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Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Volume I
Louis Goldblatt
WORKING CLASS LEADER IN THE ILWU, 1935-1977
in two volumes
With an Introduction by
Clark Kerr
An Interview Conducted by
Estolv Ethan Ward
in 1978, 1979
All uses of this manuscript are covered by
a legal agreement between the Regents of the
University of California and Louis Goldblatt
dated December 4, 1979. The manuscript is
thereby made available for research purposes.
According to the agreement, the manuscript is
closed to all users until January 1, 1983,
except with the written permission of Louis
Goldblatt. All literary rights to publish are
reserved to Louis Goldblatt until January 1,
1990. 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 at Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publi
cation should be addressed to the Regional
Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should
include identification of the specific passages
to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages,
and identification of the user. The legal agree
ment with Louis Goldblatt requires that he be
notified of the request and allowed thirty days
in which to respond.
Copy No .
Copyright (c) 1980 by the Regents of the University of California
LOUIS GOLDBLATT
1977
TABLE OF CONTENTS Louis Goldblatt
VOLUME I
INTRODUCTION by Clark Kerr i
INTERVIEW HISTORY iv
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD 1
The Lithuanian Freethinkers 1
Walking Away From the Czar 4
Strikes and "Cossacks" 5
About Religion 6
A Quick Jump to Hollywood
Back to the Bronx
The Other Children 10
The Division of Labor 11
Women and Orthodoxy 12
The Family Scene 13
Friends and Enemies 20
Anti-Semitism 24
Musical Beginnings 26
The Work Ethic 37
Leftwing Politics 43
II ON TO CALIFORNIA 54
Education, Work, Political Action 54
Joining the Young Communists 69
Matrimony 78
Life in Berkeley 82
Law and Justice 92
The Great 1934 Strike 99
The Communist Candidacy 106
The Electrifying Speaker 120
The Dangers of Fascism 121
III THE MARCH INLAND 127
The Warehouse Organizing Drive 127
The 1936 Strike 142
The Move to the CIO
The Teamster Blockade 170
IV TROUBLES AND TURBULENCE 183
Strikes, Fights and Progress 183
The Hot Boxcar 186
The Master Contract 188
Problems About War-like Japan 197
The Crockett Struggle 202
More CIO Activity 219
The Pardoning of Tom Mooney 225
Disturbing War Rumbles 234
Labor Spies 237
Union Leadership vs. Leftwing Politics 242
A Lively Social Life 248
V EFFECTS OF THE WAR 265
First Mention of Hawaii 265
More About the California CIO 269
Concentration Camps for Japanese 281
The Power of Jewish Tradition 290
VI THE HAWAIIAN DRAMA OPENS 296
Aftermath of the Tolan Hearing 296
Studying Hawaii 298
Feudal Power - The Big Five 303
Discovery of the Natural Leader 308
A Boat-Ride to the Islands 310
Grass Roots Political Action 318
How to Quell Racial Friction 319
The Garbage Can Agreement 323
VII MEANWHILE ON THE MAINLAND 327
The Party Connection Dissolves 327
Work on the War Labor Board 328
VIII SCARING THE BIG FIVE 344
A Smashing Political Victory 344
Stories About a Wobbly 352
The Pre-Strike Legal Victory 357
IX A TEST OF UNION STRENGTH 366
Striking on the Big Five's Money 366
The Passion for Land 378
Smashing Racial Discrimination 384
The Tough Hotelman 393
That Awful Brown Rice 402
X FINANCIAL LEGERDEMAIN 409
Staving Off a Million Dollar Judgment 409
Waving Farewell to the Party 419
XI END OF WARTIME CONTROLS 432
"Free Enterprise" Again 432
The Committee for Maritime Unity 443
A Question of Sleep 446
Effects of the Cold War 455
"Hawaii for the Hawaiians" 457
Showdown! 464
XII THE "NEW LOOK" 476
Employers Turn the Other Cheek 476
Kindness to Union Men 486
Family Interlude 489
A Horrendous Period 499
XIII A STORY ALL BY ITSELF 504
The Great Longshore Strike in Hawaii 504
A Long, Difficult Strike 516
The "Dear Joe" Stories 519
The "Broom Brigade" 522
Fun on An Airplane 527
Strike-Breaking Attempts 530
The Ranks Hold Solid ' 543
A Rift in the Leadership? 548
XIV ZERO SPELLS SUCCESS 556
"No Stoop, No Squat, No Squint" 556
A Heave-Ho to the "Final Offer" 557
Dangers Abroad 562
Talking with Mr. Kruschchev 576
The International Blacklist 585
Blighty Lets Down the Bars 589
VOLUME II
XV PERILS OF PARALLELISM 596
More About Expulsion from the CIO 596
XVI THE "CONSPIRACY" CASE 611
And Other Headaches 611
More Trouble in Hawaii 623
Other Legal Harassment 627
The Man Who Turned 643
XVI I A SWEET REVENGE 654
The Lanai Strike 654
Oh! Those Early Fifties! 673
Fighting at the Dalles 678
Seven Key Words 680
XVIII A PACE-SETTING PENSION PLAN 685
One Hundred Bucks a Month 685
Death of Gene Paton 692
Reason Instead of Force 694
The Velde Committee 713
The Witness Lies 721
Relations with the ILA 726
The Shady Side of the Street 733
The Eastland Committee 736
The McClellan Committee 738
The Kennedy Brothers 750
XIX IMPROVING RELATIONS WITH THE TEAMSTERS 757
An Analysis of Jimmy. Hoffa 757
An Interesting Phone Call 764
XX NEW MAN IN THE PICTURE 781
A Very Smooth Operator 781
An Amazing Change 784
Mat son Gets the Brush-Off 785
Pensions, Dental Plan, Housing 787
How To Save a Million Dollars 793
"Conformance and Performance" 801
XXI THE MECHANIZATION PROGRAM 807
Velvet Glove on Steel Hand 807
Yarns of the Docks 811
Moans and Groans 814
An Evening with Chaplin 817
Comparisons with the ILA 824
The Guaranteed Annual Wage 825
What Are "Conditions"? 829
XXII END OF AN ERA 843
Conventional Operations Disappear 843
The Shorter Work Week 848
One Crucial Word 855
XXIII THAT CHARMING SCOUNDREL
A Bigger Share of the Pie
Fantastic Economic Power
Men's Opinions of Each Other
XXIV CLASHING PERSONALITIES
Changes in the Union Membership
The 1958 Sugar Strike
Whispers vs. Pacts
XXV COOPERATION WITH THE TEAMSTERS
Formation of the ILWU-Teamsters
Joint Council
Dealing with Jimmy Hoffa
Men with Brass Balls
Teamsters v. Farm Workers
How Kennedy Beat Nixon
XXVI BRIDGES-ILA v. GOLDBLATT
Sharp Disputes Among the Leadership
Ideologies?
Back to the Womb?
Bridges Makes a Switch
XXVII A MINUET WITH THE IBT
Definite Affiliation Negotiations
Problems with the ILWU Constitution
Problems with the IBT Constitution
How Not to Conduct a Strike
XXVIII EVENTS OF THE SIXTIES
An Historical Period
Lessened ILWU Activity
Tackling High Medical Costs
The Free Speech Movement
Protests v. the Vietnam War
Supporting the Farm V/orkers
XXIX THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPER STRIKE
Rank and File Discontent
Helping in the Printers' Strike
An Assist in the Guild Strike
Sixteen Unions Involved
Getting the Crafts Together
A Plan That Succeeded
862
862
866
870
877
877
880
886
893
893
896
898
909
914
918
918
922
927
931
934
934
936
937
939
943
943
944
949
952
955
961
971
971
973
978
979
982
986
XXX MORE ABOUT THE SIXTIES
A Very Tough. Clash
Cooperation Works Well
A Sociological Lesson
Health Plan Alternatives
Hoffa Goes to Jail
XXXI INTERNAL POLITICKING
The Fight for Vice-President
The Membership Questionnaire
Total Polarization
The Hawaii Hotel Negotiations
XXXII THE LONGSHORE STRIKE OF 1971
Bridges Snubs the Alliance for
Labor Action
Bridges Renews ILA Affiliation Plea
Another Try at the Teamsters
XXXIII VIETNAM AND OTHER PROBLEMS
The Full -Page Ad
More Internal Friction
The 1974 Sugar Strike
XXXIV THE $28,000,000 POKER GAME
But First, Open Heart Surgery
An Important Golf Game
The Ante Goes Up
Bridges Rocks the Boat
The Political Economics of Sugar
Corn Sweeter Than Sugar?
Goldblatt's Swan Song on Sugar
This Consultant Business
XXXV ISRAEL AND THE ARABS
The Israeli Groupings
Peace or Land?
Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic vs. Arab
Angry Discussions
XXXVI THE LAST WAREHOUSE PROBLEM
New Man Talks Tough
A Short, Sweet Strike
992
992
993
997
1000
1001
1003
1003
1008
1012
1020
1027
1027
1033
1037
1038
1038
1043
1045
1051
1051
1056
1059
1061
1067
1073
1075
1079
1085
1085
1089
1093
1098
1101
1101
1104
XXXVII THAT DELEGATION TO CHINA
The First Inquiries
Wives - A Strange Question
Finally, The Trip to China
No Inflation
Safe Streets
Industry Has Far To Go
Target Date Is A. D. 2000
Revolutionary Problems
Role of the Unions
Use of Incentives
No Grievance Procedure
XXXVIII THE AGE LIMIT PLOY
The 65-Year Rule
Goldblatt Calls the Turn
The Office Boss
XXXIX THE FOND FAREWELLS
The Dinner for Harry
The Affair for Lou
The Daughters
Family Doings
Ruminations
Hope for the World
1106
1106
1108
1111
1113
1113
1114
1115
1115
1117
1118
1120
1122
1122
1126
1130
1138
1138
1141
1143
1146
1154
1161
TAPE GUIDE TO BOTH VOLUMES
INDEX TO BOTH VOLUMES
1166
1171
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Regional Oral History Office gratefully
acknowledges the help of the following persons
in producing this manuscript:
First and foremost, Estolv and Angela Ward
who doggedly refused to accept no for an answer
after attempts to raise foundation funding for
an ILWU-Goldblatt interview failed, and who went
ahead anyhow as volunteers, following Regional
Oral History Office methods and format, to research,
interview, and transcribe Louis Goldblatt's oral
history.
Louis Goldblatt, who devoted countless hours
recalling and recounting his adventures on the
labor front, and then spent countless more hours
with Estolv Ward reviewing the transcript for
accuracy.
Clark Kerr, labor mediator and professor of
industrial relations, who read the transcript and
wrote the insightful introduction.
Andrea Nakagawa, administrative assistant of
The Bancroft Library, who pinched and scraped out
final typing funds from budgets that were bare.
David King, Hugh Bryson, Sidney Burkett, and
Ruby Silverstone, close friends of Louis Goldblatt
who came forward with manuscript completion funds.
In behalf of all the future readers of this
oral history, we thank you.
Willa Baum
Department Head
Regional Oral History Office
November 1980
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
INTRODUCTION
I saw Lou Goldblatt in action the first time I ever
visited the Berkeley campus. I met a friend in the coffee
shop at I House. We had just started to talk when a person
came through, with a small group behind him, shouting about
a rally to be held outside Sather Gate. My friend said he
was Lou Goldblatt, a campus radical, organizing a protest
against some policy of the university, then under the
presidency of Robert Gordon Sproul. The phrase I remember
was something about "storming the walls" of the University,
as though it were the Bastille.
This was the fall of 1932. I was at Stanford after
having graduated from Swarthmore. Lou had just come up
from UCLA. My interests were in the peace movement,
reflecting four years at Swarthmore and three summers as
a "peace caravaner" with the American Friends Service
Committee. Lou came out of the political hotbed of the
famous "alcoves" at City College of New York before UCLA
and was already a member of the Communist Party (from whioh
he drifted away a decade-and-a-half later) and says in
these memoirs that Communists were then a "very active
group at Gal." We were both, however, student political
activists, however far apart, and there were few of them
in those days. That Goldblatt incident was both my first
impression of Berkeley and my first viewing of a left-wing
political rally. Incidentally, Lou roamed around Sather
Gate once again in 1964 at the time of the PSM protests;
and he thought it all "wonderful." This was a view I did
not share. I thought it was, in many ways, an unnecessary
tragedy including creating a political base for the
rise of Ronald Reagan.
I saw Lou on many occasions thereafter beginning with
World War II as wage stabilization director of the War
Labor Board on the West Coast, and later as Vice-Chairman
of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska region, as Impartial
Chairman between the ILWU and the Waterfront Employers
Association, as arbitrator in Hawaii, as Vice-Chairman of
the National Wage Stabilization Board. And, of course,
with my field of teaching being industrial relations, I
heard or read a great deal about him. So I have known a
ii
great many of the people he talks about, been familiar with
almost all of the situations he speaks about, and
participated in a few of these situations at first hand.
The last situation was an effort he made to propose a
solution to the PSM controversy in 1964; an effort which
I rejected.
This background allows me to say what a frank account
Lou gives of a most fascinating life. History is not re
written, as it so often is. His account rings true from
start to finish. There is no effort at self- justification,
at retroactive revision of the record; just a straight-out
story of what happened and how it looked to Lou when it
happened. So many oral histories are cleaned-up accounts
of what came to look like antiseptic lives. This one is
not.
In reading it I was struck by a number of things,
including these few:
The goodwill toward and respect for several of
the employer representatives with whom he dealt.
His sadness over the break with Harry Bridges.
I once asked Harry in the 1970s about Lou and
his only reply was "That Maoist."
The tremendous change from class warfare on the
Waterfront in the 1930s and 1940s to the climate
of peaceful coexistence today; and from the
violent enmity between the ILWU and the Teamsters
to cooperation with Jimmy Hoffa.
The development of stable labor-management relations
in Hawaii out of the most nearly semi-feudal con
ditions that ever existed on U. S. territory
a transformation of historic proportions.
Lou lived through some great historic events,
including the March Inland beginning in 1935, the organizing
period of the CIO, the unionization of plantation workers
on the Hawaiian Islands, the rise and fall of influence of
the Communist Party and the Old Left in the United States;
and he made visits to Russia, Israel and China. He speaks
of all this with candor and in a most interesting way. One
need not agree with his political philosophy - and I never
iii
have - to recognize here a most valuable and even essential
contribution to the history of half a century of great
social change; and to recognize also that Harry Bridges and
Lou Goldblatt, together and apart, built an honest,
democratic, effective trade union that had great impacts
on the West Coast and Hawaii. Lou G-oldblatt walks through
these pages as he has through life as a man of the Left,
as an energetic participant in history, as a bright ob
server of the passing scene, as a realist, as a participant
in many battles but who could also 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 journeys, as he began them, with
hope.
Clark Kerr
President of the University,
Emeritus
21 October 1980
University of California
Berkeley, California
iv
INTERVIEW HISTORY
There is a rare thing about Louis Goldblatt that I
hope has been captured in this oral history. He has defied
the cynical adage: "He who does not believe in socialism
at age 20 has no heart; he who still believes in socialism
at age 40 has no head."
Although now far from the days when he had glib
revolutionary answers for the world's problems, at age 70
Lou Goldblatt still entertains the passionate and abiding
belief that the more unified all workers become, the better
the populace of this planet will fare. In one word, UNIONS.
I share that belief, and on this basis Lou and I have
been friends and occasional fellow workers in the union
vineyard since the days of the Great Depression.
Thus it follows that in 1977, after Lou's retirement
as secretary-treasurer of the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen's Union, a job he had held with honor and
distinction for 34 years, I knew he was in deep trouble.
He was almost literally a beached whale. By a decision
in which Lou himself was the final determinant, requiring
all the union's top leadership to step out as the best
solution to a prolonged internecine struggle, he found him
self with nothing to do. And Goldblatt fits the definition
of a "workaholic" to perfection. More important, his
union could still have used his highly valued services.
There were many fields of endeavor in which his experience,
knowledge, and fertile mind could still have been of use.
He was aware of this and so were thousands of union men
and women whose lives he had helped to make more livable.
Psychologically, he was a wounded man.
I and many others knew of his trouble. And I happen
ed to know that the Bancroft Library, that segment of the
University of California at Berkeley that has done so much
to preserve the history of the American West, had sought
his oral history. However, there was a financial problem
involved which displeased Goldblatt.
"I'll be damned if I'll have people go tin-cupping
around among my friends so I can blow my own horn," was his
dictum.
The project lay dead in the water until my wife and
I conceived the idea of taking his oral history on a
volunteer basis. My wife, Angela, is a former union or
ganizer who has given her own oral history to the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the California Historical Society,
and who respects the value of such undertakings. She also
happens to be an excellent typist and transcriber. We
agreed that if I could persuade Lou Goldblatt to submit to
the necessary interviews, she would transcribe the tapes.
At a Christmas Eve party in 1977 at the home of Bill
and Eva Maas in San Francisco I approached Lou and put my
question. His answer was neither enthusiastic nor scornful,
not yes and not no. I did not press the point, but a few
moments later I drew aside his wife, Terry, and told her
what Angela and I had in mind. I said that .as well as of
fering a significant contribution to American labor history,
it would be an excellent catharsis for Lou to talk it all
out; spill his grief and pride on his metaphorical beard.
Terry was instantly excited, hopeful. She was very worried
about Lou.
Nothing happened. After a couple of weeks I drew up
a list of questions I proposed to ask, based on personal
knowledge of some of his more exciting exploits over the
years, and mailed it to Lou at his home in Mill Valley.
That brought a phone call, an agreement for me to come
visit him "so we can kick the gong around."
Lou had two objections to my list of questions. He
did not want to talk about the Communist party or in detail
about Harry Bridges, his one-time friend and partner in
unionism who had turned against him. I understood his
reasons: on Communism he had no fear for himself, only
concern for others. He had never hidden his past connec
tion with Communism. It was friends and fellow workers he
had in mind. He did not intend to embarrass or damage
anyone, no, sir! On Bridges, Lou's instinct was to protect
and advance the cause of his union, and he could not see
how washing the union's dirty linen in public would serve
any good purpose.
I argued that he could discuss his own role as a
practicing radical without damaging anyone else; also that
as far as his situation with Bridges was concerned, word of
VI
it already had been bandied about in the press and many of
the details were known to thousands of union members. So
why be secretive? While he would not admit a change of
mind on these points, we did agree to begin taping.
The interviews took place on a more or less weekly
basis for the entire year of 1978, less a month during
which Lou and Terry took a long delayed trip to China. The
taping was done in the G-oldblatt kitchen, a large and
comfortable multi-purpose room with the telephone at hand
and a pleasant overlook of a wooded valley and the slopes
of Mt. Tamalpais. Not all of the sessions produced tapes.
Sometimes we would spend the entire morning with the tape
recorder set aside, discussing what should and should not
be said about some subject Lou considered sensitive.
In this regard, Lou surprised me. This man with guts
of steel, who had faced cops and guns and angry men with
baseball bats, who had stiffed process servers and con
gressional redbaiters and injunctions and lawyers trying
to get big money from his union, is a softy at core. He
visibly dreaded talking about some of the things I urged
him to discuss; he suffered while uttering the words. Even
long after his story was taped, I saw tears come to his
eyes on re-reading some of the passages in the transcript.
To him, exposure of the nest of nastiness his union head
quarters had become in the seventies was almost like
turning the knife in his own wounds. Things had been said
and done for which he never will be able to find a reason.
He still is puzzled, but he no longer mourns.
There was a witness to all the tapings an African
parrot named Yarrow. She delighted in supplying sound
effects for my recorder; sometimes she enlivened human
discourse with shrieks and whistles, demands for attention
which Lou pacified by going to her cage and giving her an
affectionate tweak of the beak. At other times she got
down on the bottom of her cage, under the newspaper floor
ing, where she rustled and bustled and scratched and
scrabbled, making sounds that came through on tape like
being next door to a raging forest fire. Lou's explanation
for her actions is duly recorded on the tape and in the
script.
Terry usually managed to be absent during the tapings,
but frequently came in toward the end of the session, to
make a disturbance something like Yarrow's newspaper
Vll
rattling by unwrapping parcels to put food in the refriger
ator. Fortunately I was able to explain to Terry with
much better effect than to Yarrow what happens to paper
rattling when it has been boosted electronically several
decibels. Occasionally we spent a morning when the
telephone rang very little. Mostly, however, we just had
to put up with many interruptions of this nature; the
daughters calling, or maybe the brother or sister; many
friends, union officials, long distance calls. Eventually,
however, we got the job done.
Then came the editing. Lou loves to tell stories, and
he has hundreds of them maybe thousands. If a story is
good he likes to tell it over and over again, and it was
physically almost impossible to stop his repetitions. Also
I found it unwise to stop him, for quite often the repeti
tion developed a new and interesting phase of the subject
under discussion. In order to bring the transcript under
some semblance of control, I have had to edit out from ten
to twenty per cent of the verbiage.
Furthermore, there were instances where Lou had after
thoughts about events such as his trip to the Soviet Union
and his 1967 visit to Israel. These are inserted according
to context, not according to the sequence in which the
taping actually took place. Also, his version of the China
trip is taken at his request from a report he wrote, and
does not appear on the tapes.
Lou dropped hundreds of names which were either
incomplete or had to be verified. Dates had to be checked,
quirks of memory ironed out; Lou himself did much of the
checking. In this work, in addition to the monumental
task performed by Angela, I gained assistance from quite
a few other sources. The most prominent of these was
Carol Schwartz, the librarian at ILWU headquarters in San
Francisco. Some of my questions she answered almost off
hand. Others took her hours of research. She is to be
thanked for whatever claims to accuracy the completed
script might offer. Others who helped include Saburu
Fujisaki, education and membership service director, Local
142, Hawaii, and Ah Quon McElrath of that local's staff;
the army historian at the San Francisco Presidio; the
Japanese-American League of San Francisco and the Jewish
Community Library of BJE (Bureau of Jewish Education),
whose staffs gave valued assistance.
viii
Also I would like to express gratitude for the en
thusiastic support, encouragement and guidance given
during the post-interview phase of the work by Dr. James
Hart, director of the Bancroft Library, and several members
of his staff; these include Andrea Nakagawa, Willa K. Baum,
head of the Regional Oral History Office, and her assistant,
Judy Johnson.
In conclusion, I would like to give a quote from
Louis G-oldblatt that does not appear in the script. At
his seventieth birthday party recently, he made a short
speech in which his final words were to propose a toast
"to the survivors who haven't sold out."
Estolv Ethan Ward
Interviewer-Editor
15 October 1980
Berkeley, California
VOLUME I
I FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD
(Interview 1: 15 February, 1978)##
The Lithuanian Jewish Freethinkers
Ward: The interview is taking place at the Goldblatt home
in Mill Valley. Lou, since we have known each other
for over forty years, there is no point in my calling
you "Mr. Goldblatt." So, let's begin - first of all,
the best thing to do is to ask you when you were
born and where.
LG: I was born on June 5 1910 in the Bronx, New York
City. I think the address was 1244 Washington
Avenue. That's fairly close to the lower part of
the Bronx; Washington was one block west of Third
Avenue where the "L" used to run. The family moved
shortly after I was born to 1376 on the same street,
a block up. There I do recall spending a lot of my
early years; almost up to the time I went to high
school -
Ward: In the Bronx?
LG: In the Bronx - because -
##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of
a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the
tapes see page 1166.
Ward: Where did I get the idea of Chicago?
LG: Only because there's a Goldblatt Department store
to which I am not related.
Ward: I see - okay, we're back in the Bronx -
LG: The school I went to is Public School 2. In the
course of discussion with someone some years ago
when I visited New York this person insisted that
P,S. 2 was no more - that the buildings had been
condemned. I was curious, got a car or a cab, drove
up to that section of the Bronx. Part of it had been
torn down and there was some low-cost public housing.
Ehe balance of it was extremely run down - they were
primarily tenement houses; but there was the public
school too. You had to look carefully - you could
barely distinguish it because of the dirt. The
whole thing was all blackened.
Ward: How many years after your boyhood was this?
LG: Oh, it was a long time afterwards - it must have been
about 15 years ago, 16 years ago.
Ward:. I see, well, then - in your boyhood, it was not as
dilapidated a neighborhood?
LG: No. When our family first moved there it was a
generally mixed neighborhood.
Ward: Mixed in what sense? What kind of people, ethnically?
LG: Ethnically, I would say there were a good many
Germans living there, garden variety Americans of
various kinds; a lot of non-immigrants. I think
that my family must have been one of the early
immigrants who moved into that area; my father and
mother came to this country, she somewhat ahead of
him, about 1904 or thereabouts; my father got here
about 1905 or the end of 1904 -
Ward: Where did they come from?
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward
LG:
Came from the same town in Lithuania - a town called
Kaunas .
How do you spell that?
It's spelled KAUNAS; not among the Jews, though
and I'm not sure among the Lithuanians either,
pronounce it Kovna.
Kovna?
They
Just as you would spell KOVNA- Kovna. At one
time it might have been the capital of Lithuania.
I understand that Vilnius is now the capitol. I
recall my folks talking about Vilna, apparently an
adjacent town to Kovna; they're sister cities across
a small stream, or something. They "both came from
there.
Did they know each other before they came to this
country?
They did. They were both active in the Socialist
Bund. Mind, this is the early 1900s. And they were
both part of the general wave of migration that had
taken place in the 1800s and the early 1900s.
Initially they settled, like most immigrants did,
among their friends, people they knew. That was on
the East side and -
Let's go back just a moment, if you don't mind; the
Socialist Bund, was there any connection with the
1905 revolution or rebellion there?
I don't believe so, - I think both of them came
before the 1905 uprising.
I'm not sure that the 1905 uprising had that much
of an impact on Lithuania, although it was a part of
Russia at the time. I assume that the basic language
was Russian, not Lithuanian, which was quite a
different language. I gathered that they had both
languages - Lithuanian and Russian. My mother spoke
some Russian, but only fair. My dad spoke a very
good Russian, in fact held on to it all his life.
LG: As to whether the 1905 uprising penetrated that
deeply, I'm not sure. In her case, migration was
not all that difficult, inasmuch as from all I could
gather there were no great impediments. There were
Jews moving out of that section of the world.
Whether she went directly from Lithuania or the way
many of them did from Poland, I'm not sure.
In my father's case it was quite a different
scene. There was compulsory conscription into the
Czar's army; in the event that a boy from a family
was called up and failed to report, then the family
itself could be penalized in various ways; their
material possessions taken away, or others in the
family conscripted. So he went into the army.
Walking Away From The Czar
LG: He was stationed in the Caucasus and apparently
got to be a pretty good horseman. To his dying day,
he would never eat mutton again, or lamb, because
that was their basic diet down there. He got to
hate it so badly that he would never touch it. Terry*
once served him some lamb which she thought was
pretty thoroughly disguised and he took one bite and
said, "That's it."
Anyway, apparently they were both quite active in
the Socialist Bund. I gathered he kept in touch with
the Bund while he was in the army, and I was told
that it was his job as a member of the army to fin
ally try to get guard duty.
Apparently, there were some political prisoners
being held in the Caucasus. He finally managed to
get this guard duty, and at this point arrangements
were made for my father and the prisoner he was
guarding to leave together: they left from the port
of Batum which is on the Black Sea -
Ward: BATUM?
*Wife of Louis Goldblatt
LG: That's right. That's the port that would "be
directly across that peninsula "between the Caspian
Sea and the Black Sea. It might "be one of the first
oil pipe lines ever built, because they had discover
ed oil in Baku, the other side of this peninsula -
Ward: The distinction between Batum and Baku - ?
LG: Yes, because Baku is on the Caspian Sea. I got to
it many years later - 1959. Batum is at the other
end and, as I recall from a bit of reading and
talking to my Dad, it was primarily an oil and bulk
port.
I assume that the arrangements were that they paid
off the skipper to take a couple of stowaways. My
father left that way. He did some bumming around
Europe - worked in Holland for a while.
Ward: Did he have any skill or occupation before going into
the army?
LG: Oh, yes. He'd been apprenticed at the age of nine
with a cabinet maker and he had become a very skilled
cabinet maker; remained that way all of his life.
He had apparently not too many problems in finding
work in different cabinet shops. In those days all
this type of work was small industry work - a man
might employ a half a dozen. Ten people was a big
outfit. He used to have some stories and yarns about
his travels there before he got to the United States.
Strikes and "Cossacks"
LG: So both my father and mother knew each other.
There had been strikes there. I knew about that
because my father carried a wound - I guess it was
the Cossacks or the armed forces; they called all
the policemen and the armed forces "Cossacks". It
was a nomenclature they used; in this country they
called the cops on horseback "Cossacks" -
Ward: That's right - it got to be a pejorative word.
LG: That's right. And he still carried the scars where
they had "broken up a workers' demonstration with a
lot of shooting, so that -
Ward: A scar - you mean a physical scar?
LG: Yes, on his foot - he had been wounded in the foot -
it never interfered with his walking. Apparently
in those days that was the way a demonstration was
taken care of.
It was an interesting thing while they were both
very hostile to the Czar, they were not hostile to
Russia as such. If anything, my father and mother
still saw it as Mother Russia; all their lives they
were basically Russophiles. In most respects they
were freethinkers, as against the orthodox thinkers
there -
About Religion
Ward: They weren't what you'd call religious Jews, then?
LG: They were non-religious. My mother was indifferent
to it; my father was a pretty aggressive atheist.
Not that he'd make that much of an issue of it,
but he would make it quite plain. I recall, for
example, when Passover came along - that's usually
quite a Jewish holiday; several Seders - it's a
commemoration in part for the exodus of the Jews
from Egypt - the Seder. One of the reasons for
matzos (they don't use bread) goes back to the
concept that they did not have yeast; it was un
leavened bread. Well, my father and mother didn't
see any good reason why they shouldn't have some
good dinners and have friends in, the game as other
people did. My father would insist that there be
bread on the table as well as matzos.
Nobody went through the various religious
ceremonies at the passover dinners. I recall as kids
that the most pleasant thing about it was that there
LG: was an enormous variety of food and plenty of it;
company coming by. Questions were sometimes asked,
"How come you have bread on the table?" - which
according to the religious people was not supposed
to be there. And my father would simply answer,
"Look, I have all kinds of friends; some people like
bread, some people like matzos; they can help
themselves." It was in these forms that his atheism
showed up. My mother never felt much differently
than that, though she wasn't quite as aggressive
about it as my father. . And he used to have some -
oh, some imitative dovening -
Ward: Imitative praying?
LG: Dovening is praying among the Jews. Words that were
not particularly flattering to the rabbis and to the
religious people. I recall him going through a
ritual which was pure fun as far as he was concerned.
It was in the same sing-song the rabbis use and the
people in the synagogue use (here is Goldblatt
singing.) which sounds very religious, but only means
in Yiddish that the goats pick up their tails and the
rabbis sniff, (laughter) Obviously, a little bit
scatological.
So, that was the background; and they maintained
it all their lives. They were what you call
"yiddishten" and continued that way, even though it
was a dwindling group to which they belonged.
Ward: Why was it a dwindling group?
LG: The reason it was dwindling was that the ones who
were really "yiddishten", felt very strongly about
the Yiddish language, about Yiddish culture, Yiddish
songs; their roots were primarily among their friends
who were from the same part of the world and who
thought very similarly to them. Like they belonged
to an organization called "the Kovna Old Friends".
It obviously was a dwindling group - they died off.
Ward: Oh, when the old friends died, that was it?
8
LG: That's it. For example, I still understand some
Yiddish; I can sort of labor my way. Terry under
stands none. The kids have a few words, that's
about all, but among the Yiddishten such as my
father and mother and their friends Yiddish was a
very basic language, even though my dad, who was in
the outside world most of the time -
Ward: He had to learn English?
LG: He learned good English and learned it very well -
taught himself to read blueprints; he was a highly
skilled man. On that score they were bilingual
entirely -
A Quick Jump To Hollywood
Ward: He was tri -lingual?
LG: He was tri-lingual because he could transfer to
Russian almost as easily.
There's a bit of a story about him that I
remember. Dolores Del Rio - she was an actress -
Dolores Del Rio, perhaps the most beautiful woman
in the world. I remember working on a set when
she first turned up there; we were working on these
catwalks rigging up some scenery -
Ward: Oh, we got on to Hollywood now?
LG: Yes, it's an example of how good his Russian was.
The first time I saw her I damn near fell off the
thing. I think the man who brought her over here
married her. Edwin Carew, the director. Edwin
Carew.
Ward: Edwin Carew?
LG: Right. They brought Tolstoy's son over here as sort
of a technical advisor to this movie "Resurrection",
in which Dolores Del Rio was featured. This was
before the talkies, which sort of destroyed her.
LG-: And my father, who was working at Tec-Art at the
time, was also used in the capacity of a translator,
My mother was fair at Russian and when they
wanted to talk "between themselves so that the kids
wouldn't understand, they would not talk in Yiddish
or in English; they would use Russian.
Back To The Bronx
LG-: Going "back to my family, in the Bronx, they initially
lived in the East Side - I think what they called
Howston Street, (what we call Houston). That's still
true in New York today - it's pronounced Howston.
Ward: That makes sense.
LG: Yes. My father and mother decided to move out of
that neck of the woods when the family was just
being formed; I think my sister had just been born.
She's older than I am by a couple of years. I was
born in the Bronx.
When they decided to move to the Bronx - to many
of the Jews this was a completely strange world like
a transplanted Jewish settlement in many respects.
Some of my parents' friends asked my mother,
"Well, why do you want to move up there? What will
the neighbors think?" In other words, this whole
feeling, was she going to be accepted? And her
reply was really quite simple. She said, "I've
been there and I've seen the neighbors and I sort
of liked them. I wouldn't like it very much if they
moved out." She was going to move, and that was it,
Yeah. Even though they moved there they still
maintained their ties with their old friends; they
continued to maintain them even after they moved to
the coast here.
Ward: When did they get married?
LG: Either in 1905 - 1906 perhaps - yes, 1906.
10
The Other Children
Ward: And then the first child was your sister -
LG: Yes, my sister -
Ward: Then you and other children?
LG: Then my brother, Sam; he's three years younger than
I am and my sister is two years older than I am.
Then there's a "bit of a gap and a younger brother
became part of the family - Saul -
Ward: Oh, yes, I remember -
LG: You might have met him -
Ward: Oh, yes, he entertained us in Paris -
LG: That's right because I recall -
Ward: He was very interested in the making of the movie
Hiroshima, Mon Amour -
LG: He was a sort of amateur photographer. He was
also interested in the mime -
Ward: ,Y g s, he was a theatrically inclined person -
LG: Yes, he did some work with Marcel Marceau; he made
a short film that was shown in the festival - the
festival here - and also the one at Cannes. It was
a picture of the mime built around the idea of a
store where you could change your head. If you
weren't happy with the one you were wearing, you
could make a switch. It was a fairly good short
film.
Ward: Let's see now, there were four children -
LG: My brother was a chemical engineer. That was his
work; he worked for a big outfit there - Loomis.
They designed primarily these cracking plants that
are used by oil companies. They take the raw oil
as it comes out of the ground -
Ward: And they crack it into its various component parts.
11
LG: Right, right.
Ward: Well, then, there were the four children. Did your
mother - was she a housewife or did she work?
The Division of Labor
LG: Well, she started off working in New York as a garment
worker, although I don't believe she ever went back
to work once the family was being formed.
The old Jewish traditions pretty well prevailed
in the community, regardless of whether they were
orthodox, non-believers or atheist; namely, the
division of labor, where the mother had responsibi
lity for the children and the house. The man's job
was to provide the living. This was more progress,
in my opinion, than among the highly orthodox Jews,
where the men were considered to be doing their
entire day's work by studying the Talmud; they were
professional doveners -
Ward: Professional what?
LG: Prayers -
Ward: Oh, yes - the same word again.
LG: Yes, they would go through the whole ritual from
putting on the tfillim - those are the little
square boxes, together with the philacteries that
they wrap on their arms. What they all represent,
I'm not quite sure.
These things grew over the years - and the
yamulka - the small prayer cap; the day would have
to start that way. And among some of these orthodox
Jews that was the balance of their life.
Ward: That was a pretty easy life.
12
LG: It would strike me that way; the raising of a family,
as well as somehow making a livelihood, fell on the
woman, "because the man was doing the Lord's work.
So that it was definitely a form of progress where
a woman was only burdened with the house care and
the children and not with trying to rummage up
enough so they could feed the family as well.
Ward: So the division of labor was more equal?
Women and Orthodoxy
LG: No question in my mind. Yes. Sure. Still to
this day highly orthodox Jews live in one section
of Jerusalem, go so far as to dedicate one room in
their house so as to augment this religiosity;
the same pattern persists in terms of the role of
women.
The other features of the orthodox group were
thoroughly benighted - women shaving their heads
when they got married and wearing a wig -
Ward: What was the purpose of that?
LG: They wore a wig, their hair made up again as a wig.
Whether this was part of the marriage vows or the
business of being married - in other words, where
hair has always been associated with the beauty of
a woman ....
Ward: Oh, yes, she would make herself repulsive to
everybody except her husband -
LG: Yes, that might have been it; an off -shoot of mona-
gamy. It also might be a carry-over, the whole
attitude of orthodox Jews toward women which has
changed a bit, primarily because the women have
gotten tougher.
The whole divorce system which is extremely
rigorous and entirely under the aegis of the rabbis,
was one where the woman stood behind the man and it
was the man who stepped forward and announced the
13
LG: reason for the divorce. The woman sat there quietly,
or stood there quietly. He was the one, under an
orthodox Jewish divorce. For example, if the woman
couldn't "bear children - things like that. It could
go back to the role of women as chattels, practical
ly under the initial kings of Israel.
The Family Scene
Ward: Well, let's look at the family scene. You were the
oldest son -
LG: Yes.
Ward: Did that position give you pre-eminence among the
four children?
LG: Not particularly, there again the folks were free
thinkers. They placed enormous emphasis on
education, music, culture. My mother read a great
deal, but always in Yiddish.
Ward: Was there a good spread of literature in that
language available to her?
LG: I'm not sure how large that spread was, but there
was enough around; for example, Sholem Aleichem
wrote in Yiddish. I suppose they read everything
Sholem Aleichem ever wrote. Sholem Aleichem was
their kind of person because as he himself used to
say, "There's enough literature for the sheiner
menschen, I'm writing for the proste menschen."
Ward : What?
LG: Sheiner menschen would be something like "the
beautiful people" - proste menschen is 'common
man."
Ward: I see.
LG: Sometimes used in a derogatory way, "he's a proste
yid." But Sholem Aleichem didn't take it that way
the proste menschen was his ambience and he wrote
14
LG: for them. My folks always subscribed to Jewish,
papers; they were original subscribers to the
Freiheit, probably kept subscribing to that until
their last days.
Ward: So you saw the Freiheit around the house as a
child?
LG: The Freiheit around, yes, but there were a couple
of papers you never saw there. One was the Forward.
Ward: That was the conservative Jewish paper?
LG: Conservative Social Democratic Jewish newspaper.
There was one that was a little further to the
right as I recall - that was Per Tag, the daily.
That went out of print.
Ward: In other words, obviously right wing literature was
not seen around your home?
LG: I suppose a lot of the literature that my sister
would bring home or that I would get at school or
check out of the library maybe fell in that class.
In terms of ideologically rightwing literature the
answer is "No".
Ward: Well, I gather that a family like yours would be
pretty articulate. There must have been a lot of
talk around the dinner table and during the evening,
in which you probably got some ideas. Can you
recall any particular form the conversation would
take which interested you?
LG: There was always a lot of discussion around the
dinner table. On most occasions we ate together,
although not all the time, partially because of
the schedules that the members of the family kept.
I do recall that there were a number of conver
sations about Debs* I think they attended every
demonstration in support of Debs that ever took
place in New York City. Remember, he was not only
a candidate for President on the Socialist ticket;
he ran while he was in jail.
*Eugene V. Debs, famous Socialist
Tillie Goldblatt (above)
Boris Goldblatt (below)
Born in Lithuania
Louis Goldblatt
ca. 1914
15
Ward: That would have been when you were 8 or 10 - before
you were 10?
LG: Yes; even after Debs was gone, they still talked
about him. I recall later conversations around
the table - oh, this must have been when I was ten
or thereabouts, about Tom Mooney;* whether there
was much about Sacco and Vanzetti* I'm not sure
myself.
Ward: Well, Sacco and Vanzetti didn't come on until later -
LG: - until later. I was a bit older and I might not
have been spending that much time at home. I was
away a good deal.
Ward: You were about 18 then -
LG: Seventeen or eighteen - 1927-28.
There was a lot of discussion; articles in the
Freiheit; some of the features - they had favorite
writers. The Freiheit carried short stories or
even serials. Not only discussion of these things,
but sometimes they would be read aloud because of
certain phrases used.
Ward: Who would read aloud?
LG: My dad or my mother, either one -
Ward: Either one?
LG: Right.
Ward: It was exclusive?
LG:
Yiddish Schools
No, none of us ever became that proficient in Yid
dish. I could read a fair amovmt of it because I
went to the Sholem Aleichem Folk School.
*Mooney, a Socialist, and Sacco and Vanzetti,
Anarchists, were sentenced to death after highly
questionable convictions for murder. Mooney was
finally pardoned; the others were executed.
16
Ward: That would "be after hours at the public school?
LG-: Uh, uh; the progressive Jews and freethinkers like
my mother and father thought of Yiddish not only as
a language but as a culture. They were thoroughly
attached to it. They wanted to maintain this whole
concept of Yiddish for the children, but neither
would they send us to the usual cheders or schools.
Ward: The Yiddish schools?
LG: Well, these were cheders, a combination in some
cases of Yiddish and Hebrew.
Ward: Could you spell that word?
LG: C H E D E R. All of these finally consolidated a
bit, partially because the schools were decimated
by the mass exodus.
Ward: Let's get that a bit more clearly. The schools were
decimated; why?
LG: A lot of the youngsters just rebelled against them,
including even youngsters from the orthodox families
Ward: And why did they?
LG: Oh, both because of its irrelevance, its rigors, the
kind of faculty; the first schools were literally
impossible. Everything was taught by rote. It was
completely irrelevant.
If a youngster learned some Hebrew, he would
simply learn enough so he could recite certain pas
sages and finally the great culmination might be
that he would learn enough so as to take part in a
Bar Mitzvah when he was thirteen, at which point
all of it went blank. He didn't know what the
Hebrew was in ninety percent of the cases.
Ward: He was a parrot?
LG: Simply learning by rote; use of corporal punishment,
if the kids didn't know their lesson, bang! it was
the ruler on
17
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
- On the hands?
Yes, ruler on the hands. In many cases the early
cheders were considered by the youngsters as taking
away time they could have "been playing ball or doing
something else that might be more important, compared
to going tolhis religious indoctrination.
While parents like mine were anxious to maintain
Yiddish, they didn't want any part of this cheder
concept. That's the way the Sholem Aleichem Polk
Schools got going.
I see. It was the preferred alternative.
Yes. There the objective was to simply teach the
Yiddish language, get to read some Yiddish books,
learn something of the Yiddish songs. It was
completely non-religious.
Held on Saturdays? Evening after school?
No, it was generally an hour or so after school, and
I didn't find it all that obnoxious. I never was
that happy when the rest of the kids were out playing
baseball, and I wasn't.
Did you have to go?
go?
What happened if you didn't
Not a great deal. I think it was just a feeling on
my part - family pressure. In some cases, also,
because my peers were there; it wasn't all that
distasteful.
The whole technique must have been on a much
better level than the cheders, although true, the
Sholem Aleichem Schools finally faded out too; fewer
and fewer children were interested in learning
Yiddish. That's the reason; right now, Yiddish might
only have another few years to go.
All right, well now aside from the Jewish aspects
of your upbringing, I gather that social conscious
ness pervaded in your family.
LG:
Yeah.
18
Ward: It "became - do you have any recollection - a special
thing in a social way that influenced you? A demon
stration? An injustice you had witnessed? A good
thing that you admired?
LG: Not during those days in particular. Some of the
things I liked a great deal -
Ward: Like what?
LG: I had gone to some of the gatherings of my folks
with some of their old friends. They belonged to
a number of organizations which were of a progres
sive bent- things like the Workmen's Circle - social
groups with perhaps some people who had become more
prosperous than others. Still basically they had a
left-wing tilt in the sense that they were funda
mentally Socialist.
I used to both enjoy and admire these groups
because the meetings were all in Yiddish. They
would generally start the evenings with several
songs, something that appears to be almost gone, -
also in Yiddish. It was not too uncommon for them
to have a "reader" come in. It might be some local
person who could read poetry or read sections of a
novel or short stories; even later on when the family
was in L.A., there was a woman named Gina Medem -
she used to write for the Preiheit once in a while.
This was one of the ways she got by in life.
She'd be paid a little bit for coming to one of
these sessions and reading. She made the rounds of
any number of organizations; I doubt if she had any
other means of support.
Ward: What kind of stuff would she read? Poetry?
LG: Poetry in some cases - stories by Sholem Aleichem -
things of that sort; other poetry of some of the
Jewish poets. I was greatly impressed by a person
like this, and I guess just as much by the group who
were there and felt that keenly about having somebody
19
LG: such as Gina Medem at their gatherings. It was such
a complete contrast to everything else that I could
see on the outside world.
Ward: In contrast to your public school, for instance?
LG: Contrast to the public school, to the dances I
was going to, contrast to the get-togethers in other
homes, part of which were religious get-togethers,
part of which were just social gatherings.
I thought there was more cohesiveness and genuine
cultural identity in a group such as these yiddishten
than among other people. I can still remember as a
kid going into a house where they had all the
accoutrements of a completely religious household.
Dishes on which you could only eat milk products,
dishes on which you could only eat meat products,
special dishes that were only used at the time of
Passover -
Ward: Did they wash these different dishes in the same
dishwater?
LG: I doubt it. I guess they were doing it in confor-
mance with the Xasruth.
Ward: The what?
LG: Kasruth - I think that's a section of the Talmudic
studies that delineates all the dietary laws of the
Jews, some of which are based on legend and some are
based on ignorance.
Ward: Some of the dietary laws were based on the lack of
refrigeration in those days -
LG: You could understand a dietary law where they would
not eat pig. At one time, uncured ham was the
primary cause of trichinosis, so I can see that
being barred. But it was not put on that basis.
The question was whether or not an animal had a
cloven hoof; also the question of how an animal was
butchered.
20
LG: I could understand why they "barred shellfish "because
all of us know now, if you eat mussels out of season
you are lucky to be around the next day. It was
easy to bar all shellfish because shellfish are
fundamentally scavengers. That makes sense. But
then they went on to say that anything taken from the
ocean had to have scales, which is another way of
saying that anything like a mollusk -
Ward: Mollusks do not have scales -
LG: Mollusks do not have scales, but on the other hand,
they also barred eel because some people, even to
this day, think that an eel does not have scales.
It does, but they are very tiny scales.
There are a lot of contradictions; while some of
it might have had a logical basis, after a while it
didn't have any. To this day there is sharp
conflict even among the Jews.
For example, when I happened to be in Israel about
two years ago, a little less than that, I was making
the rounds of some of the outlying areas where there
are kibbutsim. We passed one which we had visited -
S A S A - because they have an educational institute
where kids are taken out of the slum areas and
integrated with the kibbutz families. And as we were
driving away the guy I was with said, "Big rabbit,
we've got - it weighs 300 pounds."
Of course, it was a pig. They saw nothing wrong
in keeping some pigs. Then of course you have to be
pretty careful about slaughtering and curing which
is another story. Some of these things have never
been resolved, to this day.
Friends and Enemies
Ward: Well, now, any other things that you remember that
particularly repelled you as a youngster? What about
the boys you met in the public school?
LG: Actually, in the public schools I don't recall any
incidents -
21
Ward: No fights?
LG: Oh, yeah, sure - all kids have fights, but I don't
recall fights between Jews and goys or something
like that, or between racial groups. Of course,
all kids belong to gangs; that's part of the business
of survival in the tenement district. You had to
have friends -
Ward: Something to do with -
LG: Survival, everybody belonged to a group. They
called it "gangs", but they weren't gangs. There
was also the basic framework of the baseball teams.
Ward: You had friends?
LG: Right. There were certain district rivalries. I
remember there was always a rivalry going between
the kids who lived on Washington Avenue and Park
Avenue, which is a block away up in the Bronx.
Ward: Was there any fundamental difference, outside of
the names of the streets, between the two groups?
LG: Not that I recall. There was a pretty fundamental
difference between the part of the Bronx we lived
in or, say, the part the people lived in, in the Van
Cortland section, or the Concourse or "Concuuurse"
as people would talk about it; that was supposed
to be an uppity neighborhood - people on the rapidly
upward mobile escalator. Sure there was a clear
feeling that we belonged to different economic groups,
but I don't recall having any great conflict with
any other groups because they were goys and we were
Jews.
On that score I'd say we got along fairly well
except for the periodic gang fights - like all kid
gangs - based on imaginary insults. Just letting go
of a lot of energy.
Ward: But no knives - no guns?
22
LG: No, the closest to that was rock fights. There was
a quarry about a block or so away. It was always
a great meeting ground for this sort of thing.
People improved their pitching arm, but nobody got
hurt.
Ward: All right, so you went on demonstrations for Mooney
and Debs at times?
LG-: I remember mass meetings - I don't recall demonstra
tions as such. It wasn't a question of my mother
and father trying to indoctrinate me. They were
simply determined to live their own life style; it
was a very clear and distinct thing that they had.
It had nothing to do with religiosity, nothing to
do with staying within the confines of the East Side.
They saw no reason at all why they couldn't spread
their arms.
