing." Not one of these school
officials said anything to Goldblatt, but he
nonetheless noted that ||all of us get a bit
gun-shy in these things."

Lack of money, a common complaint
during the Great Depression, ended
Goldblatt 's student life. Leaning on a shovel
in the Works Progress Administration did
not hold him for long, and by 1935 he had
found regular employment in a San Fran
cisco bottling plant.

New Deal legislation favoring union
organization prompted Goldblatt to join the
warehouse branch of the famous San Fran
cisco Longshore Union, and got him fired
from the bottling plant. Then began a rip-
roaring period of organizing while he
continued to work full time on or near the
waterfront - known in labor history as the
"March Inland". Within months, the
Warehouse local membership jumped from
400-500 to several thousand, due to the

For a time, Goldblatt flirted with the idea
of become a teacher, and tried practice
teaching at a high school in Oakland. But,
he later recalled, "The courses in education
given by the university were absolutely the
most deadly things under the sun - so
much drivel. You just went through a group
of textbooks that meant absolutely nothing.
I could never figure out how the so-called
School of Education warranted its existence.
1 don't think it meant much to the pro
fessors, either."

Doing practice teaching, Goldblatt lost
patience with a group of difficult high schoo
seniors not much younger than he was.
finally turned to them and said, 'If you
don't feel like sticking around for the
course, just go ahead and leave. I'm not
going to report you as playing hookey, or
anything. Take off and let those who want
to do some studying stick around.' None of
them did leave; they quieted down.

"In the course of events, I got my hands
on a group of posters put out by the Soviet
Union promoting things like sanitation,
public health. I saw nothing wrong with giv
ing examples of how a government that
thought differently went about the issue of
public education. In those days the illiteracy
rate in Russia must have been pretty heavy,
and a lot of these issues were being told by
pictures.

rime there were hundreds of warehouses
and processing plants of one kind or
another, almost all tied into the shipping
industry through either the import or
export of products useful to humankind in
various parts of the world. Ships were the
best and cheapest means of transportation,
in most cases. Longshoremen loaded and
unloaded those ships. Warehousemen and
allied workers stored goods received or
awaiting shipment, or bottled them, or
packed, canned, refrigerated, roasted or
otherwise processed them for use by the
eventual consumer.

Although the workaday linkage between
warehousemen and longshoremen seemed
obvious to the Young Turks, most unions
had traditionally ignored the warehousemen
so they were 99% unorganized. Rarely
does such a golden opportunity offer itself to
the union organizer, and as the Y ears _' ent
by it brought great changes to the ILWU.
Beginning as a mere adjunct to Longshore,
Warehouse, in terms of the membership
vote, became a force to be reckoned with.
Finally, when put together with the or
ganization Goldblatt initiated and devel
oped in Hawaii, Warehouse became the tail
that wagged the dog.

Goldblatt's first paid union job was as
Northern California CIO Director - right-
hand man to Harry Bridges. Here and there
were grumbles that Goldblatt was "a smart
ass College boy sent in by the Communist
Party." This was correct only in that he had
a keen mind, always seeking to learn more
about people and events and ways and
means of getting things done, who became
known throughout the West as an intellec
tual labor leader of more than ordinary
ability. Nobody told Goldblatt to join a
union; he followed his own nose. Further
more, he was a natural born workaholic.

efforts of Goldblatt and a group of fiery
young men known as the Young Turks.
In the San =- ay region at that

To hold together and
build the California
CIO Council, Goldblatt
needed tact, diplomacy
and the ability to be on
chummy terms with
people he had little in
common with.

In 1938 he was elected executive secre
tary of the California CIO Council. Thus on
a meager salary and expense account, he wa<
expected to travel all over California from

/DEC.

198

283

CALIFORN1AN

dding to San Diego, helping the 1LWU
i all the other CIO unions solve their
(blems all of which, in those days,
ire difficult, some even hazardous to the
ftlth. As Goldblart remarked, "Those
ren't the days when a guy ran for office so
could get rich."

As far as the West Coast was concerned,
CIO was an assortment of all sorts of
ons, some with lengthy backgrounds in
: East and Midwest, others with no back-
unds at all. In general the greater the
kground, the more ideologically conser-
ive the union. But in common, they
wed a preference for the industrial type of
anization over the old-fashioned craft
lion system. Some, like the Mine, Mill
Smelter Workers, stemmed from Wob-
rraditions. Other, like the International
lies Garment Workers, got their ideas
m the Socialist-versus-Communist com-
x.

The ILWU, which dominated the CIO
the West Coast, pulled itself free of the
iservative and also racket-ridden
nix of the International Longshoremen's
sociation, still to be reckoned with in the
and gulf ports of the United States.
erefore, it had the advantagous mix of
ig experience and the influx of new ideas
a combination that worked.
To hold together and build the California
D Council, Goldblart needed tact, di-
jmacy and an ability to be on chummy
ms with people with whom, deep down,
had little in common. And for nearly
r years Goldblatt managed the job, leav-
only when he was satisfied that the
uncil had become a going concern.
Of this experience he commented, "You
re dealing with such divergent characters;
erybody from a Sherman Dalrymple (a
jsty old Steelworker who had come out of
e United Mine Workers) or the Coulter
others (of the Oil Workers, whom the
ogressives' felt were too company-
nded), and some just plain old-line trade
tionists, some stick-in-the-muds; a crazy
tlange."

Virtually his final act as head of the Cali-
mia CIO Council was his appearance
fore the Tolan Committee on behalf of
e Japanese-Americans. Then, under his
vn steam, Goldblatt resigned to return as
i organizer to his first and only love, the
.WU. He and others tried to expand their
lion to the Midwest, South and East, with
me initial success in Chicago, Min-
japolis, St. Louis, New Orleans and New
ork. But conditions imposed by World
/ar II and rising opposition from other
lions mainly the Teamsters made
tstward expansion extremely difficult, and
1943 Goldblatt returned to the West

Coast to become secretary-treasurer of the
International, where he stayed until he
retired in 1977.

During the Eastern foray, Goldblatt and
other labor leaders were invited to lunch at
the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt in
one of her efforts to help defeat Hitler,
Mussolini and the Mikado. His experience
that day was quite different from his other
adventures in wartime Washington: Gold'
blatt was rebuffed by generals, admirals
and cabinet members when he offered his
plan to utilize the skills of ILWU longshore
men in facilitating discharge of military
cargo in tiny foreign ports devoid of modem
unloading facilities. But his effort was not
entirely lost; later in the war someone had
the sense to put major parts of the Goldblatt
plan to good use.

No sooner had he settled into his execu
tive job in San Francisco than Goldblatt,
ever on the lookout for new worlds to con
quer, began to think and read about Hawaii,
then only a territory of the United States,
operating under martial law. As he fa
miliarized himself with ILWU records
(other than those made by the Warehouse
division, which were well and intimately
known to him), Goldblatt learned that ever
since 1935 there had been attempts at form
ing Longshore locals in Hawaii at ports
like Hilo, Honolulu, Port Allen on the
island of Kauai and at Kahalui on Maui
but no success with the employers, no
recognition, no contracts. In 1941, when
the ILWU finally won NLRB elections for-
longshoremen in Hilo and Honolulu, char
ters were issued to locals there but still no
contracts ensued. The war came along, mar
tial law was imposed and the people in
charge of enforcing that law on the docks
were the shipowners. Even so, the ILWU
locals in Honolulu and Hilo, though muted
by the war, held together fairly well and
were ready to rebuild when Goldblatt
learned of their existence.