The usual tradition, not just among Jews, but
among many people, of the eldest son carrying
certain responsibilities or having the rights of
primogeniture, was not terribly important to the
family. Initially they felt it was just as important,
or more important, that my sister secure an education
so that she could be independent to teach or do
something other than sit around waiting for a swain;
.and she was a good student. As a matter of fact,
while we were still living in New York City, she was
going to Hunter, (the women's counterpart of CONY).
Ward: Is she still around; what's she doing?
LG: She's retired now.
Ward: She's a teacher?
LG: Yes, she became a teacher; she went to Hunter College.
After going to U.S.C., she went off to the Sorbonne
in Paris.
Ward: What did she do at the Sorbonne?
LG: Took her doctorate there. I remember seeing her
doctor's thesis - she sent me a copy - on some
esoteric French poet. I don't recall his name; I
23
LG-: labored through a few pages and realized it was
strictly a doctor's thesis in every sense of the
word. And -
Ward: Piled it away?
LG: Filed and forgotten. And if anybody's tracked it
since then, I don't know. But she was one of the
first women at the Sorbonne - at least one of the
first American women at the Sorbonne to get a
doctorate; they found that equally important.
Ward: Did she ever marry?
LG: Yes - married three times. Two adopted children.
It's an interesting business, I'm sure it wasn't
just because she wouldn't have to change the towels -
Ward: The towels?
LG: The towels because each of her husbands' name began
with a "V", which is a pretty rare thing. It's hard
to -
Ward: Was anybody superstitious about that?
LG: I don't think so - it was not a "v" for victory -
or anything of that sort. I think it was just pure
coincidence. She was married to a Frenchman for a
while, an artist by the name of Vigereux. She was
first married to a man named Varnum. I sort of
vaguely remember him.
Yigereux came from the town of Dijon, I think,
and he was a fairly good artist; not a really
successful one. Eventually, he came over to the
United States and settled in Hollywood, worked
around the studios where my dad worked, my brother
Sam worked and my brother Saul worked. Later on,
Fay broke up with him and a few years later she
married another man named "Vinock" - again another
"v" -VINOCK-
Ward: What nationality was he?
LG: I think Vinock was Jewish, but -
24
Ward: These others - the first two were not Jewish.
LG: No, Vigereux and Varnum were not Jewish.
Ward: Did your family object when she married non-Jews?
LG: No. I don't think they saw it as anything of any
importance - it just wasn't their thinking; they
accepted people as people.
An t i -S emit ism
LG: I'm not saying that during those years I wasn't
conscious of anti-semitism. I was - you couldn't
grow up in New York without being conscious of it -
Ward: How did you feel it?
LG: For example, you'd see still ads in those days of
"Only Christians Need Apply" -
Ward: Yes.
LG: Very simple things; you knew perfectly well that
'there were certain clubs where only Christians
belonged. I can recall when I first went to CCNY,*
there was some guy who started talking to me in the
gym - I was working out. At that time I felt I could
do something in gymnastics, -
Ward: You were a bit of an amateur gymnast?
LG: Oh, no, not really. I just couldn't put in all that
time on it, anyway; it's practically continuous
repetitious practice. Well, this guy approached me
and apparently they had something it wasn't
really a fraternity, it was a club. There were no
fraternities, or if there were they were sort of
s emi -und e r gr ound .
City College of New York
25
Ward: This was when you were a freshman at CCNY?
LG: Yes, at CCNY - and he wanted to know if I was
interested in joining this club. I asked him what
it was all about. He said, "Well, there are certain
people who ought to stick together." I said, "I
don't know what you're talking about, but my name
is G-oldblatt." There was no further invitation.
So, you were conscious of these things. But in
terms of any overt, aggressive anti-semitism, I don't
recall any of that at P.S. 2 where I first went to
school, or at P.S. 55 in the Bronx, a few blocks
from where I lived. This was like a Junior High
under one of these acceleration programs, which was
an educational fad of the times -
Ward: Oh, that's because of your I.Q. - you were put among
the bright kids -
LG: Yes - why, I don't know -
Ward: Don't be unduly modest.
LG: No, I'm not being unduly modest, but I don't recall
any particular testing or whether this came out of
recommendations that originated at the lower school.
They had these accelerated programs where you did
three years in two; the net result was that I entered
and finished fairly young. I was just a bit over 16,
and then went on to CCNY.
Ward: Let's see, then you were not yet 17 when you became
a freshman at CCNY?
LG: That's right - about sixteen and a half. It was
around February 1927 when I went to CCNY.
I don't think that this acceleration program was
confined to New York City. It spread all through
the educational structure. I doubt if they do that
any more, and in some ways I'm not sure it's the
best thing anyway. I would have gotten more out of
school, and I think I would have been able to handle
it better, if I'd just gone along a normal education
al course in high school.
26
LG: Instead of getting out at the age of sixteen and a
half, I would have gotten out at the usual age of
18. Then you are with your peers. That resulted
in all kinds of dislocations, plus you feel as
though you're a punk. You don't feel that you can
take part in many things when you get to college.
In high school it was no great problem because
your peers might be a grade behind but that made no
difference; you would still see a good deal of them,
You could still be playing ball with many of them.
But when you got to college, it was a different
break - some of them went and some didn't go.
Musical Beginnings
Ward: Before we get into college, let's go back a little
earlier to another phase of your life - the music:
that must have started pretty early.
LG: Yes, I'm not saying that it really started because -
Ward: Something happened?
LG: Yeah, no question about it. The family felt that
it was very important to have a piano, musical
instruments, around the place. These were charac
teristics of these people which, if they are lost,
would really be quite tragic.
I don't think anything was quite as precious in
a house as musical instruments and books. This
strong feeling on the part of these Jews, not just
as people who believed in their Jewish culture, but
who also felt very keenly about the whole cultural
structure of families and the world, was that
learning music - some kind of learning - was terribly
important; so we had a piano. Naturally, my sister
started first; she stayed with it for some years,
and then dropped it.
Ward: Was it an upright?
27
LG: It was an old Wurlitzer, as I remember, yeah. Even
though my dad - this is a sidelight - you know when
he first came to this country - and, as I said, he
was a good cabinet maker - he went to work for Stein-
way; it must have been about 1906 just shortly after
he came here. Recently we tried to find out whether
he could have done some of the work on an old piano
we have here. Terry and I picked up a Steinway when
we were living in the city -
Ward: This one here? (mentioning a grand piano in the
living room)
IG-: No - no, this one belongs to Liza, (the Goldblatts*
youngest daughter) We picked up an old Steinway in
quite good shape. Very, very reasonable, I think it
was something like one hundred bucks or two hundred
dollars and really in fine condition. In trying to
check the date of the piano, the best I could figure
out was that it was made somewhere around 1905 - '06,
When Liza was in New York for a while, I gave her
the number on the piano and she made an attempt to
see whether the Steinway people, who keep a good
record of all their pianos, could trace the exact
date and whether they would have any record of my
dad working there.
Ward: Let me interject here a moment for the sake of the
record. Lou is talking about one of his daughters -
Liza - who is a very talented musician and who is a
professional now, I believe.
LG: No, right now she is at UCLA* getting a doctorate in
musicology. That's a brand new field to me.
We took piano lessons - bear in mind that there
was no way for a family like ours to judge who was
a good piano teacher. My dad, for example, played
the mandolin. He taught himself entirely. He
decided he wanted to learn the mandolin, went out
and bought one -
Ward: Could he read music?
LG: No - no.
Ward: He had a musical ear then?
* (University of California at Los Angeles)
28
LG: Yes, just as he had an amazing ear for languages.
So did my sister and my brother. Sam inherited
more of that than I did. They're all good linguists.
My dad spoke not only Russian, he could get by in
Polish, and I'm not sure whether he learned any
Dutch. My sister learned many languages.
Ward: But he had this ear for music? Did your mother have
any musical ability or talent?
LG: If so, it never showed other than she could carry a
tune very well; she was not a monotone or anything.
Ward: She sang to you when you were kids?
LG: Yes; and she'd also sing when she worked around the
kitchen - Yiddish songs, a few of which I remember.
That passed the day for her and she liked it.
I studied the piano with some man who taught in the
neighborhood. Of course, they would schedule as
many kids as they could - they were trying to make
a living. I forget what it cost a lesson. I recall
that this man was not an outstanding piano teacher,
because later on I realized I hadn't learned a single
thing about musical structure or harmony, or anything
of the sort. Again, it was learning by rote; you
learned the scales, and his objective was that you'd
be able to pick up a few small tunes, so that when
he had his annual performance when the kids would
show off at the Aeolian Hall -
Ward: That's a good name -
LG: Nothing less, of course 1 You have to have a good
name on it; I'd say I probably could have done as
well by just picking out tunes by myself.
I had no trouble hearing something like a popular
tune and picking it up. I did learn a little bit
about reading music, which was helpful because then
as a kid in New York you formed a band. A band
could make a few pennies, nickels, playing at some
thing like a wedding, you know; a local dance. No
street corner musicians.
29
LG: Oh, I'm not saying any of us were that good. Maybe
some of the kids were; I wasn't. Actually, I learn
ed a great deal more in the. year and a half or two
when I was older - eighteen, nineteen. I spent some
time with a piano teacher in L. A. who at least knew
what he was talking about. So, yes, we worked on
the piano.
Ward: Did you practice a lot?
LG: That is a hard variable because if there was a good
baseball game going on, that took precedence. And
there was a peculiar thing; I mean, the attitude of
the folks toward baseball was not too bad.
There were some sports they didn't think too much
of. Basketball was all right, but they had some
questions about it. Why? Because of some distant
relative who had played basketball for NYU (New York
University); Stern - that was his name. He'd gotten
a hernia. They figured out that this was caused by
his stretching, and playing too much basketball
caused it. They didn't have too much use for that.
Later on, for example, when my brother, Sam
played a lot of ice hockey -
Ward: Oh, that's a rough game I
LG: That was barred completely when some kid of one of
the families who were close to us lost an eye as a
goalie. Baseball is sort of accepted; after all,
it's a kid game .
Ward: What was your position - what did you play?
LG: Mostly first base because a left-hander would play
mostly first base; that's obvious. A left-hander
could not be a catcher, right?
Ward: I didn't know you were left-handed.
LG: Yes, not when I write but I am left-handed.
Ward: Then you are sort of ambidextrous?
30
LG: Not completely, though. I'd play first "base; once
in a while they would let me pitch. I had a
tendency to get a little wild, so it wasn't too
often. We were still living on Washington, and we
had a good kid team there.
You'd play a lot of stickball during the day
right on the streets. That was just using a soft
ball and a broomstick and bang it around. But we
had a regular team and we played another team -I
think it was Park Avenue again. The old running
feud was still going on.
Somehow my folks got wind of the fact that some
local characters - none of these guys were high
rollers - were betting a few bucks on the game.
And when they found that out, they said, "Forget
it." That was different; that was gambling.
Ward: That was immoral?
LG: Right, right. They wanted no part of that.
Ward: Your folks were rather strict in certain ways?
LG: They had fixed ideas on some things - no question
about that.
Ward: They weren't going to let their little boy get in
trouble if they could help it?
LG: Yeah, on that score they thought as most Jews did;
in a place like New York City if any Jewish kid got
in trouble or landed in jail or found himself in the
headlines for some crime, this was bad for all the
people.
Ward: That this was damage to the Jewish community?
LG: Right. They saw nothing contradictory in being
strong Socialists who wanted to change the whole
system and being law-abiding. They would vary;
they would be law-abiding, yet if the Cossacks,
as they called them, broke up a strike demonstration,
that was a different story; the Cossacks were
breaking the law.
31
LG: They could understand why the workers would fight
back, which was also my dad's characteristic. He
was the same way. On that score they felt very
strongly; yet in the daily routine, such as Jews
getting mixed up in the rackets, they had no use
for that and were very hostile to it.
Ward: Well, the music again. So you had a little group
and played for a wedding or a dance?
LG: Not too well, but we got by. At weddings the most
important thing was the noise. When you hit Chasen
Kaleh, Mazeltov, the friends, because these were
not religious weddings, well, sometimes they were -
they would sing a song: Chasen means bridegroom;
Kaleh is the bride, Mazeltov is happiness and there
is a song Chasen Kaleh, Mazeltov. They had to come
out good and strong in that song.
Ward: That's something getting that spelling.
LG: Oh, I don't know. Some people spell Chasen and they
use a "k", simply assuming that somebody else knows
what it means. Some people use a "ch" - it's a
"khuh" sound - it's not a sound we have in English.
They tell a story that this fellow studied very,
very hard to be a rabbi, but he couldn't "huh", so
he never made it.
Ward: I can imagine; like Hanukah is beyond me.
LG: There are all kinds of "khuhs"; it's Germanic, I
guess. Chasen would be spelled CHASEN, but
you would not pronounce it "chosen".
Ward: And the next word is -
LG: Kale - KALE or Kaleh.
Ward: And then?
LG: Mazeltov - that's MAZELTOV.
Ward: That one I have seen many times in print. Well,
I've heard you sit down at the piano and start
playing classical and whatever. You don't practice
now and you haven't practiced for years, I bet.
32
LG: No, I haven't practiced for years. The last time
I did any practicing, Liza happened to be living
at home and we'd play some of the Mozart duets.
There I could still hold my own and read well
enough to get by.
When I went to high school - by that time we had
moved from Washington Avenue to Jackson Avenue.
That was a bit of an improvement because instead of
being a tenement, it was a two-story house.
Ward: And you had that to yourself as a family?
LG: No, we had one floor; it was a larger house, and it
was very close to my high school and across the
street from the playground. I could play until
dinner time - until I felt I had to come in and do
some practicing on the piano.
I went to the Sholem Aleichem School up until
the time I went to high school; whether it
continued beyond that I don't know. The family
was quite close. My sister was going to college
before I got there. There was no feeling around
the family of poverty. My dad was a very good
worker.
Ward: Your economic situation, considering everything,
was fairly good?
LG: It wasn't too bad. I don't recall the family ever
going hungry. It was not a family that had many
luxuries - you needed new clothes, but we weren't
that interested in them, either.
Ward: You had a piano - a mandolin?
LG: We had a piano, sure, and books. I think it was
Sam or Saul who tried the violin for a while.
Yiolin, to the Jews, made more sense than the piano
in the old country.
Ward: But why?
33
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward;
LG:
V/ard :
The only explanation I've heard which makes a bit
of sense is that it is both easily hidden and
easily transportable. If a Jew were evicted from
a shtetl a violin was something he could take along
with him.
A shtetl?
Jewish communities. If they had to move or were
forced out - these were cities within a city, some
were ghettos - the violin could be transported.
The other thing was that enough of them were
craftsmen so that they could make one; making a
piano is quite another story. Transporting a piano
would be more of a problem. You can understand
somebody being a fiddler on the roof; but a pianist
on the roof is impossible.
You never played the violin - why?
The piano was enough,
that too much.
Hardly got around playing
Have you ever heard of the raonotonic ear as
compared to the polytonic ear?
Having absolute, true pitch, you mean?
No - polytonic; for example, the possibility to make
chords, a combination of sounds whereas monotonic
is just one sound.
Single notes. There are those who will tell you
that learning a violin is easier, once you have
picked up the technique of fingering, because you
are playing single notes. I have always been con
vinced that somebody who plays a monotonic
instrument, as you define it, would have a much
easier time say, playing in a chamber music group
than a pianist, because the reading of single notes
obviously moves much more quickly. It's like
reading everything monosyllabically.
Well, did you use the piano, or your talent for it,
psychologically? For instance, when you were angry
or when you were upset, that sort of thing?
34
LG: Later on, yes, not then. There were times when I
resented it, even, because I didn't consider it
quite as important as baseball. Other times I did.
I think better teachers would have made a lot of
difference. If you start learning piano by rote,
it's hardly anything of a challenge at all.
Ward: But your finger dexterity?
LG: That becomes a fascinating thing by itself; in some
ways I would enjoy more playing scales more than
the stuff by rote. The family would finally say,
"For Christ sakes, stop the scales. Play some
music."
The finger dexterity in itself would be a
challenge, you see, to see how fast you can travel
and do it without making any mistakes. But even
there I don't recall being taught enough about
minors or majors and chords and things of that sort;
know how to transpose - make that transition between
a major and a minor, which I learned something about
later on.
I don't think I was all that fond of the piano
teacher. As a matter of fact, I caught him sort of
napping at the end of the day. He had a rough time -
Ward: This was your first teacher you're talking about?
LG: Yeah - the rest I learned by myself. After a while,
I found it more fun to pick out tunes. I didn't
know enough about the various keys, so I played most
of my tunes in the same key.
Ward: What was your favorite key?
LG: That was the key of A. I must have been at the tail
end of his schedule. That poor bastard had to make
his living in that short period of time between the
kids getting out of school and the kids going to
dinner.
In an unusual case he could get a family who
would take lessons after dinner. But then, of
course, you would run into all kinds of problems.
35
LG: If the old man has had a rough day, he might want
to hit the kip and go to sleep. One thing he can
do without is a piano lesson.
Ward: Quite an education you got!
LG: Yes. At least I did learn to read music a bit out
of that. I like the piano in the sense that it was
a love, not just for the instrument, but what could
be done with it. You see, there are still those
who figure that the piano had -
## (Interview 2: 21 February, 1978)
Ward: Lou, we were talking about the piano and your love
for it and you were caught in the middle of a
sentence there -
LG: Oh, yes. There had been a running controversy as
to whether the kind of music that could be gotten
out of a piano is better than what's gotten out of
a string instrument. There is no question that a
vibrato on a violin has a certain emotional quality
to it. There's an expression among Jews that "he's
a good violinist because he's playing from the
heart." In other words, a really emotional
instrument.
Ward: Mischa Elman? (famous violinist)
LG: Yes, Mischa Elman is a good example. The argument
went that the piano is primarily a percussion
instrument, which it is. That argument has gone on
over the years. I've never felt that it had that
much validity because if you listen to a good
pianist such as a Richter or a Gilels (Sviatoslav
Richter, Emil Gilels, Russian pianists), there's
no question that what they can get out of that
instrument is enormous. I think it measures up to
all the standards of a violin or a cello.
Ward: Did you ever hear Horowitz? (Vladimir Horowitz,
Russian pianist).
36
LG-: Yes, I've heard Horowitz play and I was lucky
enough to hear people like Bauer (Harold Bauer),
who had been a violinist and then later, at the
age of around 30, decided to become a pianist.
I was quite lucky because even as a kid we used
to go down to the concerts and to the theatre. In
many cases, I was sort of in tow by my sister. I
liked the theatre very much; liked the concerts.
I recall going to the Eva LeGallienne Theatre.
They had this repertory theatre something like
ACT, (American Conservatory Theatre). They had a
wide variety of material and you could sit in the
upper balcony. They were not regular seats; they
were benches and that was 25 cents. So we had the
chance to see at least a part of the legitimate
theatre. And I recall going to some of the Yiddish
theatres - the Yiddish Art Theatre I believe it
was - to see some of the Yiddish plays. I still
recollect as a youngster being highly shaken up by
this dramatic thing called "The Dibbuk" -
Ward: What does it mean?
LG: The Dibbuk was literally an unchained soul - a soul
that was still wandering and could not find its
peace. There were all kinds of things that went
with that play; to a youngster it was quite an
experience, a bit frightening with all the off
stage noises.
Ward: How old were you when you were so shaken up?
LG: I'd say I was around 11 or 12. I remember going
down to listen to Polly Adler, who was one of the
first of the great Jewish women comediennes, as
well as doing some singing.
This, I think, was one of the fundamental
diversions for many Jews. Something like the
Jewish Art Theatre in Yiddish represented a major
outing, an opportunity to see something that they
felt meaningful, in the same way that a reading of
Sholem Aleichem would be. They wouldn't pay so
much attention to some of the other things which,
on the other hand, my sister was very fond of. She
was growing up in an entirely different environment,
particularly around Hunters College.
37
Ward: She was interested in other things besides Jewish
drama and folklore?
LG: Right. It was through her that I got a chance to
get introduced to things such as the theatre and
the Philharmonic; we'd go to that. They also had
specials, and that included students at very low
fee. The idea that kids would have to pay the
same for tickets that adults would was ludicrous.
Of all the times to be introduced to something
like the theatre or the ballet or symphony, that's
the age.
Ward: You never forget it. Did you ever think of be
coming a professional musician or actor?
LG: Not really. I wasn't that good a musician.
Ward: No desire to walk the boards and declaim?
LG: No, my only acting experience was being dragooned
into a part in an amateur theatrical. This was
when I was at Berkeley, though. I think it was
"The Lower Depths".
The Work Ethic
LG: One other thing I might mention: even when I was
a youngster there was I guess for want of a
better word-what you'd call a work ethic. Even
as a kid you started making some side money. I'm
not sure that it had to do with dire need on the
part of the family, because I don't recall my sister
ever looking for part-time work. In my case it was
just sort of taken for granted; I don't recall being
pushed into it.
At first you'd pick up a couple of bucks by
distributing circulars door to door in the Bronx.
Somebody had a sale on someplace; a little bit like
our local merchant papers. We got paid a dollar
per thousand - something like that. Later on I
recall getting a job as a page boy at the library.
That didn't pay a great deal, but I enjoyed the
work there; being around books was pleasant and the
librarians were very helpful
Ward: This was in the local neighborhood library?
LG: Neighborhood library, yes, public library. When
I was about 15, 16 perhaps; I got a job working
in a shoe store for awhile. There was always some
sort of part-time work; it was easy to come by in
those days. Life didn't seem to be quite that
rough in terms of making a living.
V/ard: You didn't have to turn your pay over when you got
home?
LG: No, although sometimes if I'd had a full day's
work I'd never hesitate to give it to my mother;
she'd sort of parcel it back out to me. It was
not a business of my saying, "Here's my share of
support to the family". I never felt that.
V/ard: What'd you do with this money you earned? Did you
save it, or did you go out and whiff it away?
LG: I don't recall either saving it or whiffing it
away. It could go for something very essential,
such as a baseball glove, which wasn't cheap, and
a new pair of sneakers. I don't think that there
was that much interest in buying things. It didn't
occur, for example, to go out to buy an automobile,
like kids think of now; putting their money away
to buy that second-hand car. Getting a pair of
ice skates would.
V/ard: That was possible?
LG: Sure, that was possible, realistic; and it was
something you definitely used and enjoyed. There
was no feeling of trying to buy something so you
could just look at it, or just say you owned it.
Ward: Did you have money enough to last between paydays,
or were you broke half a day after you got the
money?
LG: Well, we didn't use that much money. What for?
I was going to high school at the time. Hadn't
been to college yet; when I went to college I'd
need money, yes, for carfare; and you bought some
of your books, not many.
39
LG: There were some nominal fees, "but very small.
Then you needed some cents, yes, particularly in
case you wanted to buy a sandwich and hadn't
"brought your lunch along. In high school you
didn't have the hangouts that the kids have today -
a Macdonald's, or a Jack-in-the-Box or something.
There a certain amount of money is essential, if
for no other reason than peer status. About the
nearest thing to it would be the small candy
stores which prevailed all through the neighborhood
then.
If there were some essential things you wanted,
those would be available. Getting a new baseball
was a big thing. We used one until, believe me,
it lost all spin and all liveliness and was sewn
up around a dozen times and hardly resembled a
baseball; to get a really round one was rare!
These things we considered to be fairly substantial
expenditures. What they cost I don't remember.
By the way, you asked me about my dad or the
family, as to whether there was any feeling of my
dad being a tyrant. He wasn't; although to say
that there wasn't punishment in the family would be
false. There was. And again there was a division
of labor.
The mother was in charge of the house, the
children, keeping them clothed, keeping them well,
keeping them fed. The mother was also in charge
of keeping track of the kids; whether they were
doing their piano practice, or whether they were
listening and being cooperative.
Yet, in the event that any discipline was called
for, it was the father who was called upon to
administer it. You always had that division in the
family. And there were times when some of us would
get completely wound up in some local game or
something that you never got home in time for
dinner. Or you'd been particularly mischievous
that day.
40
LG: Then the head of the family, the father, would be
called upon, and he'd give you a strap across your
"bottom. If it was called for, you would get it;
that's all. But none of this gives me any feeling
of the kind of corporal punishment that people talk
about, behind the woodshed.
Ward: Well, did your mother ever say - "Wait until your
father gets home"?
LG: Oh, you'd hear that once in a while. Sure.
Ward: You said your family was strict about some things.
What would they be?
LG: Homework - that had to be done, period. I guess
a good deal of the tempo was already set by my
older sister. She was a good scholar and highly
devoted to it. They were strict about the whole
business of practicing on something like the piano.
If they could calculate the results, I don't know.
I think that was one of the reasons for these
periodic reci'tals, to prove to the family that
something had been accomplished. In these areas
they were strict. They were strict in a general
law-abiding way; this was not law-abiding in any
redneck fashion - none of "that's the law".
Ward: What about bad language?
LG: Bad language was not acceptable around the house.
The business of the kids getting mixed up with the
wrong crowd - word would travel very fast in the
neighborhood that some of the kids were making a
quick buck by, oh, looking for a drunk and rolling
him.
I can remember as a child, some guy probably
pretty well gone, standing on an iron grill that
led to cellars all along the streets, and one of
the kids was taunting him a bit; asked him if he
had any change in his pocket. He must have said,
"Sure," and took out a handful of change. One of
the kids whacked the change all the way down to the
cellar, and one of the kids went down and picked it
all up.
41
LG: These were things that were definitely frowned
upon. On the one hand, to them a picket line was
a legal, unquestioned institution that should never
be challenged. If the cops took out after the
pickets, their attitude was they were just a bunch
of Cossacks and strikebreakers; it was their own
concept of the law.
Ward: Was there any occasion when the cop was a friend
rather than an enemy?
LG: Not particularly, really.
Ward: If there was any trouble, you solved it among
yourselves?
LG: Solved it among ourselves. There was a good deal
of carryover from the old country, a general
feeling among Jews that you don't take your head
aches to the court or to the man. You try to
resolve them among yourselves. There are endless
Jewish stories about attempts to resolve disputes
by going to the rabbi.
Ward: Partnerships, I imagine?
LG: Partnerships, domestic quarrels, arguments over
property; in the old country there apparently was
always some sort of a structure there where you
settle these things through your peer. If it
wasn't a religious person it was some person who
had standing in the community.
Ward: The rabbi usually had quite a bit to do with
mediation, didn't he?
LG: The rabbi at one time was the mediator and he was
the interpreter of the Jewish law - whether it was
written out or not.
One other little item about my mother. She was
a very, very strong woman. When she determined to
move, or do something, she'd do it.
A little bit of local knowledge: one of the
delicacies was a good herring, what they called
a "schmaltz" herring. These herring were soaked
42
LG-: in brine, and they would come in barrels, a barrel
being maybe three feet tall; big, round barrel.
They came from somewhere in Europe. The idea was
to get a schmaltz herring that wasn't all bones.
It had to be good and fat.
I recall going shopping with my mother; a barrel
of schmaltz herring was there, and some of the
Jewish women there were trying to get the fattest
schmaltz herrings. Naturally they would get down
to the bottom of the barrel, so that before long
the herring that had been at the bottom were all
up at the top. The heavier herring, I guess, would
have a tendency to go to the bottom of the barrel.
Ward: The fat ones?
LG: Right. My mother would do her shopping and let
the other women pick over these herrings; when she
was ready to buy herrings she would just take the
one on top, because by that time all the bottom
ones were on top. There are some people who simply
sit and wait and have a certain amount of patience
until that turnover takes place in a situation.
Ward: You were very fond of her, apparently.
LG: I was fond of both of them.
Ward: It must have been a good family.
LG: I think it was, really, in that there was a good
relationship. Look at that table over there, in
the dining room. My dad made that for me. And
there was another table that he made. When Terry
and I first set up house - not when we lived on
Telegraph Hill, it was later during the time we
lived on Green Street that she wanted this table.
She went by Gump's and they showed her this table.
This was it.
My dad happened to be up here visiting, so he
came down and took a look at it, and says "Sure".
So we bought the lumber, all maple or birch, and
even then it ran quite a bit a square foot. This
table was turned out. It cost around fifty bucks
instead of five hundred dollars, which it would
have been at Gump's.
43
Ward: Well, are you ready to go on to ?
LG: Sure.
Ward: Did you have any particular major in mind when you
started at CONY?
LG-: Not particularly, because as I recall you didn't
select a major, really, until after your sophomore
year. All your freshman courses were the same,
compulsory.
Ward: When the time came along when you could select a
major, what did you think of, select?
LG: At that time I selected economics and political
science.
Ward: I would have guessed that.
LG: Yes. Although how much of that work I'd done at
CCNY I I don't think it was a great deal. I
think most of the time I spent at CCNY was pretty
well with the established courses.
Ward: How long did you go to CCNY?
LG: I went there for a year and a half. I entered
there in the winter of 1926-27; I'd be about
sixteen and a half. I was there until the finish
ing up of the spring semester in 1928.
Ward: Was there anything particular about that year and
a half that you wish to reminisce about?
Leftwins: Politics
LG: A couple of things that struck me about CCNY I
still recall with considerable fondness. One was
the alcoves, as they call them. There was a sort
of a large dining area made up of little alcoves
where different groups would sort of hang out or
just sit around in bull sessions. The amount of
discussion that went on there and it was almost
44
LG: always political - was amazing.
It was during that period where a lot of the things
that I had already begun to take up in different
ways - partially through the family, partially
through their friends, and partially things that I
had read - began to jell. Here were a lot of bright,
bright youngsters no question about that most
of the time I just sat and listened - -
Ward: These were working class neighborhood boys and girls,
weren't they, pretty much?
LG: CCNY at that time was a boys' school.
Ward: Oh, it was a boys' school?
LG: Right. The girls went to Hunters - Hunters College.
CCNY was a boys' school, and I'd say that at least
80 percent of them came from working class families.
And 100 percent of them came either on foot, by
subway or train - or by bus. Anything such as some
body owning a car was unknown.
Ward: Bicycles?
LG: Some bicycles, yes, a few. Strictly a streetcar
college, that's what it was. And the school had a
. reputation of turning out some very, very bright
students; still does.
Political debate was really beginning to rage at
that time. It was after the Russian revolution in
1917. It was after the formation of the Communist
party, even though the Socialist party was still a
large and rival group.
It was still during the period of Norman Thomas,
(a Socialist leader) a very colorful and effective
advocate for whatever he was thinking about, talking
about. It was still during the period of Eugene V.
Debs. I think he was still around.
45
LG: By that time I think that some of these factional
breaks that later consumed so much of the time of
the whole left, such as the Lovestoneites (a faction
that abandoned the Communists to follow Leon
Trotsky) -
Ward: Oh, the Lovestoneites?
LG: Yes, after there had been a split in the party.
Ward: Jay Lovestone (leader of the pro-Trotsky group)?
LG: Jay Lovestone, right. The whole Trotsky thing had
come to a head in the Soviet Union around 1924, '25,
so that by '26 that was also being debated. These
were not quiet arguments. They were real screaming
drills and they'd go on endlessly.
One thing you had to admire; the youngsters who
were taking part in it did their homework and when
they debated their case it was not just a vitriolic
expression, not just to overwhelm the other person
by yelling them down - that didn't get very far.
That was an education all by itself, just as much as
the classes. There was so much coming through in
the way of political discussion, debate, about World
War I, which was not that far behind us ....
Sacco and Vanzetti were coming up?
I don't think Sacco and Vanzetti had been arrested
at that time; they might have been.
Well, the Red raids had occurred; they must have
been something that was talked about.
The Palmer raids - Palmer - yes, they had occurred.
I recall discussions about the Wobblies, (members of
the Industrial Workers of the World) even though
they were primarily located on the west coast. They
had come east and led some of the big strikes, such
as the one at Paterson, New Jersey; also in Lawrence,
Mass.
Ward: That was the one I was thinking of. John Reed
(famous radical writer) had to do with both of them,
at least Paterson, I know -
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
46
LG-: Those were among the shoemakers and textile workers
of the day. The Wobblies had come east for these
battles: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (famous woman
radical) was very active. There were discussions
about the Wobblies and their peculiar type of
tradition, their own contribution, an odd thing.
I found it very difficult to accept the nature
of the Wobblies. To me it was a strange thing that
guys, for example, thought nothing of being on the
road all the time, of riding the rods. Why? Be
cause to a kid raised in New York City, a freight
train was a rare thing to see. If you. saw any trains
at all, it was these passenger trains that went on
to Yonkers and that section above the Bronx, and
primarily along Park Avenue. They had subterranean
trains, you'd see them once in a while.
Ward: You didn't run away from home at any time, did you?
LG: No, like every kid you always think about it, but
the whole idea of this kind of existence ....
We're city people.
There was actually no feeling of the land, even
though my mother made a heroic effort to get the
kids a bit of fresh air during the summer vacation
time, partly to escape the heat. I recall we spent
several summers in a little town in the Catskills,
off the Hudson River, called Accord.
Ward: This has a political significance to me; a homo
geneous group in this town, or what?
LG: Not particularly; a lot of them knew each other.
In those days you didn't read about these places.
It went by word of mouth. One person knew about
it and told another person.
Ward: The patrons mostly Jews?
LG: Primarily, and not all of them of the same mind,
because you'd hear political debates going on
constantly. Some of the families might know each
other, or at least a few of them did - some of them
did not.
47
LG: This was a place that the family could afford, which
is important. It got you out of the city during
some of the hot summer weeks. As I recall, she
worked awfully hard, because this was not the kind
of a summer camp where everyone was served food.
There was no kitchen help. The women shared the
kitchen, and that was not always a happy thing.
Ward: In other words, who got the stove, who got the sink?
LG: Right. Three or four women in the kitchen - and I
don't care what generation or what they are - always
get the same results; not very happy ones so there
was a great deal of work for the family.
Actually, it was a pleasant enough place. We
would get picked up at the railroad station by the
farmer or the guy who owned the place, with a horse
and wagon, and taken off to the farm. That was the
chance we had to see something of another world; it
was not a city ....
Ward: Cows?
LG: There were cows around; horses -
Ward: Milk didn't come in - ?
LG: Glass bottles, right. We knew it couldn't come in
those big gallon cans because we couldn't figure
out how a cow could sit on one of those. They
weren't gallon cans, they were about ten gallons.
You've seen them - for a long time the farmers used
to use them to transport their milk.
They were a source of continuous enjoyment for
the kids. One of the major games that the kids
would play was how many of these things could you
jump over - line up two, three, four; the object
being to jump, hit the last one with your hands and
still make it. Whether any permanent damage was
done to some vital parts, I'm not sure.
Ward: Was milk homogenized then?
LG: You mean pasteurized?
48
Ward: No, homogenized. You saw the cream rise?
LG: Yes, you saw the cream rise. At one time you used
to go down to the corner to pick up your milk. I
recall once my dad being a bit irritated at every
body, including the kids, because he had to go get
the milk; so he went down to the grocery store and
had the man put a quart of milk in a brown paper
bag and carried it home that way. My mother was not
enthusiastic but he thought it was funny as heck.
But later, during the winter, by that time they
were delivering milk bottles. It was terribly cold
on Jackson Avenue and the milk in the bottle would
begin to freeze. The paper top on the bottle was
about two inches above the bottle itself because it
was all cream. The mothers separated the cream
from the milk; they used it for things like cream
with their coffee or their tea.
Ward: All right, that explains why it was difficult to
relate to riding the box cars and the other reasons
why it was difficult to relate to the Wobblies, more
fundamental than the means of transportation.
LG: The other one was this whole concept of their being
on the move constantly. They'd move from lumber
camps, say, to places like hop fields, or work in
the mines. Not in the coal mines - I'm talking
now about the western mines. These were a little
bit difficult to relate to. Later on, I began to
understand a great deal more about it.
##
Ward: Okay, Lou, now with the Wobblies, did they talk to
you about the use of violence?
LG: At that time? No, that was later on. I didn't get
to know any Wobblies when I was in New York City,
I first met some on the west coast.
Ward: All right, but you heard people talk about the
Wobblies. Did they talk about the Wobblies 1
feelings and about the propriety of using violence?
49
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
I don't recall. After all, during the Palmer raids
there was a lot of violence, but the violence was
against the Wobblies. I'm not sure whether John Dos
Passes, (an author) had come out at that time with
42nd Parallel.
We were more accustomed to things like those
grisly stories about what the vigilantes did to
the Wobblies, like the story of Wesley Everest (a
Wobbly). He was hung under one of the railroad
bridges.
Who? Wesley what?
Wesley Everest - that was in the Northwest, I think
in Centralia -
But this Wesley Everest - that name is unfamiliar.
It strikes me that you're discussing all these
divisions among the left; were there any capitalist-
minded kids at CCNY?
If there were, they sure as heck weren't in that
alcove. They were in some other part of the
building.
And never the twain shall meet. Is that it?
I don't know. It could be that they didn't spend
any time in the alcoves, that their interests and
thinking were somewhere else.
No, I don't recall any kids holding forth on the
beauties of the capitalist system. I think that
would be pretty rare in any school, even today.
Though a lot of people are in favor of it and
completely conditioned by it, I don't think they
carry it on their sleeve.
So that's the way it was. If there were pro-
capitalist arguments, they were not much in evidence
You'd get more of those in the classroom; with
studies of Adam Smith and the principles of free
enterprise; in the economic subjects, there you
would get it, but not in the alcoves, not among the
youngsters.
50
Ward: What about the professors? Were there any
professors that made lasting impressions on you?
LG: Only two that I can recall. One of them was not
a professor of mine - he was the head of the Music
Department and a good organist. They had an excel
lent organ at CCNY - beautiful thing - and he made
it a practice to play almost every afternoon, every
thing; a lot of the Each which is written for organ;
the fugues, preludes. Those were wonderful
afternoons, just sitting around and listening to him
for an hour or two.
There was a professor I had in Public Speaking,
a very competent man and also a good person in his
thinking about things.
Ward: At that time were you doing any public speaking or
identified with it?
LG: No.
Ward: Did you try to imitate him?
LG: I tried to imitate him very consciously in terms of
some of the things he hammered away at that make up
what people call "New Yorkese."
Ward: You mean like "thoid"?
LG: Yes, like "Thoid Street" and "goink", the k's
instead of g's. He had these things figured out,
and he was determined that if some youngster got
through his course at least he would speak something
that people in other parts of the country could
understand. He might have had some background or
training in New England. In retrospect, I think a
lot of his speech more closely resembled Bostonians
than anyone else.
Ward: Mass Ave.
LG: Right. Another feature of the school which in
itself manifested general rebellious feelings among
the students, ROTC was compulsory, partially because
51
LG: of federal grants, or the method in which the
school was set up, just like in the state college
system.
Ward: By law?
LG: Right. Every youngster had to take ROTO and there
was Lewisohn Stadium, right alongside. That's the
place where they used to have the summer concerts;
it was also the athletic field, the place where the
ROTO would practice. In very inclement weather
they would try to have ROTO drill in tunnels that
went beneath the "buildings of CCNY, so that you
wouldn't have to walk through rain or snow to go
from one building to another building.
It was one of the most ludicrous things that the
school could do. The kids were mostly violently
opposed to the whole system of compulsory military
training, a lot of them on political grounds; a
lot of them were just pacifists; and then there were
some kids who could think of nothing but some form
of mischief.
A few incidents stand out in my mind. Every
time they would have parade drill or whatever it
was; "march in squads," "right turn," "left turn"
or "to the rear march," there would always be one
or two kids there who would take these rolled
leggings that came out of World War I that looked
like a big Ace bandage - same size. If you put
the thing on right, it would stay up, but there
would always be a couple of kids there who would
see that they weren't fastened properly; soon as
the parade would start, sure enough they would be
come unravelled. You could just see the scene
there with somebody stepping on those things every
few steps; the whole parade would fall apart.
Pretty soon the man in charge would blow his cork.
I remember another incident where we were doing
ROTC in one of these tunnels. Some youngster
complained that they couldn't try a bayonet drill.
52
LG: A hard-headed leader said: "Oh, we can try it,
we're not going to try any fancy stuff, you know,
any charging or crap like that." They had no sooner
started the drill when some kid started screaming
and yelling, holding his eye saying somebody had
stabbed him (laughter). Nothing of the sort had
happened, but the whole thing broke up in conster
nation.
I had a feeling that the instructors there
realized that ROTC was not taking on at CONY, that
this would never be an outstanding example of how
it should be done.
The president of the school towards the last year
when I was there - I think he was named Robinson -
the director or the president . . . There had been
a clash between the administration and some students
who were determined to hold a demonstration. What
it was all about, I don't know. It might have been
a general free speech thing. Apparently, he lost
his cool and attacked the demonstration with his
umbrella; from then on he picked up the name of
"Umbrella Robinson". They would never refer to him
in any other way. How long he lasted, I don't know.
If I had been in charge of the school, there's
. one thing I don't think I could have won; that was
an open clash with the students - it could not be
done.
Ward: How many young men were there?
LG: I don't think it was all that big. The figure of
1500 stands out in my mind. I think it has become
larger since. You had a number of other schools
there that were considered more desirable; there
was NYU (New York University), Columbia, not too
far away, Fordham, Cornell - universities all around
there.
Ward: Well, why did you go to CCNY? It was the nearest
to you?
LG: Nearest my home, right, and also, no tuition. No
body felt that it was a lower calibre school. I
think most of the CCNY students and graduates felt
that if you could survive CCNY, you could survive
the world.
53
Ward: Oh, I see - great pride.
LG: Right. You have that in the whole school structure
to this day. For example, Stanford students have a
tendency to downgrade Gal students. You find that
even in high schools; Lowell students in San Fran
cisco have a tendency to play down a place like
Poly High.
Ward: Scholastic nationalism?
LG: Scholastic nationalism; and a lot of it reflects
economic "background and things of that sort.
54
II ON TO CALIFORNIA
Education, Work, Political Action
Ward: So, after a year and a half, what happened? You left
CCNY, why?
LG: Well, what happened was this. My father had been with
the studios beginning quite early in the whole film
making -
Ward: In New York?
LG: In New York. I remember he worked for the old
Biograph. He even worked for a while with the old
Crystal Films, and I remember going with him to the
Hearst Cosmopolitan Studios.
Ward: He was a cabinet maker. What did he do for the
studios?
LG: In those days they built all their sets. Movies were
made indoors other than Westerns, which were called
"locations". The challenge to a good cabinet maker
was to build any kind of a set that was called for.
To him this was a continuous, almost daily challenge
to his abilities as a cabinet maker and carpenter.
There was nothing he couldn't make of wood, except
maybe a wool carpet. If he was given a picture, for
example - and in many cases they were not given blue
prints, just pictures, although he had taught himself
how to read blueprints and he had taught himself
English.
55
Ward;
LG:
And he could turn out a French provincial chair or
a Louis XIV -
That's right, or a curved stairway which was supposed
to be the set of a mansion. He could do all these
things. I'm not sure what year he went to work for
the studios. My hunch is that it was around 1914,
maybe later. I recall taking some expeditions with
my father, either to the Biograph Films or to Ashbury
Park for a so-called "location," or to the Hearst
Cosmopolitan. By that time I must have been ten or
eleven; he had already been with the motion picture
industry for some time.
About 1924 a number of the studios were beginning
to close in New York City. The boom was taking place
in Hollywood and some of the big studios had already
been set up in Hollywood; Paramount Films, Warner
Brothers, Fox.
My father decided to take a look at the Hollywood
scene. He had a chance to work there with a new
company called Tec-Art. That was located on Melrose
not too far away from Paramount, across the street.
He went out there, not as a partner but it was some
sort of small shares in the outfit; he was in charge
of construction as well as working in the carpenter
shop. He was a hard worker.
I'm not saying he hadn't done other cabinet work.
He and some other chap went into home building, but
obviously he didn't like it much and he went back to
the studios. So, after 1924, he began to go out to
Hollywood, except for visits home, particularly around
the summer, primarily to see whether the studios were
going to take hold there. It was doubtful whether
many of them would hang on in New York City.
By 1928, he had concluded that New York City was
washed up in terms of motion pictures and that he
definitely would move out to the west coast. So in
1928 the entire family moved out to the west coast.
Ward ;
I see, so then you went to UCLA?
settle in L. A.?
Whereabouts did you
56
LG: It was one of the larger motel courts.
Ward: What part of town would that be?
LG: It was in Hollywood. We were not there too long
before we moved out to this place on Beachwood. I
think it was 2626 or 2626-^, a large flat in one of
these four-flat affairs, and fairly comfortable.
I went to UCLA in the fall of 1928, the September
semester. At that time it was located on Vermont;
sort of the border between Hollywood and Los Angeles.
You were a few blocks away, so that it was an easy
trip; sometimes if you felt energetic you could walk
home. I was at the Vermont campus until it moved
over to Westwood.
Ward: The Janss Investment Company . . . ?
LG: That's right - the Janss Investment Company; this was
the subject of a great deal of discussion at Vermont,
as to how much Janss was making on the thing. The
land on which UCLA is now located was contributed by
Janss at Westwood because that then would give the
Janss properties a chance to develop all around it.
Ward: How long were you at Vermont?
LG: My recollection is that I was only there about half
a year. Maybe it was a year, but I sort of doubt it.
It could very well have been that it was around
January-February of 1929.
Ward: At the height of the boom?
LG: Oh, yes, it was still the boom period and many of us
felt that the move out to Westwood was to get rid of
all the poor kids.
Ward: Mmmm - that made a difference to you, coming from
Beachwood to Westwood?
LG: Or any part of Los Angeles. On the Vermont campus,
you had kids from all over Los Angeles, including as
far away as Boyle Heights; they could make it by
57
LG: street car. We had a fairly good street car system,
and it wasn't all that expensive. Westwood was
another story. The nearest you could get to the
campus was on Wilshire and that was quite a walk from
there.
Ward: Oh, yes - some ten blocks or so.
LG: Eight or ten blocks, right. Then there was the whole
business of eating; if you were stuck late going to
the library, there was no way of going home and get
ting some dinner and coming back. So, there was a
good deal of feeling that this was an attempt to
upgrade the school by automatic, economic elimination.
But we went out there, all right.
Ward: Did the family move?
LG: No, the family stayed exactly where they were on
Beachwood.
Ward: That was handy for your father with the studios?
LG: Right. From where we lived on Beachwood, it couldn't
have been more than five, ten minutes to work. By
that time he had a car, and even when he went to work
at other studios they were all within reasonable
distance. Westwood was another story. The only thing
close was Westwood itself, or places like Beverly
Hills, and nobody in the family was giving any thought
to living in Beverly Hills.
V/ard: What about the student body that you got into at
Vermont? There must have been a great difference be
tween that and CONY. There were no "alcoves", for
instance.
LG: There were no alcoves, but the student body I got to
know pretty quickly. Many of them came from a similar
cultural and economic background like - oh, the kids
that came out of Boyle Heights.
My folks knew some of the people out there; again,
I think, because of their cultural ties. It wasn't
too long before they had one of their organizations
going - old friends - the people who came from Kovna
58
LG: or around there; Lithuanians in the main. The
youngsters from those families were also at UCLA,
so that this group gravitated pretty quickly towards
each other.
Ward: So, you didn't feel uprooted?
LG: I did in part. I got to be very fond of New York
City as a youngster. I walked almost every inch of
it. I didn't think too much, for example, of start
ing off at home and walking the whole length of
Manhattan down to the Bowery, taking different streets
each time so that one time I'd be going through
Yorkville and another time going over towards Colum
bia and then walking down.
You could take the subway back from the Bowery and
for a nickel you were home again. I got to be very
fond of the city, so fond that in the summer of 1929
I took off and went back to New York.
Ward:
Oh, that was after you had been in college a year?
LG: I had been at UCLA about a year. You bought a ride
by sharing gas, very common. I forget what my share
was. I had been working in Hollywood and I was saving
up some money. Perhaps I had this at the back of my
mind, plus the fact that towards the latter part of
that year my father decided to get rid of an old 1924
Buick; I inherited the thing, so transportation was
a bit better. Running a car was a bit cheaper in
those days -
Ward: You were working?
LG: I worked around the studios on holidays, in part.
Ward: What kind of work were you doing?
LG: They called me a "grip", but actually it was laborer's
work, helping to rig sets, working along the catwalks
and things of that sort.
Ward: So you had the old Buick and you were saving some
money and you wanted to go to New York?
59
LG: Yes, I bought my way to New York, sharing driving
and so forth. Whoever the guy was who owned the car
was in a hurry to get there because I don't remember
stopping along the way. We slept in the car; stopped
for a meal once in a while and go to the can. We
just drove day and night. It took a little over four
days, driving day and night along Highway 66; north
around the Panhandle to that part of Texas that tied
on to another highway, and got to New York.
I worked in New York for a couple of months,
selling shoes; that was it; I had done some of that
in Hollywood. You did all kinds of odd things. So,
I sort of got it out of my system - the homesickness
and thought I might as well come back, which I did.
I had left before the semester was finished in
1929: when I got back there was a question as to
whether I would move on. The profs I was talking to
agreed I could go on the next semester, because by
that time I would have been a junior.
Then at the end of that semester I took both the
exams for the previous semester and the ones for the
semester I was in. I was able to make it up all
right; there was no great problem. The general
attitude of the school was that they weren't all that
anxious to lose students.
Ward: They weren't nit-picking?
LG: No. Bear in mind that Westwood was still considered
the southern branch; people from up here never talked
about UCLA. They simply talked about the southern
branch of the University of California.
Ward: So, you got into the junior year all right?
LG: I got into the junior year all right. I was taking
economics, accounting - -
Ward: Accounting?
LG: Yes; I decided that it wouldn't do me any harm. I
might learn something.
Ward: Some poli sci (political science)?
60
LG: A little bit of that, right. Those were the principal
subjects; got to meet a number of friends, who
continued friends. It was about that time that I met
Aubrey Grossman (who became an attorney for American
Indians, etc.) - 1928; it could very well be that
that was when he started UCLA. Aubrey is a few years
younger than I am.