Looking back on that situation, Goldblatt
said, "When we began to study the whole
thing, we found the Island economy was
such that longshore plays a different role
than it does in most parts of the country.
Longshore is a specific industry on the main
land. Hawaii was different; longshore was
really an economic offshoot of the principal
industries there, pineapple and sugar. These
would determine what, if anything, would
be shipped out of there.

"I began to read up on Hawaii because I
was fascinated as to why we did not have
well-organized longshore groups covered by
contract or tied into the Pacific Coast agree
ment. After all, Hawaii was at least 85-90%
dependent on West Coast shipping. Matson
Navigation Company (owned by the "Big

Eleanor Roosevelt, during one of her war drives,
received Goldblatt and his proposals for labor aid to
the war effort more cordially than did many military
officers and cabinet members.

Five" at that time) had about the nearest
thing to a complete monopoly on all trade
to Hawaii."

In Hawaii, Goldblatt
and the ILWU collided
with the Big Five, first
successfully suing under
the Fair Labor Standards
Act and then striking
on the Big Five's money
thus netted.

Initially, Goldblatt suggested sending
somebody to Hawaii to look over the scene.
First to go was an old-time longshoreman
named Bill Kraft. Kraft reported that the
longshoremen, by and large, wanted to be in
the union. Next went Matt Meehan of Port
land, former secretary of the International.
He came back with the very specific sugges
tion that the ILWU ask Jack Hall to go to
work for them.

Hall had left ship in Honolulu during a
1936 strike and had made the Islands his
Viome thereafter, spending his time and
whatever money he could scrounge trying
to organize workers all kinds of workers,
for any recognized union.

But when war's advent made organizing
impossible, Hall went to work for the Fair
Labor Standards Act in Hawaii, a federal
job. (This was important later when, armed
with Hall's experience, the ILWU sued the
sugar plantation companies under that Act.)
Also Hall, not eligible for military service
because of his bad eyesight, was happy to be
appointed regional director of the ILWU.

This activity soon led to a head-on colli-

PAGE 28

284

THE CALIFORN1ANS

NOV. /DEC. 1983

Hawaiian sugar cane cutters c. 1 920. The Big 5, descended from companies formed by the first Christian missionaries to the islands, gained control of
most of Hawaii i economy by using "the bed, the Bible, and a deck of cards". Dr. dark Kerr, University of California president emeritus and
longtime observer of Goldblatt, described conditions in Hawaii as "the most nearly semi-feudal . . . that ever existed on U. S. territory/'
Courtesy. The Bancroft Library.

Notes on Hawaii's Big Five

The Big Five in Hawaii consisted
of the following companies:
Alexander Baldwin, C. Brewer,
American Factors, Castle and Cooke and
Theo Davies. (Theo Davies was pri
marily held by British capitalists, includ
ing British royalty.)

Louis Goldblatt obtained much of his
information on the Hawaiian economy
and its background and structure from a
tudy done by Dr. James H. Shoemaker,
formerly with the U. S. Department of
Labor. This (tudy showed the enormous
concentration of wealth in the hands of
the Big Five.

It is estimated that when Captain
Cook first landed in Hawaii, the native
population was estimated to have been
iomt where between half and three quar
ters of a million. Hawaii was settled by
the people who migrated in canoes from
the islands of the South Pacific, probably
about 1,100 years ago. These people

were great navigators. It was quite com
mon for their seamen to sail down to
Samoa, 2,000 miles away, to take in a
royal wedding or some celebration of
similar importance. And they navigated
by fixed stars, showing much more
highly developed seamanship than the
Phoenicians, who sailed only within
sight of land.

The Hawaiian? lived mainly on a
limitless food supply fish. They grew
taro, a starchy root indigenous to the
Islands, and they imported a few animals
(a pig for sure, maybe some chickens)
during their early migrations. Bananas
and coconuts did not exist on Hawaii
when the first humans arrived, but they
came along in due course, by means
known only to nature.

In 1855, at the instigation of the mis
sionary families, the "gr eat menek" took
place a system of dividing the land be
tween the king and his commoners. The

missionaries persuaded the natives that
there was a need to firmly establish title
to the land, something that had not
bothered the Hawaiians before. The
"great mehe/e" wound up with all the
prime land in the hands of the Island
royalty, while the commoners got some
bits and pieces here and there, mostly
marginal land. The missionaries, who
some would say had become more
greedy than good, then began the slow
process of acquiring the royal land.

The technique they used became
famous as "the bed, the Bible, and a deck
of cards." In other words, they married
into the Hawaiian royalty, they used the
Bible to instruct the natives in the ways
of civilization, including wearing mumus
and taming the eroticism of the hula, and
they preyed on the weakness for gam
bling they discovered in those gullible
people.

Goldblatt tells how Sterling Mossman,

NOV. /DEC. 1983

285

THE CALIFORNIANS

PAGE 29

part Hawaiian and a favorite Island
entertainer, had a song about how
'They're looking up at the heavens, hav
ing been told to do so by the missionary,
while the missionary is taking away the
lands down below." The stench of
this operation eventually reached the
churches from which the missionaries
had originally set out, and Goldblart
stated that "there was some threat of
expulsion."

Goldblart once described a visit he
made to the home on Diamond Head of
Paul Pagan, a very wealthy San Fran
ciscan who once owned the baseball
team known as the San Francisco Seals.
He was married to a descendant of the
Lrwin family, which owned half the
island of Molokai and other spots in the
Islands as well as immense holdings in
California. During the years, Pagan and
Goldblatt became "pretty good friends".

"He was showing me around the
house," Goldblatt recalls, "and there was
a round table, five or six feet in
diameter; it looked quite old." I said,
'What's that?' He said, " Thousands of
acres changed hands at that table. It was
used for poker." Prince Kuhio of the
Hawaiian royalty was an inveterate poker
player. It was common for them to bet so
many thousands of acres on the turn of a
card.

As Goldblatt commented, "Land by
its very nature is the key ingredient of
wealth on any island, partially because
you have no frontiers. There's only so
much; after that you're in the water.

"Castle and Cooke, founded by mis-
nonary families, owns or owned the big
gest pineapple operation in Hawaii, a
couple of big sugar plantations, a tuna
packing cannery, 25% or more of the
Matson line. Alexander Baldwin was
founded by the Baldwins, also from mis
sionary stock, primarily on the island of
Maui. They were a pretty adventurous,
daring lot; there are some very colorful
accounts about them.

"And you had interlocking director
ates, at least when we got started. Now
there has been a diversification, primarily
because the ILWU helped to break their
grip. Everything went back to the Big
Five; the banks and utilities held places
on the board of directors. Each of the Big
Five was also a general agent for in
surance companies;' one would be Pru
dential, another would be Hancock, you
name it. This went so far that in a place
like Maui, Alexander Baldwin even ran
the little railroad that ran from some of
the plantations down to the port of
Kahului." - E E. Ward

sion with the Big Five those companies
owned by the descendants of American mis
sionaries who, according to one saying,
"came to the Islands to do good, and they
did well." In any case, when the organizing
drive began, the Big Five controlled vir
tually every phase of Hawaiian life.

The workers Hawaiian, Portugese,
Japanese, Chinese, Filipino had been
chafing under not only the generally poor
pay and conditions but also under the harsh
restrictions imposed by employers under
martial law. The ILWU's organizing effort
was, therefore, a natural; the workers joined
by the tens of thousands.

Goldblart and Jack Hall, working in con
cert, took great pains to lay a solid organiza
tional foundation before doing battle. First,
they concluded that there was no way to
break the grip of the Big Five if they
confined the ILWU campaign solely to the
Island waterfronts. The waterfronts were
merely the transportation division of
Hawaiian industry, which consisted of
pineapple and sugar. Therefore, most of the
organizers headed for the plantations.

Their second consideration was a political
one: it was necessary to get local legislation
permitting unionization of the agricultural
workers if they were to march alongside the
millhands, who were covered by the
National Labor Relations Act. So, all the
meetings called during the campaign turned
into classes in politics, and by language
groupings the new members of the ILWU
were taught how to mark a ballot and who
to vote for. As a result, the 1944 Hawaiian
Legislature was controlled by a majority of
ILWU candidates and the law allowing
unionization of the agricultural workers was
passed.

Third, every effort was made to wipe out
the ethnic distinctions and pecking orders
that the employers had manipulated to pre
vent the workers from uniting effectively.

Fourth, Jack Hall was instrumental in
working out an unusual goody, at the
employers' expense, which gave the new
union a financial backlog to work with.
When Hall was on the staff of the Fair
Labor Standards Act, he became convinced
that the plantation labor system had com
mitted innumerable violations of that Act.
Carrying this conviction with him into his
new job with the ILWU, he prepared
material on which ILWU attorneys based
their suit against all the plantations.

Just before Christmas, 1945, word came
that the employers wished to discuss settle
ment of this suit, and Goldblatt hied him
self to Honolulu to talk it over with Hall.
Goldblart recalled, "We weren't quite sure
what would be a fair settlement, but
[thought that! it ought to be something over

a million dollars; the potential liability of
the employers was enormous millions
and millions of dollars."

The first meeting with the employers,
held a day or two before Christmas, yielded
an offer of half a million dollars to settle die
suit. Goldblatt, Hall and the rank-and-file
union committee didn't even call a huddle;
they just stuck up their noses and walked
out.

The next day die offer jumped to three-
quarters of a million, and a few days later, to
a full million. This began to tempt some of
the union members, and even the ILWU
attorneys. A million dollars! Whereas
before they had had not one red cent!

Goldblatt, however, took this succession
of offers as a sign that the employers were
worried, and managed to hold his ranks
firm. The settlement achieved at that time
was for $1,800,000, a million and a half of
which was to be distributed among the
workers involved, with a hundred and fifty
thousand each to the union itself and to the
union's attorneys.

Long before the 1946 sugar strike began,
the workers began planting vegetable gar
dens. Everything was planned to make sure
that the strikers and their families would get
enough to eat. The ILWU used the money
already won from the employers to finance
needy units. Soup kitchens were set up on
all the plantations; people could come there
with their own utensils and take home food,
but in many cases the families found it more
social to eat with everybody else; the
children especially seemed to enjoy com
munal meals.

Crews of people who had green thumbs
were assigned to gardening; others to the
kitchens and the cooking. Hunters were
assigned to go out in the hills and bring back
meat wild boar was a great favorite
and fishermen went fishing all in addi
tion to doing picket duty.

The kitchens were huge outdoor areas,
sometimes with a tent if it was raining.
Nothing was overlooked: occasionally the
strikers would hear of some farmer whose
cattle had found a break in his fence and got
lost. They'd make a deal to get those cattle
back, "if we get one." Then there would be
a slaughtering and a celebration. Some
strikers did share cropping for small farmers,
taking their pay in produce for the strike
kitchens. There were bumming commit
tees; many small merchants helped out.
Some people needed nickels for their
children's school lunches, and a few staples
had to be purchased, such as flour and con
diments. Mostly, however, the strikers
simply reverted to a primitive economy, liv
ing by their hands, by hunting and fishing.

Goldblatt related, "Every once in a

PAGE 30

286

THE CALIFORNIANS

NOV. /DEC. 1983

while, Jack and I would make the rounds of
the soup kitchens, talk to the members and
see what the general feelings were like,
whether the strike was holding together.
There was a bit of socialist competition as to
who could turn out the best food for the
lowest amount per head, with some of the
plantation getting down to under ten cents
per person. And a fairly good meal, at that."

The soup kitchen-
based sugar strike
masterminded by
Goldblatt left the union
solid and well-organized
but the next year,
1947, the ILWU's tides
of fortune ran the other
way.

The strike lasted 67 days; during that
time federal mediators made several at
tempts to get the opposing sides together,
but nothing came of this.

Two bargaining points of major concern
to the employer side were the union shop
demand and a claim for $25,000,000, stem
ming from the borderline Fair Labor Stan
dards Act cases. From the ILWU viewpoint
these "give away" demands could be drop
ped in bargaining for points more important
to union members. The union shop, often a
sticking point in labor management negotia
tions because it enforces union member
ship, was of little interest to Hawaiian
workers. Goldblatt explains:

"We were riding such a powerful move
ment in the plantations that it became a
question of status in the community, your
whole relations to your family, your friends,
even to doing business in the community,
whether you were a union member or not."

The Fair Labor Standards Act claim later
came to an unusual and dramatic conclu
sion, worked out by Goldblatt and Hall.
The points of most concern to the ILWU
were a guaranteed, substantial wage increase
for every worker, and abolition of the per
quisite sytem. These were won along with
vacations, grievance machinery and for-
malization of sick leave pay this last time,
most union contracts on the mainland had
no sick leave provisions.

Probably the biggest bone of contention
in these negotiations was elimination of
racial discrimination. Goldblatt explained:

"These plantations had this facade of

complete racial equality, the 'aloha' spirit in
Hawaii, but that wasn't even a half-truth. . . .
There was an unwritten rule that every
job beginning with the first grade of super
vision what they call lunas was held
by a haole (white man). There were a few
exceptions, but they were rare ones.
Integrating the people on the plantation
was essential to putting together any kind of
effective fighting machine. The employers
saw our anti-discrimination drive as a move
to open a wedge in managerial control, even
though we did not have lunas in the union;
we never managed to get them in. (But) we
finally won (the anti-discrimination] clause.
Now, local foremen are a thoroughly mixed
group of Japanese, Filipinos, Hawaiians and
what have you. There has been a general
moving up. After years this began to pene
trate the Big Five, where some of the men
in charge of industrial relations are not
haola; people like Ed Wong, Chinese, now
vice-president in Alexander Baldwin; Mits
Fukuda, Japanese, now an officer at Castle
and Cooke, I believe; Harold Hee,
obviously of Chinese background, is an
industrial relations man for Brewer.

"Sugar was a very successful strike. We
emerged with a good, solid, well-organized
union." All these events were master
minded by Goldblatt, either in person or by
correspondence.

The next year, 1947, was rough for the
ILWU in Hawaii. The tides of fortune ran
the other way. A strike called on the pine
apple plantations soon ran into trouble.
Harry Bridges, visiting the bland for the first
time, exercised his leadership and called off
the strike, over the opposition of Jack Hall
(who had a tip from the employers' camp
that the strikers could have won had they
held out two weeks more). Goldblatt later
concluded that Hall's information had been
accurate. In any case, from that point on
enmity existed between Hall and Bridges.

Their pineapple victory encouraged the
employers to enter into an all-out battle
against the ILWU in 1947 and '48. They
persuaded Amos Ignacio to desert his ILWU
leadership post on Hawaii and lead a move
to cleanse the union of the mainlanders,
pushing a Hawaiian union for Hawaiians.
Goldblatt claimed that the Ignacio revolt
was partly financed by one of the Big Five.
But whatever its money source the revolt
had some success. Local newspapers attacked
the ILWU and some of the union's mem
bers began to lean toward Ignacio.