By that time the campus was a little more livable;
when we first moved out there about the only things
that were completed were Royce Hall and the Library;
not even the Student Union Building. All of it -
it was built out of brick on what amounted to barren
dunes. I recall a number of professors talking quite
openly that Janss had really made himself a deal
because the university was on an earthquake fault.
Whether they were right or wrong, I don't know. So
far it's still there.
Ward: So are the buildings.
LG: Right. One of the reasons they were arguing so much
about brick is that brick is one of the few things
that cannot withstand an earthquake worth a damn; but
that wasn't our problem at the time. Dust. The wind
would blow out there and the dust was just unbeliev
able. It would fill the cars, and you would find
yourself shutting the windows, shutting the doors
Ward: Suffocating?
LG: Yeah, suffocating. Now it is a very pleasant univer
sity because they have done a great job landscaping,
a lot of grass around there, although the buildings
have gotten pretty crowded together. But there were
no dorms there at the time. Some people were just
beginning to build apartments and downtown Westwood
had the first few shops, including an ice cream
parlor. It was a sort of headquarters for the kids.
Ward: So, economics, poli sci, accounting. By that time
you were getting close to coming of age, huh?
LG: Yes, by that time I was 19. It was while I was at
UCLA that my political thinking began to fall into
place; not just myself, but also a number of my
friends.
61
LG: There was Aubrey, there was May Solomon, Corinne
Silver, - some others; most of them were from similar
backgrounds; some of the people in some of the
fraternities; oh, guys like Percy Solotoy, who later
took over this company Brown-Saltzman, furniture
builders. Percy remained a friend for many, many
years. I knew his wife very well - Sonya. She died
some years later - cancer.
Percy belonged to one of the fraternities; so did
Joe Aidlin. They had a fraternity house near the
Vermont campus, because I remember going over there
during one of their rushing periods. Decided pretty
quickly that I could do without it; just wasn't my
scene, period.
A number of youngsters, both at Vermont and then
at UCLA, were part of the Young Communist League.
Some were also members of the "Blue Blouses," I think
they were called.
Ward: "Blue Blouses"? That would indicate a Russian - ?
LG: No. They just wore a blue blouse that was like a work
shirt; they had small singing groups and acting
groups - things they put together for meetings. I
heard about an organization called Young Pioneers;
that, I gather, was centered primarily around Boyle
Heights; part of the Jewish community.
Ward: Oh - was Meyer Baylin a - ?
LG: Meyer Baylin was part of that group. Baylin did not
go to UCLA as far as I know. One reason I remember
Meyer Baylin is because Meyer Baylin was one of those
who unofficially closed the Olympic Games when they
jumped out of the stands and ran around the track -
not at Olympic speed - with "Free Tom Mooney" signs
on them. That must have been 1932.
Ward: Yes - it was.
LG: They went from there right to the city jail, and
Meyer Baylin
62
Ward: Oh., and Leo Gallagher; he got fired from some little
university where he was a law professor "because he
defended them, (and who later defended Georgi Dimitrov
in the Reichstag Fire trial).
LG: He defended them, right. I got to know Leo Gallagher
later on. A marvelous old guy; and Al Wirin -
Ward: Gallagher was a devout Catholic . . .
LG: Yes; and he and Al V/irin ( a prominent Los Angeles
attorney) worked closely together, you recall. Al
Wirin was active in the Civil Liberties Union. He
died a few days ago. So, I began to meet a number of
these youngsters and of course the political dis
cussions were going full blast.
Ward: You found more anti-radical sentiment at UCLA than
you did at CCNY, didn't you?
LG: I'm not sure that it was so much anti as indifferent.
The professor didn't seem to give so much never mind.
Some of them were taken with it because it would
liven up some of those classes, which were deadly,
deadly dull; did not seem to be disturbing to them.
You didn't have anything at the time that resembled
an Un-American Activities Committee or organizations
of that sort, so there was no fear on the part of the
professors. Some of them actually felt, as a pro
fessor should, that that is exactly what a school is
for; that if it is not a market place for ideas, no
place ever will be.
It was during this period that I became active with
the politically active kids in many ways. I guess it
was my age, getting into that period of life when
everything is opening up for you.
Ward: And you had to go to meetings?
LG: A few, although for a while I was primarily interested
in doing everything under the sun. I decided I wanted
to go back to the piano; luckily picked a professor
who really knew a great deal about it. He had been
both a musician and also sang with some group in
Europe; at least I learned a little bit with him.
63
LG: I also decided that I ought to stay in good physical
shape. It was not only a question of walking almost
everywhere; I remember buying a set of weights with
out any instructions, which was foolish. Weights -
you can hurt yourself - -
Ward: Unless you know what you are doing.
LG: Although I got to the point where I could snatch and
jerk two hundred pounds. Press is much more
difficult. Weights, piano, as well as being in school
taking a full program.
My schedule got to be such that while the family
was very tolerant, there was only so much they could
take. If I decided that in addition to doing my work
in school, working out on weights, and doing my hiking,
I would start to practice the piano at 10 or 11
o'clock at night - it wouldn't work.
Finally, my dad solved the problem for me. He
talked to somebody down at the studios where they
had a couple of grand pianos on the sets. So, he
said, "Look, you can go practice all you please."
##
LG: I was talking about my schedule v/hich always seemed
to run 24 hours a day, or very close. Under this
arrangement where I could practice down at the stud
ios, I recall one instance where I must have gotten
started pretty late at night. The work crews were
just coming in as I was getting through, so it
must have been around six o'clock in the morning.
The guy who ran the studio came by and I was
practicing something or other and he said, "Look,
the guys are about to start work. I don't mind your
playing the piano, but play something a little bit
faster, something in marching tempo; see if we can get
any life around here."
Ward: So you did?
LG: No, I just called it a day.
64
Ward: Then, you had just about played all night.
LG: No - I don't know what time or how late I started.
What I distinctly recall about that whole period was
very intense work and activity.
(Interview 3: 28 February, 1978)
Ward: Lou, where did you sleep those days?
LG: When did I sleep or where? I think all young people
get the idea that four hours sleep is enough - five
hours is plenty. With that kind of a schedule, that
was about it.
Most of the time I stayed where my folks lived on
Beachwood Drive. Later on, at least a year after
that, some of us chipped in and rented a summer
cottage or cabin in one of those canyons leading off
of Sunset Boulevard. It wasn't Topanga Canyon, but
it was in that area, only about five minutes from
school. It gave the advantage of being able to sleep
there if you worked late at the library or thought
you were losing a lot of time on everything else.
It was also a general hangout for some of the
kids. The rent on the place was twenty bucks a
month, or something like that. By that time I had
my father's Buick; it was a sedan with a canvas top.
I remember one time being in a great rush, flying
down this canyon, making a turn and the car swaying;
the top of the car hit a truck - not the body of the
car, just the top; it had these posts that held up
the touring top. After thinking about that for a
while, I thought I might as well have an open car,
so I cut off the entire top and left the wooden base.
Well, it became an open five-passenger roadster. It
suited me fine, except for the winter weather.
Ward: So you just put on rain gear?
LG: I guess so.
65
Ward: Do you want to talk about the people who were your
companions up there in the little cabin?
LG: Well, I remember some of them who went there; Aubrey
was there for a while; Sonya who married Percy
Solotoy, used to come by there. Another person,
Corinne Silver - I lost track of her. There were a
number of others who would come through at one time
or another. It was sort of like a hideaway from
school, a gathering place.
Ward: You'd call it a commune today, I suppose?
LG: No, I don't think it would be called a commune at any
time because there wasn't much work going on around
the place. About the nearest thing it came to a
commune was sharing the cost of hanging on to it.
Ward: I think you said something about using your education
in accounting. You worked for somebody - kept his
books?
LG: Yes, I was making some money, at least enough to pay
my share and buy gasoline for the car and get books.
Gasoline was very, very cheap then. I remember price
wars that would reach the point where you got ten
gallons for a dollar; offering eleven gallons for a
buck, an extra gallon thrown in like a baker's dozen.
Things like clothes weren't all that important;
the amount of outside entertainment was miniscule;
there was no such thing as going to restaurants to
eat. If we wanted food at the shack, we'd fix it
ourselves. Groceries were not very expensive either,
so that getting by was not that much of a chore.
I managed to get myself a pretty good part-time
job; it was either two half days a week or two half
days and Saturday. For a while I was hanging on to
that job and working also at this shoe place on
Hollywood Boulevard.
Ward: You were on your own?
LG: Pretty much on my own, although I still had my room
at the house with the folks and spent time there.
Anyway, this guy had this drugstore for years, but
none of his books had been taken care of. They
66
LG: actually were in no shape for any kind of an inspec
tion.
Whether it was the Internal Revenue or another
government agency that would do periodic inspection
of drug stores, I am not sure. It was some federal
agency, the primary reason being that the drug stores
had "become one of the legal outlets for alcohol. I
would also help out in the store; but by and large
my job was to try to get those books straightened
out. After a couple of months of working on it, with
the little knowledge I had, at least he had a set of
ledgers and some idea where the money was being spent
and how much money was being taken in. And this went
along okay until one day he came to me and said, "I
have cashed this $800 bad check. You'll have to put
that down as a bad check." I said, "Frankly, I don't
think if anybody goes through those books they're
going to believe that."
I'd seen some of these guys coming by there. They
were bootleggers who were bringing what I guess was
straight alcohol. They'd either sell it that way or
mix it a bit; sometimes give it a medicinal name.
There were individuals who even had prescriptions
from doctors, so that there was always a certain
amount of cover going on. But this was a bit too
blatant, this $800 check, which was his way of paying
off these guys, cashing their checks and then writing
them off. He told me: "That's just a plain mistake
and that's the way I want it done."
I said, "Well, if you want it done that way, you'd
better do it yourself. I don't see any purpose in
trying to handle books that way. I don't think the
job is worth enough to get myself in that kind of a
stupid jam, because if they do come around and inspect
your books again - somebody had been around there and
decided the books were in fairly good shape - they're
not going to ask just yon, they're going to ask me
'how in the devil did this $800 bad debt come along? 1 ;
ordinarily people like druggists or a grocery store
owner won't cash any $800 bad check." No, pretty
unusual - -
Ward: Eight dollars maybe, but not $800
67
LG: Eight bucks in those days perhaps, yes, or if you
knew somebody very well, make it ten; but 800 bucks
was a lot of dough. The net result was that we
parted company.
Ward: How much was he paying you?
LG: I think it was somewhere around 30, 35 cents an hour;
maybe 40, which in those days was - it sure as heck
wasn't big pay or anything, but it wasn't the worst
thing around because depression had gotten under way.
Bear in mind that this was after the stock market
crash, and in those days there was an economic time
lag between the east coast and the west coast. The
impact of heavy unemployment and everything else had
a certain time lag.
Later on it became very manifest in California,
just as it did all over the country. There was no
minimum wage. It wasn't adopted until 1936-37,
thereabouts. I was being paid about all you could
expect; for part-time work it wasn't too bad.
V/ard: Somehow from previous discussions I get the figure
of $15. You worked a lot of hours at 35 - 40 cents
an hour to make $15.
LG: Oh, yeah - an awful long time. After all, if you're
getting two bits an hour you get 2 bucks a day. I
have a figure at the back of my head that I made
around $15 a week.
Ward: How long did this type of employment continue?
LG: Oh, I was on that job about six - seven months, and
I still got some other work. I would pick up odd
jobs in the studios once in a while. Those jobs
were dependent on whether I could be available for a
full day's work; the studios had no use for part-
time people. When they hired somebody, it was for
the day.
Ward: Your father would be helpful there, wouldn't he?
LG: Oh, sure; that would happen during vacation periods,
holidays and so forth; then I might be able to pick
up a couple of bucks. My father, by the way, never
68
LG: believed there was any purpose in working with him
because he could not conceive of any left-hander
becoming a carpenter; just no way.
Ward: It's odd that you should be left-handed in everything
except writing.
LG: Yes; when I was in school they would practically
force you to write right-handed.
Ward: Also at that time you and probably your family, too,
maintained some hope that you might become a musician,
isn't that so? Professionally?
LG: Not particularly. Among the Jews in those days, a
good professional musician - and by that they didn't
mean jazz, either - had certain standing and prestige.
On the other hand a musician who sort of played
around in little bands or nightclubs to make a living,
I don't think that ever struck them as a yiddish
nachus; nachus is something you enjoy. I don't think
they entertained that idea so much.
If anything, they had the usual hopes that some
of their children would move into one of the profes
sions. I know that they felt very strongly about my
sister's ambitions to not only get a PhD, but to go
into teaching, which was the obvious logical step,
in the case of a woman particularly. She was doing
her work in literature and languages, that's where
she wound up too - a very good linguist. I don't
think it occurred to them that I had the ability or
the talent to become a musician.
Ward: Still, it seems to me that anyone who practices half
the night is pretty eager to do something with all
that.
LG: No, I was fascinated with the piano; it is a different
instrument. People can say, "somebody is an excellent
violinist; he can make a violin cry." I've heard
some of the greatest pianists in the world, people
like Rubenstein (Artur Rubenstein, another famous
pianist) and Horowitz, Gilels, Richter, and some of
them have been so amazing as to their technique and
knowledge that they might bring the piano to its
knees, but they could never make it cry.
69
LG: The fascination with the piano has an awful lot to
do with the intricacies of chord structure and every
thing else. Finger dexterity. I am not sure that
some of this practice accomplished all that much.
If you had done it first thing in the morning when
you woke up and were alert you might pick it up in
half the time. The practice itself was an enjoyable
thing .
Ward: Obviously, it must have been. So here you were along
in your junior year - senior year by that time -
LG: Let's see, I graduated in February 1931, the winter
class. I was in my senior year by 1930, yes.
Joining The Young Communists
Ward: So, other things were pulling at you - left-wing
politics?
LG: Yes.
Ward: Could you tell me anything about - any interesting
circumstances?
LG: I think that by that time a lot of my thinking at
least had begun to crystallize. Some of the things
that I had heard argued in the alcoves of CCNY,
some of the things I had begun to read, were liter
ally being confirmed by the economy; by that time
the economic crash had taken place in 1929. Before
long you were reading about these enormous unemploy
ment lines and these soup kitchen lines on the east
coast.
Everything was adding up to convince anyone who
was at all alert that the economic system just
wouldn't work. This was being confirmed almost
weekly because it wasn't merely a crash of capitalism
in this country; all of Europe was equally plagued.
Ward: The western world was all involved -
70
LG: The only parts of the world that weren't as
immediately affected were the colonial world; we knew
nothing about it. So little was said about what
happened to a country, for example, that depended on
the export of ore, while here the steel mills were
closed down.
Obviously, the impact on that country must have
been unbelievable. Like all colonial countries, they
were the source of raw material and a market for
finished goods by the controlling country, so they
must have gotten the backwash of this same economic
situation. Countries like Cuba ....
Later I began to do a lot of work on the whole
background of sugar, its price fluctuations, market
controls, growth areas, exporting as against im
porting countries. And I found out that in Cuba by
the end of 1930 or '31 the price of sugar had gotten
down to the point where a sugar worker v/as paid a
sack of rice and a pair of jeans for the season -
what's called the "safra". They wouldn't even see
money.
Ward: Wait a minute - what's it called?
LG: SAFRA- It 'sa Spanish word for the harvest
period.
Ward: Well, you heard the arguments between the various
leftist sects in the alcoves of CCNY the followers
of Trotsky, the followers of this, that and the
other?
LG: Some of those arguments didn't even discuss things
like Marx (Karl Marx, famous revolutionary theorist).
A lot of those kids must have taken it with their
mother's milk because they simply assumed it; they
assumed that any knowledgable youngster had to be a
Socialist or a left-winger; and in support of Russia
and the revolution. Then, obviously, you had to
lean toward Communism, which had not taken any form
until after the Russian Revolution - or just before,
after the breakup between the Mensheviks and the Bol
sheviks.
Ward: Then these kids must have been the children of 1905ers
to a considerable extent, yes?
71
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
I should think so, yes; and a lot of them carried
the endless debates that had gone on in the Eastside
right over to CCNY, with practically no interruption
except for the subway trip.
That's quite a political picture. So, along comes
someone who says, "Would you like to join the YCL?",
I suppose.
Yep.
You were ready for it?
Yes; everything you saw around you confirmed what was
being argued - the feeling at least on the part of
the young people I ran around with. The feeling on
the part of my folks was very intense anger about
the foreign invasions of Russia that followed the
1917 revolution. We all had in mind the armies from
21 different countries that were invading their
borders, and a surprising confidence that the Russians
could hang on.
Anyway, with this joining there was a lot of in
tensive reading. We began to go through all the
literature - everything from things like Value,
Price and Profit to What Is To Be Done, familiar
pamphlets. Then there was heavier reading. I began
to tackle Das Kapital - at least made it part way
through. Later on, I made it the other way through.
We were pretty outspoken on campus about our
beliefs. I recall, for example, a raucous debate I
got into at a political science class I was taking.
I don't think the professor was a bad egg, but
people like myself thought, "Here's the goddamn
capitalist world falling around your ears and you're
talking about political science, which in itself is
a contradiction in terms because it is not a science;
in effect, nothing but a description of all the
techniques of ideal democracy, as they have it en
visioned; great textbook stuff.
I made the flat statement that a lot of this stuff
was pure bunk, that the government belonged to the
people who owned the country; that's how simple it
was -
72
Ward: And - ?
LG: It was a question of power -
Ward: And this professor took issue with you?
LG: Yeah, he thought that the democratic structure
offered an opportunity for all people to make their
changes through the legislative forms.
My position was very simple; if they could make
some changes, how in the hell come we had this
depression? Why can't they put people to work?
After all, a pair of hands is supposed to be an
asset, not a liability.
Sure, very simplistic stuff, but it was still all
wrapped up in the conviction that a capitalist
economy had these periodic crises. This concept of
periodic crises dominated any discussion of poli
tical science because the ten year cycle of economic
set-back was almost as though it started the same
day every ten years going back to 1800.
Ward: Did you go into the generation cycle of wars?
LG: No, except that we began to talk a great deal about
things like imperialist wars. We felt that World
War I, without any question, was an imperialist war;
just a struggle for empires, colonies. Noboby bought
this business of the war having started because some
archduke got bumped off in Croatia or Yugoslavia or
whatever it was -
Ward: Yes, Yugoslavia -
LG: Sarajevo. The interesting thing is that after more
than fifty years, a single fact like that still
remains in my mind, including the name of the man.
Ward: Well, what kind of a mark did you get from that
professor?
LG: I don't recall. I got by all right.
Ward: I asked because you said the debate was rather
raucous -
73
LG: Yes, but I also had a feeling that he was sort of a
nice guy; I could expect him to defend what he had
been teaching for many years.
Ward: Cr do you think he was just protecting his job?
LG-: No. This was long before people in the academic
field were walking on eggs.
Ward: Well, first of all you had duties. You were assigned
stuff to read. And you followed your own inclination,
also, in reading. You had to make reports now and
then on what you knew and what you were doing, to the
YCL?
LG: The big bulk of the sessions that took place com
prised not just reports on current events, develop
ments which inevitably ran to the economy in the
main; included in many cases were reports on what
was happening on the other side of the ocean. And
then there was invariably discussion on some piece
of literature that everybody was supposed to have
read. The discussions were worthwhile; not merely
a repetition of what you had read to prove you had
read it.
Ward: You attempted to adapt what you had read?
LG: There was always an attempt -
Ward: To describe the whole situation and what you thought
and what your comrades thought?
LG: That's right. It wasn't like the kind of discussion
you'll sometimes have at the dinner table with a
group of friends, all of whom have read the same
article in the Nation.
Ward: Well, so it began; a period of demonstrations here
and there, little things - ?
LG: Oh, some street meetings, mostly around Hollywood;
distribution of leaflets, primarily on the question
of unemployment. I think that the Workers' Alliance
(an organization of the unemployed) had started by
then; urging people to give it a hand. The cops
74
LG: were not very friendly to meetings; Los Angeles at
that time, as I remember, was under the aegis of
this guy called Red Hynes (a Los Angeles police
officer) - you might remember his name -
Ward: HYNES-
LG: Right. He was a professional redbaiter, the expert
on Reds -
Ward: He had the support of the Los Angeles Times of that
day?
LG: Yes, the Chandlers, (Harry Chandler and family, own
ers of the Los Angeles Times). They had their Red
squad and everything else, which later on other
cities had, including San Francisco. So, a lot of
the demonstrations were rousted around, sometimes
just broken up. Nobody thought of going to court
for an injunction against the cops or anything like
that.
Ward: Well, it would hardly have paid to do it.
LG: That's right.
Ward: You'd have had a hell of a time getting a lawyer to
do that for you.
LG: Yah, even though later on we found that there were
all kinds of very fine lawyers in L.A., like Leo
Gallagher and Al Wirin. I guess it was partly we
didn't know them and partly we thought it was just
a waste of time.
Ward: There were a lot of things that went on down there
that I have heard about, including taking pretty
young girls who had joined any one of the left-
wing outfits and trying to get them to entice the
sailors who were on the town to go to meetings and
all that sort of thing. Do you have any familiarity
with any of that sort of stuff?
LG: No, in fact, I think this is apocryphal. There were
efforts made to get leftwing literature into the
hands of the fleet or anybody else; no question about
that. But this business of enticement and having
special cadres, this was all stuff that came out of
75
LG: the professional redbaiters. Look, those guys had
to make a living and keep their jobs at the Los
Angeles Times; if they didn't invent a story, I
think they would be off the payroll.
Ward: All right, so these things began to happen. Anything
that you would like to discuss about your political
or labor activities in your last year or so at UCLA?
LG: We decided we ought to make an attempt to organize.
At that time the TUUL was around - Trade Union Unity
League - which was leftwing dominated. Happily, it
did make some progress in some of the textile plants
in New Jersey. I think they made a contract at
Patterson, New Jersey, where Big Bill Haywood (leader
of the Wobblies) had helped to lead a strike, he and
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (a famous female Wobbly who
later became a leading Communist). The strike had
been broken, so an attempt was made to set up this
rival federation, which had sporadic success.
In San Francisco, even after I moved up here a
few years later, they still had the Marine Workers
Industrial Union around. I automatically joined it -
even though I never went to sea. They never did
get a contract as far as I know. They had some un
believably dedicated, hard-working people with them -
guys like Harry Jackson (a speaker and organizer for
Communist causes).
Ward: His real name was Glickson.
LG: Right. At that time he was Harry Jackson; after the
MWIU finally folded its tent, Harry Glickson got a
job in Warehouse; he was a good, solid member of
Local 6 until he was pensioned off. He died a few
years ago.
Ward: The last time I saw him was in a natural place -
a demonstration in front of the San Francisco City
Hall about peace.
LG: And there were very few demonstrations that Harry
Jackson would miss. But in L. A. we tried to do
something with the TUUL.
Ward: What types of workers did you approach?
76
LG: Well, in 1931 the Hollywood unions had a strike and
were pretty thoroughly dismantled. They never did
really get back in their original shape for some
years. I remember working down there with a chap
named Wolfe, who was an old-time studio worker and
a leftwinger.
We tried to form a motion picture workers' in
dustrial union. There were a number of sign-ups,
but never really enough to make a go of it.
Remember, there was no such thing as a National
Labor Relations Board. If a guy signed up and the
boss found out about it, didn't like it, he would
just kick his ass off the job.
My dad never dropped his union membership. He
just remained a member of the Carpenters (Union) all
the time - good days and bad days. Wolfe was a good
egg and we worked together. I was just lending a
hand, helping him to distribute leaflets and things
of that sort.
I didn't have as much to lose as somebody
permanently attached to the industry. In those days
you did not ask a guy who was working full time in
the studios to go out there and distribute leaflets.
That's just another way of asking a guy, "Why don't
you quit your job?"
I recall in 1931 distributing leaflets to the
Max Factor workers, the cosmetics place; still has
a big plant in Hollywood, now under contract with the
ILWU.* Has been for some years.
I remember distributing leaflets. Most of us
youngsters distributing leaflets were driven off and
a few of us were picked up and spent the night in
the clink. And I gave some other name and the next
day, they kicked our ass out, and that's all.
Ward: No charges or anything?
LG: No, they didn't bother with charges, and it never
occurred to you to go back in there and make a
protest, either. What the hell good would it do?
Obviously, Max Factor could get just about anything
they wanted from the Hollywood police.
*ILWU (international Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's
Uni on )
77
Ward: Well, those activities went on -
LG: Any number of unemployment demonstrations were going
on, too, and I remember attending those. Many of
those were downtown in front of City Hall or places
like that; or out in Boyle Heights; some of them in
that Olivera Street section, which later became the
Mexican section.
##
Ward: Okay, Louie, you were in the middle of - something
happened downtown, I believe.
LG: These demonstrations, or most of them, were directed
toward the economy, unemployment, jobs; most of them
were broken up by the cops. During that time a num
ber of us went down to San Diego to help out in an
unemployment demonstration. One of the guys who came
along was Will Geer (a movie actor). He's the guy
who acted the part of Walton in the Wai tons on TV.
Ward: There's a Geer who played the part of the sheriff
in Salt of the Earth.
LG: That could be - Will Geer. There was a bit of a
riot that followed the demonstration and the cops
were breaking it up. Some of the guys tore apart
a park bench. I remember seeing Will Geer with a
piece of it in hand, swinging away at the cops.
Whether he prefers to remember that or not right
now, I don't know. He's one of the actors in Holly
wood that had a rough time later on after the Dies
Committee, the McCarthy Committee.
So there was a great deal of activity along this
line. I remember the unemployment marches in those
days, a number of them. One thing about unemployment
in those days; it was the most democratic thing in
the United States because everybody from every walk
of life was in that same goddam line - college
professors, engineers, secretaries, laborers, you
name it.
Ward: Well, you got a degree in February of '31 from UCLA;
in what?
78
LG: In economics.
Ward: Now, to something else - there were girls, I suppose,
along the way; you made some experiments. You got
married somewhere in there, didn't you?
LG: Right, I got married later in '31. When I graduated
in February I decided not to apply to Berkeley until
the fall semester; part of the time was spent in
working a bit; a lot of YCL activity at the time.
Ward: What kind of work were you doing then? Studio again?
Matrimony
LG: Whenever I could catch a job - almost anything.
It was getting rougher and rougher to find work. I
got married during the summer to Dorothy Shenkman -
Dodie. As a matter of fact, we went off to Yuma to
get married. I was also trying to make a couple of
bucks so as to go to Berkeley.
Ward: You went to Yuma and sometime later you went to
Berkeley?
LG: Yes, but before that I worked on two things: one
was - my father had bought a lot with the hope of
building a house around 1929 or 1930. It was on
Glen Green. Glen Green was a dead-end street that
ran off of Beachwood Drive, a little further up to
ward Hollywoodland.
In 1931 the studio where he had been working all
those years since 1924, Tec-Art, was having a very
rough time. They finally went under. They owed my
dad quite a bit of money, wages that had accumulated,
and I recall a family session where he finally
decided that his chances of getting the money were
very slim, if any. If workers' liens on wages even
existed in those days, nobody thought of it in those
terms.
On the other hand, the guy who ran the studio,
Hamilton - an interesting and pleasant guy - though
the poor bastard committed suicide a couple of years
79
LG: later - went along with the idea of my dad getting
his money out by ordering building materials. The
studio credit was apparently still good. He figured
that he sure as hell didn't want to beat my dad out
of any money; if he was going to owe anybody, he
would prefer to ov/e it to some big building supply
outfit. After all, they were good customers of all
these outfits because most of the sets were con
structed from scratch.
My dad is one of those who finally began to
resolve some of these problems of building the sets
from scratch because he introduced a jack which
could be used for storing flats; a flat being, say,
the side of a building. He invented a jack; you
fastened one to each end and you could lift the flat
on a few wheels. The thing was stable with quite
wide wheels and then you could shove it in a place
and store it in one of these big studios, upright.
It was depression time, there was nothing to do
except go ahead with the building, because the
supplies were there. So my dad worked on the
building, I worked on it, my brother, Sam, who is
a couple of years younger than I am, he worked on
the thing. My other brother, Saul, was too young.
We finally put together a good solid four-
apartment place with a very tiny apartment on the
street level; the whole thing was on a bit of a rise.
Ward: What v/as the tiny apartment for? A manager?
LG: For any one of us - no manager; they never had a
manager. They always lived there themselves. I
don't think he used an architect. We worked on the
house and I recall carpenters coming around trying
to get a job for even a buck or two a day, which
my dad wouldn't tolerate. He paid the union scale.
Ward: What was the scale then?
LG: Maybe the scale was five bucks; I'm not sure. Wage
scales were much lower in '31. You didn't even have
the minimum wage. There were no such things as
fringes and Social Security deductions; they didn't
exist.
80
LG: Whatever the union scale was, he paid. Tine, he
didn't hire any more than he had to. If we had to
sweat it out, we sweated it out. If you put in a
12-hour day, you put in a 12-hour day. Packing
lumber there was quite a job, uphill to the second
story and climbing over these rafters. I packed
the lumber.
I also learned a lesson on work that I never
forgot. We had to mix concrete. A lot of this
stuff was mixed by hand - these troughs, you know,
a certain amount of cement, a certain amount of sand,
a certain amount of lime and then you'd put them
together.
He hired a laborer to help on this. We built the
forms for both the foundation and a retaining wall
that went mostly around the building. Well, I
thought I was in pretty good shape. I was young and
full of piss and vinegar, and hell! I was going like
a ball of fire; we were shovelling and this man
worked at a slower pace than I, but very evenly
paced. At the end of around four hours I was ready
to drop.
Luckily, there was a luncheon break where I could
nap for a while and get some food. Then I realized
something; look, this man is going to keep going the
whole day at the same pace and I'm just going to
have to quit. From then on I watched him, just tried
to work at his pace. He knew what he was doing.
Ward: All right, so it was along in there that you got
married. Where did you live? Did you set up house
keeping some place or what?
LG: We set up housekeeping for a short while there. A
bit later, after we finished on this, I took a job.
Some guy came around and said, "There's only one way
you can make a buck, if you want to go to Berkeley.
I've gotten a franchise for selling publications. I
know all kinds of areas around here that are untapped,
including places in Pasadena, where people can afford
these things."
I said, "Fine." The guy's name was Harry Gervitz -
G E R V I T Z. Later on he became administrative
secretary to one of the governors up in Sacramento,
81
LG: and then I think he was dean of either Santa
Barbara or some part of the University of California.
Ward: Really! He sounded to me at first like a con man.
LG: Yes, "but he wasn't; he worked himself. He provided
the transportation and he got a couple of extra
bucks for that. We really did quite well.
Ward: Did you have to put any money down to get this?
LG: No; I wouldn't have had any money, anyway. He
supplied the gas and oil. He's the one who drove
us to Yuma, too.
Ward: Then he was your best man, practically?
LG: Yeah, though I think it was one of those justices
of the peace things. But we did fairly well. We
hit a lot of live ones in Pasadena.
Ward: What kind of magazines were you selling?
LG: Popular magazines. Sometimes we'd sleep in these
tiny motels if we were too far away from L.A.
Sometimes I met Dodie very early in the morning -
everything else was done on foot, you see.
Ward: Cn foot?
LG: Oh, yes, you walked. In other words, if you went
to an area in Pasadena, you just spent your day
walking.
Ward: Oh, but you didn't go from Pasadena to Westwood?
LG: Oh, no-no - that's when he'd pick you up. He
would drop different people and then he would take
his route. Then he'd pick you up at the end of the
day. Another place that stands out in my mind,
we went up to Santa Maria because that was a good
distance from L. A., beyond Santa Barbara.
Ward: Well, anyway, what was Dodie doing all the time?
LG: She was doing some modeling and some other kind of
work, trying to make a couple of bucks. Everybody
82
LG: was scratching. The reason this Santa Maria stuck
in my head is that I ran into a whole group of
Japanese farmers. I figured no use spending much
time there; those were mostly market farmers,
vegetable growers; produce.
I discovered, on the other hand, after sitting
around with a couple of them that they would look
through the publications. They would always ask
about certain publications; then I realized that
their main interest in buying them was not for
themselves but for their kids.
Apparently, they had this real pressure on to
make sure that the kids became Americanized, even
though it was very probable they were sending their
kids to Japanese language school. Anyway, I made
enough dough there to make it to Cal and to get by
there.
Ward: How long did this period for getting money to go to
Berkeley last?
LG-: About three months.
Ward: Well, anyhow, this represented the gap between
February 1931 and the start of the fall semester.
LG: Plus there was another period in there of working
on the house; there wasn't much idle time.
Life in Berkeley
Ward: So, then you came to Cal. Did Dodie come with you?
LG: Yes; as a matter of fact, we hitch-hiked up.
Ward: So, you came with the intention of doing graduate
work in what?
LG: I wasn't too sure myself. I knew that the chance
of getting any kind of a steady job in L. A. just
wasn't in sight. It was the heart of the depression;
83
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
"by that time the full impact had been felt on the
west coast. I liked the idea of going back to
school. I played around with several ideas; one
was law school, which I did for a year. That was
something that my parents regarded with high favor.
Oh, the professional man?
The professional man; I registered at Boalt (Boalt
Hall, U.C. law school) and there was no problem
getting in, but at the same time I decided I would
do some graduate work in economics. I will concede
that my attendance schedule at Boalt was not out
standing.
There were some profs there that I enjoyed a
great deal, particularly old Max Radin, who had a
great sense of humor, one of the erudite sort of men,
And as a matter of fact, we became quite friendly -
and Ballentine, (Henry Winthrop Ballentine) I liked
him; he was another -
That was Betty Ballentine 's (a San Francisco news
paper reporter) father?
Yes, Betty Ballentine 's father. Another prof I
remember taking a course with, a person I really
enjoyed was called Captain Kidd (Alexander Marsden
Kidd) -
His last name was Kidd?
That's right -
Know his first name?
I haven't the slightest idea, and I don't think he
he knew himself. Everybody called him Captain Kidd
To his face?
Oh, yeah - well, no, Professor Kidd; but outside his
presence everybody talked about Captain Kidd. He
was a short, gray-haired fellow. Later on he did
some arbitration work for the ILWU, (International
Longshoremens' and Warehousemen' Union).
84
Ward: Y/hereabouts did you live in Berkeley?
LG: We lived up on Euclid approximately three-quarters
of a mile or a mile from campus.
Ward: Did you live up hill from the Rose Garden or "below
the Rose Garden?
LG: No, we were a little bit below the Rose Garden.
Ward: Apartment house?
LG: Yeah, one of these wooden apartment houses with
these sort of cubby -hole flats. It might have been
a home at one time that was then carved up into a
lot of flats. There were several people around with
whom we became quite friendly; one guy I remember
in particular. I think his background was Mexican
or Spanish and he'd think nothing of starting the
morning with some operatic tunes, some of v/hich we
could have done without. He wasn't in the best
voice but a good guy, good company.
There were a number of people up there who were
transferees from L. A.; UCLA had no law school at
the time. As a matter of fact, I believe, no
graduate school; or if it did, it might have been
in a couple of limited subjects.
Ward: Were you working at all while you were going to
school?
LG: Not so much during the week. I had enough money to
pay the rent; transportation to and from school was
no cost item - you could walk there. Tuition was
just about non-existent. You paid a little bit in
law school but that was for certain books you had to
use. All books were purchased second hand. I
forget the name of the place which was the main
shopping place for students for required reading;
it was right near Sather Gate (main entrance to the
campus at that time).
Ward: Oh, yes - well, that whole block from Sather Gate to
Bancroft (Bancroft Way, one block south of Sather
Gate) is gone now.
85
LG-: That's right - it's part of the university. When
I went there Sather Gate was just outside the
university grounds. They had this old iron fence
which was never closed -
Ward: They had a sign up and once a year they closed
everything so the cars couldn't cross the campus,
except where they wanted them to.
LG: Right - and they had those right of ways.
Ward: And Dodie, did she go to school, too?
LG: No; she did register for some classes, but I think
a good part of the time she tried making a buck too,
the same way a couple of other gals did, like Line
Fairley's (Lincoln Fairley, former research director,
ILWU) wife - what was her name then?
Ward: Bert (Bertha Stone) -
LG: I can't think of it - Bert - she was one of the
people, among the first we knew on campus. Dodie
would pick up some money as an artist's model, which
was hard work.
Ward: Well, Dodie was very pretty.
LG: Yes, Dodie was very pretty. A number of us got
work on Saturdays. During the week it was pretty
hard to tie in with working. The number of jobs
around the campus were not all that many; a few
people would work in the Golden Bear restaurant to
get a meal. I doubt if they paid them any money
because everybody lived on a shoe string. Money was
practically non-existent.
Ward: What would you say it cost you and Dodie a month to
live? You were getting by for less than $100 a
month?
LG: Oh, yes; the figure that was just going through my
mind was somewhere between $40 and 50.
Ward: Really? How much did you pay for rent?
86
LG: Twenty, maybe eighteen; rents were cheap. The
Berkeley campus was small then. I don't think that
the entire school, graduate and undergraduate,
exceeded 5,000 students.
Ward: North Hall was there -
LG: Boalt Hall was four stories - you would walk up,
no elevator. The Economics department was in an old
wooden shack, right next to the Campanile - whether
that's still there I don't know. They had a Student
Union, but it was a very small building, not too far
from the Faculty Club.
Ward: The Faculty Building was right across the way.
LG: Right - you crossed a small bridge, that was the
Faculty Building; students didn't go there unless
invited by a faculty member. It was a small campus.
I remember scouring around to find some work there
and I never hit anything. Finally, a number of us
got together. I'm trying to remember the guys
involved, whether Aubrey was there. Joe Segal, I
remember his name, a few others, at the Farmers'
Market on lower Washington Street -
Ward: On Sixth Street in Oakland?
LG: Right - Oakland. I think it's all been torn down,
but there was a Farmers' Market where farmers could
bring in produce on a Saturday. They would come in
around three or four in the morning with their
produce and set up their stands. I think they paid
a nominal fee.
For those people who couldn't afford the regular
grocery stores, this was the place to do your
shopping. The farmers were a good bunch, in the
main, and they needed workers for that day. I sup
pose many of them preferred students because there
was no problem that the students might say, "Look,
I need some more work." It was a one day job - we'd
come in and goodbye.
87
LG: We worked things out so that each of us would get
a job in a different section of the Farmers Market;
somebody would work in vegetables - certain kinds
of vegetables. Some in fruits -
Ward: Did you wrestle the boxes?
LG: Wrestle the boxes, take them down, put them on the
counter. Nothing like a fancy grocery display; you
sold the stuff very quickly on Saturdays. At the
end of the day, if there was a lot of produce left
over, they said, "Help yourself."
If there was fruit left over that they thought
might keep, they would take it. In many cases ,they
would say, "Okay, you can have this box of oranges."
Tomatoes were a good example; they knew perfectly
well that tomatoes wouldn't be worth a damn in
another week. You didn't have refrigeration. Same
thing would be true for things like eggs, butter and
milk, poultry -
Ward: You mean, you'd get that in addition to a little
pay?
LG: Yeah; I think we got four bucks for the day's work;
we worked hard and fast. The farmer felt you were
giving him an honest count. It never occurred to
anybody to take the farmer's money - although once
in a while, I'll admit, if the wife of one of our
friends came by, she got extra measure if she bought
something.
We'd then gather at somebody's house close to the
campus, taking our loot back with us - the stuff the
farmers gave us. V/e'd divide the stuff up so that
everybody had his groceries for the week. So, I
wouldn't say we were in penury.
Sure, sometimes there were certain meals you had
to make do with. Aubrey insisted he was a good cook,
which is a lot of bunk. But we never could tell him
to his face because -
Ward: Then he wouldn't cook?
88
LG: That's right; at least once a week, Aubrey would
make one of his famous omelettes. I didn't realize
until years later, what he was trying to do was to
make a Joe's Special (an omelette in a famous San
Francisco restaurant).
He would use hamburger, one of the things that
you could invariably get - rarely saw steaks; you
did see chickens - onions, spinach and everything
else he could chop up, chuck it all in there and
stir the thing up, until finally you had this
famous omelette. That would make a full meal, just
like a Joe's Special does. He loved ketchup and
tomato juice; there was more tomato juice in that
stuff than anything else and then on top of that,
the ketchup.
Ward: And no red wine to help it down?
LG: No, though later on in Berkeley - maybe it was the
first year - some guy joined the crowd. He was a
non-political character, just a friendly guy -
Ward: Most of you were a bit political?
LG: Oh yes, pretty much believed in the same things.
Among the girls you had people like Dodie, Liz
Salz - Andy Salz' (Andrew Salz, who became an
attorney in Honolulu) sister; she's dead, died of
cancer many years ago and Edith Arnstein Jenkins
(a prominent Bay Region liberal). They were all
highly political. You put that together and you're
not so badly off. The only major transportation
cost you paid was the street car fare to get all
the way downtown -
Ward: Or to get to the city?
LG: Yes, you'd walk down to Shattuck (Berkeley's main
street) or wherever it was. I think there were
street cars running in those days, and you could go
all the way down to Sixth Street and there you were
at the Farmers' Market.
About red wine; somewhere along the line this
chap joined our group, that v/as some time in '31.
He'd worked around as a laborer - he was older than
we were, about 25-26. He had a car, which was
89
LG: a big deal too. Once a month or so we'd go on an
outing with him; we'd take that old road over to
Walnut Creek, the Fish Ranch Road. It was a winding,
winding road; "barely enough room for two cars.
At Walnut Creek there were a lot of Italian
farmers; there we used to pick up a gallon of wine
for 25 cents; we'd get three or four gallons of wine
and then you'd be having red wine with your dinner.
Prohibition was still in effect, but the farmers
were friendly enough about that. They knew him.
So you had your red wine as well as a good diet; at
least it was a fairly balanced one. We had loads of
vegetables - plenty of fruit. That was no problem
at all.
The big thing that would happen once every couple
of months was to make a trip over to San Francisco;
that was quite an outing.
Ward: What was the attraction, particularly?
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
San Francisco, itself, which we were very fond of -
the ferry ride. We'd land at the old Ferry Building
because all the ferries came in there.
Did you go to any shows there?
No; whatever shows we went to were around campus;
whatever music we'd go to listen to was around campus;
shows in San Francisco were out of sight -
Too much money?
Yes. The place we'd hang out most was Izzy Gomez 1 ;
we'd walk there from the Ferry Building. It wasn't
all that much of a walk.
Walking right through the old produce market?
Right, it was a busy place but only late at night.
If we walked through there at around six-thirty or
seven o'clock in the evening, it was deserted.
Ward: Walking back at midnight was something else.
90
LG: Beginning midnight, the trucks would come in. If
you stayed some place there and started walking
back around four or five in the morning to catch
the first ferry "back, then it was the most amazing
jumble of traffic and everything else in that
produce market. Ch, there must have been about 400
500 guys used to work there.
And we'd go to Izzy Gomez'. He was very good
company. I liked him, and a lot of newspapermen
hung out there; just listening to them was fun,
meeting a few of them here and there.
Ward: Ever hear him called the Duke of Africa?
LG: Oh, yeah, he always wore that big, black hat.
Ward: You never saw him with it off, did you?
LG: If you did see him with it off, you'd understand
why he wore it all the time. I understand he was
as bald as an eagle; but Izzy was good. He'd ask
us first, "How are you fixed?" I usually figured
that I had to make that whole outing on somewhere
between four and four and a half dollars, plus your
ferry fare.
Ward: .Oh, you could do a lot on that.
LG: Yeah; I told him "Okay, we've got four bucks."
"That's enough." You'd sit down, he'd bring you
some grappa. We'd get a couple of shots of that.
If you could drink that, you could drink anything.
Let me tell you, it was a deliberate plan to see
if anybody's stomach could stand up.
So, you'd get a couple of shots of grappa, a
glass of red wine, and he'd make you a steak. He
didn't do the cooking at all. He was behind the
bar and he had this pal of his who was also a
Portuguese, a thinner guy who never wore a hat and
did all the cooking. There were just the two of
them working the whole restaurant.
91
##
V/ard :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Okay, Lou, you were saying and talking about Izzy
Gomez and the food and drink there; saw dust on
the floor, old tables. One other question: what
caused you to finally drop off the law course at
the end of the year?
I decided that the law wasn't really my bag. One
of the things that bothered me was that the law
had very little to do with justice.
All right - let's call it off.
It would take quite a while to get into that.
92
(Interview 4: 7 March, 1978)
Law and Justice
Ward: All right, Lou, do you want to expand a little bit
on the relation of law to justice?
LG: I want to make it clear that there are all kinds
of really wonderful lawyers who have taken up
difficult and important cases; surely no denigra
tion of people like Clarence Darrow; "but those were
the rare ones.
The impression I began to get and which is still
true today - a good lawyer who gets you off if
you're guilty; that becomes a definition. There is
no attempt to evaluate a lawyer in terms of securing
justice. The general evaluation is, if you're in
big, serious trouble, go to Mel Belli or one of
these lawyers.
Ward: F. Lee Bailey, uh?
LG: F. Lee Bailey is as good an example as any.
Ward: Okay, so you left the law school, but you didn't
leave Gal.
LG: No, I finished the year at law school, admittedly
not attending an awful lot of sessions. I remember
taking the exams at the end of the year.
By pure coincidence, a couple of years ago I was
asked to attend a retirement luncheon for a man who
had been on the Workmen's Compensation Board for I
don't know how many years, an attorney.
This man who was retiring had asked that a mutual
friend get me down to this luncheon. When I got
there I realized that the fellow who was retiring
was the one who had called me just before the exams;
it was the commonly accepted method of swallowing
a lot of knowledge within a week or so and then re
gurgitating it and promptly forgetting the whole
93
LG: thing the day afterwards.
This chap had called me; he had no one to cram
with and wanted to know whether we'd work together
in preparation for the exams. I saw no reason why
not, so we both took them and we both passed.
However, while I was at law school I began to meet
a good many people in the Economics department;
people like Bob Brady (Professor Robert Brady), who
wrote a very authoritative job on fascism - The
Spirit and Structure of Fascism, I think it was
called; an excellent guy" I'm not sure whether he
was a Marxist, though much of the time he sounded
that way.
There was a Professor (Norman S.) Buchanan,
highly competent and very open for discussion. A
lot of classes there were seminars. G-ulick (Charles
G-ulick) was another prof there - Flugel (Felix
Flu gel) was another one. There was a Madame (Jessica)
Pexiotto; that, by the way, is a sephardic name.
Ward: A woman?
LG: A woman, and she was in the Economics department; a
delightful older woman, who enjoyed having some of
the students over to her house for tea and endless
discussions.
I was doing a good deal of reading at the time,
not just in the material required by the seminars
and the courses but also in the whole field of
Marxist thinking - everything from Sngels 1 Fueuerbach
to A Critique of Proudhon. That was an excellent
piece of work b^F Marx, practically positive, filled
with humor. That's something you never caught try
ing to read Das Kapital.
This was definitely a forensic sort of thing; the
debates were endless in that whole Marxist period.
So, there was a good deal of personal attention and
a great deal of rapport between the students who
were really interested and the professors -
V/ard: They got to see a professor and talk to him?
94
LG: No question - yes. If you felt that you were
tackling a subject regardless of the degree of
controversy or differences, you were more than
welcome. The outlook on seminars was that they
were completely different from undergraduate
students - lecturing.
The professors in many cases would measure their
success by the degree to which they could induce a
lot of discussion; whether it was mild or sharp
made no difference to them. But as long as there
was an exchange of ideas, it came closest to the
definition of a university, the market place of
ideas. I spent more time there than at Boalt Hall.
In the following year I dropped out of Boalt;
again, partially the business of trying to figure
out how in the devil to make a living.
Ward: I was wondering -
LG: Yes; that was constantly under discussion. Bear in
mind - 1931-1933, we're speaking about now. The
depression had really taken hold; people were
scratching, but badly, before any of the pickup
took place with some of the New Leal programs,
whether it be WPA, CCC (Works Progress Administra
tion, Civilian Conservation Corps), or what have
you.
Ward: None of those things had yet come into operation?
LG: No, because I finished in May or June of 1933.
(president Franklin D. ) Roosevelt had gone into
office in March.
Ward: You finished what?
LG: I finished as much as I was going to do at Gal. .1
was playing around both with the idea of "What do
I do once I get out," and "Is there something to
take at the university that might give me a handle?"
At the same time I gave some thought - which I
eventually dropped - to going on for a Ph.D. in
economics.
Ward: Did you get a Masters?
95
LG:
Ward;
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
I don't believe so. I decided to pick up a second
ary credential. Perhaps I could then get work as
a teacher; it was something that appealed to me.
The thought of being a teacher?
Yes. I spent a portion of that year doing what they
called "practice teaching," down at University High.
That would be in Oakland - Broadway near 50th?
That sounds about right - the Oakland side.
What were you teaching there?
Poli sci, current events, some economics. The
courses in education given at the university were
absolutely the most deadly things under the sun.
In education?
It was so much drivel. The so-called techniques
of education didn't include things which today you
could say have some justification.
You just went through a whole group of textbooks
that meant absolutely nothing. I could never figure
out how a so-called School of Education warranted
its existence. But you attended the courses once
in a while; you took the examinations. I don't
think it meant that much to the professors either,
(interruption)
You were talking when we were interrupted about
the dry-balled nature of the education courses.
Yes. During that time I was still taking some of
the economics courses, as well as being active in
all kinds of other things.
Yes, well, what kinds of other things?
Primarily in the left-wing movement.
Were you active in the YCL?
In part. A lot of our activity was spent around a
group called the "Social Problems Club," which
sometimes was not referred to very kindly by the
96
LG: other students, who agreed we were social problems.
There was a good deal of that activity.
A Fling At Teaching
Ward:
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Then again, doing practice teaching ate up a fair
amount of time. You were assigned to certain
classes under the guidance of a regular teacher at
the school. The best I could do that year was to
pick up a secondary credential, take some addition
al economic courses, and continue my activities
with the rest of the progressive group on campus.
Was there any pay for this practice teaching?
No, none.
What were you using for money those days?
I had a few dollars that I had made during the
summer time. I went south during the summer. I
went out again with this same character on these
magazine sales. I picked up some work around the
studios, at Tec-Art. So, I had enough to get by,
and Dodie worked.
Mostly as an artist's model?
kind of work?
Did she do any other
She might have, but I don't recall; we had enough
to get by. Getting back and forth to L. A. was
pretty commonly done by hitch-hiking, although I
do recall on one trip from L. A. - I don't think
Dodie went along then - I decided to go by ship.
I took one of the old Admiral Line ships and they
had some very low fare, around $6.
Sit up all night?
No, they had some cots in what looked like steerage
below deck; just a big, open space and oh, a lot of
the crew hung around there. So, I took the ship;
it was a trip by itself. I can understand how the
Admiral Line finally went out of business. These
97
LG: were old tubs, rolling like the devil, and the food
left an awful lot to be desired.
While doing the practice teaching there were a
couple of amusing things that happened. I was
assigned to a group of seniors in high school, a
number of whom were a bit on the difficult side.
Ward: Any racial or ethnic distinction?
LG:
Ward
LG;
Not particularly. This was a group of youngsters
who just wanted to finish and get out. They were
not that fond of school. After a couple of sessions
with the class - unfortunately I had not spoken with
the head teacher - some of these youngsters were
creating much more difficulty than it was worth.
I was not much older than they v/ere.
I finally turned to them and said, "Look, there
are some of you here who obviously just don't feel
like sticking around for the course. If you feel
that strongly about it, 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.
None of them left?
No, they quieted down. The other thing was that in
the course of some of these current events, I got
my hands on a group of posters that had been put
out by the Soviet Union. They were promoting dif
ferent things like sanitation, public health.
I saw nothing wrong with just giving them examples
of how a government that thought differently would
go about tackling the general issue of public
education. In those days the illiteracy rate in
Russia must have been pretty heavy and a lot of
these things were being told by pictures.
This went quite well, and the supervising teacher
didn't look particularly askance, but I recall go
ing to one of these sessions and the whole back row
was taken up by the administrators, the principal,
98
LG: some guys from the Board of Education; everything
but students. I suppose that they had a bit of the
jumps and jitters about the whole thing, but this
did not affect the attitude of the supervising
teacher.
Quite to the contrary, she was most encouraging.
I asked her, "Look, if I'm way off base on this
thing, tell me." She said, "No, I hope you stick
with it and go on teaching." So I got through
in fine shape; I got a fairly good recommendation
from the supervising teacher.
Ward: Did these school officials say anything to you?
LG: Not a word. All of us get a bit gun-shy in these
things. They might have come because they were
just curious and interested.
Ward: They must have talked among themselves about it.
LG: I'm sure they did. It didn't come out as a
subscribed course in any of the future curriculums,
though.
Ward: Well, all right, so you got through that. You
weren't working for a living, then.
LG: A group of us still had this job down at the old
Farmers' Market on Saturdays; Dodie did some work
in some of the restaurants around there - the Golden
Bear, or one of those.
Ward: You were still living up in North Berkeley?
LG: Still the same place.
V/ard: So, you were just about at the end of your studies
at Cal?
LG: Yes, I went back to L. A., not enthusiastically.
I had gotten quite fond of the bay area; but I
thought I might at least have some chance of get
ting some work down there. I really didn't know of
anything I could move into in the bay area. I went
back to L. A., but things there were just as bad
or worse.
99
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
What did you finally land down there?
relief down there - no CCC -
There was no
No, there was relief; where you got it in the form
of goods, in kind; you could pick up canned goods,
rice and a few other things, staples.
What agency would distribute that sort of thing?
Well, I'll be damned - I don't know. I don't re
call the agency. I remember putting in some time
on a WPA project, leaning on a shovel. I finally
got off of that too; I had no use for it. I must
have stayed in Los Angeles about a year. I made
periodic trips up here, for some friends I wanted
to visit; for some YCL meetings. I recall speci
fically coming up here for International Youth Day,
Hay 30, 1934.
The Great 1934 Strike
Ward: That was just when the waterfront was beginning
to -?
LG: The waterfront was on strike. The strike on the
waterfront started May 9, I think. Some of us were
trying to help out as best v/e could.
Ward: How could you help out?
LG: Oh, people to be seen around Hollywood. There were
a number of progressives; the object was to raise
a couple of bucks to give them a hand.
Ward: I see - you prepared lists or helped to prepare
lists?
LG: I didn't have the lists so much as some others did.
Ward: You went around with the lists in your hands
soliciting money for the strikers?
100
LG: I remember visiting Erskine Caldwell who's quite
a good writer; he was fairly generous. The word
we had from people around Pedro (San Pedro) was
that some of the guys were in difficulties and
perhaps it wasn't too wise for them to stick around;
so we^had to raise a couple of bucks and give them
a hand in that respect. May 30th, as I said, a
number of us came up because it was International
Youth Day.
Ward: Do you remember where you met?
LG: No, but we had a demonstration on Market Street -
lower Market Street near the Embarcadero. The
turnout was not very impressive, 200 or 300. The
longshoremen did not participate in the demonstra
tion. I heard later that the reaction of the men
was "Well, if the kids want to try demonstrating,
that's their business." We were broken up by the
cops.
Ward: Well, what were you demonstrating for?
LG: In support of the longshore strike -
Ward: Did you go to 121?
LG: . Yes, 121 Haight Street (California headquarters of
the Communist Party), right. I went there a number
of times before and afterwards, but that was not
the locale of the demonstration. We may have had
our meetings there.
One reason I recollect this breaking up of the
demonstration was that when these cops came at us
on their horses, swinging their clubs, there wasn't
much you could do except get out of their way in a
hurry.
I remember ducking in a doorway just as a cop
was swinging his club and the guy he whacked on
the head was Pete Macchiarini, who later became a
jeweler, a very successful one; still has a place
in North Beach. When Terry went in there to get
something, he still remembered me, though I hadn't
seen him for years.
101
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
During that time I was sort of bouncing back and
forth; a bit later in 1934, I poked around a bit
to see if there was anything doing in the teaching
field. As a matter of fact, I remember going as
far as the Escondido mountains, between the coast
and Imperial Valley, that area. They were shopping
around for somebody to teach there, but nothing
came of that, either. Things were sort of at a
dead end for me in L. A.
You managed to still get along?
Yes and no; things began to come apart.
Pretty rough situation; you were only 21 when you
got married, weren't you? Dodie was about 19 - 20,
wasn't she?
About 20, yeah.
And then all this uncertainty?
It was an impossible period. Lots of grief, no
money; I think the marriage was a casualty of the
depression and unemployment. You finally get to
the point where you simply say "Hell, this thing
isn't working - may as well take off and get a
fresh start, somewhere, somehow."
A lot of things were done in those days out of
sheer economic deprivation and frustration. So,
when I moved back to northern California, I went
to live with a man who is still around, named
Kaplan; Irving Kaplan and his wife, Dorothy; they
lived on Roosevelt Way in San Francisco. He was an
economist for PG&E, (Pacific Gas & Electric Company)
although a dedicated left-winger; and his wife, a
very fine, warm person.
So, they befriended you -
Yes, I had known them before that because they knew
a good part of the circle of friends in Berkeley.
For example, Al Van Tassel, an awfully nice guy -
saw him about a month ago; and Bea; she married Van
Tassel. They moved east later on; remained friends
102
LG-: of Zappy until Dorothy died; Kappy still sees them.
I saw Al for the first time in 40 years; he came
by; the same good guy, though he's had a rough time.
He went through open heart surgery, too. It took
quite a toll on him. I guess it does on everybody.
We reminisced a good deal, particularly about the
days when we were at Gal together.
Ward: You made a lot of good friends - friendships that
have more or less persisted throughout all these
years - at Gal, didn't you?
LG: Yes, including friends among some of the profes
sors. Bob Brady continued as a friend. Unfor
tunately, he died in the 30' s.
Ward: He had a wonderful v/ife, too.
LG: Yes. I remember his wife working with me on a
political campaign later on when I was secretary
of the (California) CIO. We had some big campaign
going on - I believe it was Proposition 1. She
worked with us on the publicity; she was quite good
in that field.
Yes, I did make some good friends. Gulick, who's
very, very old now - about a year or so ago I met
him. He came over for dinner at the home of some
people in Sausalito. I hadn't seen him all these
years.
Ward: Nineties, I suppose? Eighties?
LG: Late eighties, yes. We had a very active group
at Cal. We put out literature, distributed
leaflets; various group meetings.
Ward: What were the issues this active group espoused?
I suppose Spain?
LG: It was primarily the depression. It was a pro-
Soviet group. One of the local issues was the
University budget, around which we called some mass
meetings at Sather Gate; that was the free speech
corner. The old balustrade is still there; that
was the speaker's platform.
103
Ward: You just hopped up on that curving rail?
LG: In those days it was outside the campus, so there
was no place from which to kick you out, I recall
several efforts to meet on campus - to get Wheeler
Hall - not that we ever could have filled it - or
one of the smaller halls, "but those efforts were
pretty much in vain.
One who really gave us a hand was Harry Kingman,
the head of the "Y" (Young Men's Christian Associa
tion). By the way, he had been a professional
baseball player at one time. I think he was on the
Yankee farm system or he might have pitched for the
Yankees before he took this job at Stiles Hall;
that was the "Y" . He was forthright, very generous,
very friendly and when there was no place else we
could meet, we could always meet there.
Ward: I can't help an editorial comment here. I never
met Harry Kingman but I knew the "establishment"
TDeople in Berkeley; he had that peculiar faculty
of getting along with both the right and the left.
He had the facility to get along with human beings.
He was respected, even by the old curmudgeons.
Right. And among other things, did you know that
when Harry Kingman retired from Stiles Hall some
years ago, he and his wife, Ruth, decided they would
go back to Washington and lobby on their own for
good legislation: a two-person lobby!
Somebody mentioned the fact that he was back,
and when they were putting together that bit of a
dinner for me last year (the farewell banquet for
the retiring secretary- treasurer of the ILWU), I
asked that they run down Harry Kingman and his wife;
I wanted them there - and they were there.
Ward: I think you mentioned their name in your little
talk.
LG: I insisted on introducing him because I consider him
a real old friend. Well, Harry Kingman knew what
we stood for. He sure as heck was no fool. A very
LG:
Ward
LG:
104
LG: bright man. In addition to running Stiles Hall he
coached the University of California baseball team.
He did that among his other jobs. And his attitude
was -
Ward: He'd been in China, too -
LG: He'd been born in China - son of missionaries.
Ward: He was known as an old China hand.
LG: Right. He's still around and I have spoken to him
a couple of times. Some time around 1950 they had
a retirement dinner for him. Terry and I drove
over there to be at this retirement dinner; or
retirement luncheon, whatever it was.
So, we made a lot of good friends. I recall one
of the high points of our Social Problems Club
activities was trying to organize a movement against
a proposed budget cut; one of the economies that
was being proposed at that time by Governor Merriam:
(Frank Merriam)
##
LG: It was part of the so-called economies that were
being gone through by various politicians in view
of the depression. These were all unbelievable
depression years.
Whether the budget cut was warranted or not, I
don't know. We weren't that interested. All we
knew was that a number of us were in school because
at least you learned something, studied something,
rather than standing around in a bread line or
leaning on a shovel. At that point they didn't
even have the shovels to lean on; the government
had not acted as yet.
Ward: Wait a minute. You had been on WPA before.
LG: No - no. I'm doubling back here. I'm talking
about the period 1931-33; I guess it was in 1933
that this budget cut was being proposed.
105
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
We did a great deal of leaf le ting, propagandizing
and talking before different groups to see if we
could put together a march on Sacramento, the
objective being to lobby the legislature, the
governor, against the budget cut.
We never got the march under way. We couldn't
mount enough of a group to make the thing go,
although it drew a good bit of attention, particu
larly in the Daily Gal (the U.C. student newspaper);
they couldn't very well knock it - "Don't pay any
attention to these Reds, who are proposing a march
on Sacramento to stop the budget cut" - when the
first thing that would be cut would be the Daily
Cal. On that score, we had fairly wide support.
I'll admit that there was very little done in
the area of student government; a few of the kids -
the left-wing ones - tried to run for ASUC
(Associated Students of the University of California)
offices. But most of us couldn't vote in the ASUC
because we couldn't pay the dues - there was a $10
fee per semester or per year.
It actually wasn't that bad a buy, but ten bucks
was still ten bucks. And all of us were pretty
fiercely non-org - we'd call ourselves - The big
fraternities and sororities, the big sports
i
They did not interest you?
No - no; we thought they were a snob group.
What about the star football players, you didn't
follow around after them?
Quite the contrary. One of the star football
players - I think he was a fullback and people
pointed him out around campus - must have taken an
awful beating. He walked like a punch drunk
fighter, sort of on his heels half the time. That
didn't impress us a great deal. Oh, I'm sure they
were college heroes to the org groups - to the
fraternities and sororities, but they weren't to
us.
106
Ward: The word "jock" hadn't reached the prominence it
has now. You were anti-jock?
LG: Yes; plus we didn't know a great deal about it.
The question of scholarships for athletes was not
that well known. What was well known was that the
sports were constantly being boosted and promoted
by the alumni.
The v/ord would leak around that some guy was on
a football scholarship, whether or not he actually
got paid money I don't know, but the impression
most of us had was that they were taken care of
one way or another by the wealthy alumni; things
like summer jobs, part-time jobs.
A lot of them worked around frat houses -
belonged to fraternities without having to pay the
regular monthly charges. Many of us didn't see
why somebody who was willing to be a football player
should be getting economic help while the rest of
us were scratching with the chickens.
The Communist Candidacy
LG: During that same period many of us felt that running
for political office was considered worthwhile, if
for no other reason to provide a forum as to some
of the things we believed in, both in terms of the
general economy and socialism.
I ran for office one year - just simply by sub
mitting my name on the ballot. The Berkeley City
Council - or something like that, in 1933.
Ward: Socialist program, I suppose, you ran on that?
LG: Communist or Socialist ticket, one or the other.
Ward: It must have been on the Communist ticket. Wasn't
there a Socialist group on the campus too?*
*(Editor f s note: Goldblatt ran on a full slate of
candidates, sponsored by the Communist party, for
the Berkeley City Council, election of May 2, 1933;
he received 649 votes.)
107
LG :
Ward :
Ward :
LG:
V/ard:
LG:
Yes, as a matter of fact -
You were at odds with them, I suppose?
We weren't particularly friendly. They called
themselves the YPSLs (Young People's Socialist
League). The group that was most outspoken of the
Socialists on the campus was the League for
Industrial Democracy. Oleta O'Connor, who later
became Oleta O'Connor Yates, was the head of the
LID, League for Industrial Democracy.
I thought she was a YPSL.
She might have "been a member of that at the same
time. I remember some strenuous debates we used
to have.
Did you debate Oleta at that time? She was on the
v/omen's team (University women's debating team),
I believe.
That's right. I was not on the debating team. I
remember some debates among us; a lot of them were
on the same theoretical plane that students have a
tendency to get into.
Most of us felt that the record of the Social
ists, and particularly of the Socialist
democracies over in Europe was how these organi
zations had collapsed in World War I. After all,
we were still on the heels of the post World War I
period, where the Socialists became super-patriots
and joined the war movement.
Many of them didn't speak out at all, or
supported their governments, when they decided to
launch the invasion of the newly formed Soviet
Union when it was under attack; so we didn't feel
too kindly towards them.
The other thing was that many of them spoke in
the tradition of Norman Thomas. Their facts were
good on the logic of socialism as against the
anarchy and stupidities of capitalism. They had
all the specific examples such as milk companies
all delivering milk on the same street; namely,
the stupid forms of waste and competition.
108
LG: They had the same figures we had on the degree of
unemployment. They pretty well accepted the same
economic thinking. I guess they considered them
selves Marxists in terms of their economic
evaluation of the system.
Where we parted company was in the general area
of the class struggle, with the Socialists feeling
very strongly that the only method of change was
through the legislative process, whereas many of
us felt that the legislative process became a bog
which you just sunk into.
I recall one debate where Cleta O'Connor and
myself disagreed pretty sharply on that. She was
trying to say that something could be done about
the class struggle. I said I didn't know what
could be done about it except that it was there.
It was something like the common cold. People
would talk about it, but you couldn't get rid of
it; it was just inevitable.
She still thought the legislative process was
it and that emphasis on the class struggle was a
mistake. Well, the world turns. Oleta O'Connor
became one of the leaders of the Communist party
as you know; married Al Yates, a very good guy.
Now the world is turning again and you have the
development of Euro-communism which is in large
part dependent on the legislative process under a
new set of economic and political circumstances.
Ward: That gives a better picture of your extra
curricular activities during those years. Now
here we are in Irving Kaplan's home, trying to find
something to latch on to.
LG: That's right; that was in late 1934.
Ward: You were up here on May 30th in '34 and then you
came back again -
LG: As a matter of fact, I came back again around
August. It was after the general strike, which
impressed and completely overwhelmed all of us.
This gave complete substance to the power of the
109
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
working class to change the system.
After the general strike and after the settlement,
there was quite a period of vigilantism in San
Francisco. You might be familiar with it.
I am very familiar with it.
Oh, there was a breaking up of the various left-
wing bookshops, rocks being heaved through them,
121 Haight being attacked. The red hysteria was
pretty bad.
The longshoremen had gone back to work in July
and the issues had gone to the arbitration board;
Archbishop Hanna (Edward Joseph Hanna, Archbishop
of San Francisco) was on that; 0. K. Gushing (a
prominent San Francisco business man), and Edward
F. McGrady from the United States Labor Department,
The newspapers were just off their rockers and
screaming, saying they were all communist plots.
That's when the Examiner put up iron shutters on
its ground floor windows?
Right. That was the reason why afterwards in all
the Labor Day parades, the one thing you'd hear
down the whole length of Market Street was when
they walked past the Examiner building at Third
and Market streets; that "boo" echoing through
the hills of San Francisco.
This was a period of a good deal of terror.
Some of my friends would be sitting with shotgun
at night in a place like the big bookstore down
at 37 Grove Street. I recall going down there
and spending a few hours, keeping them company.
What would have happened if the vigilantes ....
I was there and fell on my ass in a pool of blood
in that store, right after the attack. I was in
there and quick - rubber heels - and zip. Oh, yes
I saw a lot of that!
When was that attack?
110
Ward: That was during the general strike - I was over
there as head of a seven-man team for the Oakland
Tribune.
LG: Yeah. There's no question that guys like Sam Darcy
and Walter Lambert (Communist party leaders)
played a very influential role during all that
time; gave advice and unstinting support. There's
no question that it was the left-wing that really
stuck with it and took on a lot of the very hard
chores, worked endlessly; marvelously devoted
people.
What was happening was this unbelievable wave of
red-baiting, far worse than what happened with the
Dies Committee (the House Un-American Activities
Committee, headed by Congressman Martin Dies at
that time;or the McCarthy (Senator Joseph McCarthy)
era, because it was connected with personal violence
against individuals, against bookstores, head
quarters and so forth.
People did what you'd expect them to do in that
situation. They'd sit guard in the bookstores or
headquarters all night, hoping that they could
frighten some of these people off.
Ward: You actually did a little duty down at the Grove
Street bookstore?
LG: Yes, I was sent down there one night -
Ward: Did anyone have any weapons there?
LG: Oh, yeah, there were weapons there; luckily, no one
had to use them. I'm not sure that I knew how,
frankly (laughter). My ROTO training didn't go
that far. All the training we got there was to
march into battle in perfect formation and the
enemy would fall over.
Ward: All right, so you were doing what you could and
looking for work, I suppose. What kind of a job
were you gunning for?
LG: I made no distinctions. You were in no position
to be job shopping and choosing; there weren't that
many offers.
Ill
Ward: Well, what did you get in the way of a job?
LG: When I finally got back to San Francisco?
Ward: Yes, when you were at the Kaplan's house.
LG: I had gotten a job for a little while before I left
L.A. I got a job with the National Youth Admini
stration - NYA - and I continued on that in San
Francisco. I was some sort of a two-bit supervisor,
because I had a college degree.
Ward: What kind of a project did you supervise?
LG: I'll be damned if I can remember; a lot of them
were just things you'd put together. I recall
being very active making surveys and studies of
unemployed or job skills. If you advertised a job,
you'd have more damn applicants than you could
shake a stick at. They'd just line up by the
thousands. People would sleep there all night.
So I was with that for a while. I didn't feel
it was something that I wanted to stick around
with. I started getting some other work; finally,
in 1935, I went to work in a machine shop - Federal
Mogul. That was a shop that made bearings for
automobiles and other moving parts in San Francisco.
I got to know some of the guys there who remained
friends for life - guys like Bob Cain and his
brother-in-law who had been a light heavy weight
champion of the navy. I only worked there about a
month.
I got fired, perfectly good reason. My job was
operating a punch press for the purpose of boring
a hole through this babbit - sort of a lead shield.
The hole had to be exact, and the one thing you had
to be careful of was that the bit which you pressed
through this punch press was always sharp so that
the hole would be even; they also put a screw in
there.
I was on the graveyard shift, and obviously I
wasn't doing any sleeping during the day. I was
too busy with other things, including making major
changes in the world. I thought the work was going
pretty easy, all these bearings set out on trays
before an inspector looked at them.
112
LG: Come early morning when the superintendent turned
up, went around and looked at these trays, I was
half asleep; he looked at one of these trays and
said, "Well, I've seen a lot of bearings in my life,
but this is the first time I've seen so many bear
ings with perfectly square holes." I hadn't
sharpened the bit.
Well," he said, "this is not the job for you."
I couldn't argue about that, but I did have the
chance later on, when I belonged to the ILWU, to
get a bunch of our members to give a hand to the
Machinists (members of the Machinists' Union) who
were picketing Federal Mogul to get their first
contract.
This was about 1936 or '37. My old friend, Bob
Cain was still there. One of them had gotten fired;
that was the fighter - some guys wouldn't join the
union so he poured lye in their shoes.
Ward : Lye?
LG: Lye. Guys would put on their work shoes while
working there and they'd leave their good shoes
and he would pour lye in them. That would raise
hell on somebody's feet, so Bob later came to work
on the waterfront.
I got myself a job at Owens-Illinois Glass
Company, which was then located between 15th and
16th on Folsom Street.
Ward: Well, you were getting jobs pretty good then. Was
there any special reason? Did you have friends at
these places? How did you manage?
LG: At Federal Mogul, I got a job just by going down
and applying. The factory there had begun a small
expansion . . .
Ward: Somebody tell you it would be a good idea to go
down there?
LG: That's right. Then I went down to Owens-Illinois.
Some people I knew said, "The turnover there is
enormous because the job conditions stink and
113
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
nobody likes to work there." I think half the
Mission (a local working class district) kids had
gone through Owens-Illinois Glass at one time or
another.
Old Harry Harrington who runs the bar once
worked at Owens-Illinois - he has a place now at
Larkin or Turk. I went to work there some time
around May, 1935; I worked fairly steadily. I was
paid at that time a little over the base rate. The
entry rate there was 40 cents an hour. I think I
was paid 42^ cents.
Why?
After I had been there a month the foreman took me
aside and said, "You know, you're being paid more
than the base rate because we think you ought to
be executive material." Because I had some college
background.
Once a month they would have these dinners - but
you paid your own way - made up of foremen, a couple
of superintendents from out of town, the big cheeses;
and then people like myself would be invited to go.
You were supposed to be part of the whole comrade
ship of the guys who really run the place.
They were trying to take you in?
That's right. You weren't one of these ordinary
peasants, but as far as the work was concerned, you
just worked your ass off.
You were working days this time?
No, I worked days part of the time. Cne of the un
happy things about the job was they rotated shifts.
By that time I knew that night shifts were not for
me because the amount of sleep I'd get during the
day was negligible.
Later on I began to adjust my life. When I
finished up work on the graveyard shift, I'd walk
back; at that time Terry and I were living together -
114
Ward: Now, you were divorced by that time, were you?
LG: Yes. I'd left the Kaplans. I'd known Terry in
L.A. She was married at the time when I first met
her, though not living with her husband. He was
back in Chicago.
Ward: She came from Chicago?
LG: That's right. She went back there and they decided
they would call it a day; they separated and she
came to San Francisco where I was.
Ward: But your first contacts really began in Los Angeles?
LG: Yes.
Ward: She was a social worker, wasn't she?
LG: Yes, she was in San Francisco.
Ward: Where did she get her education? Chicago?
LG: She had gone to the University of Chicago. I think
she had gone to the University of Wisconsin and
spent a year at Columbia.
V/ard: What brought her out here?
LG: I think what brought her out here was that she was
married to a doctor who was doing his internship
at L. A. General.
But by that time, 1935, she had traveled north
to join me. We had this apartment on Telegraph Hill,
290 Green Street; that was it. We must have stayed
at the Green Street place for a couple of years.
They were all Italians living in the house: the
landlord was concerned whether we felt comfortable
because they were all Italians. I said, "Fine, if
they want to get along with us, we're happy to get
along with them." The rent there was not all that
bad; I think it was $22.50 a month, and there was
no heat. You had two kitchens - a regular kitchen
and then the side kitchen for heavy cooking, so
that the house wouldn't be filled with the odors.
115
LG-: It was a modest place, and furnished even more
modestly; we got things from Sears Roebuck and
Company like this garden furniture that you can
assemble yourself. .
Ward: She was working and you were working?
LG: She was working. She got a job with SRA - State
Relief Administration - which was a branch off of
programs launched by the federal government.
I was working at Cwens-Illinois Glass, and that
was a workshop; I can understand why guys went
through it. For example, let's say you were packing
beer bottles or coke bottles, they were long Lehr -
I think it's spelled LEHR- which takes the
molten glass and puts it in a mold; a spurt of air
goes into the thing, gets it into a form.
It comes out in this Lehr and takes a certain
length of time to cool. The Lehr was calculated
to move at a rate of speed so that by the time they
got to you, you could pick them up and inspect them.
Actually, it was a conveyer, but it was always
called a Lehr.
My job as a warehouseman-packer was to inspect
the bottles, because one of the concerns of an
outfit like Owens-Illinois was lawsuits; you don't
hear of them anymore. At one time, people would sue
a company because they found a piece of glass in a
bottle, a cigar butt or something.
You examined the bottle for two things, one to
make sure there were no breaks around the throat of
the bottle, that there were no chips, what they
called "birds' nests" because sometimes small veins
of glass would form a bird's nest within the bottle
itself. They would break the moment you put fluid
in there, and you would have glass in your drink.
And we inspected the bottoms.
You picked up the technique so you could do six
or eight at a time, inspecting one side, turning
them over, catching them and then slipping them into
the container, but that was tough work. Those
116
LG-: bottles just kept coming at you - you felt a little
bit like Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times." The
only way you could get a smoke if you wanted to -
there was practically no relief . . .
Ward: You could not stop the machine?
LG: No - no. There's a reason why you cannot stop a
glass machine. If that glass hardened in the
machine, then they had to bring in jack-hammers to
start it again. If a bottle is defective, you let
it go down a chute, and it went right back into the
crusher and came up again as molten glass.
Ward: But no smoke?
LG: The only way you could do it was to go like hell to
work that Lehr back as far as it could reach; that
would give you a margin of five to eight minutes,
depending on the kind of stuff that was coming
along. That was time enough to have a smoke.
Ward: And you could stand there and smoke?
LG: Yeah, they didn't care about that, as long as you
could handle the work.
The ventilation system wasn't too good either.
Right behind the place where the packers worked,
like myself, were small open chutes right next to
the floor. Sometimes you got goddam irritated with
everything because of the speed of the Lehr; you
felt that no matter how fast you worked, there was
always somebody at the other end giving you an extra
notch.
Although there v/ere some things that were nice,
easy going, like gallon jars; that was pleasant.
You could only take one at a time and look the thing
over, plus they couldn't come that fast.
Ward: And coke bottles?
LG: Coke bottles! My god, they came at you like waves,
just one steady flow. Sometimes you would get so
irritated you would take one of these bottles that
hadn't passed inspection and instead of letting it
117
LG: go down the chute you just heaved it out of that
small ventilator opening and out onto the street,
which was not heavily trafficked.
Anyway, it was there that I joined the Warehouse
Local, Local 38-44 of the ILA.* There was an organi
zer came out there, Jerry Dillon, an Irishman; he'd
been around for some time. A guy, I would say, in
his early fifties.
A number of us signed up in the union at once
and he told us to watch our step around there. The
company had a long record of firing someone just
like that . . .
V/ard: For joining the union?
LG: Or for any other reason. My hunch is that company
policy was deliberately designed not to have anybody
stay too long. It was the kind of a job that didn't
take that long to learn. Yes, you had to have the
dexterity to handle the stuff.
They used these small walk-around dollies, sort
of a dolly- jack; you shove it under the flap and
then if you want to release it, you step on the
catch and it lowers it. That was the main piece
of mechanized equipment they had. All the rest
of the work was done by hand. You just muled it -
worked with your hands.
So, I joined, and another fellow who worked with
me on the packing line and in the warehouse, Freddie
Helmar. Incidentally, he remained a member of the
ILA, and then the ILWU, until he retired. I bumped
into him at a party for the pensioners last Christ
mas. Looks great. He'd been an ex-fighter at one
time. Hell of a nice guy.
V/ard: A lot of those guys have been pugs.
LG: Oh, yeah. A lot of them had been fighters just to
make an extra buck. That was one of the horrible
things about the fight racket. I used to go to
the National Arena (a prize-fight ring). They had
Friday night fights, or Saturday night fights.
* International Longshoremen's Association
118
LG: These kids would just bang the hell out of each
other for three rounds - 25 bucks apiece. A lot
of the kids would do that, partly because they
thought they were tough, and partly because they
could pick up an extra buck.
Helmar joined, and Joe Dillon, not Jerry Dillon;
not related. Joe worked in the warehouse and
packing room with us; he had been there a bit
longer than we had, an extra five or six months.
He knew his way around there, so that many of us
felt that it was a real leg-up to get Joe in the
union.
I was fired out of there before I got sworn into
the local; I went to work at Sunset Warehouse for
a while.
Ward: Why were you fired?
LG: They fired me for union activities; the guy who was
my foreman felt I had betrayed him and the whole
world because here I was, a promising guy, who had
been invited to pay-y our- own-way dinners v/here they
gave you a lecture on the making of glass and the
wonders of Owens-Illinois, and here I had gone ahead
and joined the union.
Ward: And that was a hell of - .just treachery.
LG: Complete treachery - betrayal of all the confidence
they had placed in me, which of course was just
plain bullshit.
Freddie Helmar also got fired. And when I saw
Freddie he said, "By the way, Lou, you know neither
one of us ever got fired. Don't you remember, we
were both laid off; they said they would call us
back when they needed us. They just never got
around to calling us back " (laughter).
So, that was the end of my work experience at
Owens-Illinois. I had been there about seven or
eight months. I decided I wanted to stay with the
local. I had been attending meetings as a permit
man, just listening in. I had a temporary book,
good until I had six months; then I would become
eligible for full membership.
119
##
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
All right, now you were just becoming - you had
been to meetings of the Warehouse Local -
Local 38-44 of the ILA.
You were just one of the new members?
That's all and -
Were
you able to get other jobs in the industry?
Yes, although there were pleasant things. Cne
was working the graveyard shift; there is always
less supervision at night.
Anybody in the higher echelons is not going to
be there all night, so you have the lower range of
the supervisors, most of whom are pretty well
bored; just waiting until they have been there
long enough to move up and get off the night shift.
There are all kinds of guys who don't like people
looking down their necks, and they prefer working
nights. I never did get quite used to rotating
shifts either every week or every two weeks.
What warehouse would this be?
That was when I was still at Owens-Illinois. The
difficulty of rotating shifts once a week is that
you never get used to sleeping at a certain time;
even once a month is better than once a week.
You finally have to try to get your whole clock
changed where you'd have your breakfast in the
same way as you'd have your dinner after a day
shift. You'd spend a couple of hours reading or
doing something or taking a walk, and then go to
sleep as though it was night-time; wake up in the
afternoon, have a couple of hours and then go to
work again.
120
LG: The other thing about the graveyard shift was, I
used to walk home from work through the flower
district, somewhere around 8th Street, and then
walk over to Telegraph Hill, where we lived at
290 Green -
Ward: Quite a walk.
LG: A fair distance, but not all that bad. I don't
think it took me much more than about three
quarters of an hour; walking through the flower
district was always pleasant. It was just about
the time v/hen they were finishing up, moving the
flowers into the various flower stores around town.
I'd get to know some of the guys who worked
there and I'd stop and pick up some flov/ers and
usually I'd get a whole bunch of gladiolas for a
dime, or something like that. When something was
left over and they knew it wouldn't keep, they
would just throw that in.
Ward: And that didn't hurt any at home, either?
LG: No. Those were the only two advantages I could
think of in regard to the night shift - everything
else was a minus.
Ward: That's a good point - we'll stop right here.
(Interview 5: 14 March, 1978)
The Electrifying Speaker
Ward: Before we get into anything else, Lou, I want to
tell you that the other night I was talking to
Barney Young, whom you may remember -
LG: Sure.
Ward: And I was talking about student days in L.A. ; he
came to UCLA about two years later than you and
people like Aubrey Grossman. Among his remin
iscences was a remark about the first time he met
you. You were making a speech somewhere on the
121
Ward: Eastside in '31 or '32 - he wasn't sure which year.
He said you were the most electrifying speaker he
had ever heard up to that time. Even then, he said,
you were something to listen to. He was greatly
impressed.
The Dangers of Fascism
LG: I think he was talking about the Eastside of L.A.,
right?
Ward: I think so. I don't know if he said it was in a
hall, or a street corner. I asked him what your
subject was and you were talking on the dangers of
fascism.
LG: That could very well be true. Some of us felt that
there were the beginnings of fascism, particularly
in Germany. True, Hitler didn't come to power until
1933, but there were already manifestations of it.
I know that was the beginning of a period of a
great deal of activity, both in terms of partici
pation of the YCL, getting to know a lot of the
youngsters who felt the same way, beginning to form
my own ideas as to where I wanted to go in life,
things that eventually became a good deal more
definitive when I went to Cal.
Working in the field of economics, I had come
to certain conclusions that to this day I have not
changed. One was that there weren't going to be
any fundamental changes in this world witiiout a
powerful working-class base.
Student movements could be good; to put them
down, I think is a mistake. True, they have a very
limited and built-in life span, namely, the length
of time that someone is in school. Also, the issues
that might attract them are npt exactly the same as
those you'd find among the working people.
But the one thing I did know was that a lot of
these things were developing and coming to fruition.
Perhaps that coincides with what Young was talking
122
LG: about. Is he still teaching down on the Peninsula
(an area between San Francisco and San Jose)?
Ward: I think he just retired.
LG: He'd be at about the retirement age. Yes. He's
a bright guy.
I think that all these things spring from the
same base fundamentally; fascism was just the open,
mailed-fist control of the economy by the capitalist
system, using fascist methods to make sure there
could be no form of effective opposition to fascist
control; basically what amounted to the employers'
control.
These things were pretty well confirmed in the
whole lash-up that took place between Hitler and
the large industrial employers throughout Germany.
Ward: Well, it gives an interesting sidelight from a
person entirely removed from what we are doing at
the moment. I could just see you on that curving
balustrade at Sather Gate. I used to see the guys
there when I was a campus reporter, but that was
before your time - back in the middle twenties.
Now to get back, you and Terry were living UT>
at 290 Green -
LG: That's right.
Ward: For the record, Terry - Theresa; what was her
maiden name?
LG: Jaffe. It's an old Israeli name. I think the port
of Jaifa, right alongside Tel Aviv, is fundamentally
the same name.
Ward: I see. You got married some time, I suppose.
LG: Later.
Ward: Want to tell me when?
LG: Got married in 1939.
Ward: I suppose that was a big family affair?
123
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
No, it wasn't really.
Okay. You were working nights and beginning to
attend Warehouse Local meetings. Okay, what would
be the next progression? Did you move from job to
job, or did you work out a steady job or what?
I stayed with the warehouse industry. I worked at
Merchants Ice and Cold Storage. That was at the
foot of Telegraph Hill.
As a matter of fact, the building is still there -
it's one of these old brick buildings. The cold
storage house was closed up about a year ago.
Right now I guess the brick building is being
converted to offices and interior decorating shops,
like a lot of others have.
What did you do in the ice house?
Unloading, primarily, of freight cars. A good part
of it was things like apples and pears; these did
not go to the freezer, they went to the cooler.
There were two different sections to the ice
house: one where you keep things such as meats
at below freezing temperature; and the coolers where
things like apples and pears could be kept for a
great many months; there the temperature was some
where around 40-45 (degrees Fahrenheit). But it
was cold.
Most of the crew there were Italians, very
cooperative and willing to teach somebody the ropes.
I was taller than some of them. Some were short
and stocky, better built and acclimated to that
cold than I was.
Most of the stuff was hand piled; you moved it
with hand trucks and then stacked it up by hand.
You had a palette board and a jack that lifts the
palette board 3 or 4 inches off the ground. Then
you pull that jack with the board on it, or you
used a hand truck. And you'd have to high-pile
these boxes; they weighed around 50 pounds apiece.
Ward
That could get pretty old by the end of 8 hours.
124
LG: Yes. But you pick up the rhythm of the work. I'd
say that the only part that I found particularly
uncomfortable was the cold.
Ward: Did you wear long underwear?
LG-: No. I recall one night I was working on a sort of
overlap shift, starting somewhere around four in
the afternoon or thereabout - used to be called
a swing shift - during the period when you would
have a great influx of pears, apples, from that
Sebastopol (a town in Northern California) country.
I guess it was about 11 o'clock at night; we were
unloading freight cars, and I see two guys walking
down the platform - Gene Pat on and Ralph Daws on.
They had become friends of mine; we were part of
the whole Local 6 mavericks.
Ward: It wasn't Local 6 then?
LG: No - no, it was still Local 38-44 of the ILA - and
here they were coming down the platform, carrying
a blanket for me and a bottle of liquor. They had
apparently been out together after a meeting, done
some drinking, and decided that Lou must be awfully
cold, you know, after working in this icehouse all
evening. So, they were coming down to warm me up.
- We all wound up at some bar having a drink.
Ward: So, you didn't stay at the icehouse forever. Why
did you leave?
LG: Probably the work ran out. I then went to work for
another icehouse, a big place - not too far from
Islais Creek. It was down around that part where
Third Street almost joins the Embarcadero, makes
that twist there, and towards the off-shore end.
It was a warehouse from which they either could
load ships or take the - whatever cargo they had
assembled and move that by elevator right down to
the vessels; -the whole idea at that time being that
they would have a cold storage or semi-cold storage
house directly adjoining the waterfront.
There was a whole series of these warehouses,
all of which were tied to the water side one way
or another. Merchants Ice, where I worked, was on
125
LG: the waterfront at the time; Gibraltar Warehouse
was tied to the waterfront, Seawall Warehouse,
Pioneer Warehouse, Hazlett Warehouse, this State
Ice and Cold Storage plant where I worked. It was
across the road from that huge building that later
housed Phillips and Van Orden, the printing house.
Rathjen Brothers Liquor, Haas Brothers Grocery,
S&W Grocery - those are places I remember; a whole
warehouse complex adjoining the waterfront.
On the other side you had the banana docks where
the banana boats would come in. I went to work in
this cold storage plant, although at that time we
weren't handling much perishable cargo. There was
a tremendous overflow of cotton.
Ward: Why did cotton have to be . . . .?
LG: It didn't. I think they decided that they'd just
simply use it as storage. No, cotton doesn't
require cold storage at all. I was working with
Frenchy Arripe. He was one of the early members
of 38-44, good, solid left-winger - While I was
moving from job to job, big changes in Local 38-44
were taking place. Some of the changes had taken
place before I was sworn in as a full member.
Ward: When did you become a full member?
LG: In December, 1935. The president had been replaced.
He was a weigher on those scales where the trucks
had to come out. I gathered he was a fairly good
union guy, but just didn't see the thing other
than picking up a few of the warehouses, weighers
and strappers and samplers.
The consignee never took the word of the
consigner as to what the weight was. So all this
had to go on the scales. It was a simple process
but hard work, where the coffee sacks were piled
on hand trucks and run across the scale; somebody
was taking the weight. It was the kind of a market
where nobody trusted anybody; they also took samples
of this coffee as it was coming in to make sure it
was the brand they had ordered.
Ward: But you didn't strap a sack, did you?
126
LG-: No, you didn't strap a sack. On the other hand,
a shipment of dried apricots came in wooden boxes;
they didn't weigh an awful lot, perhaps up to 25
pounds. If they were going for shipment, they were
strapped, so that you wouldn't have breaking in or
pilferage. These went through strapping machines
for overseas shipments. They had heavy orders from
Scandanavian countries, Germany, France, the
Netherlands. They were great holiday delicacies,
ordered months in advance. It was the kind of stuff
that kept.
Those were the weighers, and strappers and
samplers; the weigher and strapper groups are still
around the waterfront, though not like the large
group it used to be.
The president was replaced by a man named
Warren Denton, a pretty good egg. He was no
youngster; he generally believed in what some of
us were pushing for, namely, that the time was
ripe to go for an all-out organizing drive through
out the industry, including moving away from the
waterfront. That's where the name "March Inland"
was coined. A number of us felt very keenly that
there was a limit on how far we could go on the
waterfront in terms of wages and conditions -
##
127
III THE MARCH INLAND
The Warehouse Organizing Drive
Ward: Lou, you started to mention the "March Inland".
LG: Right. The other change that had taken place in
Local 38-44 was a major change. Had it not been
successful, I doubt very much that the whole
organizing drive that later took place would have
carried such momentum and resulted in the
organization, not only of the vast majority of
warehouses in this city, but of many, many other
groups.
That change was the recall of Dan Flanagan.
Dan was secretary-treasurer of the local. There
had been some difficulties in Local 38-44,
partially because of the presence of guys like
G-ene Paton, Ralph Dawson, George Valter, who had
joined Local 38-44 from Western Sugar. And there
had been some struggles going on up in Crockett.
The whole thing revolved around the basic issue
that here were a lot of young rebels who wanted
to move. Flanagan saw no reason why the local
should expand. Quite to the contrary, his thinking
was in terms of the entrenched Teamster (Union)
thinking of the time.
If anything, he felt the local belonged in the
Teamsters; or if there's going to be some organizing
in some of these up-town warehouses, like (Ward)
Walkup and places of that sort, those people belong
ed in the Teamsters' Union. He was very close to
them.
128
LG: A very nice guy had been assigned from Local 38-79,
the Longshore local of the ILA, Ernie Woods, to
help our local. One of the turning points was,
there must have been a difference of opinion
between Flanagan and Ernie Woods. Flanagan, who
had been light heavyweight champ of the Olympic
Club or something, a considerably younger guy than
Ernie Woods, worked Ernie over pretty good; he
dumped him.
You had an unwritten code around the warehouse
and the waterfront. There always was a good deal
of fighting; that was not unusual. It was under
stood that a big guy, for example, kicking a little
guy around was an absolute "No". A young guy
kicking the hell out of an older guy was an absolute
"No". If the guys were sort of evenly matched,
whether one guy had fought more than the other guy
was another story.
The violation of this sort of basic code was a
pretty serious thing, and it was one of the things
that finally triggered the removal of Dan Flanagan.
There was a recall and he was ousted.
Ward: This was done by a vote of the membership?
LG: . Right - by a vote of the membership. By the time
I became a full member, things were pretty turbu
lent in Local 38-44 and -
Ward: How many members would you say they had?
LG: Oh, maybe four or five hundred.
Ward: Not very big.
LG: Oh, no. The headquarters were at 85 Clay Street.
That was just up the street from where the long
shoremen had their headquarters. It was on the
second story - a long flight of stairs, straight
up. I guess many an evening you weren't sure who
was going to be in charge of the meeting because it
depended on who remained at the top of the stairs.
There were a lot of guys from the Mission,
particularly, who were very good with their hands.
129
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
V, r ard :
LG:
Ward
LG:
This whole process of turmoil included the deter
mination to organize on the part of the Young
Turks, like Gene Paton, Ralph Dawson, FrenchyArripe*
George Yalter, Bob Robertson. In the East Bay it
was led by members like Paul Heide, his brother
Ray Heide, Chili (Charles) Duarte, Bob Moore.
This was all one local, even then?
Yep, one local -
Even Crockett (a town and sugar processing plant
on the northeast shore of San Francisco Bay
in it?
) was
Crockett was in it, yes. They (the workers in the
sugar warehouse) were first organized in 1935, very
new.
The group that was in favor of moving uptown,
marching inland, finally won out. They were left
inclined, union-oriented in their thinking.
Simultaneously with trying to make a living, I was
part of this group and the general program of
driving inland.
Did you caucus before meetings to decide what
positions you were going to take?
On occasion, although once the main battle was
over - did we or didn't we move uptown - there
wasn't all that much to caucus about. Caucusing
was not half as important as being there.
I guess there were some pretty close votes?
No, not once the basic issue was decided; before
that there were. You had this entirely different
orientation, with many of us feeling very strongly
that the chance of growing as part of the Teamsters'
Union was zero, because the teamsters were
dominated by guys like (John P.) McLaughlin, Mike
Casey, John C'Connell; their thinking was entirely
different.
As a matter of fact, Mike Casey's philosophy was
that he would negotiate the wages for the teamsters,
and after that, by god, it was the teamster's job
130
LG-: to hang on and put out a day's work. The rumbles
around there were that in 1933 the teamsters had
reached an agreement with the drayage companies -
after all, all of our warehousemen were directly
affected by the actions taken by Local 85 of the
Teamsters; they were all dependent on trucks,
although most of the warehouses had railroad sidings
so that there wasn't the complete dependence on
trucks to the degree it is today.
The story was around that in 1933 the teamsters
picked up a 50 cents a day increase in pay. After
all, 1933 was still the depression and pretty rough
times -
Ward: Fifty cents a day was quite a thing?
LG: Right, but simultaneously most of the warehousemen
took a cut. How much truth there was to this I
don't know, but there was no question that as far
as the teamsters were concerned, they were interest
ed in that driver. As to what happened to the
warehouseman, that was just too bad.
Ward: So, anybody who had any brains didn't look to the
teamsters?
LG: You couldn't see that as the way out; the teamsters
themselves had no orientation in that direction.
That didn't happen until later on with Dave Beck,
(one-time president of the International Brother
hood of Teamsters), who began to move. As far as
Mike Casey was concerned, the only thing that was
peculiar was that the teamster was driving a truck
instead of a team of horses.
It was only in later years that these other
things took place, where the teamsters began to
move over into a much more industrially organized
outfit, such as canneries and things of that sort.
Ward: So, you got V/arren Dent on in. What was the next
step upward?
LG: I'm trying to remember who became secretary-treasur
er at the time; (Charles) Quirey -QUIREY-
I think it was spelled. He was an older man; he
went along with the general program of organizing.
131
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
His attitude as secretary-treasurer was that he
was a desk man; and the organizing was primarily
with the young rebels.
Now, these offices in the union, like the secretary
and the president and so forth, were they full
time in a local that size?
I don't think the president was - the secretary-
treasurer was.
They were opening up registration for additional
longshoremen, somewhere around 1936 - and a number
of us kicked the thing around. I had become fairly
good friends with George Valter and we were talking
about whether we would go down and apply; we pretty
well decided that we'd be better off, in terms of
what we wanted to get done, to stay with warehouse.
You were hitting the floor pretty frequently in
meetings then, weren't you?
Mmm - It was the same time in 1936 that I went to
work in a car gang.
Car gang - that's unloading railroad cars on the
waterfront?
Right. You didn't have much loading; it was
primarily unloading awaiting shipment. I worked
in that car gang for the balance of 1936 until the
warehouse strike took place; after the strike, I
also worked in that car gang.
But you were organizing on your own time?
On my own time and helping out as best I could.
This was late '36?
I'd say May, June or thereabouts. I was working in
the car gang because the strike in warehouse in 1936
was the first major strike they had. That took
place simultaneously with the waterfront strike
which started either the first of October or the
end of October , 1936.
132
LG: All during this 1936 period, the local was growing
by leaps and bounds. ?or a while we directed our
attention towards cleaning up the organization of
grocery warehouses. The waterfront warehouses were
fairly well organized, although staggering around
in terms of getting any decent contracts out of the
employers. Our "big ambition was to get 75 cents
an hour which would have been $6 a day. During
the strike that was the major demand.
Ward: What were you getting before the strike?
LG: Oh, around 62^ cents an hour - it varied a good
deal. We decided we wanted to go for a uniform
rate of pay, six bucks a day. We had some workers
who were getting slightly more, like the East Bay
Terminal workers, though most of them were in the
lower range. The longshoremen had won their 1934
strike and in the arbitration award they had picked
up a base rate of 95 cents an hour. When I worked
in the car gang, one of the reasons that the car
work was assigned to the warehousemen, through an
understanding between the warehousemen and the
longshoremen, was because they paid a dime an hour
less than longshore work - it was 85 cents an hour.
Ward: That was a desirable job then, in warehouse.
LG: Yes, except for its sporadic nature. I happened to
get an employer - Marr was his name - who was a
small employer. I think he had around four or five
regular guys in the car gang.