Goldblatt recalled that the newspapers
called him and other ILWU people from
the mainland "kolea birds". "A kolea bird
is a plover, and they are said to use other
birds' nests instead of building their own.
They didn't need any of these kolea birds.

That combined with a great deal of redbait
ing, which had some impact, particulary
with the small merchants, who had been
pretty much friends of ours in '46. This
patriotic pull, this newspaper pull, got
greater and greater."

So, in early 1948 the ILWU called i
showdown convention at the armory ir
Hilo. Also at that time, Life magazine sent tc
Hawaii a journalist and a famous photo
grapher, Eliot Elisofon, to do a story on the
Big Five. According to Goldblatt, when the
journalists came to the ILWU headquarter!
he told them, "I'm not sure you want tc
talk to our people. We know you've beer
riding around in a car supplied by the Big
Five; you've been wined and dined by
them; you have a special rate at your hotel
We don't think much of your objective re
porting. I don't think you're reporters ai
all." The more aloof Goldblatt was, the
more insistent the Life men became. Finally
Goldblatt gave them a letter that gave then-
access to all the union meetings and invitee
them to "walk in there, sit and listen. If the
guys want to talk to you afterwards, fine, ll
not, too bad. We threw the whole thinf
open to the newspapers and everything else
Apparently the Life men realized there wa:
a lot more to it than the story they were get
ting about lovely Hawaii and the beautifu
situation in which the people lived. [Tlhat'i
the first time 1 think we had any deceni
coverage in something like Life."

Speaking to the
"showdown"
convention called to
confront the Hawaiian-
union-for-Hawaiians
dissidents, Goldblatt
kept the members in
the ILWU fold by
reminding them of his
testimony opposing the
internment of Japanese-
Americans.

Goldblan later said that the ILWU triec
to find Ignacio and invite him and other dis
sidents to the convention. "We had hunt
ing parties out all over the place looking fo
him. I guess he decided he didn't want thi
kind of a showdown, or would just rely 01

I U-WU Local 142 negotiating team during the 1965 sugar negotiations, with Goldblatt fourth from left. Jack Hall is on Leu/is 's right. A majority of the
committee and of the officers of the local are non- Anglo. Goldblatt'i commitment to racial equality particularly his vocal opposition to the in-
| lernment of Japanese-Americans during World War II saved the ILWU's Hawaiian organizing effort from disruption by Hawaiian~union-for

Hau'aiians dissidents

the support of the employers and the
newspapers. He never showed up."

Goldblatt's key message to the conven
tion was worker unity. But the key "per-
uader" in Goldblatt's speech came when
he read to the convention a letter received
years before, unsolicited, from Dillon S.
Myer, who had been in charge of the
Japanese concentration camps on the main
land towards the end of World War Two.
Myer complimented Goldblatt for his
testimony in opposition to internment of
the Japanese -American, describing it as "a
beacon light."

After reading Myer's letter, Goldblatt
asked the convention whether any of the
Big Five had befriended "the local people
when you were having the hell kicked out
of you, when you were put in concentration
camps, families broken up, people barred
from certain employment, maids frozen in
their jobs for $25 a month or less, or in a
laundry so the colonel could get a shirt
lometime? You just name one person. All
you gotta do is think back and make a deci-
H'on for yourself: are these new-found
friends better than the old ones?"

The impact was obvious, particularly
among the Japanese who were most active in
the union. When the issue was put to a
referendum vote, more than 95% favored
Kicking with the ILWU.

This, however, did not solve all prob
lems. The advent of the mechanization of
cane-cutting and slumping sugar prices
caused the employers to make demands that
led to yet another strike in 1948. This time,
the employers asked for a wage reduction
plus a differentiation for those plantations in
distress because their terrain was too rough
to adapt to machine cutting.

The ILWU studied the wage cut, but was

adamantly opposed to differentiation, being
determined to keep industry-wide bargain
ing intact. Although a strike was avoided,
one plantation, Olaa, locked out its
employees. The union supported the result
ing strike at Olaa but resisted the invitation
to widen the struggle. Instead, Goldblatt
and Hall bargained as best they could under
difficult circumstances.

"We couldn't get rid of the entire wage
cut," says Goldblatt. "We got rid of about
half of it, and then we got rid of the rest of
it later on [when sugar prices bounced back
upl. "

In 1949, Goldblan and the ILWU
turned their attention to the Hawaiian
longshoremen who, though 100% union
and under contract with the Hawaiian ship
pers, had never achieved wage parity with
their mainland brethren. The gap had
grown to 47 cents an hour (basic wage) for
identical work.

The contract expired on May 1, and
Goldblatt said that perhaps the employers
thought the date was "more than a coinci
dence." (May 1 was the date of the original
Labor Day, first observed in the United
States. May 1, in the rest of the civilized
world, still is the day for the working class to
show its muscle.) There was a single
demand for a wage increase, based on the
raise of 15 cents per hour just achieved by
West Coast longshoremen. If the Hawaiian
longshoremen could win a raise of 16 cents
an hour, that would close the 47-cent parity
gap by one cent an hour, and if they could
repeat this gain of a single penny in each
succeeding year, in 32 years they would
reach equality with their fellow unionists
2,000 miles away.

The employer stuck at 12 cents, with
Goldblatt sensing that 14 cents was a

definite possibility but not 16 cents, the
lowest gain that could make a strike worth
while. Only a two-cent difference but, if the
union could get that two cents, it would give
a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel
wage parity! The strike was on.

Goldblatt tells of sitting at the breakfast
table of Alex "Pinky" Budge, one of the Big
Five, listening to an oration on the beauties
of Hawaii which led, as always, to the stan
dard argument that these beauties should
compensate for the low wages obtaining
there. Budge failed to mention, however,
that living costs in Hawaii are much higher
than on the mainland a fact that added
insult to the Hawaiian longshoreman's
injury.

The Big Five, looking for a knockout that
would rid the bland of the ILWU forever,
used every punch in the anti-union reper
toire redbaiting, anti-Semitism (attacking
in particular Goldblatt and an ILWU attor
ney with a Jewish name), strike-breaking
and the "Broom Brigade". (This last
weapon, more formally known as "We, the
Women", consisted of employers' wives
and their maids mostly the maids
picketing the ILWU's Honolulu office.)

The federal government, while all this
was going on, indicted Harry Bridges and
two other union officers (not Goldblatt) on
charges of Communist conspiracy, claiming
that they had lied by swearing, at a cermony
where Bridges became an American citizen,
that he had never been a member of the
Communist Party. These charges, like pre
vious similar charges against Bridges, were
ultimately wiped out by the United States
Supreme Court. It seems reasonable to
speculate that the charges were really
intended to help the Big Five, because the
then-U. S. attorney general, Tom Clark,

PAGE 32

288

THE CALIFORNIANS

NOV. /DEC. 1983

issued a statement declaring that the indict
ment "ought to help clear up the situation
in Hawaii."

Goldblatt credits Bridges for playing a
constructive role in the Hawaiian longshore
strike that contributed, more than any other
single factor, to the victory. Under Bridges'
guidance, the mainland longshoremen made
it impossible for the Big Five to ship sugar
and pineapple (or any other Hawaiian prod
ucts) to the mainland, and also thwarted
efforts to ship goods, other than essentials
such as food, medical supplies and pas
sengers' luggage, from the mainland to
the Islands. Also, Bridges came to Honolulu,
walked the picketline with an official of the
Teamsters Union and did other helpful
things.

Goldblatt's genius for
compromise set the
Hawaiian longshoremen
on the road to parity
with their West Coast
counterparts, and also
helped usher in an era
of more cordial relations
with employers as well
as other unions.

The Big Five raised their offer to 14
cents, but stuck there. Finally, the
employers began getting restless: here the
strike was nearly six months old a length
of time that almost always means that the
strikers have lost and the ranks of the
Hawaiian longshoremen were as solid as at
the start. Bridges, in contact with members
of the Big Five on the mainland, sniffed a
hint of approaching settlement in the air
and returned to Honolulu.

Goldblatt learned that some of the key
money-men (e.g., Walter Buck, Paul Fagan
and people in the Matson Navigation Com
pany) were fed up and eager to bring the
pay issue to a head. They sent around a
representative with whom Goldblatt had
dealt on the mainland, and the two had "a
very abrasive session." In between the angry
exchanges, however, Goldblatt suggested to
the Big Five representative that the
employers could cling to their 1 4 cents and
still pave the way to giving the workers their
demand for wage parity. How? By way of a

two-step contract, starting at 14 cents and
going to parity within the one-year term of
that contract.

Bingo! "I recall a session with Walter
Buck," says Goldblatt. "There was son of a
general agreement that it would be 21 cents

14 and 7 and obviously the employer
ranks were badly split. Buck announced the
thing was settled; Harry did the same thing.
And within a day or two it was settled; 21
cents. Instead of getting parity over 32 years,
we had it in two years. And they still get
automatic parity." A major turning point in
ILWU affairs came with the West Coast
longshoremen's winning of a 1948 strike,
ushering in an almost complete change in
employer attitudes and a peaceful era
known as the "New Look". Goldblatt
turned his energies toward implementing
his belief that unions should be "instru
ments for change," not only in regard to the
traditional wages, hours and working condi
tions, but also regarding other areas of life

pension, vacations with pay, low-cost
housing, health plans, dental care for
workers' childeren, etc. All these benefits
have come to pass for ILWU members.

Among the best known of Goldblatt's
projects in California is the workers' hous
ing in San Francisco's St. Francis Square.

Into the scene of cordial cooperation be
tween capitalism and proletariat came a new
kind of employers' attorney, J. Paul St.
Sure, new president of the Pacific Maritime
Association. While unusually cooperative in
many ways, St. Sure persuaded the ILWU
to accept his "Modernization and Mech
anization Plan" which revolutionized
the longshore industry. Goldblatt was origi
nally enthusiatic about this plan, seeing its
inevitability and thinking it could benefit
the workers. Experience with the plan,
however, soon changed Goldblatt's mind
but not Bridges'.

In a speech at his "farewell" dinner a
quarter of a century later, Bridges praised
the membory of St. Sure as a man who had
taught him many things. According to
Goldblatt, one of the things Bridges learned
from that source was that St. Sure, the
employers' key man, was always right. "He
gave," Goldblatt said, "but he took more
than he gave. ... He was a charming
scoundrel."

Goldblatt thought that his resistance to
some of St. Sure's maneuvers was the open
ing gun in a conflict with Bridges that grew
until almost anything one proposed the
other opposed. Realizing that this stalemate
was harming the union, Goldblatt forced
both himself and Bridges to retire in 1977.
"I called the turn," Goldblatt said.

But in contrast, he could be a diplomat as
well as a fighter. Starting in 1956 and 1957,

Goldblatt engineered a series of face-to-face
discussions, first with Jimmy Hoffa and, soon
after, with a local Teamster official who had
once worked for the ILWU. These talks
eventually changed relations between the
two unions from bitter hatred to dose
cooperation in many fields. As another
example of his diplomatic ability, Goldblatt
used union, political and social contacts that
he had taken pains to keep alive throughout
the years to achieve what most labor leaders
called an "impossibility" in the 1968 San
Francisco newspaper strike. He coaxed the
Newspaper Guild, a CIO union and 15 AFL
craft unions (all involved in the newsprint
industry) into a mood of unity that led to
accord with the publishers and a successful
conclusion of the strike.

Outside the ILWU orbit, Goldblatt
helped American Indians in their efforts to
make Alcatraz an island fortress, the free
speech movement at UC-Berkeley, Cesar
Chavez and his fight to organize California's
farm workers and the civil rights sit-ins of
the '60s and '70s.

Epilogue

Now it is over. Until his death earlier this
year, Goldblatt was enjoying family life in
Mill Valley with his wife, his three
daughters and two grandchildren. He taught
a class in negotiations now and then and
would discuss China with anyone who
would listen. But let Clark Kerr sum up the
man: "Lou Goldblatt walks through these
[oral history! pages as he has through life as a
man of the Left, as an energetic participant
in history ... as a realist, as a participant in
many battles but who could stand outside of
them and above them, and as a person of
more good will and good humor than he
appeared to be to some who knew him
along the way. He ends these many jour
neys, as he began them, with hope."

From author to reader: This article is
largely based on extensive interviews con
ducted by me with the late Lewis Goldblatt.

- E. E. W.

Author Ward, a labor historian, was
Goldblatt's oral history interviewer, and is
now condensing that document into book
form intended for general publication. The
oral history is now available to the public at
UC's Regional Oral History Office at the
Bancroft library in Berkeley. Ward also
wrote The Gentle Dynamiter, a biography of
Tom Mooney recently published by Ram
parts Press.

Keepers of the Labor Record Honorees
April 27, 1989

Madeline Alverson
Fred J. Camacho
Margery Canright

Pat Dunn
Bette Eriskin

Charles Hackett
Zoia Horn

Elinor Kahn Kamath
Marjorie Leonard
Richard Liebes

Gwendolyn Lloyd

Joan London
Clara MacDonald

Ruth Mark

Margaret McMurray
Doris B. Murphy

Paul G. Pinsky

Anne Rand
Merle Richmond

Carol Schwartz
Sarah Stewart

Kristian Valstad
Angela Ethan Ward

Estolv Ward

California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO

Teamsters Local 85

Anne Rand Library, International

Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union

International Brotherhood of Electrical

Workers, Local 1245

Business/Social Science Library,

University of California, Berkeley

Warehouse Union Local 6, ILWU

DataCenter

Assistant Research Director, ILWU

Law Offices, Leonard & Carter

Research Director, Northern California

Council of Service Employee Unions

Institute of Industrial Relations, UC,

Berkeley

California Labor Federation AFL-CIO

California Labor School; ILWU Research

Library; Northern California ACLU

Division of Labor Statistics & Research,

California State Dept. of Industrial

Relations

California Nurses Association

The Joseph A. Murphy Center for Labor

Education and Social Action

Research Director, California CIO

Council

ILWU Research Library

Harry Bridges Case, Law Offices,

Gladstein & Leonard

Anne Rand Library, ILWU

Warehouse Union Local 6, JLWU

Union Research & Information Service;

Western Benefit Plan Consultants

Library; Regional Oral History Office,

UC, Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office, UC,

Berkeley

Labor Archives & Research Center
San Francisco State University

289

INDEX - Estolv Ward

Adams-Campbell Die Casting &

Molding Company, 143-4
Alameda County Central Labor
Council, 50, 57-9, 62-5,

223

Alameda County CIO Council,
63-6, 69, 72-6, 79-81, 83,
85-6, 91, 101, 180, 222-3,
261
Alameda County Industrial

Union Council, 59, 62
Alioto, Joseph L., 236
Amalgamated Clothing Workers,

115
Amalgamated Garment Workers,

American Communication Asso
ciation (ACA), 103, 117,

151-4, 156

and Western Union, 151-2
American Federation of Labor
(AF of L), 5, 9, 62, 66,
106, 121-2, 125-8, 130,
136-8, 110, 151, 154, 155,
159, 160, 177, 223
American Newspaper Guild.