I was a half-assed lead man, because I drove the
little pick-up truck from dock to dock. We had our
hand trucks on this pick-up and you had to find the
plates that would go between the dock and the rail
road cars. Sometimes we carried a few of them
along, sometimes we had to borrow them, but the
total equipment he required to run this operation
was not a great deal. The net result was that a
crew of guys could roll around in a small pick-up
truck of that sort.
Ward: From place to place?
133
LG: From dock to dock. The times you'd get four or
five days work at one dock with a string of freight
cars was not too often. It was quite common to
handle a couple of cars in the morning and then go
to another dock for a couple of cars in the after
noon. Marr's job was to get these bookings of
discharge from the freight cars. Some of the guys
on the gang got to be close friends of mine; a guy
by the name of Tim Dorsey. He was a Harponian from
out in the Mission -
Ward: A what?
LG: An Irishman from out in the Mission: Harps - a
good guy. He was a member of the party. To give
you an idea how crazy things were in those days,
Tim had a tendency to drink once in a while, but
most times he'd make the job in the morning. If
he did, you found out pretty quickly it was better
not to talk to him for at least three or four hours.
He'd work the stuff out of his system - strong man -
he'd just sweat, pure alcohol, and you left him
alone.
He had been picked up one night as a drunk and
taken over to the county jail. Apparently one of
the cops there knew his family and when they went
through his pockets, they found a rosary and a
Communist party book. The reaction of this Irish
cop was, "That's just like these Communists -
they'll plant one of these books on anybody; here's
a good Irish kid and he would never belong to
something like this." Out he went. No bail; they
just held him overnight and he was discharged the
next morning.
And there was a character by the name of Riley
in the gang, a reformed alcoholic. Riley had taken
the pledge. He was an older man, though our idea
of what was an older man was very peculiar. We
figured if someone was 45-50 years old, he was
ancient, or damn near. Riley was constantly
lecturing Tim and I was trying to tell Riley, "Gee,
leave the guy alone when he's hung over; at least
he's here and helps put out."
The gang worked together; none of this stuff was
very complicated; you picked up certain techniques
134
LG: I recall we got a string of cotton bales. These
were all freight cars from the valley, and the
bales were all standing up. Bales are heavy - they
weigh about five hundred pounds.
Ward: What do you mean "standing up"?
LG: They're on end - standing up. On top of the ones
that were standing up were a group of bales that
were on their flat side. Well, wrestling with
those would be quite a job. I figured out a system
where the work was sure as hell easier on us. What
it did to that freight car, I'm not sure.
Breaking out the door is opening the door and
taking out the first bales. After you broke out
the door, I figured the best thing to do was to
roll those bales over to where you'd broken out
the door and let them drop on one end. They'd
bounce and hit that wooden floor of the freight
car a couple of awful whacks, but then they would
be standing up.
Once they were standing up, they were very easy
to handle. All you needed was a hand truck and a
hook to move that bale. It was quite a simple
thing. Three or four guys would unload a freight
car of that sort with ease in about forty minutes,
sometimes less, because you weren't manhandling
those bales and standing each one up. You just
dropped them instead. The net result to Southern
Pacific (railroad company) is something I've never
tried to calculate.
Ward: You mean it tended to punch out the flooring of
the cars?
LG: Oh, sure, the floor took an awful beating with 500
pounds dropping on it. And the drop - you had
only broken out enough so that the bale couldn't
fall down again. It bounced back and forth, maybe,
once or twice. You just stood clear and made sure
it didn't land on your foot.
In the case of these wooden boxes that were
going overseas, dried fruit, there the technique
was to simply break out the door and then by using
135
LG: a cargo hook which could get into the wood quite
easily, you would pull out a whole string - enough
for a handtruck full - and then tip those up. One
man would help load the handtruck, the other guy
would wheel it. So that moved along quite easily.
Again, you weren't handling it box by box. If you
handled it box by box, it would be a long process.
Ward: And now you say when you weren't on the job, you
were frequently out organizing. When did you do
that?
LG: At night.
Ward: Well, what would you do? Go to the night operations
of these warehouses or would you go visit the homes?
LG: No - no, these were mainly meetings that might take
place in a bar or restaurant over coffee, if you
were just getting started in a house. If on the
other hand we felt we had been picking up enough
momentum, there might be a meeting at a union hall.
The idea was that like in any organizing campaign,
people take a lot of courage from groups; it
becomes much more infectious.
It was quite common, let's say, if we could get
two or three guys who felt that the place was
ready, we'd say: "Look, why don't you gather ten
guys and meet at a certain corner and then you walk
down to the hall as a group?" Then we'd take
another ten somewhere else. In that way there would
be a general feeling that the thing was a real mass
movement. A group of guys were hot to trot. Then
meeting with them at, say, 5:30 - 6:00 o'clock
before dinner was not uncommon.
Ward: Would they come to the hall, then?
LG: You'd have both. You'd have guys who were
interested and you'd meet near their place of
work - have a cup of coffee. Other cases, where
you were further advanced, you'd meet them at the
hall.
##
136
Ward: Okay. There were two full time organizers?
LG: The full time organizers were Gene Pat on on the
San Francisco side of the bay and Paul Heide on the
east side of the bay. Ralph Dawson joined Paton
in the whole organizing program, after a while.
The organizers initially were paid so much a
head. The initiation fee was $10. The organizers
were paid five bucks a head. We had already picked
up an additional two or three thousand members be
fore we went out on strike in 1936. Our meetings
were getting bigger and bigger and we couldn't
hold them at 85 Clay Street, which would hold,
maybe, two hundred men. That was still the hiring
hall, though.
We began to meet at the Labor Temple out at
16th and Capp Streets. Well, at that meeting
there was a move on foot to make these organizers
regular, full-time organizers ....
Ward: And take them off piece work?
LG: Here was a whole group of impassioned speakers
on the whole evil of piece work and how the labor
movement had always fought against that; this was
a horrible thing to do. Here we were guilty of
having our organizers work on piece work; it ought
to be abolished and they should be given the
dignity of regular pay. Gene Paton sat the thing
out and Paul Heide and Ralph Dawson were the
others directly involved.
The membership voted overwhelmingly, if not
unanimously, to knock off that piece work at once
and to put them on a regular salary of $30 a week,
which was our demand for the basic wage at that
time. It worked out so that, although they had
several thousand dollars coming, they never saw it.
They took it as real champs; to them getting the
job done was far more important than the money.
Ward: As long as they could eat and get by?
LG: Right; it was a step in the right direction. I
still remember, because of the job that was done
by a number of guys on the issue of piece work.
These were fellows who knew all about the Bedeaux
137
LG: system. As a matter of fact, I met the old fellow
years later. He said it was always misunderstood.
Ward: He invented, promoted this system?
LG: Yes, he promoted the system at a number of places.
As a matter of fact, they had the Bedeaux system -
or the piece-work system - at Cwens-Illinois Glass
when I worked there.
Some sort of complicated system, I'm sure that
nobody could figure out except the guy making out
the paycheck. If you got a certain amount of
"ware" - that's what they called the bottles and
everything else they made; it's a packaging term -
out that was undamaged, then there would be
certain incentive bonuses paid.
These ranged from the guys who were responsible
for the molds where the molten glass was first
dropped in, to the packers; certain incentive
bonuses would be paid. This became an issue later
on when we managed to organize Owens-Illinois Glass,
I guess I was partly responsible for a running
feud that went on with them for years.
When we finally got a majority there in 1937,
we notified Owens-Illinois Glass we had a majority
and if they doubted it, a picket line would be up
the next morning. We weren't going to bother with
any elections or anything of the sort. We secured
recognition.
At the same time the company paid the fare of
two officials from the Glass Bottle Blowers Asso
ciation, an old-time AFL outfit, and flew them up
from L.A. They herded the balance of the plant
into the Glass Bottle Blowers; we had the warehouse
and they were fearful we would pick up the whole
thing. We managed to get a first contract.
Those were the days of annual contracts; one-
year contracts. V/e thought that was enough.
Prom then on, I made it my own business that
when that contract expired, we'd figure out some
thing new and different we were going to ask. One
138
LG-: time we put forward the demand, around 1938 or '39,
that we refused to work on any kind of piece-work.
I knew full well that this meant dislocating the
base structure of the whole plant. How could you
abolish piece-work in one department and not throw
out the entire plant?
Ward: And this was at Owens-Illinois, again?
LG: Yes. The contract was finally resolved with the
most insane kind of formula which in effect said
that regardless how much work the warehousemen
did, they would be guaranteed a certain amount
as piece-work. It was really a base rate, not
piece-work, but it had to be phrased that way
because the company was fearful of a move by the
entire plant to get rid of piece-work. I think by
now it must all be gone. In those days it was an
element in the production system.
Ward: Now, you've been talking about the '36 strike
quite a bit. You worked in a car gang before and
after that strike, didn't you?
LG: Yes -
Ward: And the issue of the strike was $6 a day - that
. was the main issue?
LG: I'm not positive. We struck the general public
warehouses and the cold storage plants, which we
had organized but were having more and more
difficulty in getting contracts renewed. And we
struck the grocery houses which we had fairly well
organized.
During that same period Bob Robertson became
very active. He had been working in and helped
organize a grocery warehouse called Kockos Brothers.
Chili had been working at a grocery warehouse
called Haas Brothers; we struck the grocery houses
at the same time.
Organizing was going on in other industries as
well. I'm talking now about various parts of
warehousing; you have public warehouses, cold
storage warehouses, grocery warehouses, paper
warehouses, which are quite big installations.
139
LG: You had dry goods warehouses, like the big Butler
Brothers plant. They're out of business now, but
they had a big warehouse at First and Mission
(Streets) .
I was head of the publicity committee, and
eventually took over the chairmanship of the
strike committee. But let me just mention one
brief yarn about the nature of these organizing
campaigns. We had organized the guys at Zellerbach,
(Paper Company) including a lot of men who had
worked there most of their lives, wore these 25-
year pins.
Ward: And they were for the union?
LG: They joined the union - right. What happened was
that the warehouses had been given an awful beating,
wage-wise, during that whole depression era. V/e
were coming out of it; we were riding this crest
of organization; and they joined with us.
Anyway, one of the demands was the 40-hour week.
While we had a Pair Labor Standards Act, it did not
provide for the 40-hour week. You could work 44
hours a week without overtime; we were trying to
pick up the 40-hour week with Saturday and Sunday
off. We had a number of sessions with the company.
One of the Zellerbachs, Harold, I believe,
decided he would personally take a hand in these
negotiations; on most things we got along fairly
well. When it got to the question of the 40-hour
week, that was an absolute "No",' with a long line
of chatter about how they had to stay open on
Saturday to serve the trade. We kept pointing
out that we weren't talking about closing one
outfit on Saturday and letting others operate on
Saturday. We had the industry pretty well organ
ized and we intended to make the same demand on
all of them.
Well, we still got nowhere. Finally, I invited
Harold Zellerbach: "Why don't you come down and
talk to your own people?" And he said, "Fine, I'll
do that." I said, "Don't worry, you'll be cour
teously received." We had a meeting at 85 Clay-
Street and we asked the men with the 25-year pins
140
LG: to sit in the front rows; we also urged that they
be very polite, which they were.
Zellerbach made quite an impassioned speech
which, in effect, said that the company realized
that time marches on and the day had come when
they had to recognize the union. Sure we were
deadlocked on the question of the 40-hour week,
but he kept using the expression, "Time marches
on, time marches on", figuring that the people
who worked for him would realize that they were
not dealing with a completely hostile employer.
After he finished his pitch - I happened to be
chairing the meeting - I said, "Are there any
questions?" Although they had given him a polite
hand when he got finished, one guy gets up and
says, "Mr. Zellerbach - and they addressed him as
Mister - in your talk you kept telling us that
time marches on". He said, "Yes." "Well, just
let me ask you one question; does it have to be
straight time?" (laughter) Well, that ended the
meeting.
Ward: No answer?
LG: No answer. I'll go into the details of the 1936
strike.
Ward: Very good. One other question. Sometime along
in here, you must have been having quite a few
dealings with the longshore guys?
LG: Yes.
Ward: And you had run into Harry Bridges by then?
LG: Right. In fact, we belonged to the Maritime Fed
eration as well as to the Labor Council. At the
meetings of the Maritime Federation, naturally,
we saw Bridges. Of course, during that '36 strike
we worked very closely with the longshoremen.
Ward: You had meetings with Bridges, personally, you and
other warehousemen during the strike, I imagine?
LG: During the strike, yes. Prior to that, we had had
encouragement from the longshoremen. They were
anxious to see the warehouses organized, too.
141
LG: For obvious reasons, because in 1934 that had
been one of the focal points by the employers in
their attempts to open up the waterfront. They
could use the warehouses to assemble cargo. They
were right across from the docks; the fact that
they were not organized and not prepared to move
in direct support was one of the weaknesses that
could occur during the strike.
Ward: Did you and your warehouse bunch - the progress
ives - accept leadership from Bridges and his
bunch of longshoremen?
LG: It wasn't a question of accepting leadership, so
much. In the warehouse organizing drive, there
just was general agreement that it was a hell of
a good thing.
Ward: And you exchanged ideas?
LG-: Ch, yes. The place where we exchanged ideas
primarily was in connection with developments in
the Labor Council. Local 38-44 was a member of
the Labor Council just as Local 38-79 of the
longshoremen. Bridges was a delegate to the Labor
Council; I became a delegate to the Labor Council.
Our delegation to the Labor Council was made up
in good part of this younger group I'm talking
about, heading the organizational push. Remind
me to tell you a bit of a story about Tim Dorsey
some time, and this guy, Riley who was in the same
car gang with me.
Ward: Okay, we'll start off with that next time.
(Interview 6: 21 March, 1978)
Ward: All right, what was the story about Riley and Tim?
LG: Tim had a tendency to do a little bit of drinking,
but he'd turn up on the job and for the first
three or four hours he would just sweat it out
and worked like the devil. Riley was just waiting
for the right opportunity to start lecturing Tim
on the evils of drink.
142
LG: Tim gets on the job one morning and the usual
thing and working his tail off, and about 10:30
or 11:00 o'clock, before Riley can say anything,
Tim says, "I'm going to tell you guys something
that happened last night." Tim had some funny
scratches on his face. He said, "You know, I
was having a few drinks south of Market at the
bars where I go and I get to one place where
there's a guy playing the banjo and he's playing
"Way Down South" and "Mississippi" and "Way Down
South in Texas."
"I just asked this guy, 'Why the devil don't
you play r Way Down South in San Francisco' or
something? Why all these other places? I guess
maybe I made a bit of a nuisance of myself because
all of a sudden he takes that banjo and hits me
over the head with it. Here I've got these strings
on my face and these funny scratches; I thought
about it later. Here I was going out for a bit
of a good time, having a little fun and what do I
do? I put some poor bastard out of business."
At that point Riley gave up and decided there was
no point in talking to Tim. He had a different
attitude on life.
The 1936 Strike
Ward: All right, now we're back in the '36 strike?
IG-: The strike lasted something over 60 days. It must
have been settled somewhere around the first of
the year. Incidentally, the strike did not cover
all the houses we had organized, because a number
of them were just in the process of being organized;
places like some of the drug houses; paper. These
were not quite set to make the move.
When we entered the strike we might have had
about two, three thousand members, and we just
about doubled the membership before that strike
was over. It was a combination of an effective
strike, an enormous amount of momentum, the use
of a lot of the membership in helping to spread
the organization; a real organizing crusade all
143
LG: through the city and the bay area. Part of the
inland march had taken in the organization of the
workers up at Crockett.
Ward: Did you have, aside from employer opposition, any
other opposition from within the union or among
the workers of an organized character?
LG: Not at that time. You did in Crockett, from a
company union and a group led by company vigi
lantes. That was a very rough beef up there.
Ward: Was the ACTU active then?
LG: No. The Association of Catholic Trade Unionists,
you're thinking of; that was later on. We had a
certain amount of opposition from the Labor Temple
and from the established machine. John O'Connell
was secretary of the Labor Council in San Francisco,
Well, the council had been trying for years to
set up a sort of self-appointed mediatory body;
a procedure whereby after demands had not been met
in negotiations, the council would then ask the
employers and the union involved to come before a
council board in an attempt to see if the differ
ences could be reconciled.
In some cases I think it was worthwhile. How
ever, we had decided in 38-44 that movements of
this sort were not going to do us a great deal of
good. The council was not trying deliberately to
do any harm, but we felt very strongly that the
momentum was such that if you allowed it to bog
down in hearings and further hearings and postpone
the hearing, particularly with an employer who is
looking for time to see whether he can whittle
away at the organization, we were better off to
just go ahead and move.
It apparently began to nettle people like
O'Connell quite a bit. What we would do was
report at the Labor Council that we had struck
so-and-so and so-and-so; the strikes were on. And
O'Connell invariably would make the point that
once again the procedure of the council was not
being followed; they had not called on us, and so
144
LG: forth and so on. We'd make some excuse for it that
there just was no choice. If we had gotten bogged
down in some sort of dilatory process, a lot of
the steam would have dissipated itself.
Ward: Let me ask this. You were employed full time at
the beginning of the strike and I believe you said
you went back to that full time employment in
private industry after the strike?
LG: Yes, after the strike.
Ward: Were you on the negotiating team that settled the
strike?
LG: Yes, the negotiating team included the chairmen
at that time. I was the chairman of the publicity
committee for a while and then of the strike com
mittee, both; so we were part of the negotiations,
as well as the officers and some of the organizers.
Ward: Kow did you get to be chairman of this and that?
LG: Elected in meetings; part of it was just the
business of "thems that were willing to work,
there's plenty to do." It wasn't a business of
having a lot of competition for the job; those
who were willing and anxious to put in the time,
. to put in the nights and get the job done.
On the publicity committee, I can recall, we
used to do a lot of drumming up for that, because
in most cases it needed volunteers. One chap who
did volunteer turned out to be a very good cartoon
ist. And he began to help in putting together some
of our mimeographed bulletins. Most of the stuff
we put out was mimeographed.
Ward: A mimeograph machine was a great thing in those
days.
LG: Right. Making a mimeograph machine operate and
knowing how to operate it. It was not unusual
where the publicity committee would write its
bulletin, do its own typing - we didn't have
stenos . We'd crank the mimeograph machine and
the same committee would be out there the next
morning distributing the literature.
145
Ward: Prom beginning to end - the whole thing?
LG: Not uncommon.
Ward: You were on the negotiating committee also?
LG: Yes.
Ward: Was this your first experience dealing with
employers?
LG: Just about. I might have had a little bit of
experience prior to that talking to individual
employers; in those days we were taking the
various industries within rounds; several years
later, the framework of what is called the master
contract developed. The most highly organized
group among the employers were the public ware
houses, partially because they already had a
structure in dealing with the PUC*on the setting
of public warehouse rates.
Ward: What does that phrase, "public warehouses" mean?
LG: Public in that sense meant that it was not a
proprietary warehouse. Public warehouses are where
the warehouse facilities are available for rent.
In other words, you had a line of merchandise and
you didn't want to hire your own warehousemen, you
could negotiate with a public warehouse both as to
the storage of this material and filling orders as
they were phoned in.
Ward: Very good. So this was your first strike of any
consequence. Did you feel you had a lot to learn?
LG: I thought it was the job of any young rebel in the
labor movement to learn all I could about the nature
of the industries we were dealing with. We weren't
terribly interested in the personnel on the other
side. Employers are employers. It's not that we
thought every one of them was evil and impossible;
they were just employers.
We had a lot of discussion on the nature and
structure of the industry. This, of course, was
important on several scores. Let me give you one
*Public Utilities Commission
146
LG: example which was quite crucial in the case of the
1936 strike. In the course of the strike, I had
spent a fair amount of time with a man who ran a
produce company. I "believe this outfit was
Paramount Export.
This man's name was AntoneKarguleas and we were
just casual acquaintances and bumped into each
other on the street, talked for a while. He came
to me during the strike and said, "You know, a lot
of us as merchants have an enormous amount of money
tied up in things used for Thanksgiving -
cranberries, turkeys, yams, the whole she-bang.
If we can't get the stuff out, we're going to take
an awful beating."
Well, sitting around with our guys, I threw out
the theory, "Which kind of a strike is most
effective against a public warehouse or a cold
storage house? Is it most effective if you keep
everything locked up and nobody can get anything
out, or would it be more effective to actually
empty out the place so that the house you are en
strike against had no source of revenue - nothing
stored, so nothing to collect on? Which way do
we come out ahead?"
Of course, the initial reaction to that was
anathema, because you don't strike a place and
let the merchandise out. .1 said, "Well, we ought
to give that some more thought. Maybe we can do
something to help turn things around for us. Some
of the merchants - they're not big guys - what if
they paid what we're asking for in the event we
take this stuff and release it; the stuff that's
required for Thanksgiving? We have a chance to
rotate that work through the union, and we insist
that they issue a statement supporting our demands.
After all, they're the ones who have to pay the
freight to the public warehouses."
Well, that cast a slightly different light on
the matter. After a good deal of discussion, we
decided there would be no harm done to set up a
release committee - one that these employers could
visit and tell why they needed certain stuff and
were prepared to meet our demands, and also to
subscribe to the statement.
147
LG: We finally had a meeting with, oh, there must have
been about twenty of these produce dealers and
other employers who used public warehouses and cold
storage space; they agreed to what we were propos
ing. It took a bit of heavy duty discussing with
our own guys - yet it did work effectively. In
the course of doing this, I'd say it was the first
time that an employer group came along and said,
"The union is right."
It was a big challenge to learn something
about an industry. Where is the economic leverage?
Where is the pressure? What is the nature of the
beast? This became apparent in the case of the
grocery houses, even though our demands were for
the same rate of pay in all of them. There was
the grocery warehouse that was a completely captive
warehouse, which handled merchandise, produce and
so on for their own stores; Safeway is as good an
example as any. Mutual Warehouse; United Grocers;
Lucky.
Then there was another number of grocery ware
houses v/hich were on the general market, selling
wherever they could. Some of them carried
specialty items, a variety of what was considered
high grade items. For example, S&W (Sussman and
Wormser) v/as a grocery warehouse, but it was not
a captive warehouse at all. It was on the general
market; S&W carried a very good reputation for
quality brand of merchandise. Haas Brothers was
another grocery warehouse which did not have a
series of stores of its own. There was really a
distinction between the two.
Some warehouses were called institutional ware
houses. Those are the kind of warehouses which
would cater to places like hospitals, hotels,
public institutions, ships. The economics in
these situations were not identical. It's much
easier to break through with a captive warehouse
than with an institutional warehouse.
The reason is quite obvious. The warehousing
operation with an outfit like Safeway is an
infinitesmal amount of their total cost of
operation. It might mean something like a tenth of
148
LG: a cent on an item, whereas in an institutional
house all these things would directly relate to
the single economic unit they were running; they
didn't have anything to merge it with. In other
words, it wasn't part of a whole structure like
the Safeway warehouse.
Ward: It wasn't under the same management, opportunity
to streamline operations?
LG: Right. That was one element in the picture. The
other element - an odd one in some ways; an insti
tutional warehouse could not take a strike in the
same way as an outfit like Safeway "because in no
case were they anything like the financial size
or strength of some of the other warehouses, so
that it was a combination of these things.
In some cases we'd even have some of these
warehouses sign up separately provided they met
the union demands. We managed to get a single
rate from each industrial grouping. That's an
example of what happens in grocery warehouses.
Again, that's completely different from an outfit
like a paper warehouse, where none of them ran
storage. They had no specific outlet; their major
sales in the paper warehouses were the usual,
print shops - so -
Ward: Now, Lou, you were saying something about a dif
ferent can of worms.
LG: I was referring to different types of warehouses.
All this is in answer to your question as to
whether I felt there were a lot of things I had
to learn. The answer to that is "yes." In other
words, it's a bit more complicated than just saying,
"Fellows, let's join a union and we'll bang these
employers on the head and get this and that." Also,
you learned that the employers had a lot of power
and they could be very rough.
Ward: Can you illustrate that?
149
LG: For example, Wesley Howell. He was the head of
Hazlett Warehouse: also the head of the Public
Warehouse Association. Ke was as rough as a cob.
He made that very plain right in negotiations. If
he had had the resources he would have sat the
thing out indefinitely. He just had no use for
people coming around, organizing his loyal em
ployees; it was evident that he could hold that
machine together.
I think he might have been hurt more - though
I never really found out - by the tactics we
adopted in emptying out some of these v/arehouses
and striking an empty place. That probably
disturbed him more than anything else because as
long as the stuff was stored it was collecting
money. He might not be making the kind of income
which goes with a regular turnover, but at least
he wasn't being hurt as badly. So, you have to
respect them for their own stubborness, I guess.
Ward: Did you ever run across an employer whom you found
you liked, personally? He responded, in a way?
LG: There v/ere a few employers, some from the smaller
warehouses, who v/ere not difficult to deal with.
For example, a man I always liked was Adrian Falk.
Later on he became quite prominent in the Chamber
of Commerce. Adrian Falk was in charge of the S&W
warehouse; an interesting duck. I think he came
from an old-time San Francisco family, probably
among the initial groups who came out here. I
never felt that he was fundamentally hostile to the
union.
I don't think he ever took the attitude that
his only purpose in life was to see that we were
gotten rid of. I discovered in talks with him that
if you could put together something logical you had
one listener. The big bulk of employers, it made
no difference what you said, they just weren't
interested. The only time they finally sat down
and dealt was when they had to.
Later on even someone like Wes Howell - this was
after the 1936 strike - mellowed quite a bit and
was much easier to get along with.
150
LG: I recall a man from Zellerbach - I believe (Eugene)
Breyman was his name - in 1937 - he was not the
most difficult person in the world to deal with.
Although he got himself all cranked up with some of
these books on labor relations; all the devices
which people invent in books that get you to be an
expert on labor relations. The most unusual
character I met during those years in some ways
was "Navy" Bill Ingram.
Ward: Oh, yes - the football coach. How in the world
was he in the labor relations picture?
LG: Not too hard. "Navy" Bill became one of the
officers in charge of labor relations for Safeway
stores. About the second or third time I met him,
we happened to be walking down Montgomery Street
together and he started telling me that he wanted
to clear something up - that he was not responsible
for running strike-breakers in 1934.
One of the things that developed in the 1934
longshore strike was where they recruited strike
breakers from the U.C. football team. He kept
insisting to me that he had nothing to do with
that; it was something that happened through various
fraternities. How true I don't know.
We were walking along Montgomery Street, and he
said, "Look, I got to sit down and rest." And we
sat on the curbstone while we were talking. "Navy"
Bill was pretty well known on Montgomery Street and
here were guys coming along and saying "hello"; he
had a heart condition.
Ward: You and he were sitting on the curb - ?
LG: Talking and we got along fairly well; except at a
later stage, he came to me with a proposal that
had to be turned down cold. His proposal was that
they would meet whatever demands we had, plus an
additional 5 cents an hour, if the union would then
undertake to compel all other grocery employers to
pay the same rate. Obviously, a device carefully
thought out by the people who ran Safeway that this
was one way to get rid of their competition. I had
to tell him, absolutely no dice; we just weren't
interested.
151
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
V/ard :
LG:
In that same period I got to know Bart Crum; he
was an attorney in John Francis Neylan's office.
I recall going by there for a meeting with Crum
and Neylan somehow getting around to telling me
about the time he defended Anita Whitney (a famous
Communist) against criminal syndicalism charges.
I didn't know that.
That's right, he did. Here I am sitting in the
office of this man whose reputation as far as
labor was concerned . . .
He was the principal attorney for (William Rand
olph Hearst, famous newspaper publisher) Hearst.
Oh, his reputation was that of one of the most
reactionary characters in the town, and there he
was telling me this yarn about Anita Whitney and
defending her on criminal syndicalism charges,
sometime in the twenties.
Nineteen - nineteen 1920, about the time of
the Palmer Raids.
And that was when I got to know Bartley Crum. For
a while Safeway dealt separately; they were not
opposed completely to working with the union.
Later on they got to be more and more difficult,
particularly when life got complicated with the
entry of the Teamsters into the field of warehouse
organization.
Smart!
Yep. We won the strike; the guys learned their
own power. Contracts that had been kicking around
for six or eight months were wrapped up.
Any brushes with the cops on picket lines?
We had some over in the East Bay. I forget the
name of the cop over there - Brown or something -
a thoroughly impossible guy.
Was he in Berkeley or Oakland?
Oakland; he made a practice of rousting the pick
ets all the time. Oakland had an anti-picketing
ordinance.
152
Ward: Well, they all did.
LG: Yes; we didn't pay any attention to the one in
San Francisco. The first time they made an attempt
to enforce it in San Francisco was around this
Woolworth beef. They used the ordinance to try to
confine the number of pickets. We had all kinds
of guys up there and most of them were there for
solid trade union reasons, but the fact that there
were also a lot of attractive young girls on the
picket line wasn't a handicap in getting our guys
to go out there. They sort of filled up the San
Francisco jails arresting everybody over a certain
number.
Ward: I'm pretty sure that the repeal of the anti-
picketing ordinance began in Berkeley; there was
quite a beef there with the Berkeley police. Do
you recall anything about that?
LG: It was Woolworth; it might have arisen because we
had spread the strike in Woolworth over to the
branch stores.
Ward: How close did you come to achieving all of your
aims, 15%, 90%?
LG: Oh, we got the wage increases we were after or most
of them. I'd say we won in terms of .getting a
contract, getting union recognition, getting
vacations written into the contract - something
that was new - establishing seniority, particularly
getting hiring through the warehouse hall for extra
labor; not the same as longshore because it was not
a complete rotation of all workers; but it was the
question of any replacements being called out of
the hall, any new employees being called out of the
hall.
You can establish a real grip over the industry
in the sense that the employer can't go out and
hire willy-nilly and choose a lot of people who
would be hostile to the union. Those were the big
demands; including preference of employment.
Preference of employment v/as good for union people;
an employer calling the hall: "I need so many guys
to discharge a freight car."
153
LG: At the same time the union was going through a very
intense campaign against what was called "hiring
off the street". Many of our own guys had become
accustomed, before they became members of the
union, to go shopping around at the various ware
houses to pick up a day's work, a half day's work.
Preference meant doubling back and getting a good
deal more discipline out of our own people so as
to knock off things like hiring off the street or
going job-shopping.
The hiring halls became well established. An
interesting sideline is that we did not place much
emphasis on the union shop; in those days we didn't
even have the union shop in the contract.
Ward: You didn't ask for a check-off of dues or anything
like that?
LG: No - no. It was a wholly different attitude. Sure,
institutions change and times change and require
ments change. But our attitude in those days was
if we could get preference of employment through
the hall that was enough in the way of guarantees
of union security.
Then, the question would come along, "Well, if
someone won't pay his dues?" We wouldn't even
have the business agents collect dues on the job.
People had to come down to the hall and pay their
dues. We wanted that direct contact with the union.
Same reason, we established compulsory attendance
at membership meetings and a fine for non-
attendance. The whole thing was built around the
basic concept that the only way to build a union
was to see to it that the membership took part.
Ward: You got compulsory attendance from the longshore
experience?
LG: Yes, sure, and the preference of employment we also
got from the longshoremen. To this day the long
shoremen don't have a union shop, even though there
is a provision in the contract that permits the
union to get a union shop any time it wants it.
They prefer preference of employment and the hiring
hall, which is a much more effective weapon.
154
LG: When some guy would say, "Well, look, there is so-
and-so and this son-of-a-gun won't join the union
on the jot) or come up with his dues," the attitude
at that time was, "Look, if you guys can't take
care of a character like that when he's walking
alongside of a pile or a stack of canned goods, you
have no business even being in the union." So,
that turned it around where it belonged.
Ward: Well, that's the way you guys built a stronger
union by making the guys take care of the slacker?
LG: Right. In other 'words, it had within it what I
think is still the fundamental strength of the
union; it could only spring from the membership
itself. It's not going to come by how many dollars
they have in the treasury or how many officers you
can hire; the nub of the thing had to be the direct
participation of the members; to my mind that still
remains the nub of any effective organization.
Ward: All right. What v/ere the things you tried to get
by the strike that you ended up not obtaining? If
any?
LG: I'm not sure if we got the uniform 40-hour week.
I'm not quite sure whether we won that one. I do
believe that we got the wages we were demanding or
very close to it. We did get the big thing,
preference of employment and the use of the hiring
hall. I doubt whether we got the full vacation
demands which we had -
Ward: How much did you demand?
LG: I think it was one (week) after one (year) and two
(weeks) after two (years).
Ward: Yes, that was the usual thing at that time.
LG: Bear in mind that most of these companies had no
vacations, or if they did have vacations it was on
a hit-and-miss basis, depending on who the indivi
dual was; more a personal favor. We did not have
a great proliferation of demands. There was no
struggle for health and welfare, no attempt to set
up a pension plan. I doubt whether we introduced
155
sick leave. We got that later. Seniority was a
very big thing and that one we did win.
It would be worth while somebody doing a bit of
work to see what happened with other unions around
here as a result of some of our organizing demands
and the good fortune of winning them. I distinctly
remember that at that time the teamsters did not
have seniority in their contract. The warehousemen
got it first.
That reflected the general attitude in the
teamsters; they negotiated the wage scale; after
that every guy was on his own to hold that job.
That's the reason that outfits like V/alkup got the
reputation of "V/alkup - Rundown". If the men
couldn't meet the work, that was just too bad.
Introducing the concept of seniority was a very
big thing.
Another important thing we got was the recog
nition of stewards. To us the steward system was
extremely important; this was a whole layer of
leadership with daily contact with the membership
on everything from the application of the contract
to grievances, the importance of preference and
everything else.
Some of the old line unions had absolutely no
concept of the steward system, or were hostile- to
it. I recall an instance in the Labor Council
where we reported some newly signed agreements -
some that we might have gotten after a day or two
of strike, because v/e had that kind of speed. We
were reporting, among other things, that the
steward system was recognized and we were setting
it up.
John O'Connell, in an impassioned speech, said,
"They talk about steward systems - that's not true
at all - that's just an attempt to build a Soviet
inside the warehouses." Where the association of
a steward system and Soviets came from, I have no
idea, (laughter) Today, of course, that's
accented, like coffee in the morning.
156
The Move To The CIO
Ward: When the strike was settled, you went back to work
in the car gang?
LG: Yes.
Ward: What was your position in the union, then?
LG: I was vice-president of the union. I had been
elected vice-president in the 1936 elections; that
was not a full-time office.
Ward: Obviously not, if you were working in the car gang.
LG: No. I think we had only two or three full time
officers.
Ward: How long did you continue working in private
industry?
LG: I continued v/ith that, though some of it became
hit-and-miss, when we had a lot of these organizing
pitches going.
Ward: You mean, sometimes you would be too busy with
union work to be working on the regular job?
LG: That's right. Although, one of the things with
the car gangs, it was not entirely steady work.
Ward: I see.
LG: Some days you would be very busy and other days . .
It was quite common, oh, if you picked up four
days in a week, you were doing fairly good. Five
days was a good week.
Ward: When you were out doing union organizing, were you
paid for that time?
LG: As I recall, most of this work was all volunteer
work.
157
Ward ;
LG:
Ward: Even though you had to lay off in order to do it?
LG: Yes. There's another distinction between the union
in those days and what happened later. The whole
idea of someone being paid by the union for work
ing on a committee, attending the Labor Council
meeting, was absolutely unknown; you just did it,
that ' s all .
And those weren't the days when a guy ran for
office so he could get rich.
Oh, one of the things that came out of the '36
strike, was that we settled before the maritime
strike ended. Bear in mind that we went out on
strike at the same time and that the impetus for
the organization of warehousing was the role the
warehouses played during the '34 strike. Cn the
other hand, the '36 strike differed enormously
from the '34 strike as to how the employers
approached it. There was no attempt to run scabs;
in '36 in many ways it was more of a seamen's
strike than a longshore strike.
The major push, as I recall, was an attempt on
the part of the employers to get rid of the
seamen's hiring halls. I don't recall the long
shore demands playing that much of a prominent
role in the '36 strike. The union just stuck
together against a counter-offensive on the part
of the employers.
Ward: Then it wasn't damaging to the maritime strike,
as such, for you to settle first?
It did them no harm. I recall we had some con
versations with them and I guess Karry (Bridges)
must have been there and some of the maritime
guys.
Ward: (Harry) Lundeberg?*
LG: Lundeberg was still with the Maritime Federation;
some of his manoeuvering that later led to the
breaking up of the Federation was already taking
form.
LG:
(Leader of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific.)
158
LG: There was a big hassle around the paper there - it
was called the "Voice of the Federation". Barney
Mayes was editor and he had a peculiar slant on
life all of his own; not very friendly to us,
anyway. There was a lengthy beef where finally he
got heaved out as editor. There was no damage
done by our settling and the general feeling was
that it was for the good.
Ward: And there was no resentment on the part of the
longshore union?
LG: No, none at all, because there was no attempt to
use the warehouses as a diversion point for cargo
and no attempt to bring any cargo down to the ships;
the problem didn't exist. In addition, when the
strike was over, we voted $1,000 a week to help the
longshoremen.
Ward: You had money by that time?
LG: Right. Money that came in because of a lot of
organizing, and we felt quite affluent.
Ward: When did you go full time?
LG: That was later in 1937. We had the Pacific Coast
District convention -
Ward: You were still in the ILA?
LG: Still in the ILA. We had a Pacific Coast District
convention in Seattle in 1937. It was around April
or May, and it was at this convention where the
decision was made to take a referendum on joining
the CIO, (first called the Committee for Industrial
Organization; later becoming the Congress of
Industrial Organizations) because the CIO was de
finitely moving all over the country by that time.
The general feeling was that we belonged with them,
although we weren't leaving the AF of L, (American
Federation of Labor).
We thought that part of our job was to see
whether or not we could get the AF of L to adopt
the principles of industrial organization and to
accept industrial unions in the whole structure.
So it wasn't a complete breach.
159
LG-: There was a beginning of a breach between the
teamsters and ourselves. Dave Beck was in power
by then: Tobin (Dan Tobin, former president of
the Teamsters' International) was gone. I recall
when we were up in Seattle that time, there was
an attempt on the part of the teamsters and Dave
Beck to move against the warehouse local we had in
Seattle. As a matter of fact, they moved fairly
successfully and broke the warehouse organization
there.
A lot of hostilities that carried on for a
number of years began to develop at that point. I
think it was during 1937 when we were up there,
the P-I was on strike -
Ward: The Post Intelligencer (a Seattle newspaper) ?
LG: Right. I remember meeting Anna - the daughter of
Franklin D. Roosevelt - Boettiger?
Ward: Boettiger, yes. Her husband was the publisher.
LG: I remember meeting her during that strike - I don't
know how. Apparently, she was fairly friendly to
the strikers.
Ward: Yes, I think that was true. That was a Hearst
paper?
LG: Right. And she was at some little gathering of
ours; I recall everybody having a pretty good time;
I wound up playing some revolutionary songs on the
piano. That didn't seem to offend her or take her
aback. She seemed like an awfully good sport.
Harry had met with Joe Ryan (president of the
ILA) and other parts of the maritime industry in
an attempt to see whether the whole maritime group
could move over (to the CIO). He met with no
accord of any kind from Lundeberg and Joe Ryan of
the ILA.
At one time, as I recall, Harry made a straight
forward proposition to Joe Ryan to take a national
referendum in the ILA on whether to go into the
CIC. If the majority voted not, we wouldn't go
either. But Ryan would have no part of that.
160
LG-: So we voted as a Pacific Coast District to take a
referendum and we voted to go into the CIO.
Ward: That referendum would have "been held in -
probably May or June of '37?
LG: In mid-1937, right.
Ward: And you were vice-president of Local 38-44 and you
were technically, at least, a working stiff?
LG: Right.
o- 1
Ward: Okay, then the referendum took place; did your
position change?
LG: Yep. What happened after that was Harry (Bridges)
was designated Pacific Coast Director of the CIC.
I guess he designated me, or I was designated by
the national office, I don't recall which, as
Northern California Director. In other words, a
sub-title; at that point I went to work full-
time for the CIO.
Ward: You never did work full-time for Local 38-44?
LG: I don't believe so.
Ward: One day you were in the car gang and the next day
you were something else?
LG: That's right. Anyway, it was at that point that I
went to work full-time for the labor movement. The
job there was working together with any unions
that belonged to the CIO, or giving any other
unions who wanted to come into the CIO a hand. Al
though during that same time we continued our mem
bership in the Labor Council.
Ward: For how long?
LG: Until they heaved us out. The Labor Council had
become during 1937 perhaps the most active labor
forum that the country had ever seen. Debates v/ent
on endlessly on the whole question of industrial
organization, rank-and-file organization, the need
of the labor movement to expand. We maintained
very good friends and close allies.
161
Ward: In many labor organizations at that time the guys
who stayed up the latest carried the vote.
LG: No. Meetings lasted until 11-12 o'clock at night,
but it wasn't the business of the delegates
drifting off. As a matter of fact, it was very
tough for a visitor to get in, even, because it
had a very small gallery section. I recall Terry
coming down there and she got a seat only because
I was a delegate and the guy at the door saw to it
that she got a place to sit. There were times
when there were just as many people outside the
Labor Council on the street picking up news as
to what was going on as there were inside.
We had no intention of leaving. I never thought
that we left the AF of L; they left us. About that
time, another thing was taking place which is rather
important. Before Dave Beck took power Tobin, who
was still head of the Teamsters' Union, and Joe
Ryan reached an agreement on dividing up the
warehouse field; where the warehousemen who v/ere
in the ILA would be confined to the waterfront
warehouses, and the teamsters would have all the
warehouses uptown.
Bear in mind that at the time we got going the
teamsters were ignoring the warehousemen completely.
The fact that we began to organize with a good
deal of success became quite a motive for the
teamsters to begin to change.
Anyway, this agreement between the teamsters
and the ILA then began to be effectuated, or an
attempt was made to implement it by William Green,
(president of the AP of L). For a while almost
every Labor Council we'd attend, there would be
another telegram from William Green parcelling out
the warehousemen like so many bunches of bananas;
this belonged to the Teamsters Union; some hard
ware warehouse belonged to the Carpenters Union, or
a plumbing warehouse belonged to the Plumbers'
Union.
They themselves didn't know what they were
doing, because on the one hand they were completely
craft organizations; on the other hand they were
determined that this stupid fight against the
formation of the CIO would go on.
##
162
(Interview 7: 28 March, 1978 )##
Ward: All right, you were about to tell what went on
inside and outside the Labor Council while the
deliberations were in progress.
LG-: What was going on inside the Council was the
debating of the merits of an idea that had taken
form within the labor movement for years. We were
not arguing with the crafts, but our position was
that unless the mass of workers could be organized,
the people who were not craftsmen - and after all
that included a majority of the workers, whether
it be in the bay area or anywhere else in the
country - even the crafts themselves would find
their situation pretty desperate at times and be
subject to every vagary of the employer's position,
such as the American Plan.
These debates were worthwhile. Even in recent
years you still run into some old timer who had
been a delegate to the Labor Council and the re-
miniscing and remembrance of those debates still
stands out in his mind as perhaps the finest
chapter in the whole history of the Labor Council.
The march inland was rubbing off on all kinds
of unions, so that unions which had been either
dormant or completely out of business suddenly
took life again. It was no accident that San
Francisco saw one of the first organizations of
retail clerks. That Woolworth strike was one of
the examples that took place, although the ware
housemen also had a strike against Woolworth then.
Those things tied in together; the importance of
making San Francisco a real union town. This was
an expression that was easily understood.
There was no reason why the whole town should
not be unionized; no reason why just because some
worker happened to be in a non-craft organization
he would be ignored. It was a period where even
the Dishwashers' Union began to flourish. They
163
LG-: were part of the hotel group; at one time the only
groups that carried any weight among the hotel and
restaurant employees were primarily the cooks and
waiters and bartenders - all of them in three
separate little locals. Y/hen it came to the large
installations such as cafeterias and things of
that sort, they only had a handful, if anybody.
A lot of the organization was literally stimu
lated by the waterfront. I remember, for example,
there was an old Clinton Cafeteria down at lower
Market Street, somewhere around Market and Steuart.
I think it was Clinton or Foster - I'm not sure
which. The culinary workers had made some progress
in organization, but not enough; a number of us
decided to get in the act.
That meant, oh, maybe 50 or 60 of us going in
there one morning, occupying every seat, ordering
a cup of coffee and sitting there; that's all.
Three or four hours of that and the company gets
the idea pretty quick that unless they recognize
the union" their chance of business could be pretty
thin.
Like barber shops on the waterfront; all had to
organize at once. The idea that they could operate
non-union was completely unacceptable. Everybody
got in the act. These things stimulated the or
ganizations throughout the city. It also resulted
in us making some awfully good friends and support
ers.
There were some real characters in the Labor
Council. Some of them, very colorful guys, men
who became good friends of ours, very loyal,
remember Hugo Ernst - he was with the Hotel and
Culinary Workers and he had his chair where he sat
on Labor Council nights. We all knew it because
we were already delegates, but apparently some new
delegate came to the Labor Council and took his
chair. Hugo Ernst carried a cane - whether he
actually needed it or not, I don't know - always
had a carnation in his button hole. I'm not sure
whether he wore spats at the time -
Y/ard: He was supposed to have -
164
LG: I think so; he was a character. He walked into
the Labor Council and here is this man sitting
in his chair. He stood there and tapped the chair
a couple of times with his cane. This guy is
getting a little bit embarrassed - doesn't know
what to do - and somebody leans over and says,
"Get the hell out - that's Hugo Ernst's chair."
There's a guy like George Kidwell, who was a
delegate to the Council from the Bakery Wagon
Drivers. One of his proteges was Wendell Phillips,
who retired at the same time I did. George
Kidwell - that man was oust like a rock - just a
good, strong -
Ward: His other protege was (Jack) Shelley -
LG: Yeah, Shelley was the other one. Shelley became
head of the Labor Council, became a member of the
Sacramento Legislature -
Ward: State senator -
LG: Senator and then went on to become a congressman
and then mayor. People like that were pretty
colorful. John C'Connell in his own peculiar way
was a unionist - no question about that - but in
the oldest possible tradition; one who felt so
keenly about observing every little bit of proto
col within the Labor Council. I guess we were
quite a chore to him because when we'd make reports
of unions to announce how many places had been
organized, how many had been on strike and so on!
Before a union was given strike sanction the
Labor Council would try to arrange sessions between
the union involved and the employer involved to see
what could be done to mediate the differences.
Well, we had made a decision.
We couldn't run the risk of getting bogged down.
We were being bogged down enough, as it was, by
the old Labor Relations Act.
Ward: It took too long?
LG: After all, if there's anything that the employers
and their lawyers know it's how to buy time - stall
indefinitely. So, you'd go in and organize a
165
LG: place, try to meet with the employer and get
recognition of the union, preference of employment,
sit down and bargain. If the employer questioned
you, we'd say, "Okay, tomorrow morning you be here
early and count the number of people outside. If
there are more people outside than inside, you'd
better recognize us. If there are more inside
than outside, you win." It was just that simple.
It's no wonder that the Chamber of Commerce and
the Industrial Association got into quite a frenzy
over these things. They almost identified union
ism, communism and revolution as all one and the
same thing, particularly this kind of unionism.
John O'Connell reflected that.
But there were also men in there like Dan Del
Carlo. He came from the building trades, the
Glaziers Union; always remained a very close
friend of the ILWU; he was a former Wobbly. There
were a number of guys who had been Wobblies and
later settled in San Prancisco and became part of
the trade union movement. There are men like Joe
Murphy, a wonderful character in his own right,
also a former Wobbly. I think he has the best
collection of Wobbly literature and songs of any
body on the Coast.
Ward: The machinists were very friendly too?
LG: Very, very friendly at the time. As a matter of
fact, two of them lost out in the machinists in
a very ill-calculated strike at the end of World
War II - (Harry) Hook and (Sd) Dillon. Hook turned
up as a witness against Harry later on; not Dillon.
The waterfront machinists - the Machinists Union
through their waterfront division - that's more
accurate because they were all members of Lodge
68 - were part of the Maritime Federation.
We also helped out any number of unions, even
the union from which George Johns, who later
became the secretary of the Labor Council, came
from. Those were the Cigar Clerks, v/hose main job
was not really selling cigarettes or cigars but
playing this "36" game - bet a quarter against the
house on rolling of dice, to see if you could win.
Anyway, it was a form of half-baked, legalized
gambling.
166
LG: It was tolerated in the city just like dice for
drinks is still acceptable around San Francisco.
Liars dice. Bull dice, you know. Ship, Captain
and Crew. Razzle-dazzle. You name it. All the
various games; although in other parts of the
country, like Los Angeles, you never see a dice
box. It's a characteristic of the city and its
tolerance of certain things. Kyne's and -
Ward: Corbett's. You used to see the D.A. (District
Attorney) at Kyne's on election night.
LG: And every once in a while some reporter would go
down and talk to (Tom) Kyne and ask him how the
odds were running. We also would venture a couple
of bucks there. The wealthy candidate would throw
money into Kyne's, because this is one way to in
fluence the election. After all, a number of
people are influenced by the newspaper stories
saying that the odds against someone winning are
four to one, five to one, or what have you.
Ward: Well, let's get back - you ran against John
O'Connell for secretary at one time, didn't you?
LG: Hmmm. That must have been late in 1936 or sometime
in 1937. Oh, somebody came up to me and said,
"What do you think about running against him?"
' Heck, we didn't have much use for him - he was
always blasting us. John O'Connell had strong
friends in the Labor Counc.il like John McLaughlin
of the teamsters; he thougnt pretty much the same
way as McLaughlin. And I said, "Fine, I'll run -
I just hope I'm not elected;" of all the jobs I
didn't want would be secretary of the Labor Council.