See Newspaper Guild
American Trading Company, 9,

20
Anaconda Copper Company,

121, 128-30, 135
Anderson, Carleton (Andy),
52, 70

Ballentine, Betty, 48, 54,

Ballentine, Henry, 48
Barilone, Johnny, 116
Barlow, Eddie, 153, 162
Barrows, David Prescott, 96
Barrows, General, 43
Basic Magnesium, 121-3, 128-

143, 149-51, 261, 269
Bentley code, 16

Berkeley, California, 8, 9,

10, 12, 15, 26-29, 74
Perkins Typewriter Company,

fire, 1923, 27, 28
Harms and Morse Stationary

Store, 29
Shuey Creamery, 235

Berkov, Ben, 178

Bessie, Alvah, 234-5, 253

Billings, Warren, 87

blacks, organizing, 124, 132,
135-9, 141-2, 155

Bogigian, Ellinore, 107, 117

Bohemian Club, 108

Bondy, Harold, 159-60

Boston Medical School, 5-6

Boudin, Louis, 206

Bowman, Charlie, 25

Bowron, Fletcher, 115-16

Brewery Workers, 159-62, 171,
173, 224

Bridges, Harry, 43-4, 61 , 67,
68, 71-4, 76-8, 86-100,
102-4, 106, 121, 158, 17C
172-3, 180, 182-3, 189,
205, 226, 234, 238, 255-
263
Harry Bridges on Trial,

99-101, 103, 172
trial, Angel Island, 76-7,
90-99, 100, 102, 106, 170,
180, 182

Broadhead, George, 223-5

Broun, Connie, 101

Broun, Heywood, 45, 48, 101

Browder, Earl, 164

Brown, Archie, 156, 211

Bryson, Hugh, 168, 189

Burford, Jim, 102

Burke, J. Vernon, 90, 105-6

Caen, Herb, 82

California Labor School, 166,
171, 187-8, 201, 257

290

California State CIO Conven
tion, 71-2, 77-8, 85, 87,

170

California State CIO Council,
71-2, 77-9, 121

162

California Supreme Court, San
Francisco, 18, 51, 57, 61,

Cannery Workers Union, 86
Century Die Casting Company,

Chevalier, Barbara, 50
Chevalier, Carol, 227, 229,

231
Chevalier, Haakon, 37, 50-1,

58, 227-9, 231, 236
Cheyfitz, Dorothy Eckert,

112
Cheyfitz, Eddie, 112, 120-1,

118

China, 19-21
Clyde, Johnny, 116
Cole, Lester and Kay, 235
Committee for Industrial
Organization (CIO), 58-9,
62-3, 67, 77, 80, 108,
110, 122, 121, 127-30,
133, 138, 153-5, 157,
159, 162-3, 170, 222-3
Alameda County, 63-1, 68,

91, 170

Alameda County Central
Labor Council, 50, 57-9,

62-5, 223

Alameda County CIO Council,
63-6, 69, 72-3, 75-6, 79,
80-1, 83, 85-6, 91, 101,
180, 222-3, 261
California State CIO Con
vention, 71-2, 77-8, 85,

87, 170
California State CIO

Council, 71-2, 77-9, 121
CIO News, 135
Contra Costa CIO Council,

180

leftist purge, 163-5, 73,
222

Local 10, 93

Los Angeles CIO Council,

110, 123-1, 131
radio program, 110, 117,

120, 128-30, 227
San Francisco CIO Council,

108, 152, 151, 159, 170,

221
San Francisco CIO Political

Action Committee, 153-7,
West Coast, 72, 93-1, 105,

106, 115
Communist Party, Iff

and Basic Magnesium, Inc.,

132, 110
Bay Region, 51, 55-9, 61,

63- 65-6, 75, 103, 151,

160-1, 161, 192
and CIO purge of leftist

unions, 222-3
DuClos letter, 118, 161-5,

215
and California State CIO

Convention, 71, 77, 83
exiles in Paris, 231-8
and Governor Culbert Olson,

88-9
and Harry Bridges, 92, 95,

96, 99, 182
and House Un-American

Activities Committee

(HUAC), 198-200, 202
Italian, 207-13
and Labor's Non-Partisan

League, 105-7, 171
Los Angeles, 117-18, 119
and Mine, Mill, and Smelter

Workers, 180, 182
Northern California, 91
Soviet, 213-17
and Taft-Hartley, 168,

171-5, 202
underground, 219-50, 178-9,

183-5

Sierra Nevada Group,

183-5

and unions, 81
and Henry Wallace campaign,

190

291

Connelly, Dorothy Healy, 110,

192, 265
Connelly, Philip "Slim," 78, 106,

110, 116, 119, 123
Contra Costa County CIO

Council, 180
Cur ran, George, 146, 242
Czytelnick Publishing House,

194-5

D'Angulo, Jaime, 36-7

Dargee, Mrs., 53

Davidson, Milt, 79, 87

Dawson, Ralph, 123

DeJong, Dirk, 97

Democratic Socialist Organi
zing Committee (DSOC), 265

Dies Committee, 112

Disney Studios, 116

Dole Pineapple flight, 32-4
"Flying School Mann," 33

Duarte, Chile, 69

DuCaux, Lenny, 138

DuClos letter, 118, 164-5,
215

Dyer, Dick, 64

Eckert, Ken, 112-13, 120-1,

123, 128, 140, 148-9
Edmonds, Percy, 223, 225
Edmundsen, Fred, 20
Electrical Manufacturing
Company, San Francisco,

175-8, 186, 200
Evans, Herbert M., 32
Ewer, Johnny, 15

Farrell, Tom, 227. See also
Tom Van Dycke

Federal Bureau of Investiga
tion (FBI), 150, 181, 183

Federated Metal, 224-5
Fowler, C. D., 135
Fowler, Eleanor, 135
Franco, General Francisco,

organizing against, 80-81
Frankenstein, Dick, 114-15

Garry, Charles, 169, 189,

202

The Gentle Dynamiter, 87,
166, 200, 249-51, 253-4,

258, 268-9
Gizzi, Angela. See Angela

Gizzi Ward
Gizzi, Maria, 208
Gizzi family, 88, 118, 141
Gladstein, Richie, 93, 95-7,

106, 109, 145, 184
Gladstein, Grossman, and

Maraolis. 15<
Glavinovich, Rose, 31, 36-7,

Glessner, H. P., 12
Gold, Lee and Tammy, 234
Goldblatt, Louis, 71-2, 76,

78-80, 85-6, 94, 105-6,

115, 117, 123, 150, 152,

164, 170, 172-3, 175, 188,

205, 255-63

Goldblatt, Terry, 255, 262
Gold Rush, California, 3
Green, Bill, 58-9, 223
Grey, Fernando (Dading), 17-

19
Grossman, Aubrey, 97, 109

Hall, Jack, 260-1
Hanov, Elmer "Pop," 91, 213
Harrison, Claire, 139
Hartford, Dick, 102
Harvill Die Casting Company,

112, 120

Havenner, Frank, 147-8
Haynes, Lynn, 149

292

Healy, Dorothy (Dorothy Healy

Connelly), 113, 193, 265
Hearst, William Randolph, 12
Heide, Paul, 58, 62, 69, 70
Heide, Fay, 58, 62, 69, 70
Henderson, Las Vegas, 122-3,

128-32, 138
Heywood, Bill, 112
Higdon, Jack, 131-2, 136,

138, 110-1

Hillman, Sidney, 115
Hollawa, Bob, 122, 128-9
Hoover, Herbert, 11-2
Houseman, Joe, 131-3, 137,

139-41

House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), 185, 192,

198, 202, 209-10

Hoxsie, , 166-7

Hoxsie, John, 166
Hoxsie, Lizzie, 166
Hull, Morgan, 57
Humphrey, Miles, 63-70, 72,

73, 75, 77-9, 81, 95-6

International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers (IBEW),

175, 177-8

International Lady Garment
Workers Union (ILGWU), 85,

227

International Longshoremen
and Warehousemen's Union
(ILWU), 58-9, 69-70, 74,
77-8, 86, 99-100, 121,
152, 158, 161-2, 175, 189,
206, 226, 231, 257, 262-3
International Union of Mine,
Mill, and Smelter Workers,
112, 180-1. See also
Mine, Mill, and Smelter
Workers
Irvine, Charles (Ted), 59

Jenkins, Dave, 119, 119, 178,

183, 190, 193
Jerico, Sylvia, 231

Johnson, Johnny, 110, 227

Jorgenson, _, 16

Jurasz-Damska, Krystyna, 195
197

Kagel, Sam, 177

Kahn, Elinor (Elly), 188,

238

Kamath, Mahdav, 238-9
Kaplan, Leon "Kappy," 160-1,

190, 193, 201
Kelley, Mike, 31
Kelley, Spike, 17
Kennedy, John F.,

assassination, 215-6
Kenney, Bob, 88-90
Keynes, Tom, 117
King, Carol, 97
Know land, Joseph R., 31-5,

10, 17, 53

Knowland, Russ, 31-5, 12
. Knowland, William F., 31-5,

16
Kutnik, Lee, 185

Labor's Non-Partisan League,
76, 90, 91, 105-7, 111,
117, 172, 171
labor union organizing,
American Communications
Organization, 117, 151-1,

156

Western Union, 151-5
Brewery Workers, 159-62,

171

East Bay unions, 69-70, 81
Electrical Mfg. Co., San

Francisco, 175-8, 200
Mine, Mill, and Smelter

Workers, 112-17, 121-5,

153, 166-8

Adams-Campbell Die Cast
ing and Molding Company,

113-1

Aluminum Company of Amer
ica (Alcoa), 125-7

293

Basic Magnesium, Las
Vegas, 121-4, 128-13,
269

Century Die Casting Co.,
143-4

Harvill Die Casting Co.,
Los Angeles, 112-14,
120

North American, Los Ange
les, 114-17

Western Mechanics, 120-1
Newspaper Guild, San Fran
cisco/Oakland, 45-6
La Luneta, 16-18
Lambert, Rudy, 91-2, 152,

156
Lambert, Walter, 73, 75, 90-

93, 106, 149, 152
Landis, Dean, 97-9, 102
Lapham, Roger, 154
Leonard, Norman, 80-1 , 159,

181, 184, 188, 199, 206,

260, 266-7

Levy, Leo, 39, 45, 49
Lewis, John L., 58-9, 90,

105, 172-4

Lichauco, Dolores, 17-19
Lichauco, Faustina, 18
Lieber, Maxim, 194-5, 197
Los Angeles CIO Council, 110,

123-4, 131

Lowie, Robert, 37, 51
Lundberg, Harry, 103-4
Lundigan, Jack, 119-20
Lynden, Dick, 158, 211

Machinists Union, 68, 74,
155

Local 1304, 74
Maloney, Tom, 157
Malraux, Andre, 229
Manila, Philippines, 16-18
Manila Hotel, 17
Marine Cooks and Stewards,

168
Marine Workers Industrial

Union (MWIU), 44-5, 51, 62
Marshall, William, 235

Martin, George, 63
Mason, Redfern, 55
Matuso, Harvey, 180-1
Maybeck, Bernard, 28, 51
McCarran, Patrick, 136, 150,

151

Merriam, Frank, 93
Michener, Lou, 116
Milner, Major, 97-8
Mine, Mill, and Smelter

Workers Union, 112-17, 121,
122-5, 128, 131, 134-5,
140-3, 153, 166, 179,
181-2, 222-5
Local 50, 224
See also names of indivi
dual companies
Modern Age publishers, 99,

100

Money on the Floor, 241-2
Montgomery, Jack, 70
Moody, Ella, 235
Moon, Bucklin, 193-4
Mooney, Tom, 79, 87, 89, 92,
93, 166, 200, 244-5, 249-
251, 253, 258, 268-9
The Gentle Dynamiter, 87,
166, 200, 149-51, 253-4,
258, 268-9
Moore, Bob, 70
Moore, Larry, 254
Moorehead, Del, 160, 163-4
Morris, Edita and Ira, 234
Morse, James R. , 9
Morse, Milton, 9
Mortimer, Wyndham, 67-8
Moulin, Gabriel, 186-7, 198,

221

Muir, John, 5, 24
Muir, Johnny, 15
Murray, Phillip, 73, 166,
172

National Division of Die

Casters, 112
National Guard, 10
National Labor Relations

Board (NLRB), 129, 136

294

Neilson, Ernie, 25

Neilson Furniture Company,
Santa Rosa, 11

Newspaper Guild, San Fran
cisco/Oakland, 15-9, 51-5,
57-60, 61-5, 67, 75, 77-8,
86, 101, 222-3

Noble, Iris, 191, 193

Noral, Alex, 103

Norris, Kathleen, 109

North American, strike, 85

Norton, Stanley, 16-7

Oakland general strike, 1917,

171, 173
Oakland Post-Enquirer, 16,

55, 60

The Oakland Times, 16

Oakland Tribune, 31-6, MO,

12-3, 15-53, 55, 70
O'Brien, Aileen, 80, 82, 88
O'Connor, Oleta (Yates), 151,

168, 185, 190-3, 201-5,

210, 262-3

Office Workers Union, San
Francisco, 73, 79, m
Olson, Culbert, 79-80, 88-90,

93, 185-6, 189
Olson, Dick, 89-90, 106
Olson, Johnny, 102-3
O'Neill, Jim, 261

Pacific Coast Maritime

Association, 257
Pagnol, Marcel, 229
Patterson, Ellis, 106-7, 117,

189
Paul VI, papal inauguration,

239-11
Pedro Pete (A. H. Peterson),

121-2, 133

Pellman, Matt, 117, 119
People's World, 55-6, 91-2,

187-8, 201, 226-7, 253,

268

Perry, Celia, 2
Perry, Norma, 103-1

Peterson, A. H. (Pedro Pete),

121-2, 133
The Piecard (Renegat), 162-3

166, 169, 172, 193
Pinsky, Paul, 178, 185, 200,

230, 251
Pittman, Las Vegas, 122, 128,

130

Plowman, Auntie, 9
Populist ticket, 1
Pozner, Vladimir, 235
Progressive Party, 189-90
Prohibition, 11
Pu Yi, Henry, 20

Quakers, in Algeria, 212-9
Quezon, Manuel, 18-19
Quin, Mike, 56, 61

Ramparts Press, 251
Rathborne, Mervyn, (Merv),

103, 153

Real, Charlie, 58, 66
Regional War Labor Board,

California, 127
Reite, Ed, 91-5, 158
Renegat (The Piecard), 162-3,

166, 169, 172, 193
Resner, Herb, 211
Reuther, Walter, 111
Rhine, Jessica, 181-2
Richmond, Al, 192-3, 253
Richmond, Merle, 188
Ring, Joe, 72-3
Robinson, Jim, 127
Robinson, Margaret, 127
Robinson, Reid, 121, 127-8,