I did fairly well. The fascinating thing was
people coming out of the woodwork from every
direction. Delegates who had been rounded up to
be sure to vote that night. We never had an at
tendance like it.
Ward: I think you said they brought them in on stretchers.
LG: Damn near. Anyway, the Labor Council was a lively
affair - no question about it.
167
Ward: You were telling about the weekly telegrams
coming from William Green, and. about how Harry
(Bridges) manoeuvered in that -
LG: It was a combination of two things that were com
ing to a head; one was the attempt to effectuate
that agreement between Joe Ryan and Dan Tobin on
jurisdiction. And the other was the attempt on
the part of the central leadership of the AF of L to
decapitate the CIO here, and specifically to get
us expelled from the Labor Council.
Our position was that while we thought the CIO
was a good thing, we felt it would be best to stay
in the AF of L, be affiliated with the CIO and at
the same time campaign for the acceptance of the
CIO principles by the American Federation of Labor.
In retrospect, I still think that position was
very sound. For one thing, I think it had an
enormous impact on those delegates. Secondly, I
think it gave a whole progressive tone to the
San Francisco Labor Council and became a really
genuine educational experience.
But in the meantime, the AF of L had taken the
position that if you belonged to the CIO you were
guilty of dual unionism. You haven't heard that
expression for a long, long time. In those days
"dual unionism" was an expression in constant use.
As a matter of fact, there were organizations
that literally tried to do the very same thing we
did, like the International Typographical Union.
They were in the AF of L; they supported the CIO.
The time they broke with the AF of L was when the
AF of L levied an assessment of so much a member
per month on all the international unions to carry
on the fight against the CIO. The ITU (Internat
ional Typographical Union) refused to pay. They
said, "You're simply asking us for money to break
down industrial organization and we'll be no part
of it.
Ward
##
Lou, you were saying -
168
-.
vw
LG-: These telegrams would threaten to lift the charter
of the San Francisco Labor Council unless the dual
unionists, namely, outfits like the ILWU, were
heaved out. No question in my mind that had there
been any kind of an open, above-board vote without
the threat of yanking the charter, we would have
won hands down.
The delegates there, with the exception of
perhaps a couple of awfully stiff-necked and
hard-bitten guys, definitely would have stuck with
us, because that had been one of the by-products
of the maritime and general strike and the march
inland, and the enormous benefit it had done to
all kinds of other unions. You had a tremendous
influx of young people for the first time, in
stead of a Labor Council that was comprised of
people in their dotage.
So it was under the gun of these threats that
a lot of these debates took place; a lot of
parliamentary manoeuvering. We'd meet before the
Labor Council meeting with our friends - kick the
gong around. The whole excitement of the Labor
Council resulted in an enormous attendance, not
only by the delegates; there would be nights
when there were almost as many people outside the
Labor Council as there were inside. People came
because it was the best show in town and without
charge .
Funny things used to happen in the Labor Council,
Like one night, the argument had gone very, very
late. This delegate, Tony Cancilla - a very tough
guy - of the Cab Drivers Union - got up to make a
point of order. Jack Shelley v/as in the chair.
Shelley asked him, "Y/hat's your point of order?"
"Oh, I just want to say one thing, if this argument
keeps up this way there's going to be a mad dash
for the door and somebody ain't going to make it."
Another night, for example, when we were de
termined to try to prevent a vote on G-reen's
telegram of expulsion, Harry made a suggestion.
Harry is a good parliamentarian, even though he
169
LG: sometimes had what you'd call "Bridges' Rules of
Order". He also knew Roberts' Rules of Order and
C u sh i ng ' s I-lanu al very well.
He suggested, "Why don't we go into a committee
of the whole?" The advantage of a committee of
the whole is that you can argue every single merit
of an issue without necessarily making motions,
amendments, amendments to amendments, voting down
the whole thing. It's a free and open debate
around an issue until the assemblage has decided
okay, we've heard all the arguments and we're now
prepared to take motions.
So when this telegram was read Harry gets up
and says, "Mr. Chairman, I make a motion we go
into a committee of the whole." Jack Shelley
didn't see anything wrong with that and we went
into the committee of the whole. The debate must
have gone on an hour and a half, maybe two hours
when somebody got up and said, "All right Mr..
Chairman, we've heard enough. I make a motion we
accept the telegram from President Green."
Harry jumps up and says, "Sorry, Mr. Chairman,
that motion is out of order." Shelley is sort of
riffling through the Rules of Order and says,
"I guess you're right, Harry, it is out of order."
Somebody else gets up and makes another motion,
"I move we throw out these dual unionists." Harry
is on his feet again and says, "Sorry, Mr. Chairman,
but that's contrary to Roberts' Rules of Order."
Finally, it goes round and round on these
points of order with Jack Shelley having to up
hold Harry on these things. Finally, Shelley in
complete frustration turns to Harry, "Look, Harry,
you got us into this damn thing; how do we get
out?" Apparently, the only motion that is accept
able under those terms is to rise and report,
which simply means that you return to the formal
structure of a meeting, with making motions,
amendments and so on.
Ward: By that time, everybody wanted to go home?
170
The Teamster Blockade
LG: That's right; that took care of that night. As
a backwash of the whole 1937 teamster blockade,
there was a good deal of friction. Beck was on
the move. He had some pretty tough eggs, and
other things v/ere developing that were bound to
lead to trouble.
The teamsters had chartered a warehouse local
in the San Francisco area, Local 860. Later they
acceded to the employers' demands for so-called
industry-wide contracts, but already they were
sort of nibbling at our flanks in some warehouses;
some employers were stampeded into signing with
them before we got around.
There had been incidents outside (the Labor
Council meetings); there would be some flare-ups,
although in the main, considering the number of
people that would turn up and the intensity of the
debates, there was amazingly little in the way of
outbreaks.
Ward: I think you said that sometimes there would be a
couple of hundred guys outside?
LG: Not uncommon at all.
Ward: Waiting to see what happened?
LG: Yes, waiting to see what happened. Part of it
also was a feeling that the delegates inside were
trying to protect their interests; perhaps even a
certain feeling of a show of strength in support
of their delegates; and also to be around if some
thing untoward did happen, which it didn't - never
in the Labor Council. Outside the Labor Council,
yes.
Gene Paton was one of the delegates to the
Labor Council and there was a bar right across
the street from the Labor Temple at 16th and Capp
Streets. Pat was having a drink with (Swan) Swede
Carlson. Swede Carlson was one of our early mem
bers and he had been a pretty good light heavy
weight in his day. He was no longer in that light
Tom Mooney Freedom Parade up Market Street,
San Francisco, January 8, 1939. Tom Mooney, hand
raised; to his left, Louis Goldblatt; behind him,
George Kidwell, State Dir. of Industrial Relations
Teamster Blockade, San Francisco Waterfront, 1937.
Louis Goldblatt, center; Ernie Woods, at right with
button; Clarence Paton, at extreme left without hat.
171
LG: heavy-weight class, since he had picked up a few
pounds, but he was a strong guy, tough.
Pat was always a very outspoken guy. Some
teamsters were in the bar and Pat said something
and one of the teamsters copped a Sunday on him
and down he went. And before Swede could turn
around, somebody whacked him and down he went.
The way Swede picked up the story he says,
"So, I shook my head and here was Pat on the floor
and there's no need for both of us to be down
there, so I got up and went to work."
Apparently Swede just cleaned up the joint -
flattened several guys. One guy finally flying
through the door, draped over a car. While Swede
was not a delegate to the Labor Council, having
him around generated a certain respect.
Ward: Remembering him, I would think so.
LG:
One of the by-products was that people said,
"Ckay, don't screw with these guys, that's all -
argue with them, fine, but if you want to go the
hard way, it's a two-way street." You ask any of
the reporters who covered those debates. One of
them who was most fascinated was Art Eggleston
from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ward: He used to have a column specifically on labor
and its problems.
LG: That's right. It was the first labor column that
I know of around here.
At any rate, by the end of 1937 we were
expelled. That happened in the Alameda (County)
Labor Council too. One Labor Council where they
were having a hell of a job trying to expel us
was over in Contra Costa (County). This wasn't
just expelling these wild, hairy-assed guys from
Longshore and Warehouse.
There, you had all kinds of people like the
Oil Workers, Rubber; Steel were there; the old
Pioneer Rubber plant. You had the Hine, Mill and
Smelter Workers at Selby. You had the guys who
172
LG-: made different powder and dynamite products at
Hercules (formerly Hercules Powder Company, now
part of Hercules, Incorporated); you had a whole
string of industrial plants. Actually in terms
of proportionate relationships the craft unions
weren't nearly as important, and they were
obviously reluctant to heave out the industrial
unions.
I recall going to a meeting of the Contra Costa
Labor Council with Paul Heide. That long drink
of water is an unusual character. I never thought
the guy was so strong but we'd gone to one of
these little arcades, I think it was in Seattle -
he also got tangled up with some teamsters in a
fight there too - where they had these punching
bags where you could register how hard you could
hit it. Paul says, "I think I could hit that
thing pretty hard." And he whacked it right off
its hanging.
So, Paul was also a very courageous guy. We
walked into the Contra Costa Labor Council and
there was someone from William Green's office
presiding. He turned up later in Crockett in 1938
where an attempt was made to break the ILWU. Paul
and I walked in and somebody else was with us; it
. could have been Ham.
Ward : Ham?
LG: (August) Hemenez - "Ham and Eggs" from Crockett.
And as we walked in, this guy dropped the gavel
and said, "The charter is hereby suspended." That
was the end; never any debate, never any discus
sion.
Ward: Did that happen in San Francisco too? Was there
any vote?
LG: No, in San Francisco the delegates finally voted
to expel us; either that or surrender the charter.
And they weren't ready to surrender the charter.
I don't think anybody thought seriously that that
sort of a fight was in order and that we could
make it. Your proportionate relationship in a
city like San Francisco between craft and
industrial unions is overwhelmingly towards the
crafts.
173
Ward: It's the reverse of the Contra Costa situation?
LG: Exactly the reverse, right. By that time we were
setting up the CIO and keeping busy. This was at
the tail end of 1937 f and I had been appointed
Northern California Director of the CIC.
Ward: And your working relationship with Harry Bridges
had existed some time before that?
LG: Yes, not closely, obviously, because Harry was up
to his ass with the Maritime Federation; some of
the conflicts in the Labor Council were also re
flected in the Federation. The attempt, for
example, on Harry's part and the Longshore
division to see whether or not we could get the
maritime unions, as a group, to move into the
CIO. There were a number of efforts made in that
direction, like that of John L. Lewis*to set up
a whole maritime section of the CIO; but people
like Lundeberg and (Vincent) Mai one of the
Firemen's Union were dead set against it.
There was a continual struggle around the
Federation which went into decline after the '36
strike and began to phase out its effectiveness.
All this was bound to preoccupy Harry; he was also
head of the Pacific Coast District of the ILA,
remember that.
As a matter of fact, (Harvey) Carty, who had
been president of Local 38-44 and had been
removed by petition, sealed his own fate in 1935
when he voted against Harry to be head of the
Pacific Coast Division of the ILA. And there were
the attempts on the part of Pedro Pete (Peterson)
in L. A. and the Dirty Dozen, as they called them
Ward: The Dirty Dozen, would you elaborate on what that
was?
LG: Guys who were tied to the ILA, even after it went
to the CIC. Pedro Pete was the leader of the
group; I think he was on the ILA payroll for some
time afterward, after we went CIO.
Ward: I know he was on somebody's AF of L payroll years
later, in the forties.
*Founder of the CIO
174
LG: That's right. So, that struggle was on. The
National Labor Relations Board had used what they
called the globe election theory in the case of
our affiliation with the CIO. In other words,
where you could carve out parts - even though we
had a Pacific Coast District contract - it was a
west coast agreement, you see.
Locals, according to the NLRB, could leave; so
three ports - Tacoma, Port Angeles and Anacortes -
Port Angeles and Anacortes are tiny locals, re
fused to affiliate to the CIO; remained in the ILA
for some years, and finally came back into the
ILV7U, somewhere in the late forties, I believe.
Anyway, Harry had his hands full with the or
ganizing drive and the almost endless number of
struggles.
I can hardly recall a period where we didn't
have a strike on somewhere. They were just pop
ping all the time. You never fiddled around with
anything more than a one-year contract. And it
meant that you not only had your major contract
negotiations, but with your organizing push, you
also had an almost continuous stream of strikes
as well. So that while we attended the Maritime
Federation meetings we also attended the district
meetings of the ILA; the relationship was not all
that close.
Ward: Well, here you were at the age of 26 or 27 with
one big strike behind you, a rather successful
strike, and you had your first full-time trade
union job. That was the situation?
LG: Right. During the earlier period I had been
elected vice-president of Local 38-44 in the 1936
elections. That was the time when Gene Pat on
became president, and an old-timer named C. T.
Quirey who continued as secretary of 38-44 and then
of Local 6; he was elected.
Robertson was business agent at the time and
(Ray) Tarling was another. I mentioned him in
conversation. Some time in 1937 he mis-directed
a letter and it got into the hands of somebody who
was a friend of the union - complete stranger,
175
LG: though. It got to us and we were about to go
ahead with a trial; simply dropped the information
to Tarling that we had it. He was reporting on
organization that was going on at Western Sugar,
among other places. Anyway he promptly took off
and that was the last we saw of him.
By the way, there was a period when almost all
of these employers that we v/ere bumping into were
hiring Pinkertons (employees of a detective agency)
As a matter of fact, (J. Paul) St. Sure later ad
mitted that almost all of the big employers
employed Pinkertons, and I don't mean a Pinkerton
guard standing outside the door or wearing a
Pinkerton uniform; none of that crap. They were
people employed as warehousemen, they were workers
in the plant, their job being to report every bit
of union activity and particularly to single out
the ring leaders.
How much they helped the employer, I don't know.
They did in a few cases where they would finger
somebody and then the employer would find some
other reason to can him, such as coming in a few
minutes late or having a shot of whiskey at lunch
time. But not in terms of supplying any informa-
., tion to the employer which he couldn't get by just
reading our union paper or leaflets which we were
putting out all the time - or by calling us.
I think the employers finally decided this was
a complete waste of money. Most of these guys
were not effectual in dissuading anybody from
joining a union. There was just too much of a
wave going on. As a matter of fact, if somebody
made a crack, "Oh, the hell with the union,"
people might think he was a Pinkerton when he was
not.
Ward: V/ell, in a sense life became somewhat different
for you when you took on this full-time job. I
imagine that one of the things that you were doing
was preparing for the formation of the (California)
State CIO Council.
LG-: Yes. Cnce the expulsion of the CIO unions from
the A? of L was a fait accompli, obviously, the
fight had to shift. For our own self-protection
176
LG: and our own effectiveness it meant that we had to
set up the CIO Council, help out wherever we could
with organizational drives, help the weaker unions,
also help some of the bigger unions when they
needed a hand.
I recall making an awful lot of mileage. It
was pretty common for me to be driving to L. A.
and San Diego, a few days there, stopping along
the route with various groups; and to cover every
thing from San Diego up to Redding . . .
Ward: Not to mention Sacramento.
LG-: Not to mention Sacramento, because I also became
head of Labor's Non-Partisan League. Labor's
Non-Partisan League was really a (political) alte_r
ego of the CIO. It might have had a few other
organizations in it, but not many.
I remember it was a continuous roundy-go-roundy
of work. I remember meeting with newspaper
people, some of whom later successfully helped to
organize the San Diego Union -
Ward: Brodie?
LG: Yes, Brodie - Bill Brodie was one of them. A
slight, small fellow, very aggressive.
Ward: He became a farmer, I understand.
LG: He was a good man. It also meant trying to help
out in the organizational pitch we had going on
among the Fishermen in San Diego. I got to know
the Slovenians very well. I made my first trip
to Mexico City on their behalf; I think that was
in late 1937. I went down to Mexico City.
I met Lombardo Toledano (head of the Mexican
labor movement); as a matter of fact, when we
had a convention of the CIO in San Diego, we made
an effort to have Lombardo Toledano come in. At
that time he was persona non grata with the U. S.
government. Later on he did speak at one of our
conventions together with the man who translated
for him, Alejandro Carillo, who later became the
177
LG: governor of Mexico City, D.?.
1 v/ent down there on behalf of the Fishermen
because somebody had run through a bill in the
Cortes (legislature) in Mexico which in effect
would "prohibit all seine fishing. V/hat they did,
was shove seine fishing in with drag-nets, gill
nets, and so forth.
The Slovenians were part of the friendly
group in the Fishermen; they were the most ef
fectively organized. The Fishermen ran to three
nationalities in San Diego and one in San Pedro.
You had the Slovenian fishermen who were the
dominant group in San Pedro; they invariably used
purse seine nets for catching tuna. You had your
Italian fishermen - not a very large group - and
some of them used purse seine nets, but most of
them used hook and line.
The balance of the group were Japanese fisher
men - Japanese -American, who used unbarbed hooks.
Some of them were not American born, but there
were both Nisei (second generation) and Issei
(first generation) among them. The Japanese would
fish off these platforms on unbarbed hooks. V/hat
they would do was chum (a type of fish) the waters
V/ard : Chum?
LG: You chum the waters by throwing bait out there.
And then the fish all come in a circle and mill
around them; they keep churning so that the school
would be kept fairly close to the tuna boat and
then they v/ould fish with these unbarbed hooks.
The tuna v/ould snap at the hooks v/hich shone like
chum and the fishermen would flip the tuna over
their shoulders into the hold of the ship.
And if they ran into a particularly big school
of tuna I don't know if you've ever
seen this: there could be two men on one line,
sometimes three men on one line, and all three
would have to work together to hook the tuna and
flip them into the ship.
V, r ard: Because the tuna v/ere so big?
178
LG: Some tuna, yes. When tuna began running, say,
150 pounds, you're not going to yank that out.
If you did it by hook and line, you would be at
it forever. When they'd hit a school of tuna,
it was pretty common for them to work 48 hours in
a row. But that's the way the industry is; San
Diego was getting big; a lot of the fishermen
were Portuguese. They used both bait and seines.
Ward: A lot of this fishing went on in Mexican waters,
apparently.
LG: les, they were doing a lot of fishing in Mexican
waters, plus the fact that they used to get some
of their bait - anchovies - tov/ard the lower part
of Baja California. Anyway, if this bill passed,
it would have effectively knocked out the Sloven
ian fishermen, so I took a bounce down there and
things fell in place for me pretty well. Luckily,
I met almost everybody I wanted to meet very
quickly -
Ward: You had the help of Toledano?
LG: Toledano, yes, he was very friendly. As a matter
of fact, Toledano had been supported by John L.
Lewis; he knew everyone around there and he was
able to steer me. Some attorneys I met down there
. knew the ropes, one of whom was a bull fighter
aficionado. He had all the brands of the famous
bulls around his office and I went out to the
bullfights with him.
We found out that the ones who had gotten that
bill through were the Van Camp* interests, which
really owned most of the Japanese boats or held
mortgages on them.
Ward: And they wanted to get the seine fishermen out of
the competition.
LG: Right; what you do is knock off the purse seiners
and you've got the only tuna in town. At that
time (Lazaro) Cardenas was president of Mexico, a
fine, progressive man, you see, and people like
Toledano were very close to him. Anyway, somehow
*Van Camp Seafood Company
179
LG: the newspapers got in the act; and then I recall
that there was some half-assed California legis
lator who went down there.
Ward: That would be one of several, I can't remember
who . . . .
LG: I can't remember which one it was. He went down
there supporting the Van Camp interests. But
this got into a good, public debate and no harm
done at all.
They had some people who looked me up, includ
ing a young guy who manned a small Coast Guard
vessel in Baja California, in the gulf; what they
call the Sea of Cortez. He was telling how the
Japanese had all kinds of concessions there, such
as in Guaymas - shrimp fishing.
They were supposed to teach the Mexicans the
technique - part of the reciprocity for the
concessions. All they taught the Mexicans was
how to cut off the heads. He was angry as could
be, and very helpful. He also insisted that they
had the best coastwise geodetic survey of Mexican
waters that anybody ever had. Well, it got to be
quite a roundy-go-roundy and we won that one hands
down. Cardenas killed the bill, yes.
Ward: Oh, I see, he had veto power.
LG: Oh, yes. He had veto power, the bill had already
passed, but then he killed it. That was my first
trip to Mexico City.
Ward: So, we formed the State CIO Council?
LG: The CIC convention took place at the Royal Palms
Hotel in August, 1938. That was when the State
Council v/as set up and I was elected full time
secretary- treasurer.
Ward: And (Philip M. Connelly of the newspaper Guild)
Connelly was elected president -
LG: Later on there was some change in that -
180
Ward: Yes, later on, but he was the president for two,
three or four years. Then there was the feeling
that the Newspaper Guild was - people were begin
ning to realize that although there was some
romance around the idea of organizing white collar
workers, after all it was a small union. Jim
Thimmes, his nose v/as out of joint a mile -
LG: The Steelworkers ....
Ward: Yes, he v/as the representative of the Steelworkers
out here and he was feeling pretty sore about the
whole thing; Connelly was persuaded to resign and
put in Jim Thimmes.
LG-: Because I recall ....
Ward: You played some role in that.
LG: Right, because the thing I was so determined to
do - all of us were, really - at the founding
convention was to try to get all the industrial
unions represented on the executive board.
Thimmes was one; then there was (J.R.) Roberts,
"Sen-sen Roberts" we used to call him, of the
Rubber Workers; (James) Coulter of the Oil Workers,
I remember the oil workers used to bend my ear
that he was on the payroll of the companies. True
or not true, I don't know. There were the Coulter
brothers, key people in the Oil Workers.
We were determined to try to get them all
represented without having it dominated by the
left-wing unions or the newly formed unions. I
spent a great deal of time on that. I thought
that unless we could maintain that kind of unity,
\ve'd be in trouble.
Some of the initial difficulties of the CIO
began to surface at the Royal Palms convention
For example, there was the International Ladies'
Garment Workers; Jennie Matyas, for example,
played anything but a constructive role. Actually
they were trying to organize a mass walkout.
181
LG-: This we got wind of - I forget in what way, but
word got to us somehow; we had a lot of friends,
naturally. If the Garment Workers could work
things out their way, there would be a mass walk
out and a break-up of the convention even before
it got started, so instead of having a genuine
California State CIC, all we'd have would be just
a fragment. A breakup would have been very
damaging.
Ward: What did you do to prevent the walkout?
LG: We were just meeting every minute of the day and
night with delegates from all the different
unions, like Steel, which we considered important,
Rubber \vas important, I remember spending a lot
of time with Roberts. He was convinced to stay,
finally. Jennie Matyas and the guy from the
Amalgamated (Clothing Workers' Union), Jerry
Posner .... He was a pretty decent guy; he
didn't walk out.
But the Ladies Garment Workers Union just made
a pain in the ass of themselves during the
convention, Jennie Matyas being particularly
difficult. She saw nothing wrong with walking up
and taking the mike, whether it was her turn or
not, and just start rattling off.
I recall one moment there - Harry was in the
chair, presiding as West Coast Director of the
CIO; she got up once too often, interrupting all
proceedings without stating her name for the
record. Harry lapsed into complete Australianese
because he rapped the gavel and said, "Stayt your
name and affiliyiation."
Ward: I also remember a crack of his when there was
some question of a nomination of a candidate from
the needle trades for the executive board and I
think it was she who said, "Well, who could
represent the needle trades better than the needle
trades?" And Harry, from the chair: "I'll tell
you who - anybody - can represent the needle
trades better than the needle trades renresentative. "
182
LG: Cn that score, they did not walk out. Apparently
they didn't have time to organize a walkout;
their support had been thoroughly dissipated.
It was a good convention, lot of spirit to it,
lot of young delegates. We didn't realize that
things were brewing back east. We weren't aware
of it until it surfaced at the '38 CIO convention.
I thought that Jenny Matyas and the Ladies'
Garment Workers had their nose out of joint.
Ward: You mean on the west coast?
LG: Yes, but later on it was pretty obvious that
Dubinsky (David Dubinsky, president of the ILGWU)
was determined to walk out. As a matter of fact,
by 1939 they were out.
Ward: I see. Then, you feel that Dubinsky had something
to do with it?
LG: Oh, I'm sure of it, in retrospect; but at that
moment I didn't know it. We were pretty naive,
I suppose.
183
IV TROUBLES AND TURBULENCE
(Interview 8: 4 April, 1979 )##
Strikes, Fights and Progress
Ward: All right, Lou, now we go into other things that
happened in 1938. How about the "hot box car"?
LG: Things were jumping even before 1938. Tensions
between the ILWU and the Teamsters were pretty
sharp. Dave Beck had achieved hegemony on the
west coast. He had started his move to set up
the Western Conference that later developed into
a series of conferences established by the Brother
hood of Teamsters, such as the Western Conference,
Central States Conference, Southern Conference and
Eastern Conference.
That included the establishment of a Teamster
local in warehouses for the first time, headed by
a man named Ted White. There was also the
continued march inland. That continued full scale.
There were some pretty sharp confrontations
that occurred, like the strike against Cal Pack
(California Packing Corporation) in Alameda. The
warehousemen were locked out. The company made a
move to run strikebreakers and break the union,
which they pretty well managed to do. There was a
large scale confrontation, pretty ugly and violent.
A large number of the Alameda police force, as I
recall, were not civil servants really - they were
on a sort of special hire basis. They quit after
the whole thing. I remember that the neighbors,
184
LG: people living in the area around Gal-Pack, were
sympathetic with the union. Ralph Daws on was in
charge of that picket line and Ralph enjoyed
drafting military plans of how we would handle
these things.
Cne of our warehouse employers got his nose very
badly out of joint because we borrowed some of his
trucks without telling him what the purpose was,
then used them to bring large groups of men over to
Alameda. There you saw the courage and determina
tion of guys like Bob Moore from the East Bay, Paul
Heide, Chili.
I recall there was a temporary standoff and a
few of us decided we'd walk up there and talk to
these cops to see if we could re-establish a picket
line, get the confrontation behind us; we were
convinced there would be no problem. We left the
pickets standing there - a large group - and walked
up there, three or four of us.
When we got to them we realized how stupid we
were, because here were a couple of these cops with
shotguns and they were shaking; these are the kind
of guys who pull the trigger under almost any
circumstance. As we were talking to them, one of
the cops kept swinging a billy at Bob Moore, who
-was a big man; it's a scene you would never forget.
He'd catch the thing in the palm of his hand, put
it back to the cop, keep on talking and catching it
again. Nothing much happened; finally that picket
line lost.
We never did manage to get Gal-Pack, although
later on they shifted that operation, or part of
the operation, to San Francisco. It was around
that Del Monte (Corporation) or Cal-Pack warehouse
where the blockade of the San Francisco waterfront
started.
By 1938 the San Francisco Employers' Association
had set up an affiliated group of warehouse employ
ers and it got to be a pretty comprehensive
organization. Their basic thrust was that a kind
of unionism was moving in - uptown and away from
the waterfront - that would result in endless
disruption.
185
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Incidentally, some of the ads and editorials in the
papers in those days are really worth reading to
give you an idea of how people felt at that time.
These employers were literally out of their minds.
They saw the revolution right around the corner?
It was right there! Right! The whole program of
trying to organize warehouse and other people was
to get a death grip on the whole distribution
structure; they had visions of the city being
brought to its knees by the organization of ware
housemen, together with the maritime workers.
Obviously, that was the key industry for the city
because the whole nature of San Francisco was one
where it didn't have any real heavy industry to
speak of.
Anyway, they formed themselves into an organi
zation - I don't recall the exact title - but it
included wholesalers, warehouse, distributors and
so forth.
The union had been directing its organizational
efforts so as to pick up various branches of
warehouse such as public and cold storage - grocery,
hardware warehouses, paper warehouses, drug, and
dry goods; obviously, the attempt was always being
made to try to bring all the warehousemen up to the
level we had won in 1936.
In many cases this took an enormous jump because
we organized people where the wage scale was less
than 40 cents an hour. Moves of that sort were
enormous; actually we negotiated contracts where
the wage increase must have been almost as much
again as the individual had been getting -
You mean double?
Yes, double it. I recall particularly a place like
Butler Brothers where we found people who were
making $16 or $18 a week. We just about doubled
that.
So the employers became convinced that what we
were doing was whip-sawing the industry. A lot of
that was actually true - no question about that.
186
LG: It was easy for the union to pick out one group and
have it tied in with the general wage scales and
conditions like public warehouse' and cold storage,
and then move on to the next group.
The employers came along with the idea that they
wanted a single contract. On that score, people
like Harry felt very strongly that a single master
contract made a great deal of sense. Most of us
in Warehouse pretty well agreed with it, although
somewhat reluctantly, because the organizational
bargaining technique of working one group off
against the other was attractive.
We finally decided that we'd go along with the
idea of a master contract, but not under circum
stances where the differentials between the
different parts of warehouse were frozen. In other
words, nobody was going to give up anything in
exchange for a master contract.
The Hot Boxcar
LG: We did recognize the fact that some groups would
have to stand still for a little while until others
'caught up. Well, the employers brought their
program to 'a head with the "hot boxcar". I think
the hot boxcar originated with Woolworth' s.
Ward: I was reading that this car was loaded with school
supplies.
LG: Yes.
Ward: But it was sent to places - to warehouses - that
had not the faintest connection with school sup
plies.
LG: It was sent to any kind of a warehouse v/hich had a
siding - a railroad siding. It moved around town -
the hot boxcar. The railroad guys who were moving
the car were very friendly, but after a demonstra
tion they would have to take the locomotive and
the car through, because of the laws governing their
employment with the railroad company.
187
LG-: As the "boxcar reached the warehouse, our men would
be given instructions to discharge the boxcar,
which they alv/ays refused. Down would come the
warehouse - locked out - and pretty soon a very
substantial portion of the warehouses in town had
been closed down.
Ward: No attempt was made to operate?
LG-: No; it was a straight lockout. Your biggest
difficulty with a lockout is that fundamentally it
is an employer strike and about the best you can
do is to get back to where you were. With a lockout
there aren't specific gains in sight for the union;
it is not built around union demands.
However, the thing began to jell, because of
the amount of time that this '38 lockout was con
tinuing, and also the amount of publicity it was
getting. I recall Kike Quin* doing a piece for us;
we printed it in the San Francisco Chronicle. That
was about the hot box car ....
Ward: There was a song. It was a parody on a song called
"A Tiskit, A Taskit" -
LG: Yes -"A Boxcar, A Boxcar"; right.
Ward: The girls used to put on shows at money raising
affairs.
LG: Actually, we had good support on the thing. By that
time - and Harry played an important role in this -
policy finally got jelled. Well the hot boxcar
dispute finally wound up with the basic agreement
that there would be a master contract, although
some of the elements of the master contract would
be finally determined by arbitration. The
arbitrator at the time was a man named Harry J.
Rathbun.
The resolution of the hot boxcar came about by
a combination of things; one was an editorial by
Paul Smith, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle,
saying that the kind of conflict that was going on
around the hot boxcar was turning San Francisco
into a ghost town; there had to be an end to this
* A GIG radio writer
188
LG: thing. Gene Paton had become president of ILWU
Local 6 by then. He wrote a letter to the editor
in which he took on Paul Smith, saying, "Look, if
you know so much about this, we hereby notify you
that we will be happy to accept your services as
mediator." Well, Paul Smith didn't know what to do
with this; obviously someone had called his hand.
However, Paul Smith had a lot of gumption, and he
did take on the job as mediator until the sessions
got started. Sam Kagel (a prominent mediator-
arbitrator) was in the picture; Gene Paton, of
course.
The Master Contract
LG: By that time, I was with the State CIO; but we
spent a lot of time on it. We didn't win every
thing we wanted, but fundamentally we did achieve
the one thing that we were determined to get, a
master contract which would preserve whatever gains
we had made and perhaps provide for a period of
catch-up time.
At least it would be the kind of contract that
when you sat down to negotiate, you weren't
'negotiating industry by industry and maintaining
differentials. The only differentials which might
exist within the contract deal with job classifi
cations or addenda - in terms of base rate, which
was called the freight handler's rate, that we
wanted to make sure was uniform; eventually that
did come out of the master contract.
It was during the same period of time that Jim
Blaisdell, who had been with one of the big law
firms in town, became a wheel in this association.
We began to deal with him; as an individual a very
personable guy. I never had the feeling that he
was anti-labor. No question that he organized his
own people very effectively. V/e found out later,
for example, that the employers during the hot
boxcar dispute had set up something they called
the "heat" committee.
Ward: Sounds like a goon squad to me.
189
LG: It was more effective. The "heat" committee's job
was - I know this is true, because I got it direct
ly from Jim later on - that in the cases of ware
houses which were reluctant to go along with the
hot boxcar lockout, they would get in touch with
all the financial ties of those warehouses. Here
was Company "G", that didn't want to go along with
the lockout. They would find out very quickly that
Company "G" had an outstanding loan from Bank of
America for so much money.
Pretty soon Company "G" got a call from Bank of
America, "Look, we're under the impression that
your credit rating is extremely bad. This loan
will have to be called and I doubt very much if you
can get any future ones in view of your attitude."
So, that was a "heat" committee. Talk about having
leverage on an employer! That's power with a
vengeance. So the employers learned the technique,
in effect organizing their own union.
Ward: Did you get preference of hiring for all the
houses?
LG: I don't think so, although there was some sort of
a referral system set up for some houses that
didn't have preference of employment as yet. But
where we might not have had preference, we had this
referral. By that time the momentum of the union
was great enough that there was no problem in see
ing to it that the referral system was tantamount
to preference.
Ward: Would you explain the difference between referral
and preference?
LG: Referral would simply mean that the union might
send out a man who had experience in some particul
ar industry and the employer would interview him
to see whether or not he wanted him; still leaving
the employer with the right to reject the man.
But if you have enough steam on in a situation
like this, nobody else can take the job except
somebody out of the union hall; pretty soon that
employer can get worn down just by referring the
same man back, and back and back.
190
LG: I remember at the time we had a couple of "black
men in the union - as a matter of fact, some of us
used to pitch in a couple of bucks to keep them
going - because we were determined that there would
be a breakthrough on this question in terms of
blacks in the industry. And the technique we would
use if there was a freight handler's job - which
is still a large part of the industry - and no
question that the man could handle it, was that
we'd send the same man back to the same company day
after day. Pretty soon the employer would get the
point - that if he didn't hire this man, he wasn't
going to get anybody.
Ward: But wait a minute - under the reference system
couldn't he hire off the street?
LG: On that score, the employer realized pretty quick
ly he better not take the chance, because the guys
in the house were backing the union. After the
hot boxcar beef, even though the employers felt
they had achieved something - and I guess they had
they did not come out unscathed.
They realized they were dealing with an outfit
that wasn't about to dry up and blow away. The
big bulk of the employers were not anxious to get
into another confrontation, so that even loose
language could be administered in such a way as to
be a pretty effective practical thing.
It was during that time that Local 860 of the
Teamsters announced that they had agreed basically
to the employers' demand for a single contract.
All they had was a handful of warehouses, primarily
plumbing, and maybe one or two others. They
carried a full page ad on responsibility on their
part, warning us to get along with the employers,
etc. etc.; a purely propaganda ad.
Years later when I went down to the Western
Conference of Teamsters - many, many years later,
when wounds had healed, in one of their conference
rooms was a big, framed copy of this ad by the
Teamsters Union. I'm sure the thing wasn't hung
there deliberately so as to needle us, but the
Teamsters were determined to prove themselves as
being the goody-goody boys in relations with the
employers.
191
Ward: Would you call it a "sweetheart" move?
LG-: Not entirely; it couldn't be too much of a "sweet
heart" move because if it was, then at that
particular time the men would have deserted in
droves. The Teamsters had to go along with some
of the basic things that we picked up.
The main thing they gave the employers was, in
effect, a free hand in the operation. I don't
think they even fiddled around with things like
steward systems; no attempt to get the membership
to really enforce a contract, or to even stretch
that contract a bit where necessary. One outfit
was just a contract holder; the other outfit,
namely, Local 6, was a genuine mass movement of the
membership. That showed up time and time again.
When the Teamsters realized that continued
attempts to try to put us out of business would not
work, one of them used the expression, "Look, you
guys are different; you can blow a whistle and the
whole damn membership is right there." Of course,
to them that's a highly admirable thing to have
that kind of discipline.
What they did not think through was that even
though his description might be accurate, it wasn't
because anybody was carrying a club. If you blew
that whistle they knew you meant it, and they
happened to be in support of what you were talking
about.
The theory behind the master contract is sound.
However, there's no question in my mind that even
to this day, if you were to single-shot warehouses
some of them could be knocked over for more money
than others.
7 or example, one of the groups that has sort
of drifted off, was not part of the master contract,
is in grocery; the reason is quite obvious. There
the warehousing is only a very small part of an
enormous chain such as Safeway or Lucky Stores.
Those rates can be boosted quite a bit; in terms
of the percentage of the total marketing cost, it
is not that much. It's like paying one machinist
in a warehouse of 200 people a higher wage; if you
192
LG: put it in relationship to all the workers, it
doesn't amount to a hell of a lot.
So, grocery is an example of where, for one
reason or another, they were determined to get
out from under Local 6. Like at one time, for
example, Safeway had a big installation in San
Francisco ....
Ward: Bill Ingram 's plan working out?
LG: It worked out in the sense that all of the small
grocery warehouses, unless they had a specialized
commodity like Italian olive oil, were put out
of business. All you have left now are the bigger
ones. Even an outfit like Purity Warehouse -
Purity Stores, that was a big grocery outfit -
that's folded by now; you have United Grocers which
still goes on. Associated Grocers, I think, has
folded too.
Those characters, in order to get out of the
agreement they had with us had a little operation
in San Jose called United Grocers Cash and Carry;
that's a place where a guy in a truck picks up
some things wholesale and takes them away himself.
When they opened up in Richmond, where they are
located now, they used that contract to sign an
agreement with the Teamsters in their Richmond
Barehouse as United Grocers. Then 'they doubled
back and folded up the Mutual plant in San Francisco,
They used the device there of having had an
agreement with the Teamsters. When Safeway folded
their San Francisco warehouse, they had already
set up a warehouse in Richmond; there again they
worked up an understanding with the Teamsters'
Union.
There is a humorous sidelight when the present
Association was still the Distributors' Association
the employer group negotiated the master contract
and administered it; the man who became head of the
Association, J. Hart Clinton, was anxious to have
the master contract rates apply to grocery. He was
practically tearing his hair on what was happening
to United Grocers, which he still represented even
193
LG-: though they were not part of our master contract;
they were in the Teamsters. Apparently the
Teamsters were really giving them the business.
He wanted to ioiow whether we could do anything,
"because our relations - this was later on - with
the Teamsters had improved somewhat. I said,
"Well, if we were to get mixed up at all in this
thing, to tell you the truth, I'd be sitting down
with some of those Teamsters figuring out what
additional demands could they make on that house,
other than what they have done so far."
I said, "The United Grocers are the guys who
jumped the fence. They decided to get out from
under the tent, used their own devices; they
thought they were cutting a fat hog in the ass by
getting rid of Local 6; I gather they are paying
a bit of a price now." He said, "That's right,
that's right." I said, "If I could think of any
thing that would help the Teamsters give that
company a bad time, I'd be right over there at
once." There's no use trying to salvage somebody
like that. When they have done it, they've done it.
By that time the Teamsters were trying to
organize all the warehousemen they could; not just
Local 860. On the Oakland side of the bay, they
set up Local 853. In Richmond, their Teamster
local became a general local, including warehouse
men in Local 315. On the Peninsula there was a
local headed by a man named Joe Dillon.
Ward: Oh, yes - he used to be with Local 6?
LG: Right, although one thing about Joe, at least he
was frank and open when he left Local 6 to go to
work for the Teamsters. He sat down with Harry
and myself and said, "Look, I'm leaving Local 6
and it's not because I don't agree with the union
or what it's done." As a matter of fact I had
known Joe Dillon when we worked at Owens-Illinois
Glass together, back in 1935.
He said, "I just can't raise my family on the
kind of money this union is paying, so I'm going
to work for the Teamsters; I don't intend to
fight the ILWU. I'hey've given n;e a charter down
the Peninsula, Local 655.
194
LG: He was in charge of that until the day he died,
although there were some odd periods many, many
years later where I found myself going down to
his local at a membership meeting to help explain
a new master contract which we had negotiated
jointly and where some good rank and filers got
hold of me after the meeting and said, "What the
hell are you doing down here? We figured we'd
get him on this one." (laughter)
Ward: You were protecting Joe?
LG: Oh, this was quite a few years later. All I'm
trying to say is that the Teamsters were actually
moving in many ways.
As some of them would tell us later, "You know
that we used to call your office every once in a
while and pretend that we worked at a certain
place and have you guys go down there and put out
a leaflet, because as soon as you put out a
leaflet we could go in to the employer and say,
"You don't want them." They were using us as a
cat's paw to organize; more than a cat's paw, as
a bogey-man.
It cost the employers something; at least the
- guys got organized. They might have done better,
of course, in Local 6, but one thing that did
happen during that period was that in a couple of
places, like the case of 860 in San Francisco,
they paid their warehousemen or freight handlers
the base rate, plus one penny more than the Local
6 agreement.
In the case of Oakland, they paid them 3 pennies
more than the base rate. Incidentally, everybody
called that "the red penny"; that was the penny
that was being paid; these guys under no circum
stances had any red thinking or red underwear.
So, years later when we had gone into joint
negotiations, Teamster warehousemen and the ILWU,
which still continue to this day, there was an
attempt at one time by the employers to equalize
rates. When they finally granted our demands, they
were substantial demands; we came out very well;
and they said the least that ought to be done would
be to get rid of this differential the Teamsters had,
195
Ward: Was that your position, too?
LG-: Hell, no - because we said, "Look, you guys paid
for that and you're going to pay for it from now
on. We're going to keep the red penny in the
contract. "
Ward: Yeah, but your workers were paying for it too?
LG: Ho - they were paying for it during the time
the employers were able to use the Teamster
contracts to ride our back and drag their feet.
The Teamsters went from those days of organization
at least 20 years or thereabouts without ever
having a strike. Local 6 was doing the fighting;
they would either drag their feet or sign "me too"
contracts. That in effect was what the enrol oyers
were paying the one penny for.
The warehouses organized by the Teamsters would
operate under any circumstances, and just a sort
of general understanding that they would wait and
see; once Local 6 finished its contracts, they'd
go back and pick up the same gains. That didn't
do us a hell of a lot of good, of course, and was
one of the reasons why years later we felt it was
so important to try to put together joint nego
tiations; then instead of the ILWU warehousemen
carrying the load for everybody, they'd all be in
there pulling on the oars in the same direction . .
Ward: But you still wanted to preserve the differential?
LG: We did, but the employers wanted to get rid of it
because they figured okay we're not getting any
thing more for it. You finally get to the point
where in negotiating jointly you coordinate your
demands, they get to be joint demands and finally,
if you take a strike vote, you take a joint strike
vote.
We even had an understanding whereby the joint
strike vote is pooled as to whether or not it
authorizes taking strike action, and actually the
ratification is pooled. When you have done that,
what the employers have paid for with the red
penny is obviously of no value.
196
##
Ward: All right, where were we in the discussion?
LG: The red penny -
Ward: Oh, yes, the red penny.
LG: Our position was: "Look, you paid for it. Now,
at this particular moment, you figure you are not
getting value received. You made a deal and we
are going to hold you to it." Bear in mind that
by that time the penny did not make that much
difference. When you were talking about 62^- cents
an hour or 75 cents an hour, a penny looked like
something, but by the time you're talking about
$5.50 or $6.00 an hour, a penny doesn't look like
anything.
So we deliberately kept it in the contract; of
course the Teamsters wanted to keep it in the
contract because their members would say, "Look,
we're not getting the full wage increase you're
talking about."
Ward: In other words, the employers wanted to reduce the
Teamsters down to Local 6 -
LG: Yes, because they were no longer getting something
they paid for.
Ward: But couldn't you have fought back and said, "Well,
let's raise the ILWU rate to the Teamster rate"?
LG: Oh, yeah, that would have been one of our argu
ments but we're not going to make that a strike
issue because ho\v in the devil can you get a joint
strike where all we're striking for, and all we're
asking the Teamsters to strike for, is for us to
get a little bit more which they are already
getting?
Ward: I see.
LG: In other words, when you have joint demands and
joint strike action, there must be all the things
that have common denominators; otherwise you'll be
in trouble. Plus the fact that I saw nothing
wrong with it.
197
Ward :
LG:
Did you have any argument in your negotiating
committee on that score?
Ch, we'd get arguments once in a while among our
own people; but obviously with the Teamsters, they
weren't going to raise an argument because they
were getting a penny more.
Problems About War-like Japan
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Now, we've been going along here in an almost
exclusively masculine paradise. Did you ever hear
the phrase, "The stigma of silk?"
Oh, only during the boycott of Japanese goods -
Didn't that start in 1938?
How, you're talking about another field - it was
in 1938 and I believe went into 1939.
Yes, it was in 1939 definitely but I think it
started in 1938 -
That was when there were a whole series of tie-ups
up and down the west coast against the shipment of
scrap iron to Japan. A lot of it originated in
San Francisco when they tore up some of the Market
Street railway lines. Part of the whole movement
of scrap iron to Japan came with the tearing up
of these rails. That was very good scrap for the
making of steel; it's probably the finest scrap
that anybody could find because it is already
finely tempered.
It was during that same period when the Japanese
were invading China. I think that must have been
shortly after the incident of the Marco Polo Bridge
where the Japanese moved in claiming that something
or other had happened. It was after the Japanese
had taken Manchuria and set up their puppet dicta
tor, (Henry) Pu Yi. Then they extended their
control in '37, '38, '39 when the Japanese
launched their program, the Greater Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere.
198
LG: Anyway, these "beefs against the Japanese invasion
of China were going on full blast, and there was
one tie-up after another on the loading of scrap
iron to Japan. As a matter of fact our relations
with the Chinese community in San Francisco got to
be very close and warm. We'd have little informal
discussions with some of the Chinese in one of the
restaurants; and they were very fine hosts.
I'll never forget one incident that occurred
where we walked into one of the restaurants that
was up a flight of stairs; they had taken over the
banquet room, a small one, and they asked if some
of the guys would like to have a drink - Pat on,
myself. At that time the Chinese had not really
gotten into the bar business like they are today.
Pat and I asked for Scotch and soda, which we were
drinking at the time. I guess they thought that
soda was cider; we were served a pair of Scotch
and ciders; it was just horrible, just horrible.
Ward: And you had to drink it?
LG: We drank most of it and then figured out an excuse
to wander back there where they were mixing the
drinks and finally got the guys straightened out.
Next time it was Scotch and plain water, if you
don't have soda. But as far as they were con
cerned, Scotch and soda and Scotch and cider, the
same thing. They were very pleasant hosts.
There was one get-together where Pat had quite
a few and they had one of the Chinese take him to
a cab, take him home and come back again. They
were very solicitous. At the same time we
discussed with them loading plans that were going
on about scrap iron; we had an idea what ships were
taking it.
They would make arrangements for people from
Chinatown to come down and picket that ship, and
our guys would then observe the picket line. None
of these picket lines could last very long because
sooner or later the arbitrator came along and said
that this was not an economic picket line, that it
did not involve workers on the job; that this was
a demonstration picket line and was therefore
illegal under the contract.
199
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
I don't know how many of those arbitration decisions
came down, but they must be longer than your arm.
I recall in one place the arbitrator was a rabbi
by the name of Jake Weinstein. Jake Weinstein
was a very progressive rabbi, a very good man. I
got the impression that he was considered a little
too far out for the congregation that he had in
Portland and as a result he left there and came
down to San Francisco. Ke was making a herculean
effort to try to establish that the picket line
was legitimate. (laughter)
Even you couldn't do that.
No, we couldn't do it. Finally somebody got the
word and said, "Look, it won't do any harm - the
demonstration is over with." These things got
enormous attention. They used to have a sort of
annual festival in Chinatown built around support
ing China. The feeling in a place like San
Francisco was very warm toward the Chinese - very
hostile to Japanese aggression.
During that time Harry got some wire from the
State Department asking why we couldn't just stick
to our business of being a union and to keep our
nose out of foreign affairs. That was ignored.
During the same period it got to the point where
the women who supported the boycott of Japanese
goods and were opposed to the invasion of China
took to wearing cotton stockings instead of silk
stockings; they looked terrible.
Lisle stockings.
Just a little higher grade of cotton, as far as
I know, but that was during that silk stocking
period -
Well, what was the alternative if you couldn't
wear silk stockings? There was no nylon then.
Oh, no! We're talking about the thirties -
nylon came along later.
So, you could tell right away whether a girl was
a progressive or union or what; if she had pretty
legs there was something wrong with her.
200
LG: By that time few of them, if any, had gotten
around to going bare-legged or wearing trousers.
There was a period there in Warehouse where we
had a woman business agent. We had a good number
of women in the union - places like Hiram Walker,
Southend Warehouse, Lipton's Tea, Colgate-
Palmolive, Clorox, Best Poods; at least 20-25%
of the total local.
Sure, you had some warehouses with no women,
but a place like Hills Brothers would have some
women in the packing line; Polger Coffee Company
would, Lipton's Tea - they had a large operation,
particularly making these tea bags - employed a
large number of women. We had a lot of women
stewards, still do, in the local.
Right now Local 6 has a very competent woman
business agent over in Oakland - that's Evelyn
Johnson, a black woman who does one hell of a job.
At that time there weren't that many black women
in the local, as there were not many blacks. When
you went out to organize you rarely came across a
plant that had any blacks. The blacks came in by
way of the hiring hall. The whole question of
racial hiring broke down and the employers began
to hire them on their own.