131-5, 112-3, 166-8
Rogers, Doc, 15
Rolph, Tom, 117
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 11-2,

11, 85, 102, 173, 192
Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel,

230

Rosenthal, Joe, 17-8
Russian Revolution, 1905, 19

295

Sacramento Press Democrat,

48-9
St. Sure, J. Paul, 69, 171,

256-9
Samish, Artie, 94

Sanctes, Sancte de, 207, 209
Sanctes, Ugo, 207
San Francisco

Bernal Heights, 7
"Bloody Thursday," 43-5
Candlestick Park, 108
earthquake and fire, 1906,

10, 11
General Strike, 1934, 43-5,

48-9

Panama Pacific Internation
al Exposition, 14
Smith's Cash Grocery, 1
San Francisco Art Institute,

186, 221
San Francisco CIO Council,

108, -152, 154, 159, 170,

224
San Francisco CIO Political

Action, 153-7, 162
San Francisco Chronicle, 45,

48, 55, 60, 65, 89, 97-8
San Francisco Examiner, 31 ,

45-7, 55, 60, 65, 156
San Francisco News, 47-8, 60,

100-1

San Francisco Press Club, 97
Sarosohn, Peggy, 192, 209
Saxton, Sandy, 248
Schafran, Eva, 118
Schlipf, Paul, 70, 72, 80,

85, 88, 170-1, 232
Schmidt, Henry, 255
Schneiderman, Bill, 73, 75,

87, 91-2, 99, 149, 152,

165, 262
Schnur, Paul, 152-7, 159-60,

162, 173

Schofield, Ron, 48, 60
Schwartz, Carol, 223
Schwartz, Monroe, 223
Scott, Adrian, 235
Scott, Arthur, 91-3, 96
Scott, Jean, 39

Sen, Peritosh, 235
Sasuly, Dick, 206
Sesuly, Elizabeth, 135
Shelley, Jack, 106-7, 202,

205

Shuey, Barbara, 235
Sinclair, Upton, 43, 46, 88
Sewell, Emmett, 64
Slaby, Frank, 69
Smith, Jin "Turkey Neck," 68

74
Smith, Laura Mae. See Ward,

Laura Mae Smith
Smith, Paul C., 60
Smith Act, 178, 184, 186
Smith-Kennedy, Alma, 51-2
Socialism, 213-16
Socialist Party, 7, 11-16,

26, 169
Soviet Union, 91, 210-17,

226

Spooner, Bill, 58-9, 223
Sprott, Pesky, 25
Sproul, Robert Gordon, 82
Steingart, Harry and Sylvia,

230

Steelworkers union, 166
Local 96, 73-4, 79, 95
Local 1798, 73
Strack, Celeste, 204
Strassman, Toni, 237
Sullivan, Elliot, 237
Sussman, Morris, 85

Taft-Hartley, 150, 168, 173,

174, 181, 202
Teamsters Union, 58, 66, 84-5,

160, 173

Tenney, Jack, 183
Thomas, Norman, 36, 41-3
Thompson, Dave, 109
Thompson, Frank, 1 61
Thompson, Fred, 108-10
Thompson, Jean, 109
Thompson, Joe, 108
Todd, Louise, 156
Travis, Maurice, 126, 180
Trorey, Eugenia Ward, 29, 37

119-20

296

Trotsky ites, 81-2

Tucker, Welcome (Welc), 2-3

United Auto Workers (UAW),
68-70, 74, 80, 86, 111,
116, 151
University of California,

Berkeley, 13, 96
Utility Workers Organizing
Committee (UWOC), 131, 145,
146, 149-50, 163, 168,
224

Valentine, Max, 26

Van der Linden, Cornelius

"Daddy," 11, 16
Van der Linden, Peter, 11
Van der Linden family, 11
Van Dycke, Liz, 229
Van Dycke, Tom, 227-9, 234,

236-8, 241, 244
del Vayo, Julio Alvarez, 239
di Vittorio, Anita, 211-12
di Vittorio, Guiseppe,. 211,

212

Virginia Military Institute
(VMI), 23, 25

Wallace, Henry, 169, 189

Warehouse Ball, 98

War Labor Board, 133, 136,

143

War Unity Board, 205
Ward, Angela Gizzi, 71 ff
Alameda County CIO Council,

81-2

Anaconda Copper, 135-6
Basic Magnesium, Inc.,

122-3, 131, 133, 135-41
California State CIO con
ventions, 71-2, 79, 80
Communist Party affiliation
71, 156, 165, 173, 179,
184, 191-3, 101, 211-12,
234

leaving the Party, 191-3,
200-1

Communist relatives in

Italy, 207-10
Garry, Charles, campaign
manager, 169. 189, 202
and House Un-American
Activities Committee
(HUAC), 192-3, 198-200,
209-10
Los Angeles CIO Council,

120-21
marriage to Estolv Ward,

87-8

Mine, Mill, and Smelter
Workers, International
Union of, 112, 120, 125,

129, 131, 133, 135-41
parents, 88, 118, 141
and Progressive Party, 189
Henry Wallace campaign,
190

San Francisco Office
Workers Union, 73, 79,

111

and Taft-Hartley, 168, 174

Utility Workers Organizing

Committee (UWOC), 145-8,

151, 163, 168, 174
Western Benefit Plan Con
sultants, 178, 200-1,
220, 230-2, 251
Ward, General Artemas, 37-8
Ward, Louis Artemas (Art),
1-11, 13-14,

16-17, 19, 23-7, 49, 61,
167, 169, 186, 200-201,
205
Ward, David Perry Artemas,

37-8, 232-3
Ward, Eugenia (Eugenia Ward

Trorey), 29, 37, 119-20
Ward, George Hazzard Mumford

Perry, 2-4

Ward, Uncle John, 3,4
Ward, Laura Mae Smith, 1, 4-

7, 30

Ward, Aunt Nettie, 10-12
Ward, Roger Ewing, 38
Waste, Jean, 12, 15-16, 23-7,
39-40

297

Waste, Judge, 12, 17, 31-2,
38-UO, U9, 6M

Waste family,, 15, 16, 2M

Wayburn, Bruce, 206

Webb, Miss, 12

Weinbrenner, Dolph, 95

Welch, Dick, 108

Western Benefit Plan Consul
tants, 178, 185

Western Federation of Miners,
112

Western Mechanics, 120-1
Local 700, 112, 121

Western Union, 151-5

Western Worker, 55, 61

Whitney, Anita, 35, 83, 156

Willkie, Wendall L., 172-3

Wilson, George, 60, 100, 173

Woolworth's Department Store,
7M

World War I, 17, 2H-5

Yangco, Teodoro, 17

Yanov, Nat, 80-1

Yates, Allen, 20M

Yates, Oleta O'Connor, 15 1 *,

168, 185, 190-3, 20M-5.

210, 262-3

Lisa Rubens

Received a B.A. in American History from the University
of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. from the University
of Michigan. After working for the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission, she taught United States History from 1969-
1984 at Laney Community College, Oakland, California. She
helped develop and taught a series of special-emphasis
courses on the History of U.S. Labor, on the Social and
Cultural History of Working People, and on Women.

During the 1970s Ms. Rubens was an organizer for the
California Federation of Teachers and also began more
scholarly endeavors. She has written on the 1934 Maritime
and General Strike in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well
as on the role of women in California politics and labor.

Ms. Rubens is currently completing her Ph.D. in U.S. History
at the University of California at Berkeley, where she is
specializing in U.S. social, cultural, political and labor
history during the 1930s. She continues to conduct oral
histories in the field of labor history for the Regional
Oral History Office.

2 015 7 2