I'm trying to recall what the year was when we
put together the town hall meeting. There was a
"committee of 40" of employers, set up for the
purpose of coordinating employer bargaining and
taking a very tough position on the issues of the
day. It was headed by a man named (W.P.) Puller.
Do you remember Puller Paints?
Ward: It's still Puller Paints.
LG: I don't know if it's still around. Of course,
the old man is not around. I know his son quite
well - Palmer Fuller; he's on the board of the
Exploratorium (a science exhibit in San Francisco),
I know his present wife - Esther Pike; she was
formerly married to Bishop (James) Pike.
The San Francisco News was still publishing in
those days - that was Scripps Howard (a publishing
chain). They insisted they were not anti-union,
201
LG: just wanted certain ground rules of bargaining;
San Francisco was getting to be "a real ghost
town." The whole thing was being built up during
this period and I went up to him one day and said,
"Look, if what you say is correct, you shouldn't
have any objection to a town hall meeting."
Ward: You're talking to Fuller now?
LG-: Yes. "A town hall meeting where you can put your
position out before the people and we'll put ours
out before the people." We arranged a town hall
meeting at the Civic Auditorium and it was packed.
The thing caught on. As a matter of fact, I recall
a headline in the San Francisco News - "Town Hall
Meeting Tonight" - that v/as the banner. It was
an interesting session; I'm not saying a great deal
got accomplished.
Ward: Was Lapham (shipowner Roger Lapham) the guest?
LG:
Lapham against Bridges and I v/as bucking heads
with Puller. Lapham blew the show when he got up.
The hiring hall v/as still a hot issue because it
took away their grip over the men. When Lapham
made the statement saying, "We're not opposed to
the hiring hall - we just want to control hiring,"
that was the end of the line; nobody missed it,
and everybody just roared.
Lapham, until then, was getting quite a good
reception, because he was a very personable guy.
He looked like a shipowner; big, grey-haired,
heavy-set; actually a rather pleasant egg - a lot
of guts. After the 1936 strike, I had gone back
to work in the car gang - the same car gang. We
were at American Hawaiian; that was it - because
Lapham was head of American Hawaiian.
Somebody came along - it was around quarter to
twelve - and said, "Knock off, fellows." And
that's all anybody had to say; we assumed it was
a stoppage over some issue or other. We started
v/alking out and somebody says, "Look, we're all
supposed to gather there at this loading platform";
and so we stopped. After all, it's on the employ
er's time and it v/as a lunch break. And here is
Roger Lapham. He was wearing a battered hat and
202
LG: an old raincoat - it was drizzling that day. He
had asked for the meeting with all the guys on the
dock, simply to tell them, "The strike is behind
us - as to who won or who lost, it's not important.
I'm just happy to see that the strike is over and
as far as we're concerned, we have a job to do and
we want to get along." There was an interesting
reaction on the part of a number of guys; they
turned around and said, "That old son-of-a-bitch
ain't so bad, you know."
Ward: Did you ever hear the story of Roger Lapham's
little evening at the P. U. (Pacific Union) Club?
LG: No.
Ward: Where somebody said the room they were doing their
drinking in wasn't big enough to swing a dead cat
around in; by god he went out, found a dead cat,
came back and tried to prove the room was big
enough.
LG: That sounds like him; in later years our relations
with him were fairly good (after he became mayor
of San Francisco).
Ward: Yes, I remember that he and his wife came and
danced at the Warehouse ball.
LG: He came to the Warehouse dance - I remember that.
Yeah, that dance was at the Civic Auditorium. We
used to have these big shindigs - that and the
Christmas party we used to have there for the kids.
We're wandering a little bit here, but it gives a
sort of the flavor of the '38 period.
The Crockett Struggle
LG: On. the other hand, in certain other areas the
battle was almost unrelenting. It was in 1938,
towards the fall, when we had the major confronta
tion in Crockett; they tried to break the Warehouse
local there.
203
LG: It had been established in 1935 after a rough go
with that company (California and Hawaiian Sugar
Company); the guys struck after losing an NLRB
election in which the employers were practically
looking over their shoulders and telling them how
to vote. Well, in 1938 there was a big head of
steam up in the refinery because they had been
herded into a federal local; you remember federal
locals?
Ward: Yes.
LG: These were sort of direct chartered locals by the
A P of L. I forget the number. There the company
had even herded in the secretarial staff and people
who were in semi-executive positions who were also
leaders of the local.
As far as we were concerned, it was just an
out-and-out company union. And a number of the
guys, good guys, I remember - one was named (Allen)
Engle, another was (Carl) Schneider - I don't
know if they are still around - wanted to take the
lead in the formation of a CIO organization up
there. We got a charter for them; I think it was
called Local 776 of the CIO. They began organizing;
one day the company fired them.
A strike over their discharge wouldn't work out
too well, because again you are running into the
same principles of a lockout. The best you can do
is to get back even. In that case it's the jobs
of two men against pulling out several hundred.
The warehouse contract was open at the same time
around September or thereabouts. I remember missing
the ILWU convention, which took place in Aberdeen
(Washington) that year.
Ward: And you missed it on account of Crockett?
LG-: Right. The Crockett beef turned out to be a major
confrontation between the ILWU and the Teamsters.
They had mustered part of the A P of L to support
their beef.
Ward: This company union?
204
LG: Yes - their objective was to get rid of us entirely;
no question that they were being assisted and help
ed by the company. That got to be a pretty tense
beef because they brought in a number of heavy-
handed guys. I forget the name of the A P of L
representative in charge - it was something like
Watkins -
Ward: It wasn't Pedro Pete?
LG: No - no, I think the only time I saw him (Watkins)
was when he lifted the charter of the Contra Costa
Labor Council when I walked in. Well, he was a
big fellow -
Ward: Watkins?
LG: I think so. They ran off our picket line. I
remember getting a call from Crockett headquarters
of the union; they were upstairs above a bar. The
vigilantes had run them off the picket line en
tirely, screaming that they were going to run them
out of town. Well, we decided we better go up
there and re-establish the picket line. I got a
lot of help from the warehousemen and longshoremen,
guys like Swede Carlson, Pat C'Hanigan, Red C'Leary
(longshoremen) ; these guys were pretty good with
their dukes -
Ward: C'Hanigan beat up Henry Schmidt (former president
of Longshore Local 10) one time -
LG: Right. Red O'Leary is the guy who kicked the hell
out of this Russian, who went home and got a gun
and killed him. The guy's name was Korshin - that
was years later. Red and those guys were pretty
good guys. Well, anyway, we gathered these guys
up in whatever cars we had, all piled in together.
Some of them even walked through that Selby tunnel
(a railroad tunnel) to get to Crockett.
Ward: How many did you have?
LG: Oh, I'd say, around 250. Yeah.
V/ard: All in private cars?
205
LG: Just about - there was no other form of transpor
tation. If you wanted to go to Port Costa, you
went from Crockett over the hump and then to Port
Costa, which had legends all of its own. That's
where guys like (Daniel) Diwil Hahoney hung out.
He had "been a friend of Jack London's. Jack used
to hang out at Port Costa with the dock wallopers.
Diwil Mahoney had a couple of sons, one of
whom is still in the warehouse local or about to
retire. That's Dan Mahoney. Another son was in
the clerks' union. He's been retired now for
some time. Diwil was a character all by himself.
He felt that C & H owed him a living.
Ward: C & H would be the sugar refinery?
LG-: Crockett; he thought nothing of helping himself to
whatever sugar he needed. Somebody gave orders
that Diwil Mahoney was not to be allowed near the
plant. He found himself a way in there and got
himself a 100 pound sack of sugar, walked up to
the office with the 100 pound sack of sugar on his
back, slammed it down on the desk saying, "Never
you tell me that Diwil Mahoney can't have sugar
when he wants it."
Ward: What was that first name?
LG: Diwil - that's just the Irish name for devil.
His best days must have been during prohibition
where he ran a still - he used to poach. When
PG&S (Pacific Gas and Electric Company) came
through there with electricity, he figured out a
v/ay to tap the wire. Ran a bit of a bar in Port
Costa; had a circle of friends there, sort of the
unofficial mayor of the town; he was an amazing
old guy. It's just sad that we never got a
chronicle of this man - there's mostly legends
about him.
During the '38 beef, Dave Beck had some heavy-
handed guys moving up and down the coast. There
was a lot of violence in the air. It wasn't an
easy situation; some of them came out to Port
Costa.
.
Somebody told them to talk to Diwil Mahoney,
206
LG: because he had a lot of influence; so they came
over there and talked to Mahoney about whether he
would lend a hand taking over the Warehouse local
for the A F of L. He says, "Well, I want to think
it over; come back this afternoon." They came
back that afternoon and here was Divvil and about
three or four of his friends with shotguns and he
said, "You got your answer." (laughter)
Ward: Okay, let's go back to the strike.
LG: The sheriff of the town was called "Honest John"
Miller. I think he had shaken down every business
man and bar in all Contra Costa County. That's
"Honest John" Miller. And v/e get to the entrance
of Crockett and he's there with some police cars
and a couple of state cars and he says, "Nope, you
can't go in there. If you go in there, there's
going to be a riot."
Ward: You were with them?
LG: Yes, I was with them; I was in charge. So, I said,
"We're not going in there to start a riot. All we
want to do is to re-establish a peaceful picket
line in front of the plant. We've been run off.
Our men are holed up. There's about 200-250 of
our guys holed up in our office and fearful of
leaving because they'll be beaten up by the vigi
lantes. So we want to set up the picket line."
He says, "Well, I don't think there are any out
siders in town anyway - there are no outsiders in
town. If you can prove that to us . . . ." V/e
knew that there were outsiders in town, so he said,
"Well, I'll go back and find out." "No," I said,
"We'll go back with you." I guess he didn't like
the looks of our guys.
Anyway, I left word that: "If we're not back
in 45 minutes, you guys just come on in; period."
So, v/e go into town. Sure enough here are all
kinds of characters in town that you could tell in
a second were some of the vigilantes; primarily
among the supervisors and foremen and so forth.
They formed a big ring around us and the sheriff
was trying to maintain friendly relations.
207
LG: There was just one group of our guys who went in;
I think Swede Carlson was in there, O'Kanigan, Red
C'Leary, somebody else was along; so I spot this
same A ? of L representative, and say, "I know this
guy is an outsider - he doesn't live here in Crock
ett, he doesn't work at the plant." This guy
starts bellowing, making a lot of noise.
Oh, it was one of our guys, I think it was either
Pat O'Hanigan or Red O'Leary said, "Look, these
guys are carrying clubs, and you're telling us
there's no problem here in town. That's the reason
our guys are holed up." So, as the sheriff walked
over to see whether one guy had a club, apparently
some of the other guys felt they v/ere going to be
shaken down. All of a sudden they dropped them and
stepped back. Here's a whole pile of clubs.
We told the sheriff, "Cur guys are coming into
town - v/e're not going to tolerate this." We got
back just before the 45 minutes had run out and we
said, "Come on, fellows, let's go, it's all right
with the sheriff." Cur guys came into town and the
fellows we had in Crockett who were holed up
decided to come out.
Cur guys in the office had improvised a series
of battering rams; it was a steep flight of stairs
up to the office. They had gotten something like
a saw horse and they had mounted two-by-sixes or
two-by-eights on top that the vigilantes would have
had to break through to get into the office. These
things would have come flying downstairs.
So we said, "V/e're going to put back the picket
line." That was our objective. There was a tense
moment when the guys all gathered outside and I
announced, "We are going to march four abreast in
front of the company and we are going to lock arms
just to make sure that under no circumstances could
anybody say that one of our guys threw the first
blow."
I asked Dan Mahoney and Austy Reagan to go back
up into the office and bring down the union banner
and the American flag. Mahoney tells the story
later - "We get up there and I told Austy, 'You
take the American flag - I know you're more patri
otic!'"
208
LG-: So, we formed our line and started marching. It
was a very tense moment as we got to the main
entrance. A lot of these vigilantes had gathered
and as we got there you weren't sure what was going
to happen. We moved and they decided they better
not start anything. We kept marching around for a
while and before long some of our guys started
wandering around town.
Some of the families had been frightened sick -
were afraid to leave their homes. But we re
established the picket line. What happened after
that was quite humorous. This character from the
A P of L was giving everybody an awful lot of lip;
he was saying, "What are you going to do about all
the guys we have here?" I said, "We're going to
re-establish a picket line, that's all." He said,
"Well, I'm not sure we will stand for that."
I said, "If you want to settle something that
way, though it doesn't make any sense, you got
around 250 guys at least, and we've got around 250.
There's a ball park over there; we'll send them
all in there and see who comes out. All right?"
He decided he didn't want that either; our guys
had fire in their eyes. They were pretty angry.
Anyway, after we re-established the picket line
somebody made a big decision to see this fight
through; they announced a general strike of the
building trades. They were going to shut down
everything and gather in Crockett. Two or three
days later this announcement came out in the press.
I was up in Crockett.
We were sitting around discussing this and what
the devil we'd do; once again the guys were fear
ful, and legitimately so, that an attempt would be
made to run us off the picket line and break the
union. After figuring out the whole thing as best
we could - Larry Resner (reporter) was up there;
he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle and the
San Francisco Chronicle at that period has some
interesting stories on the while thing - we finally
decided v/e'd issue a public statement, saying that
inasmuch as the A P of L had announced they were
taking a public holiday to gather in Crockett, we
thought we ought to take a holiday, too; we've
209
LG: asked our men to go fishing; we would just have a
token picket line up there.
We took four old-timers; they manned the picket
line. The fascinating thing that happened - I
don't know how many men they actually got into
Crockett that day; maybe a thousand men, maybe a
few more - they marched through these absolutely
empty streets. We just had four pickets standing
there. It became a laughing matter. There were
no incidents.
Oh, there was one incident at the end of the
parade v/here there was a guy in the warehouse who
had been an ex-fighter and he had a tendency to
get a bit punchy. He had a few drinks and their
parade wound up with some of the heavy guys and he
went down to the bar to have a couple of drinks.
Ke walked out and saw them and said, "Why don't
you get your ass out of town?" And pretty soon
he and this guy tangled. Ke did all right -
(laughter)
There were some other incidents during this
strike that I recall; we had a small soup kitchen
set up for the pickets where they could get coffee
and doughnuts and things of that sort. It was up
a block from the plant itself and then down a bit
of a slope. I went down there one night - 1:30 or
2:00 o'clock in the morning and the only person
there was Mama Zuber.
Mama Zuber was one of the most amazingly loyal
people - she had the greatest love for our union.
Joe Zuber worked in Crockett; later on he stayed
with the union and worked somewhere in Oakland.
Joe Zuber v/as a Montenegran - they both were - and
he stood as straight as an arrow, about six foot
tall, strong man; very quiet, though. I'm sitting
around there talking to Mama Zuber and said, "We
still have a lot of these vigilantes running around
town; why are you here by yourself? You might be
having nothing but trouble." She said, "No, after
all Joe and I fought together against the Turks."
(laughter) This must have been around 1914.
Ward: Oh, in Montenegro -
210
LG: Sure, in Montenegro. She walks over to the kitchen
drawer, pulls it open and there's a Luger. She
says, "You know, Montenegrans are afraid of Sod,
not of men." (laughter)
We finally wound up the strike all right - we
got a contract. We took Schneider and Engle, and
there might have been some others, into Warehouse
Local 6. We couldn't get them back into the plant.
Local 776, this CIO Union we tried to form, never
did get much further.
##
Ward: Now, you have the two guys - got jobs for them -
LG: In the warehouse, in the city of Crockett; they
worked out their days there.
Hot only did the ILWU union survive in Crockett;
over the years it literally set the pace for all
negotiations, everything in the contract, with the
big majority of the workers in the plant belonging
to the Federal local and just tailing along. It
even got to the point a year or so ago where the
wages for warehousemen were higher than the journey-
. man's rate in the plant, because of the persistence
of the ILWU.
Ward: You mean you actually still have two outfits up
there?
LG: Yes, although relations now are much better. The
man who is the secretary-treasurer of the refinery
local has turned out to be a good union man, very
friendly to the ILWU. As a matter of fact, years
later we even had joint negotiations.
Ward: Well, what does the refinery local's membership
consist of?
LG: Oh, I'd say about a thousand.
Ward: How many workers in the warehouse?
LG: At that time there were about 400.
211
T .vard :
I see, the tail wagging the dog.
LG: Yes, and now the warehouse, which is highly
mechanized - you don't have any more bagged raw
sugar or things of that sort - is much smaller;
must be about 175 - 180 men. The union has done
a pretty good job in terms of protecting our men.
The pension plan there is fairly good. We've made
general progress; the big beef has been that they
wanted the bay area scale; the result of getting
that kept moving us constantly ahead of the A ? of L
local.
As a matter of fact the A ? of L local went on
strike two or three times in the last seven or
eight years in an attempt to catch up; most of
them finally concluding they never could.
At the time of the last contract, after they
negotiated their contract and the ILWU finished
its contract, the employers granted an additional
50 cents an hour to the journeymen, partially
because they were afraid of losing them. Some of
these journeymen, even though they had years of
service at C & H, were shopping around for jobs at
this new brewery that's opened in Benecia.
Ward: 1 should think they would have been shopping around
for a job in the warehouse.
LG-: Not quite; no, because a journeyman thinks dif
ferently.
One of the other incidents that occurred during
this Crockett thing; tensions were very high all
during this period. Damn near took on the frame
work of a civil war. If somebody was a vigilante
our guys would never forget it to their dying day.
A guy like "Ham and Eggs" - Hemenez - his memory
on these things is like an elephant's. He forgets
nothing.
I was up there just about every day and usually
quite late into the night. Cne evening I was
leaving the Warehouse hall and a v/hole gang of
women had gathered; these were the wives of some
of the foremen and vigilantes. They were screaming
at me about "outsiders," and I ought to get the hell
212
LG: out of town; get this whole, goddam warehouse
local out of town.
Here they were, embarked on purely fraticidal
strife; no way out except the other guy has to get
killed. The sheriff was around. Apparently some
of these gals had decided on their own crazy plan
that they were going to grab hold of me; they had
a blanket that they were going to cover my head
with, and then they were going to tar and feather
me. Some of them began to get pretty violent; one
of them got hold of the lapel of my jacket and tore
it.
Let me tell you, being attacked by a group of
women is not easy to handle - it's almost impos
sible. I spotted the sheriff standing there right
on the outskirts of the scrap and not doing a damn
thing. I finally said, "Look, Sheriff, I've got
to talk to you," and I pushed my way through.
Years later, when I retired, the guys in Crock
ett put on a dinner for me; many of the old-timers
were still there, and it was an interesting affair
because the men had decided they would do all the
cooking - not the women. One of them who had been
an ex-baker put together a marvelous cake.
They charged something like 015 bucks apiece,
including all you could drink. Some guys must have
had their 15 dollars worth in the first hour. Any
way, it was a real pleasant affair, very friendly,
very warm. Their cooking was good, although I
understand that the beef inside the kitchen as to
who was the best cook went on through all the prep
arations. They spent most of the day at this.
They had a present for me, a barometer, and they
presented me with a check. Dick Boyer, who is an
old-timer, had been around there in '38 during this
beef and he said, "You know, it's been a lot of
years since we've owed you a new suit. Maybe this
will cover it." I stayed very close to the union
up there over the years and continued to help
negotiate contracts or handle the strikes.
o"
It was in 1938 that I went back to the first CIO
convention in Pittsburgh. That v/as the first and
only time that I met Heywood Broun (famous news
paper columnist and first president of the
American Newspaper Guild). Broun greatly enjoyed
213
LG: his drinking and the company of everybody around
him and was a marvelous racounteur.
They had a men's bar in the William 2enn Hotel.
A number of us gathered there and I was lucky
enough to be along. Everybody was exchanging
stories; these were halcyon years for the GIG.
The description of Heywood Broun as "an unmade
bed" is very accurate. He had this huge hat and
when he sat down to drink he took his hat off and
put it on his lap. Pretty soon you began to real
ize that everything at this table was ending up
in Heywood Broun T s hat including his money; if
somebody would tell a story, he might make a note;
this might supply him with something for a column.
He had this faculty - an amazing one; if he could
not write a column in 20 minutes it was no good
and he'd tear it up and start all over again. So,
here were the notes going in his hat; everything
going in his hat.
Every once in a while his wife, Connie, would
stick her head in. He'd told one of the v/aiters
there that under no circumstances did he want any
women in the bar. The waiter would rush over and
say, "Sorry, this is a men's bar." She was getting
pretty irritated with him. But it was a good con
vention.
Ward: The founding convention of the CIC. Before that
it was the Committee for Industrial Organization?
LG: Before then it was called the Committee for Indus
trial Organization. It was as a Committee for
Industrial Organization that many of us put up this
fight that v/ent on in the labor councils because
we said, "This is not a dual union - it's a com
mittee for the purpose of organizing industrially
the major industries like steel, auto, glass,
textile, rubber. "
It became obvious that the Committee really had
no choice at that stage but to form itself into an
industrial organization. That was the founding
convention; it became, instead of the Committee for
Industrial Organization, the Congress of Industrial
Organizations - the CIO.
214
(Interview 9: 11 April, 1978)
LG-: There are a couple of small items on Crockett which
might be of interest. We decided that the only
way to avoid a straight lockout on the terms of the
A F of L, namely, that the warehouse be surrendered
to the A ? of L, v/ould be to go on strike on our
own demands, which were open at the time.
The background of Crockett is one all of its
own and would take a lot of study. Over the years
company policy had been that there were different
national groups that were hired in; in most cases
they came from backgrounds where they didn't read
ily communicate with each other. There were just
plain garden variety Americans; then they hired a
substantial number of Italians - some 40 percent
must have been Italians. Then there were some
Spaniards who were hired, like Hemenez - his father
was a Spaniard, I think an Asturian. Then the
company brought in a number of Portuguese.
During that 1938 beef up there I was inducted
into the Portuguese Club. One of the very active
members we had up there, Clarence Rose, a man v/e
. used to call "Horse-power" - strong man and a very
powerful union guy - came to me one day and said,
"Lou, we've been keeping an eye on you; we decided
you are eligible for membership in the Portuguese
Club; that's a great honor, because we know you're
not Portuguese." I said, "Many thanks."
He said, "We're having the swearing-in ceremony
tonight and we'd like to have you make it." I said,
"Well, okay, we have no meeting that night." I had
been up there most of the day, so I went over to
the Portuguese Club; not many there, perhaps 20 -
25. Clarence Rose was chairman, and a small
wooden box was set up before him. The so-called
swearing-in ceremonies, I think, were a complete
fabrication in Portuguese with an adequate amount
of Portuguese wine being circulated.
Finally, Clarence announced: "Okay, now you
are about to take the oath. You've got to place
your hand on this box and repeat after me . . . . "
215
LG-: I put my hand on the box - there was a spring
there - and out jumped a monumental horse cock
that somebody had picked up in Butchertown years
before and shellacked. That was their swearing
in ceremony. It was a nice evening.
But in view of this whole background of hiring
and all these different national frictions, it was
understandable when some of the old-timers said,
"You know, we never went down to San Francisco to
see the fights; you just hang around on Saturday
nights right here in Crockett." A lot of it was
guys letting off steam and the national frictions
some companies will try to develop.
The evening we took that strike vote to go out
one of the Portuguese got up and said, "I want to
say something in Portuguese, by gosh." And that
was to support the strike vote and to vote "yes";
so he says it; and then somebody else jumps up and
says, "Look, I've got the right to say it in
Italian." Same thing in Italian.
Pretty soon, they're going through all the
nationalities - a Spaniard gets up, says his piece
in Spanish. Cne guy gets up and says, "Who's
going to talk Russian?" And the chairman says, "I
guess you better do that - nobody else can talk
Russian." So, he spoke in Russian, urging that
they vote "yes". It was an odd and interesting
sidelight; it represented that nationalities were
being forgotten, and that the members were sticking
together as a single group.
V/ard: The nationalities were being put to a better use
than the company imagined.
LG-: I told you how we marched those longshoremen and
warehousemen into town when "Honest John" Killer,
the sheriff, finally had to concede that there
were all kinds of outsiders in town. Most of them
were armed with billy clubs that had been made in
the company's carpenter shop . . .
V/ard: That's a new one, you didn't tell that before.
216
LG: And when we finally got into town the first thing
we did was go over to the Warehouse hall and make
it possible for the guys to leave who had been
holed up there overnight. We gathered there de
termined to re-establish a picket line.
I got on top of a car to announce how we would
form our picket line, namely, four abreast, which
was exactly the width of the sidewalk there, and
that we would lock arms and under no circumstances
would any of us strike the first blow. There was
this brief confrontation, but our men took over
the picket line, circled around the entrance
several times and sort of got things back in order
where they belonged. "Honest John" Miller was
standing on the fringes all the time and he turned
to me and said, "You know, you must be crazy."
And I said, "Why?" "You damn fool, standing there
on top of that car talking to the guys!" he said.
"Some guys have rifles and they're sitting around
here in the hills."
The only moment in which he was of any value
was when he was standing on the fringes of this
crowd of women; there was no choice but to rush
over to him. Cnly at that point did he do any
thing, and that was to simply stand there and
make it plain that any ideas they had about throw
ing a blanket over me and tarring and feathering
me was no dice.
That's about all on the Crockett thing, except
that you still have a very fine, wonderful, loyal
bunch of men up there. The old timers are moving
along, one after the other. I guess the last of
those who were around are men like (Joseph) Mc-
Intoffer, who had played football at St. Mary's
College, and people like Dan Mahoney, a son of
Diwil Mahoney. They're just retired or about to
retire. Ham has retired and still lives in Rodeo,
close by Crockett.
But there are some very fine young guys who
have come along. They are an effective bunch -
still very proud of their organization. A couple
of years ago I suggested at a membership meeting
at Crockett that we negotiate jointly with the
sugar workers. I felt we might be better off than
having the company continue playing one off against
the other.
217
LG: Apparently they had heard about it earlier be
cause I had mentioned to Ham and the committee
that we ought to consider it. In the two days
prior to the membership meeting all these
pencilled things appeared around the warehouse
and on the fork-lifts saying, "VOTE NO," "VOTE
NO." At the meeting when I proposed we go into
joint negotiations, it all surfaced and one
after another said, "Look, we want no part of
it."
Here was just a handful of warehousemen
compared to the size of the refinery saying, "Lay
off the joint negotiations. Y/hat we can get,
we'll take," they said. "If they can get more,
fine - let them go their own way." Some guys
getting up and saying, "Now look, Lou, if you
feel that you want to do this on your own - good,
we'll let them hire you." It wasn't a hostile
thing; when the vote was taken, any idea of joint
negotiations was overwhelmingly defeated.
We had gone through joint negotiations at one
time, at my urging, and we came out very well;
but immediately thereafter some of the arch
reactionaries in this sugar workers union - and
in a small town like this single incidents would
hang on for years - adopted a series of motions
instructing the officers to have nothing to do
with the ILV/U, etc. etc.
Well, our guys really had their noses out of
joint because they thought that since 1938, a
long time, the only real power in Crockett came
out of the ILWU because of its ties with long
shore. The plant could not operate without the
ships bringing in raw sugar and we had within
our union all the sugar workers in Hawaii. C & H
is a farmers' cooperative - it pays no taxes
because it operates as a farmers' processing and
distributing cooperative v/ith each of the sugar
plantations having a proportionate share based
on its tonnage.
So our guys felt very keenly that it was only
through our economic power that anything could be
done; if the sugar workers felt that way about
218
LG: having no relations with us, then the hell with
them. This was the only industrial plant I know
of, at the time we negotiated this last contract,
where the rate of pay for warehousemen was above
that of the journeymen in the refinery.
That, of course, is a distortion; the reason
for it is that they kept playing around in the
refinery with percentage increases; there the
journeymen on a percentage increase got more than
somebody who was just a machine tender in a lower
labor grade. It wasn't so much how much they got,
it was just that they got more than somebody else.
It's one of the real evils of percentage in
creases; the guy at the top doesn't measure his
increase in terms of what the hell he ought to
get in the first place, but only in terms of
what he got more. It's a clever use of the
employer's pecking structure. Because of that,
and because of the fact that we fought constantly
for across-the-board increases that the wages in
warehouse moved up to the point where they were
ahead of the mechanics.
The mechanics were also far more concerned
with overtime devices than in actual results in
the contract. The plant operated with the ten
day operating schedule, called back-to-back
schedule, - you work ten days in a row and then
get four days off.
In case of any important repairs or overhauls,
the mechanics then had to be called in at the
end of the ten days, and would pick up a day or
two of overtime; that became more important to
them than the wages. It's another one of the
sicknesses that is reflected in the labor move
ment, where people start living on overtime. It
becomes a way of life.
Ward: You've got a soft spot for Crockett, haven't you?
LG: Yes, I spent a lot of years there. It was under
stood that when the Crockett contract was open,
I'd give them a hand; so that the friendship
there went over many, many years.
219
More CIC Activity
Ward: Very good; now, getting back to the fall of 1938?
LG: Remember when we were talking about the hot box
car, there are a couple of items I think I
missed. One was that during the course of this
lockout, the Teamster warehouse local - which
didn't have a very large membership, maybe around
300 - announced an agreement with the Association
of San Francisco Distributors for a master
contract, exactly on the terms the employers
wanted - a five year contract with no strikes.
I doubt whether it even had an arbitration
provision, because all they planned to do was
to piggy-back on us and, if possible, continue
their raid. Their contract, as I recall, pro
vided for 70 cents an hour, which would have
meant surrendering one of our objectives, part
of which v/e had won in the '36 strike; namely,
a 75 cents an hour rate. No mention there of
the vacation provisions which we were anxious to
extend to all workers, because even the vacation
provision we had at the time did not cover all
employees. Nothing at all about preference of
employment.
No question that White's settlement did some
damage. In addition the Teamsters, in collusion
with an outfit that was called Standard Brands -
it was a paper company - tried to open up a
liquor warehouse ....
Ward: When you say "a paper company" . . .?
LG: I think it was a front. They tried to open up a
warehouse and employed some twenty warehousemen
to handle the liquor distribution for the same
accounts that were locked out. When that took
place we had a mass turn-out at Standard Brands,
which we figured was just an out and out phony.
Luckily, the Teamsters decided after the 1937
220
LG: confrontation that another to-do along that line
was not in their "best interest; the place never
did open; the company itself disappeared after a
while.
##
LG: While we didn't win everything in the master
contract, basically we picked up the wages we
were after, namely 75 cents as a "base rate for
freight handlers, with other rates adjusted ac
cordingly. We managed to win out on the question
of vacation rights, the way they should have
"been written up. I believe when it came to things
like preference of employment, we kept that in
just about every place.
There was a modified "hot cargo" clause;
namely, that if we struck any warehouse that was
not a member of the Distributors' Association,
none of our members in the master contract
houses would have to handle that cargo. If it
was a Distributor house, then of course, under
the master contract you have to strike the whole
thing anyway; if they wanted a lockout, they'd
have to lock out the whole thing.
One area in which I don't believe we won a
really clean-cut victory at that time was on
the work week. Rathbun, there, sort of cut the
baby in half. We had some houses on a forty hour
week, some on forty-four. He announced a 42-and-
a-half hour week - a very odd one. That v/ould
mean that you could have five days of eight hours
apiece and a half day of two and one-half hours.
It wasn't too long after that where we got
the 40-hour week uniform throughout the industry.
I think the biggest thing was that the employers
were in effect saying, "Okay, you're here and
we're going to have to bargain with you." After
the devices and tactics, manoeuvers and everything
else that had been going on for what amounted to
approximately three and a half years, four years,
of continued warfare, the employers had finally
decided that this was not the way to go.
221
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
It also meant something, of course, that in the
long pull it turned out very well; while it is
true that maybe in an isolated place or two
you might find a warehouse which has a slightly
higher rate of pay than the Local 6 agreement;
if you take all these warehouses as a group,
there is literally no place in the country that
even comes close to comparing terms of rates and
conditions.
Another question: in August of 1938 there was
the formation of the State CIC, the convention
in Los Angeles. And then in November of that
year was the formation of the Congress of
Industrial Organizations. Now, at that time you
had become secretary of the State CIO Council,
California.
Yes, I was elected at the first convention.
Right - and you had been Northern California
Director of the CIO. Did you still hold that
title also?
I might have - for a short time, though. There
undoubtedly had to be a transition period because
the per capita to the State CIO was very small . ,
And it didn't come in immediately?
No, it would take some time. Eventually I was
on that payroll and in between I was Northern
California Director. But other things were
happening, too. In 1939 they revised the CIO
structure on the west coast. Where Harry had
been the v/est coast director of the CIO, he was
then limited to California. The north was turned
over to a man named Dalrymple - Sherman Dalrymple
of the Steel Workers, who I think was a former
miner. By the end of 1938 the State CIO was
quite sound enough to take care of the costs.
I know it was solvent enough in early 1939 to
hire a legislative representative in Sacramento.
Yes. As secretary of the State CIO I was also,
just a matter of changing hats, head of Labor's
Non-Partisan League in California. Labor's Non-
Partisan League had been initiated by
222
LG: John L. Lewis. John L. was very distrustful of
putting all his eggs in any party basket. While
I think he was probably Republican most of his
life, as best I could figure out it was not some
thing he espoused.
He had anything but a pleasant relationship
with FDR (President Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
It came to a head around a miners' strike in the
early part of the war; as well as the Wendell
Willkle campaign (against FDR) in 1940. It was
after the defeat of Wendell Willkie that Lewis
made up his mind to leave the presidency of the
CIO. That was when he turned it over to Phil
Murray (president of the Steel Workers). There
was that famous confrontation between Lewis and
FDR where he took off on FDR and used the ex
pression that "it ill-suited someone who had
supped at labor's table to then condemn with
equal impartiality the employers and labor" in
the coal miners' beef. Lewis had that turn of
words; truly remarkable ....
Ward: Biblical -
LG: Some of it biblical - some of it just his own
eloquence. I was enormously impressed at one
CIO convention - I think it was the one in San
Francisco in 1939, when I recall Lewis making
several speeches, some of them very, very brief -
not more than three or four minutes apiece -
on various resolutions; each one was a gem in
terms of its structure and the speed at which
he got right to the heart of an issue, including
one which took a blast at the Red Cross.
Lewis apparently felt very keenly that the
so-called "grey ladies" were in the do-gooder
class, a form of condescension in helping out
people in distress. I guess over the years
something had happened and he wasn't too happy
about it.
By early 1939 I'm spending all my time with
the State CIO, v/ith the exception of breaking
loose every once in awhile around some of the
ILV/U issues. In 1939 there was a Bridges trial;
there had been a hearing before then, around 1935,
223
LG-: primarily as a result of all the employer clamor
to get rid of the alien Australian.
There were all kinds of accusations, rumors,
innuendos that Harry was a British agent; they
had him as an agent for a number of different
groups around the v/orld. He was a British agent
determined to put the American merchant marine
out of business. It had nothing to do with the
workers' demands, of course, nothing to do with
what the employers had done to the workers
obviously; can't attack those upstanding gentle
men. There had to be some other motive.
We began to get the first lessons on how red
baiting is used in many ways by the employers,
and how later they became so much a part of the
thinking of the institutions that are locked in
to the society that they turn up in the most
peculiar ways. Harry was called either an
English agent, or an Australian agent, or a
Russian agent - to show how some of the stuff
is picked up.
When we were expelled from the CIO in 1949 -
I'm jumping ten years now - there had been the
business of the Cold War and Fulton, Missouri,
(an anti-Russian speech made by the British war
time prime minister, Winston Churchill, at the
invitation of the then president of the United
States, Earry S Truman), and a number of things
that occurred.
We sent a delegation back to the so-called
trial the CIC was conducting. It was Arthur
Goldberg (then chief counsel for the CIO) who
was the prosecutor. One of the men we sent back
there was Tony Rania; he was a Filipino, presi
dent of the combined local of the ILWU in Hawaii;
he had been one of those who had been an early
organizer and active rank-and-filer when the
union was formed. Tony Rania testified on how
much the ILWU had done in Hawaii; v/hat it meant
to the plantation workers and so forth.
The reaction of people like Phil Murray and
Arthur G-oldberg was not that his testimony was
false. They put it another way: "V/hat was the
224
LG-: real reason that the ILWU had organized so well
in Hawaii?"
It couldn't have been just "because of the feudal
nature of the plantations and the miserable wage
structures, the busting of heads and the crack
ing of strikes that had gone on for years. It
couldn't be that - it had to be something else.
V/hat was the real reason that we organized in
Hawaii?
I'm giving this as an example of the same sort
of thing where a single individual was concerned,
like Harry; the whole technique of pilloring
people, not because of what they had done,
but .... what was the real motive behind it?
Ward: At that time Arthur Goldberg was chief counsel
for the CIO?
LG: He was chief counsel - right - 1949. I'm jump
ing quite a number of years.
Ward: Chief counsel - Supreme Court justice - ambassa
dor to the United Nations, and what all?
LG: Correct, correct. Just as a humorous sidelight,
I remember going back there when Arthur Goldberg
was Secretary of Labor for awhile. John Henning
(now head of the California State federation of
Labor, A7L-CIO), had just gone back there to work
for the Department of Labor and I happened to be
visiting John.
He said, "By the way, there's a bit of a get-
together for Arthur Goldberg. It could be that
he's about to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
I think you ought to come in," and he walked over
to Goldberg and said, "You must remember Lou
Goldblatt. you helped to expel him from the CIO."
(laughter) Goldberg didn't think it was a bit
funny and turned to talk to somebody else.
Ward: That was ten years ahead. Now, by 1939 there had
been the big victory we thought we had with the
election of the new governor.
225
The Pardoning of Tom Mooney
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward
LG:
Right; that was Culbert Olson. That was one of
the things where the State Council really wet
its feet in that campaign through Labor's Non-
Partisan League - there was a real upheaval.
I'm trying to recall who Olson was running
against: wasn't it (Prank) Merriam?
He was the incumbent.
Right; and it was Marblehead Merriam who was in
power at the time of the '34 strike, I recall,
and he was the one who ordered the National
Guard -
He should be because he served a little over one
term. When (Governor James) Rolph died Merriam
was Lieutenant Governor, if I recall rightly.
He assumed governorship automatically for the
balance of Rolph 's term and then he was elected
in '34 and beat (Socialist) Upton Sinclair. The
Clson election was in November 1938 and he took
office the 1st or 2nd of January, 1939.
That's correct. So, it must have been Merriam.
I recall every body calling him Marblehead -
Marble top.
And the campaign for the governorship was really
an effective one. It crossed all lines, in
terms of people who had been victimized by the
depression, workers who had become part of this
enormous wave of organization.
Things were jumping all over. Woodworkers in
the northwest were moving into the union by
leaps and bounds; shipyard workers were being
organized; the auto plants - there was a sitdown
in Richmond, California where, I think, ?ord had
an assembly plant. They organized the GM plant.
There were the auto plants in L. A. including
the airplane plants. The Oil Workers were mov
ing very rapidly. Traditionally open shop
226
LG: companies like Associated Oil, Union Oil got
organized over in the eastbay. Standard Cil
wasn't cracked until some time later, as I
remember.
This upheaval was going on all over the
state and it was not difficult to take the same
head of steam and put it in the political cam
paign, particularly against a target such as
Merriam, who was as far as possible in terms of
polarity from what we stood for. It was a very
successful campaign.
One of the things that we were concerned with
was the freedom of Tom Mooney (a militant
Socialist and union organizer). After all, he
had been in jail since 1916. That was the
Preparedness Day parade incident that occurred
in San Francisco, so Mooney had been in jail one
hell of a long time ....
Ward: Twenty- two and half years.
LG-: Right. We were campaigning for the freedom of
Mooney and Billings (Warren K. Billings, con
victed of murder with Mooney). Tom Mooney had
taken an unwavering position that he would not
accept a parole; that he had been framed. That's
a chapter all by itself in American history.
I recall going up to San Quentin to visit Tom
Mooney. He had achieved a sort of political
status by implication; people would come by all
the time to visit him. They would just bring
him into the visiting room and you'd talk to him.
He was a man of great courage.
Another of the things we were greatly con
cerned about was the kind of legislature we had
in Sacramento. It was almost completely domi
nated up until those years by outfits like PG-&E,
Southern Pacific lobby, Kern County Land Company.
V/ard: Associated Farmers?
LG: Associated Farmers - they ran that thing as
their own club. When I first went up to
Sacramento - because I got stuck with some of
227
LG: this legislative work later on - they paid the
legislature for a certain number of weeks. At
the end of that period of time the legislators
were cut off the payroll, unless they were on
some interim committee "between sessions of the
legislature.
The first thing I discovered on going to
Sacramento was that the big lobbies would never
push their bills until the very last days of
the session; by that time the legislators were
broke. It was literally impossible for anybody,
including myself, - and Christ knows I wasn't
paid much - to walk into the lobby of the
Senator Hotel around 5:00 or 5:30 without being
stuck with some legislator, his drinks and his
dinner bill.
They were sitting around with their tongues
hanging out, waiting for a live one. Cf course,
by that time they were a lead-pipe cinch for the
lobbies; the lobbyists knew just what they were
doing. The early part of the legislature they
would just spin their wheels, keeping things in
committee, referring them back, and so forth;
they'd v/ait for the last days and then they
would move in.
One cf the prime commitments we asked of
Clson was support on things like getting rid of
the state anti-picketing laws; these laws had
become a plague through the entire state. Host
of them were county laws, and we were determined
that they all had to be defeated. We went
through a lot of battles on them. The San
Francisco one finally got to the point where
nobody was trying toohard to enforce it ....
VfarcL: But we had repealed it in San Francisco before .
LG: Right. But you went into some of the cow
counties - like I remember going up to Shasta
County when we had that strike in Redding; the
Shasta Dam - and there was still an anti-
picketing ordinance. It was during one of the
disputes where I was trying to give the Mine,
Mill and Smelter Workers (Union; a hand as
secretary of the State GIG.
228
LG: I had known some of the Mine-Mill guys when they
were building Boca Dam (near Truckee, California).
A number of them were floaters; they moved from
one job to another. They weren't bindle stiffs.
A lot of them were Wobblies. The first time I
think I met Red Adams (a Mine -Mill leader) was
up there at Boca Dam, together with some of his
side-kicks like Blackie Dyer, and Arrowsmith -
a marvelous bunch of guys.
After Boca Dam, they moved over to Redding;
that's where the Laborers (an A F of L union)
were brought in to sign back-door contracts with
the contractors after the Mine, Mill workers had
a majority. It was in Redding that I was faced
with a decision; a continued confrontation there
was going to be a loser. I didn't see any way
they could win it.
We had all kinds of violent overtones. Part
of this decision had been based upon some of my
readings about the Wobblies; I figured the thing
that might appeal to them would be a straight
free-speech fight around this anti-picketing
ordinance. This ordinance limited pickets, like
to three; after that it was an unlawful assembly,
or some crap like that. We're talking about 40
years ago.
So we put out a leaflet and the local
distributed it. Everybody understood we were
calling for out-and-out defiance of the anti-
picketing ordinance. Automatically a whole
bunch of us - I forget whether it was 50, 60,
were all arrested for violating the ordinance.
We go down and get booked.
Judge (Jesse) Carter saw it as a free speech
fight, and released all of us on our own recog
nizance. That became Carlson vs. California;
that case went to the Supreme Court and the anti-
picketing ordinances were thrown out. And the
reason it was called Carlson vs. California was
because Carlson was the first name in the
alphabet of those indicted.
Ward: Were you indicted also?
229
LG: Yes. The whole group; as a matter of fact, so
was Richie Gladstein. He was attorney for the
ILWU - he and Aubrey Grossman; they were put on
retainer "by Local 6. We paid them a lot of
money. I think it was 50 a month.
Anyway, back to Olson again and Tom Mooney.
One of the commitments we had from Culbert
Clson was that his first act in office, not
second or third or fourth - would be the pardon
of Tom Mooney. It was clearly understood". At
that time, as I remember, the secretary of the
Mooney-Molders Defense Committee - because the
Holders union carried the thing along as a for
mal group - was attorney Herb Resner.
Anyway, Clson was elected in November, but
they always had this gap between the time you
were elected and the time you were installed . .
Ward: First Monday in January -
LG: January; and Terry and I had gone up to some
place in Truckee, just spending a long weekend
up there, near Truckee. It had been a long
grind, with the election campaign and everything
else. Somebody chased me down there - I had
left my phone number in case of anything impor
tant - and said they were meeting with Culbert
Clson. It was either ITew Year's Eve or New
Year's Day.
Ward: It was New Year's Day, Sunday night - New Year's
Eve was on Saturday night. It was the Sunday
night and he was to be inaugurated on the Monday
morning.
LG: It was just before he was to be inaugurated. He
was not in the governor's mansion. He was in a
fairly large apartment near the Capitol.
Apparently there was considerable urgency in this
call because Culbert Olson had indicated that
perhaps it was unwise to make the pardon of Tom
Kooney his first act in office. He was under
the guidance or advice of some of his political
cohorts.
230
LG-: Cur feelings were that if Mooney was not
pardoned at that time, once again we would be
back at square one and going around and around
forever. Resner had this appointment set up
with Culbert Clson and could I take a run down
and be there? I know that Culbert Olson was
under pressure to renege - that was the thing.
So we gathered at this apartment; Resner,
Jack Shelley, Harry See of the Railroad Brother
hood. I think you were there, right?
Ward: Yes. Kidwell ....
LS:
Yes, Kidwell - he was still active at the time,
though getting along in years. Slim Connelly?
I'm not sure if he was there or not -
Ward: I don't think so - I know there v/ere guys there
from Eureka to San Diego.
LG: Right. It was a fairly large group. There must
have been at least fifteen of us, maybe more,
all crowded into this apartment. Olson was
damn defensive and angry, as though anybody could
ever doubt him; he was in effect being accused
of going back on his commitments and he wasn't
that kind of a man.
As I remember everybody was very, very insis
tent; they just took the same position - no ifs,
ands, buts - no business of a 24-hour delay, no
40-hour delay, no nothing. Everybody just kept
asking the same question. "Is the commitment
still good?"
/
Toward the end of the session - Herb Resner,
by the way, did a very good job - a number of
us were asking, "Look, we would like to be there
at the inauguration - and we particularly want
to be there because Tom Mooney is being released."
There was also insistence that Tom Mooney be
brought to the legislature to receive the pardon.
And finally, Olson said okay, he would go
through with it.
V/e in turn made preparations to be there for
the inauguration, in part to make sure he would
not back away. And sure enough he was sworn in
and Tom Mooney was pardoned.
231
V/ard :
LG:
V/ard :
Clson announced at his inaugural that he would
pardon Hooney the following Saturday.
LG:
Ward :
LG;
Ward :
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Yes, you're right,
act in office.
Literally it was his first
The pardon was a question of getting a place
and setting it up.
Right, '.veil, our concern was the Senate, which
was a highly reactionary body. As a matter of
fact, they blocked almost everything he wanted
in the following legislature.
He did nothing ....
He wound up empty-handed and he began to back
away mere and more and more. The Yorty
(Assemblyman Sam Yorty, who turned Red-hunter)
Committee got busy under Clson. As a matter of
fact, we had supported both Yorty and (Assembly
man Jack) Tenney - Tenney was in the Musicians'
Union - "I-Iexicali Rose" (a popular song) by
Tenney - in the elections in L. A. Tenney was
a part of the red-baiting group.
It was Yorty who later did all the damage,
particularly in the way of discharges. They
cleaned out, oh, the whole State Relief Admini
stration; people like Bill Plunkert (a promi
nent social worker) got the axe. Terry did -
she was working for him at that time.
Terry did?
Yes.
Rose Segure (social worker)?
Rose Segure, of course. She was a close friend
of the Plunkerts and later became a close friend
of Kike Quill (head of the Transport Workers'
Union). Many years later, Rose Segure tried to
act as a sort of intermediary in patching up
things between ourselves and Mite Quill.
Anyway, the pardon of Tom Mooney did take
place. It was the end of that week, Saturday,
I guess it was; the (legislature's) Assembly
232
LG-: chamber was jammed. Ily dad and my mother had
been part of this campaign for the freedom of
Tom Mooney for years. I got in touch with my
mother - I think it was the first time she ever
set foot in an airplane - and she flew up and
came to this ceremony in the Assembly chamber
in Sacramento to witness the pardon of Tom
Mooney.
Afterwards a group of us went over to have
lunch in a Mexican restaurant in Sacramento, and
I brought my mother along. This was a big thing
for me and for her. She reported back to this
little group she belonged to - these various
progressive groups - mostly Jewish - about the
ceremony. It was a fascinating climax to the
sort of thing which in most cases doesn't end
that well.
Ward: Lou, you were talking about this function after
the Tom Mooney pardon with your mother.
LG-: Oh, it was a big thing. After all, she and her
friends had been campaigning from 1916 or '17
until 1939. I felt elated that I was able to
pay back, sort of ... a general feeling of
obligation for some of the things my folks
believed in which helped to condition me as a
youngster.
Ward: It was a rare occasion?
LG: Yes. We headed back at once to San Francisco
where my mother took a plane back. We had to
get ready for Tom Mooney to come to San Francisco,
Ward: It was Sunday, the 8th -
LG: Sunday, the 8th. We had all kinds of work to
do. We decided there would be a march up Market
Street with Tom Mooney at the head of the parade.
We also arranged that there would be a speakers'
platform at the Civic Center where the parade
would wind up. All of our planning notwith
standing, it turned out to be hopeless.
233
LG: There was really no parade. There was an attempt
to put together a parade, but we quickly dis
covered that any effort to set up a disciplined
parade just wouldn't work. People swarmed around
Mooney. We got around oh, two or three hundred
of our biggest guys, and sort of formed a circle
around Tom Mooney and some of the leaders of
the labor movement who were walking with him
and at least protected him from the crush of
the crov/d.
V, r ard: Well, it v/as more than that too; there were
death threats ....
LG: There might have been, but nobody was paying
any attention to them. Some of the nuts, some
of the vigilantes, I suppose, who might have
been around in 1934, '35, part of the backwash
of the general strike.
Market Street was just black v/ith people for
its whole length; photographs show that when the
parade got to the turning point on Grove Street,
all of Market Street right down to the ?erry
Building was just one mass of humanity.
It was the biggest turnout I have ever seen
anywhere around a single issue. We've had some
Labor Day parades that took three or four hours,
but this was different. It v/as just a swarm,
none of it in any way difficult or fractious;
a great celebration. Mooney spoke, a bit too
long, but so many things stored up for so many
years, you see. Even Rena Mooney* turned up for
that. Tom didn't live too long after that.
Ward: His guts had been ruined, prison diet . . .
LG: That v/as quite a day. That's all we ever got
out of Clson - the freedom of Tom Mooney -
Ward: I think so.
LG: Clson had some good proposals but they all died
in the legislature. For what reason the Yorty
Committee, the Tenney Committee, got under way,
I don't know myself; except that part of the
clash between Clson and the legislature was a
* Tom Mooney 's estranged wife.
234
LG-: situation where the legislature could pick up
certain things on their own and run away with
them. And where you found an ambitious
character like Yorty and a man who turned
renegade like Tenney; unfortunately, people v/e
had supported.
Ward: Well, then we come on through '39 and the next
interesting point would be the Bridges trial
with (James M.) Landis, wasn't it?
LG: Those hearings were on Angel Island at the old
Immigration station. We used to commute every
day by boat from San Francisco. The story was
told that on one of these trips Landis took the
wheel for a while and said, "Well, this is my
chance now - I'm heading right for Australia."
Well, while that trial was going on all kinds
of things were going on at the same time. All
my attention at that time was devoted to the
CIO. That meant helping to set up local labor
councils. It was just getting too crowded around
the Balboa Building where we'd been. Anyway v/e
got ourselves bigger headquarters.
Disturbing War Rumbles
The organizational drives were going full blast.
The invasion of Poland did not make that much
of a dent in the organizational drive, though
politically things began to get reflected all
over the place. There were a number of issues
which many of us were concerned about.
All of us were aware of the attempts on the
part of the Soviet Union to build some sort of
a collective security pact; the efforts of
(Maxim) Litvinov (U.S.S.R. foreign secretary
under Stalin); the invasion of Finland, "poor
little Finland." The Finns, the political group
in power at that time, were fairly close to
Germany. There was the Mannerheim Line (a fort
ification of the Finnish-Russian border). I
guess the Russians had pretty well decided that
the way things were going, their inability to
235
LG: get a coalition together to stop Hitler,
whether or not they liked it, they were going
to be on their own pretty soon. After all,
(Neville) Chamberlain (British prime minister
prior to World War II) had come back from
Germany with "peace in our time," after the
surrender of the Sudetenland. Hitler had picked
up Austria, part of Czechoslovakia.
There were all kinds of political debates
going on. Beginning with the civil war in
Spain, it was hard to reach any conclusion other
than the fact that the clash between Hitler and
the Soviet Union was inevitable.
Cn the other hand, there were all kinds of
debates going on about the Russians moving into
Poland about the same time that the Germans did.
It was the period of the Nolotov-Ribbentrop
pact. (An agreement between Vyacheslav 14. Molo-
tov for the U.S.S.R. and Joachim von Ribbentrop
for Germany which temporarily postponed open
hostilities betv/een the two nations). ?or those
of us on the left, the flack was flying from all
directions.
Ward: Japanese too?
LG: The Japanese question was separate. V/'e didn't
tie into any German- Japanese axis at the time.
The action at the Marco Polo Bridge signaled the
invasion of China by Japan; I think it took
place in 1937. The union itself (I'm talking
now specifically of the longshoremen) had gone
through a whole period of stoppages of work on
the use of ships for scrap iron to Japan; these
had been going on since 1933.
I remember a demonstration against the ar
rival of the Karlsruhe. That v/as a German
training ship after Hitler had come to power.
All these things were closing in on everybody.
We knew a lot of what Hitler stood for; his
announcements for getting rid of everything that
tainted the Aryan race, but I don't think we v/ere
aware of the whole "final solution" program
(the extermination of Jews).
236
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward;
LG:
While you had all these debates on the question
of industrial unionism, other debates took
place on a quite higher level; Hitler, Spanish
civil war, and so forth. This went on both as
individuals and as a union; we felt very keen
ly that what was going on in Spain, particular
ly with the help that was being given Franco
by (Benito) Mussolini and Hitler, these were
forerunners of wholesale repression.
While no one had taken Mussolini all that
seriously, even as a fascist regime, all of a
sudden some of its further implications began
to come through to us. You might recall some
of the airplane attacks by Mussolini's airmen,
including either a son-in-law or someone . . .
A son.
Son - including the descriptions of the bombing
of ...
Ethiopia -
And Spain. He had invaded Ethopia, yes, earlier.
Things were going on in our own ranks; the
question of who went to Spain was constantly on
the agenda. Some close friends of mine on the
waterfront decided to go to Spain.
One awfully good guy I had been close to,
Jack Egan, he went to Spain; the last they saw
of him was when he decided to go after a tank
with a hand grenade in each hand; that was the
last of him and the tank. He had a younger
brother who never got over it.
You had a combination of large scale union
movements, strikes breaking out in every
direction, and the political fight going on at
the same time. Deportation attempt against
Harry; struggle over questions such as "poor
little Finland;" the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Trying to keep your bearings in all of this
was not the easiest thing in the world; your
leftwingers were doing valiant service as or
ganizers and leaders, trying to get certain
237
LG-: things done when you knew that the parameters
were specifically limited. It was a rough
period, and a very exciting one. No question
about that.
Labor Spies
Ward: Would you like to talk about the spies for a
minute? Arthur Scott Kent? Jim O'Neill, who
was one in a way
LG-: Jim O'Neill was just a weak guy, more than any
thing else, plus Jim had lost his battle with
John Barleycorn. Jim O'Neill was our PR man,
did our radio program. I recall Jim going to
the clink for 30 days around a dispute we had
at the Teagarden warehouse in North Beach.
The employers decided to run scabs in these
covered vans and one day a big beef blew up and
some of the trucks got overturned and what-have-
you. Dominic Gallo, a very tough little short
guy, managed to get his hands on a couple of
these strike-breakers and they surely weren't
the same very quickly. He was one of those who
did time and Jim O'Neill did time.
We never had any feeling that Jim O'Neill was
a labor spy. I think what happened was that
they got to him a bit later. No question, later
on he went through that crazy business, first
testifying against Harry and then repudiating
it - obviously a very weak guy. There were guys
who were active in the labor councils or in the
Guild or other unions who later turned up on the
witness stand. Not during the Landis (James M.
Landis, who presided at the first trial of Harry
Bridges) thing -
Ward: There was one -
LG: Yes -
Ward: (Miles) Humphrey.
238
LG: Yes, Humphrey. I think Lundeberg turned up in
the next trial. George Wilson was active in
the Newspaper Guild at the time.
Ward: Yes, he was the second secretary of the Bridges
Defense Committee - the second trial.
LG: Merv (Meryyn) Rathborne, who was active in the
ACA (American Communications Association), the
radio operators. He later "became secretary of
the State CIO. Henry Schrimpf was a witness.
John Shoemaker; these and others turned up at a
later trial.
Ward: Shoemaker was a longshoreman -
LG: Longshoreman, right, very active in the 1934
strike. Mike Quin in his "book, The Big Strike,
specifically mentions John Shoemaker - he made
a big impression - a big man - his stature, short
cropped hair, looked like a typical longshoreman;
and a very dedicated one. I did mention one man
from Local 6 who disappeared - a man by the name
of Tarling; the fact that some report he wrote
fell into our hands.
Ward: Oh, yeah.
LG: He suddenly disappeared. Some of them, I'm sure,
were industrial spies who were bought for certain
jobs. Some of them were turned up by the
LaPollette Committee (a Congressional investi
gating group headed by U. S. Senator Robert
LaPollette) later on.
I don't recall the guy's name, but he was one
of those who was active in Crockett - he worked
in the refinery. He had become part of this group
which was trying to take the refinery into the
CIO. I remember a meeting with the leadership
of this group that was trying to move into the
refinery; by that time a couple of the guys had
gotten fired.
I said, "Look, this whole thing looks too
much like a put-up job by the company. One thing
you ought to be careful of is, under no circum
stances do you put up a picket line because the
239
LG-: Local 6 contract is open. If we have to we'll
shut it down, around the contract demands, but
to get sidetracked on this first and then try
to add the Local 6 strike to it, you'll be biting
off more than you can handle. It would be better
to keep plugging away with the National Labor
Relations Board and then bring the thing to a
head when the warehouse negotiations come to a
head; do it at the same time."
This guy was at the meeting and it must have
lasted until about 12:30 or 1:00 o'clock because
I drove back and I got a phone call at 6:30 in
the morning from Crockett. This guy said, "Look,
I know we talked about it last night, but that's
a lot of bunk. Let's throw up a picket line."
He was without any question a provocateur.
He disappears the next day - within 48 hours.
The next I hear about him, he suddenly bought a
service station somewhere in the eastbay. I'm
sure that outfits like the Pinkertons and what-
have-you were making nothing but hay. They must
have honey-combed all the unions.
V.'ard: Did you ever run into Captain Bakcsy? Used to
hold all these parties down at Carmel and invite
all these suspected Communists and leftwingers?
LG-: No, I used to go down to Carmel but I don't
remember him. I remember going to Carmel and
meeting Lincoln Steffens (a famous writer)
married to Ella Winter at the time, and they had
this little young one, Peter Steffens. I remem
ber going to Lincoln Steffens' house any number
of times; he v/as a delight to talk to.
He had a faculty of sort of picking you up
in the middle of an idea and saying, "Now, wait
a minute - I know what you're saying, but let's
go back to the beginning of this thing to find
out how you ever reached this conclusion?" He
had this technique of forcing you to think
things through. I got to know him and Ella
Winter and some of the other people around
Carmel through Dan James.
240
LG: "//hen I was at Gal I had known Dan James; his
wife later wrote this musical comedy "Bloomer
Girl." At that time, Dan would go down to
Carmel and stay at his folks' place. His father
was very wealthy - he was the James Pottery
Company of St. Louis, 1 think. He built this
fabulous place - it v/as just below Carmel
Highlands and built right on the cliffs. I'd
go down there and spend weekends sometimes with
Dan. We were quite good friends; we used to
walk a lot, throw cans out in the ocean and try
to pick them off with a. 22, things of that sort.
Ward: Did you ever have anything to do with Arthur
Scott Kent? He was a sidekick of Mooney - they
met in San Quentin.
LG: Yes. I remember him. But not much.
(Interview 10: 18 April, 1978)
Ward: Lou, you had another Crockett story that hap
pened later.
LG: Yes. It was a friendship I had up there that
carried on throughout the years I was with the
union, a very close friendship. There was a
running confrontation in Crockett between the
management and our union. They figured we were
irascible and impossible; paid no attention to
what they happened to do with this company union
they had in the refinery.
The company was constantly doing surveys of
big factories where they could show that the
warehousemen were paid nothing like our guys
were. That didn't carry any water with us, but
some very peculiar negotiations were bound to
result. They always felt that there was some
kind of a diabolical plot somewhere in the
wind.
We had a great deal of leverage, after all.
It wasn't only that we had the warehousemen in
Crockett; we also had standing with us the long
shoremen; Crockett could not operate unless the
LG:
241
longshoremen were working, for obvious reasons;
all the raw sugar canie there from Hawaii.
Around 1940 or 1950, after the war, the man
in charge of the Crockett operation was William
Tyler; everybody called him "Call Me Bill" Tyler -
his way of establishing informality. He was
also a very high-strung man, particularly when
it came to dealing with the ILWU.
Tyler, about that time, divorced his wife and
married his secretary. '-.Tien I heard of this I
made the crack to somebody, around the office,
"Well, that will set back office worker organi
zation at least 20 years." Because that was the
thinking of a lot of secretaries, that eventually
they would marry the boss.
But that wasn't the story I was going to tell
you about. We were in a set of negotiations,
and in those days we were talking pennies most
of the time. Sometimes the settlement might be
in the range of six, six and a half, seven cents
maybe a dime.
Ward: This was after the war.
LG-: After the war, oh sure; it was before the rapid
inflation period. We had a big move going on
after the war in Warehouse; CPA had been repeal
ed and with the leadership of Gene Paton the
local managed to compel increases, even though
the contract was not open, by a series of slow
downs, job action.
We had gotten a call from Tyler who said he
wanted to talk to Chili and myself. Well, we
had talked at great length in the committee and
knew where the differences were. Most of the
issues were resolved except wages. There the
company offered somewhere around 4 or 5 cents.
Chili and I huddled about the thing and we said,
"All right, if we can get this guy to go to 6--J-
cents, the committee figures it's okay. It
doesn't pay to take a strike over what remains."
After Chili and I and the committee had pretty
much made up our minds, v/e went into Tyler's
office; he was awfully fidgety, walking back and
242
LG: forth behind his desk. Then he let go with
quite a tirade - how as far back as he could
think, the Warehouse local there had constantly
been determined to upset Crockett. Why is it
that we are always determined to get a strike?
He couldn't understand. But, damn it, he was
going to make every effort to avoid a strike.
We don't say anything; we're just sitting
there listening to him, and he finally concluded,
"Look, like it or not, I'm going to offer you
7 cents. I know your attitude; you guys are
just determined to fight; I'll offer you a 7-cent
an hour increase." I don't say a word and I
look at Chili and start shaking my head in dis
belief. Chili and I had just agreed that six,
six and a half cents would do it.
Tyler interprets my shaking my head at Chili
as a "no". And he says, "All right, it's seven
and a half and I'm telling you right now, that's
final." And I'm still shaking my head and still
haven't said a word. Finally, he says, "I'm
going to bring this damn thing to a head and
that's it. It's 8 cents, take it or leave it."
So, we finally leaned back and said, "Well,
if you feel about it that way, I guess we'll
take the 8 cents." That's the only set of nego
tiations I can recall where 'we reached an
agreement on more than what we ever anticipated,
by never saying a word.
Union Leadership vs. Leftwing Politics
Ward: Ckay. Now let's go back a few years ... as
you became active in the trade union movement
more and more, accepting greater and greater
responsibilities, were there any changes in your
personal relationship with the Communist party,
in your thinking and your action?
LG: Not fundamentally. I'd say that there were
changes in one area.
##
243
Ward: You were saying, Lou, that as you became more
active in trade union affairs, there were one
or two things -
LG: What happened, I think, was something over which
you would have no direct control. Unless you
were awfully thick, what got to you was the whole
business of timing, what issues could be
effectively presented, a real consciousness of
how the rank and file would react.
It was not just a business of adopting a
resolution; in many cases, this was the easiest
thing in the world, particularly if you put it
vaguely enough. The one thing that became most
important was the measurement of any political
action or position.
How the thing could be bounced off the mem
bership and to what degree they would support
it? It was not a question of tailism, waiting
for the workers to move before you start running
to catch up.
Leadership had with it certain obligations.
The job of leadership meant that you would
reflect as best you could the reservations, some
times the reluctances, priorities, of the people
you represented. This became a measure of
leadership.
It did not mean in any way compromising what
I thought. An individual in my position, or any
trade unionist, cannot over any long period of
time make the price of his leadership the auto
matic support of the rank and file. You could
not demand that price, but you could demand that
you handle yourself with confidence and knowledge
of the issue.
What you could insist upon was that just
because you had been elected a leader did not
mean you had to give up any of your ideas. It
was around this, for example, that we would
fight things like redbaiting; and actually not
so much the fight against redbaiting; the more
correct way of appraising that would be, the
right of a Red to retain his opinion when he was
244
LS: a union man. You "began to put these things in
a different equation; as a union we were not
trying to change somebody's religious opinion;
we were not trying to change their political
registration. Neither was it anybody else's
damn business how you as a leader felt about
issues or political opinions or political regis
tration.
This sort of balance had to be achieved,
which meant also that any relations with some
thing like the CP (Communist party) you would
weigh constantly. You would speak up on them,
pretty pointedly, because on many scores it was
not that the CP was wrong - it was right.
They were right on every issue from Loyalist
Spain to the battle for the Scottsboro Boys (a
political struggle on behalf of nine black
youths) to the freedom of Tom Hooney, their
thinking about a socialist society, their sup
port of the Soviet Union against Hitler.
The issue was, how could a person in leader
ship exercise judgment in these questions so as
to move the membership along with him; not to
sit there blandly and flow with the tide, not to
duck all issues.
In some cases there were some pretty sharp
confrontations. For example, there was a period
there when the Catholic church had a pretty
violent reaction against Loyalist Spain. There
was a long period of that; but those of us who
had any kind of a leadership influence or
position never backed away on the question of
Loyalist Spain. The same way when it came to
the whole question of the fight on racial dis
crimination, which we started very early.
In the case of Longshore, they had quite a
struggle on the question of racial discrimination
because apparently some blacks had been brought
on the v/aterfront; I think they were American-
Hawaiian gangs and they had been brought on the
waterfront during the 1920 strike.
Ward: When you say American-Hawaiian, you mean the
steamship company?
245
LG: Yes, American-Hawaiian Steamship Company. That
was the one Roger Lapham was the head of. It's
a shipping company that somehow managed to lose
all its ships during the war, World War II.
I'm not saying they were in collusion with any
body, but somehow all of their ships went down.
They wound up as the wealthiest shipping company,
without a single ship, when the war was over.
There was a problem of taking on the issue
in Longshore. The blacks were accepted as part
of the union and a number of them became very
active. Some of them were just splendid
examples of good, solid trade unionists with a
lot of leadership ability.
One of the old-time longshoremen who came to
the surface was a man named Joe White. When he
retired he moved down to some small town near
Fresno and was elected mayor there. One of the
stories I remember about him: he was up in Coos
Bay when Harry was in jail after the outbreak of
the Korean War - Harry had taken a position that
there ought to be a cease-fire and the killing
ought to stop; that was when Judge Harris made
the statement that in this time of peril there
was no room for minority opinion, and he put
Harry in the clink and he was in for several
weeks.
We had a very sharp caucus up in Coos Bay -
one that was really quite crucial; a couple of
odd things happened. Some of the reactionary
characters from Portland made a proposal that we
take the honorary membership away from Paul
Robe son (famous black singer and actor) which
we had granted to him and give it to Jackie
Robinson (a black baseball star). This was
really interesting, coming from Portland. It was
finally voted down.
But the story about Joe White is different.
Apparently, one night some of the guys decided
to call on one of the cat houses in North Bend
or Coos Bay. Joe White is sort of leading the
group and they call at this cat house and the
madam takes one look at Joe White, very black
colored guy, and she tells Joe, "Look, we don't
mix them here." And Joe, without blinking an eye,
turned to her and said, "If my friends can't come
in, neither am I."
246
Ward: Getting back to the relationship
LG: The relationship with the party was such that
you "began to measure things in a different way.
Certain party leaders were far more flexible
and understood these things better than others.
Sam Darcy - and this was true of the '34 strike,
as well as in later years - was head of the
Communist party in California. He had a pretty
good feel of the problem that any trade union
leader would have, or any leader of a mass
organization; recognized the importance of not
spinning yo.ur wheels on every issue.
There was a question of looking for the key
link in the chain of events that you could grasp,
that you could carry. Walter Lambert had very
much the same feeling and would never argue with
you as to your appraisal of what the membership
would or would not do in a particular situation
or in a particular issue. He felt that was your
problem and that was your judgment.
That was what you were down there for; not
just to draw a salary or to conduct a set of
negotiations once in a while, or just say "yes."
On that score, he was a very independent guy.
His brother, Rudy, (Rudy Lambert, another
Communist official) I don't recall having too
much contact with. For one thing, he was hand
ling some other work in the party machinery and
I don't think he was that close to the trade
unionists.
You can't call it drifting away; I guess what
would be more accurate would be to say you got
a different sense of priorities and a different
set of values and a better understanding of what
the hell your job was. I've always felt that
with trade union leadership or leadership of any
mass organization there comes a certain number
of obligations that you cannot avoid; and if you
try to duck them you are either going to capitu
late or you are going to turn phony.
One, of course, you damn well had better know
your job. It's a rare thing to find a good
union official who is not at the same time, or
247
LG-: who has not been a good worker on the job. The
worker's reaction would be if he is an incompe
tent in one place, he will be incompetent in
another place.
If someone is a goof-off on the job; if he
doesn't do his share of the work or gives the
other guy a "Portugee lift," as they call it -
that means the guy picks up his end of the sack
first and the other guy has all the weight to
pick up - if he has no respect for that man as
a worker, then the reaction will be pretty much
the same as to any aspirations he has as a union
leader.
Ch, that was a form of drifting away, but it
wasn't in any sense a break. I'd say that that
took place later on -
Ward: I'm talking about the beginnings of substituting
your own judgment for that of someone who sat
up at 121.
LG: I think this became symptomatic of a lot of the
leftwingers in the trade union movement, parti
cularly those who survived. After all, it has
to be borne in mind that the CIC on the west
coast in some areas had the same impact that it
might have in Pittsburgh, Chicago; such as Los
Angeles, where you had large rubber plants - the
Firestone plant and a couple of others - some
large auto plants. You had the airplane
manufacturers like North American which were
organized early by the Auto Workers. So, it had
some of the same impact there.
But in a place like northern California it
was almost as much a question of principle and
a belief in industrial unionism; that was the
highly motivating thing. The northwest, it was
the IWA (International Woodworkers of America;
(Harold) Pritchett was the president initially.
Later he was forced out of the country by the
Immigration Department because he was Canadian
and had never become an American citizen. Eal,
by the way, is still alive. His son, Craig, is
our regional director in Canada.
248
LG: In the Northwest it became a real running feud
between the IA and the Carpenters, who suddenly
decided to organize industrially rather than have
the woods and the sawmills organized by the IWA.
The net result was that your leftwing leadership
in all parts of the coast either survived by
some pretty good solid, independent judgment or
they'd fall victim to the whole attack because
they couldn't hold the membership; that became
the key.
A Lively Social Life
Ward: I see. Well, I think that solves that for the
moment. How, on your personal situation, you
and Terry, for whatever reason, decided to get
married.
LG: That's right - we'd been living together since
around late in 1935, and in 1939 we pretty well
decided that we ought to have a family. That
was the main reason we got married. We got
married by Reverend Herrick Lane and the man who
stood up for us was Aubrey Grossman. My friend
ship with Aubrey, by the way, goes back about
50 years. Herrick Lane was a fine man; matter
of fact, I called him at the time my daughter,
Anriv was getting married to David King, some
ten years ago. Apparently, he was busy or
something and we had some judge do the ceremony.
But Herrick Lane must have thought about that
because about a couple of months later he came
to the office at 150 Golden Gate to re-introduce
himself and sort of apologize for not having met
our request.
Ward: Any comments on the cause parties and the social
life of which you were a part?
t
LG: Oh, yes. The cause dinners and cause dances made
up a very large part of our social life. I think
this was true of everybody on the left. There
was always something doing on support for Loyal
ist Spain during that period; the constant meet
ings in support of Tom Moonev. PW (The Peoples'
World, a Communist newspaper) parties were frequent,
249
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
The union itself would have all kinds of social
functions. A good many of our social engage
ments revolved around a lot of these cause
parties. As I recall, they were pretty
exuberant affairs - you felt good about them.
It was a good family.
They were working parties in a sense, too,
because you made contact there.
You made contact with people. If there were
trade unionists who you felt wanted to go just
beyond the nickel and dime demands in the
contract, you'd make it your business to invite
them there. It was never this business, you
know, that they try to paint that it was sub
versive and all this crap. That had nothing to
do with it at all. Quite to the contrary, it
was built around friendship and social engage
ments. This became a big part of the social
life of almost all the people I could think of
in the left.
Yes, it was a good time.
Those were good times and they were exuberant
times. We were riding a pretty good wave. We
felt that history and developments were very
much on our side. The country was finally
climbing out of the depression; organization
was going full blast. We won some very
important victories.
A lot of the unions were establishing them
selves as the conscience of the trade union
movement. That's why I always felt that our
expulsion from the A F of L, and later our
expulsion from the CIO, was really a form of
hari-kiri by the A F of L and the CIO. I think
that if there's any one single thing that's
responsible for the trade union problems in this
country it was that whole series of expulsions
and the redbaiting that went with "it.
Well, you'd run into some of these A F of L
guys whom you knew at these parties - it was a
mixed bag?
250
LG: Oh, sure. There were all kinds of good, solid
trade unionists; some of them not all that
politically inclined; some of them left-inclined;
some of them just genuine people, for example,
who carried over some of the Wobbly tradition.
I'm talking about people like Joe Murphy, who
was head of the Laborers' Union - -
Ward: Jack Wagner?
LG: Jack Wagner was a good example. He was with the
Pile Drivers Union. There were people like Dan
Del Carlo, (secretary of the San Francisco
Building Trades Council), who was very friendly
to our union. There were any number of them
who were simply carrying on as best they could
what they had picked up in the Wobblies.
Many of the individuals who came out of that
Wobbly movement were fundamentally very sound
on a couple of things; they had absolutely no
fear of socialism; if anything, they leaned
toward it. Of course they thought of socialism
in more of a syndicalist fashion - one big union
and were quite distrustful of some of the
political sides of socialism, but they were not
allergic.
They definitely were not redbaiters; if any
thing, they understood the danger of red
baiting, particularly after what had happened
in the Palmer raids right after World War I.
Ward: Central ia.
LG: Right - Centralia, Washington; Wesley Everest;
they felt very keenly about the right of people
to believe as they pleased. There was also a
wonderful, sort of a goyishe chutzpah -
Ward : Chutzpah?
LG: Chutzpah, you know - I guess the closest defini
tion you can get to it is that it's a form of
arrogance and defiance. You've heard the story
of this young man who is brought to trial for
having killed his mother and father and pleads
251
LG: for clemency on the grounds that he's an orphan.
That takes chutzpah, you see. But a goyishe
chutzpah is a sort of gentile chutzpah.
With my own background and my own beliefs,
I always had a certain admiration for a group
of people in this country that ranged from some
of the Wobblies I knew to some rather prominent
people like Bob Kenney (one-time State Senator,
California Attorney-General and judge). They
just seem to take their democratic rights of
personal belief, refusal to redbait - seem to
have taken it with their mother's milk. It
never frightened them.
There was a certain great feeling, "Look,
this is our country; just because you happen to
wrap yourself up in the American flag doesn't
make it your country." I'll never forget an
old-time Wobbly, now retired, a member of our
union named Paul Keady from Newport, Oregon.
It was during one of the debates on the Vietnam
war or the Korean war when there was a lot of
this rabid redbaiting, flag-waving.
In his own way and strictly as a kind of
grass roots simple American, he would sort of
fit the definition that if you dropped him out
of an airplane anywhere on the west coast, he'd
somehow make a living. He got up and made a
a speech that literally shook up everybody in
the place and cooled off this hysteria.
The point he made was very simple: he wasn't
going to argue his patriotism with anybody; it
wasn't any of their damn business; his life and
his record spoke for themselves. When certain
things were important, he'd support them; when
it came to fighting in World War II, he had done
his share .
And he said, "As to these flag wavers, I have
no objection to that either. I don't have an
objection to them even when they take the Ameri
can flag and cut themselves a coat out of it.
But, damn it, when they cut themselves a vest
and a pair of pants out of the American flag
they have gone just a bit too damn far."
(laughter)
252
LG-: This stripe of person was attracted to the CIO,
to support of Loyalist Spain, to the whole
fight for freedom of expression by the left-wing,
They might not agree at all times, but their
minds were open.
These were the sort of people you knew you
had to have with you; either that or you were
fighting a lost cause. Some people thought
that triumph was going down with your flags
flying. So what? It was far more important
to try to measure things against people of this
stripe.
Ward: Incidentally, you mentioned a while back that
the Catholic church took violent opposition to
Loyalist Spain. Is that where the ACTU played
a role in local trade unionism?
LG: I think the ACTU had started by then, although -
Ward: Before the war, it was a problem?
LG: It was before the war and during the war - both.
It disappeared later on, the Association of
Catholic Trade Unionists, the group you're
talking about. The man v/ho was very prominent
in that was a Father Rice. I think he was in
New Orleans - he was based there, in the South
somewhere.
He actually put out pamphlets on how to
stack a union meeting; instructions on how the
Catholics should handle themselves; all, of
course, directed against the left. Whether he
was a direct disciple of Father Coughlin (a
famous radio priest), I don't know. You
remember him, of course, a dangerous man.
As far as we were concerned, they became
much more prominent in the years after the war.
That's when they became quite a pain in the ass
to us; set up basic ACTU chapters in Longshore
and Warehouse. They got mixed up in attempts
to raid the ILWU after we were expelled from the
CIO. I'll never forget one of our longshoremen,
Johnny O'Connor. He was a very tough little
guy -
253
Ward: Ex- pug -
LG: Ex-pug, wonderful guy, a lovely family, a very
ardent Catholic. I don't think he ever missed
mass. He came to Harry and myself as we were
sitting around and he said, "Look, they're try
ing to get me into the AGTU; v/hat do you think
I ought to do?" And Harry said, "Why don't you
ioin? Find out for yourself." Well, he did.
The very first meeting he goes to, the local
leader in San Francisco of the ACTU was a
teamster, who was also mixed up in some very
aggressive raiding activity against the ILWU.
As soon as the meeting starts, he starts taking
off against the ILWU and why the AGTU had to
take it apart. And Johnny O'Connor got up and
said, "Look, nobody can blast my union that way."
That just about ended the meeting. There were
very few meetings called after that.
Ward: And Johnny would have done that.
LG-: Yes, Johnny would have done that. Sure.
You were asking about Terry and I getting
married and somehow we got off on these other
things.
Ward: And then the social life ....
LG: While all this was going on, the social life
was sort of squeezed in between v/ork schedules
that ran, oh, 14 and 16 hours a day. They
seemed to be endless. A lot of the ground that
I covered had to be by car because there were
all sorts of out of the way places. I remember
that the State Council began to become the
depository of some of the more difficult beefs.
They (some unions) v/ere reaching into areas
where it was inevitable for them to run into a
bunch of scissor-bills and people who were very
hostile to the v/hole union movement. There were
Woodworkers' strikes, and I remember going to
Westwood. George Andersen (an ILWU attorney)
went along with me. This was after we got word
254
LG: that they had run the strikers out of town -
the vigilantes had. As George and I got towards
Westwood - maybe within 15 or 20 miles - here
were some of the families of the guys who had
been run out of town.
When we went in there, it was an armed camp.
The man v/ho was the head of the company - I
think it was a family concern - was named
Walker. I said, "Look, we want the families
reunited and coming back into town." He was
sort of half listening.
Obviously the strike was lost, although
eventually I think they came back and did re
organize it. A lot of the strikers were from
the area they called "old town" - made up of
Italians. During the midst of this a fire wagon
began to sound and this guy Walker jumps over
and grabs one of these fire hats and a jacket
and says, "I'll see you later," goes out and
jumps in the wagon; they were waiting for him.
I couldn't help but feel, "There's a pyro-
maniac, if I ever saw one in my life." (laughter)
Westwood is not operating anymore. They finally
timbered out there, and more recently the whole
town was sold.
I remember getting a call from a Mine-Mill
guy who said that the guys at the New Idria
mine had walked out. New Idria mine was one of
the places where (former President) Herbert
Hoover built up his fortune; it's way back in
the hills from Hollister, and I went down there.
These people had been driven out of town; it
was so common in these small company towns.
They were mostly Spaniards. They were camped
alongside the road and it was raining miserably.
We went in there to hammer things out with the
company. People went back to town; in that case
the union managed to hang on all right; but
talk about a desolate, god-forsaken area, that
was it. There were all kinds of other things
going on - the organization of the fishermen.
I learned much in that period about the basic
need for what was then being called "united front"
255
LG: The need was for maintaining some sort of
collective understanding and leadership in the
CIO; you were dealing with such divergent
characters; everybody from a Sherman Dalrymple
to the Coulter brothers and some just plain
old-line trade unionists, some stick-in-the-
muds. There was a crazy melange and the only
thing you had in common was that we were part
of the CIO.
Ward: And accepted John L. as the leader?
LG: No question about that.
Ward: So now we come on to . . . .
LG: The '39 CIO Convention which took place in San
Francisco and the State CIO coordinated with it,
It was at that convention that I really had a
chance to not only meet John L. Lewis but to
talk to him a bit.
Ward: You went to Treasure Island v/ith him ....
LG: Yes, I went to Treasure Island with him, and I
got to know (his daughter) Lathy Lewis very-
well . She became a good friend of mine; she
liked us out here.
Ward: Some people found her a bit of a problem.
LG: She was; I think that later on she got mixed
up with this America First (an extreme right-
wing political group) , though there was an
attempt to disclaim it. John L. was pretty
much of an isolationist, really. He distrusted
American foreign policy, and particularly dis
trusted any connections with the British -
Ward: Well, he was of Welsh background.
LG: He was a Welshman, yes, and Welshmen don't have
much use for the British. They've always felt
that if you have any alliance with Great
Britain, it would only be because the British
wanted to use you in some way. Kathryn Lev/is
spent a lot of time with us.. She was a heavy
woman .
256
Ward: Very stout . . .
LG-: Very stout; she wasn't too attractive, but she
was pleasant enough. I recall a party we had
at the place Terry and I were living at that
time. We had moved to a penthouse . . .
Ward: On the curve going up to Telegraph Hill?
LG: Right, it was just before the last turn. Oh,
we paid a big rent there. Both of us were
working then, so we were making a lot of money.
We paid $65 a month.
Ward: Terrific!
LG-: That was a good deal of rent. We moved out of
there when Annie (Goldblatt's oldest daughter)
came along in 1941 and took a place on Green
Street, which was a little more reasonable -
$42. 50. By that time, Terry had quit work.
It was a nice interlude up there (on Tele
graph Hill); it had become a gathering place
for a lot of people. And it was a hell of a
good party pad - no two ways about that. To
wards the end of the convention, I had managed
to hustle a batch of wine from the Wine Insti
tute. In those days they were trying to
advertise California wines, and I told them one
of the chances to advertise was for the conven
tion dinner.
They sent down a few cases of wine and a case
of champagne which they thought would be for
the head table. We never got around to using
the champagne for the head table ; and we kept
that and I said, "Well, okay, the least we
could do is take some of the staff v/ho worked
their tails off, and we'd have a bit of a party.
I recall Lee Pressman (CIO attorney) was there
and I think, Len DeCaux (editor of the CIO News)
was ....
Ward: Yes, I know Lee v/as there -
LG: Yes, definitely. As a matter of fact, Lee was
responsible for drafting most of the resolutions
during the convention. Kathryn Lewis was there;
257
LG:
Ward ;
L&:
Ward :
LG:
you might recall that the apartment had those
bookcases that were right under the windows,
and Kathryn -
We were talking about the party and Kathryn
Lewis; she had some champagne.
Yes, and she was sitting on these bookshelves.
Luckily, nothing happened.
No books were lost?
No. But the 59 convention was a good conven
tion; it had a lot of spark to it. Ey 1939
people like Dubinsky had begun to move out of
the CIC. The 1940 convention I recall distinct
ly; that was back in Atlantic City. I think it
was in 1940 or '41, Lewis resigned as president
of the CIC and Phil (Philip) Murray took over.
That was the turning point in the CIC when he
(Lewis) stepped down. I recall a large scale
campaign by many of us to persuade him to stay.
He supported Wiltkie in the 1940 campaign. When
the CIC did not go all out in supporting Willkie ,
he decided he'd been repudiated. A number of
us were up night after night to find ways and
means to try to persuade him. But nothing
worked.
He was very cordial about the whole thing;
I remember one night a number of us were sitting
around in one corner of the lobby and Lewis
came over to say "Hello" to all of us; sat down
and regaled us with all kinds of stories from
the coal mines, and some of his jokes. He was
a great raconteur as well as a great speaker.
But he wouldn't even broach the subject of
staying and there was no use broaching it with
him. He had made up his mind. It was a sad
day. A number of us began to feel that things
were going to change. I left the State Council
by the end of 1941 . . .
Ward :
How did that transfer take place?
ed it?
What initiat-
258
LG: Well, I initiated it myself. I felt that the
council was set up; no question about that;
also that councils have a certain inborn limi
tation. The way your councils are set up in
the labor movement, the amount of authority
they have is almost zero.
People keep talking about someone like Heany,
(George Meany, former president of the A F of L);
on a national scale it is true that the A ? of L
heads pre-empted some areas such as foreign
policy. Cn the other hand, the individual
unions within that council have an enormous
amount of autonomy when it comes to their bar
gaining. You can't tamper with their contracts.
You can't walk in -there and tell them what to
do. Cnce in a while it overlaps - when you get
into periods of the War Labor Board or the Pay
Board.
The principal role you play is that of a
fireman; somebody doesn't call in, there's no
fire to answer. The one thing that became
apparent to me is that the scope of this job
was going to be very "limited. I thought I had
had enough of that, and I preferred to go back
and work for the ILWU.
In 1941 I went to Chicago representing the
ILWU, primarily in an attempt to do some or
ganizing there; that was moderately successful.
What we didn't realize was that the v/ar brought
about many other things so that organizing had
a different coloration.
A lot of employers, in order to get workers
during the war, were granting voluntary
increases. Even where they didn't do that the
War Labor Board regulations prevailed and the
increases went through the Board; so World War
II became a time when most of the newly formed
CIO unions got to be entrenched, or grew by
accretion.
Ward: Weren't the employers also aware of the fact
that the CIO had adopted a no-strike policy
during the war?
259
LG: Sure, so there were certain limitations. While
still in the CIO Council we could play a moder
ate role in the pursuit of the war effort. I
recall going back to Washington, D. C. for a
luncheon called by Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of
President Roosevelt). It was around the
business of supporting the war effort. Other
than the time I went down to see Pierre
Salinger (press secretary to President John F.
Kennedy), this was the only time I was in the
White House. But I much preferred to go back
to the ILTJ, which I had really never left.
Ward: I see. And did you approach Harry about it?
LG: Yes, I talked to Harry about the thing and to
Bob Robertson.
Ward: And they were agreeable?
LG: Oh, sure. That was the time Merv Rathborne
became the secretary of the State CIC.
Ward: Yes. Well, now, there was a convention at which
you got elected? When and where?
LG: Ch, that didn't happen until 1943. I was back
in Chicago about six or seven months, maybe a
little more. Terry and I were living with her
sister on the Southside, down near Gary, Indiana.
I recall they were spending the summer out there
while I was staying in town and plugging away
on some of these organizational things. We had
organized a large group of paper, scrap metal
houses, primarily black, and we weren't doing
so badly.
Ward: Well, then at that time you were working as an
organizer for the ILWU?
LG: Right. Then I moved on to New York City. Again,
with the same objective in mind; we still had
hopes that we could put together a national
organization. We had locals all around - New
Orleans, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland. In
New York the warehousemen were in a group called
District 65.
260
LG: We worked out of their "building for a while
and we were hoping that that might "be a natural
alliance. They were part of the Retail. Whole
sale and Distribution Workers. (Samuel) Wolchok
was the man who was the head of that ... He
was really quite hopeless, particularly when it
came to the ILWU. I think he felt that in any
lash-up with the ILWU, he'd never survive, and
he was right. Ee was pretty much a business-
type trade unionist.
Eventually, District 65 split with him, too.
We were also having some jurisdictional hearings
in Washington, D. C. with Wolchok claiming all
the warehouses. I remember going before the
CIO Executive Council and arguing on the ques
tion of warehouse jurisdiction and getting some
pretty good support. Not only the leftwing
unions but Allan Heywood (CIO official)
supported us; John Brophy (also in CIO leader
ship) did; Brophy was very fond of our outfit,
and Kathryn Lewis was very friendly to us. I
used to stop by and talk to her all the time,
so we got certain help from that direction.
It was during the period when I was in New
York that it was obvious that the war effort
had to take precedence. I met a number of
people who were with - what do you call it?
The O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services)?
These were civilians. It was one of the war
organizations, and they were telling me of the
back-up of supplies in Espiritu Santos - places
like the north coast of Africa.
I began to work with Elinor Kahn (a prominent
labor researcher) back there on a war shipping
report; a series of recommendations on how the
whole flow of supplies could be expedited. The
basic idea was that we could take ILWU men, key
guys - naturally we would expect them to be
paid whatever they were paid at present - ship
them to such places and have them supervise the
discharge of the ships.
The idea v/as really implemented by the navy
through the Sea Bees (construction workers);
they became basically the same thing.
261
LG-: In working on this report I also got the
cooperation of Joe Curran (president of the
National Maritime Union). Cf course, I knew
Blackie (Frederick IT,) Myers and some of the
other men of the NMU.
Later on, I took this report down to Wash
ington where we had an office. I believe that
Bjorne Hailing (a prominent longshoreman) or
Harriet Bouslog was in charge. She was an
attorney licensed to practice in Hawaii.
Harriet went back to Hawaii in 1946, several
years later.
In Washington we had a whole series of
meetings on our report. I remember meeting
with Lev/ (Lev/is Douglas of the War Shipping
Administration) Douglas, (James V.) Forrestal,
(Secretary of Defense); (Assistant Secretary
of War John J.) McCloy, I think, of the Army.
Finally we set up a meeting with (Rear)
Admiral (Emory) Land and got copies of the
report to him. He had read them apparently.
Joe Curran was there at that meeting.
Admiral Land's reaction was very quick. He
said, "Maybe you can or can't help on getting
these supplies moving, but basically what you're
trying to do is change all the work standards
in every one of these countries v/here the
shipping is going." He was convinced that was
our only purpose.
Later on, people who wanted to get the ;job
done did begin to recruit a number of our long
shoremen to help out. I remember members like
Sailor HcCloskey from Los Angeles, Phil Sandeen,
then president of Local 10; guys like L. B.
Thomas, Charlie Ross - they were all part of
the navy, or going as civilians to various
places.
Ward: Well, that brings us around to your situation -
you weren't drafted? Cr were you?
LG: No, I wasn't drafted.
Ward: How come?
262
LG: I filed with the draft board just like every
body else did; it was on Polk Street, the North
Beach draft board. I never applied for a
deferment. I got the funny feeling that they
didn't want me any more than I wanted them,
because there was a sort of an ugly confronta
tion. I was called down to the draft board;
they were classifying people and they wanted
to know what I did. I told them I was a trade
unionist and what we were doing.
They said, "That's not essential for the
war effort." "Well, you feel as you please,"
I said, "We feel pretty keenly about the war,
and by the way I don't remember ever seeing
you on any of those picket lines when we refused
to ship scrap iron to Japan." Well, he just
blew. After the hearing, one of the draft
board members walked out with me and said,
"Don't let this guy disturb you; he's got a
kid overseas and got a report he's hurt." So,
nothing came of this.
Ward: You never got a call?
LG: No. Never got a call.
Ward: . Because you were within the age limit?
LG: Oh, yeah. I was within the age limit. This
was in 1941 and I was 31 years old. I wasn't
about to volunteer. True, we had one child by
then. That might have made a difference.
Ward: Okay, that answers that question. Now, after
this organizing and this work on the logistics
problem, there was a convention in '43 in which
you became the secretary of the ILWU, the
secretary-treasurer?
LG: Yes, I came back to the west coast. Gene Paton
was then secretary of the ILWU, but he decided
in 1943 that he was going to enlist in the army.
Gene had a number of problems of his own -
rough problems. Later when we tried to find out
as much as v/e could what had happened to Gene
during the war, some of the guys in his company
that we ran down said that he was almost like a
263
LS: man with a death wish. Paton was one of those
rare characters; he must have been promoted to
sergeant three or four times, or some ether
rank, and then always got busted. I got a call
from Paton when he was stationed out at the
(San Francisco) Presidio for a v/hile. He said,
"I'd like to see you this evening; let's have a
bite to eat and a few drinks." So, we go out,
we're having dinner together, and a few drinks.
So I said, "What time are you due back?
It's after midnight now." He says, "Yeah, I
know that, but I know v/hat I'm doing." I said,
"Y/hat do you mean?" He says, "V, r ell, we have a
guy in charge here; his idea of getting even
with somebody is to send him overseas, and I'm
sick and tired of sitting around here. And if
I can bust the rules one more time, I think
I'll go."
Sure enough, within a week or so he was on
his way. By that time, I think he had been
busted down to private; he v/on a battle-field
commission to captain. Most of the officers in
his company had been killed. Pat was quite a
guy, really a son of the people. Had a wonder
ful flair to him. Understood the rank and file.
A very courageous guy; also had his problems.
He was married to Virginia Woods, who had
been my secretary when I was up here with the
CIC. I had known her in Los Angeles; she
graduated cum laude at UCLA.
Ward: She's a brilliant mathematician.
LG: Yes. She and Pat got hitched; I guess it was
during the war. But Pat also had some drinking
problems.
Ward: Yes, he was a heavy drinker.
LG-: I remember getting him to go out to see a
Doctor (Norman) Ryder - I guess he's considered
to be the best analyst in San Francisco. Pat
said, "What the hell's the good of me seeing
a head-shr inker?" I said, "Look; the way you've
264
LG: been going, you've got to be doing yourself an
awful lot of damage." Ryder was wise enough
to have him get some tests, and Pat was told
that he had some brain damage.
Ryder decided very quickly that one thing
a psychiatrist can't do successfully is treat
alcoholics. Pat's attitude for example . . .
I guess Norman Ryder thought that maybe it
would frighten him into stopping drinking. V/e
were sitting around talking about it and he
said, "Oh, what the hell, so what? Still, with
half a brain, I'm a lot smarter than most of
these employers."
I came back because he decided to go into
the army, and I became secretary. It might
have been an interim appointment just before
he left, and then I was elected in 1943.
265
EFFECTS OF THE WAR '
First Mention Of Hawaii
V/ard: Ckay. How, how long had the Longshore local
been organized in Hawaii?
LG-: The Longshore local in Hawaii initially had
been organized at the end of the 1934 strike
and the beginning of 1935. The first group
that organized down there v/as in the port of
Hilo. Honolulu came later, and the other
outlying ports like Port Allen, now Y/awiliwili.
These were on the island of Kauai; at Kahalui -
that was on the island of Maui.
I think that in addition to the Hilo long
shoremen, there might have been a small group
up at Kukuihaole - that's where they loaded
ships on a high line - bags of sugar. They
might have been a part of the Hilo local. They
had begun to organize in 1935 but they were
having damn little success getting any kind of
a contract from the employers, or recognition.
They had gone through a nasty strike in 1938.
It was the Inter-island strike; the Inlandboat-
men's Union had struck and the employers ran a
shipment to Hilo. The longshoremen and their
wives were down there. It was more of a picnic
atmosphere than anything else, apparently.
They weren't going to work the ship and were
there to dissuade anybody else from doing it.
The local constabulary opened fire on them and
a lot of them were injured.
266
Ward: ITo deaths?
LG: No - nobody got killed. Cne of the guys who
went to work for us later on, Bert Nakano, had
been in that same beef. He had part of his
heel shot off, so that he always walked with a
limp from then on. The leader of that group
was a fine, competent man - Harry Komoko. He
continued with the union until some years later,
when he married a girl who worked for our union
and then they moved to Monterey. She was
determined that Harry (Komoko) get out of the
union scene, which is a little bit sad.
Most of the leaders of the longshoremen in
the '30 T s there, '34 and the early part of '35
were Hawaiian; guys like Freddy Xamahoahoa, who
was built almost like a kamehameha I mean - one
of the strongest men the world had ever -
Ward: Is he the guy who picked you up (pointing to a
nearby wall) in that picture?
LG: No - in that picture? No, that's a woman . . .
Ward: A woman picked you up?
LG: Yeah, Blossom something or other. She's not a
small woman, but she figured it would be a
great gag. Then Benny Big Nose Kahaawini - he
was one of the leaders there.
Ward: Well, these guys - their main problem was try
ing to get wage parity with the west coast,
wasn't it?
LG: Oh, yes. Their main problem at first was just
to get recognition in the contract, and they
didn't have much luck. In Hilo they finally
were well enough established so that they had
some sort of an informal understanding, or may
be even an agreement, but in Honolulu the
employers just opposed organization constantly.
Finally we did win an NLRB election. That
was around 1940 or '41, but never really got
around to getting a contract; the war came
along and the military promptly took over.
267
LG: Martial law was imposed and the people in
charge of martial lav/ on the docks were the
same shipowners.
It wasn't until the tail end of the war that
we really began to rebuild the longshoremen,
though they stayed pretty v/ell together during
the war. Jack Kawano who was president at the
time, served in some sort of a minor capacity
working for the government. He was also doing
part-time farming, so my hunch is that we did
not have too much going for us.
Later on when we began to study the whole
thing, we found the island economy was such
that longshore played a different role than it
does in most parts of the country; at least
it did in terms of the industrial control there
by the Big Five. Longshore is a specific indus
try in the mainland. In some cases however, you
find longshore shipping tied back into bigger
corporations. Reynolds Tobacco runs some big
ships. Some outfits have been tied in to
trucking.
Kav/aii v/as different. In Hawaii, longshore
was really an economic off -shoot of the prin
cipal industries there, pineapple and sugar.
Pineapple and sugar would determine what, if
anything, v/ould be shipped out of there.
Each of the Big Five controlled certain
shipping operations. At the time we organized
Mat son (Navigation Company) it was owned by the
Big Five, which determined Mats on f s policy.
Alexander and Baldwin, for example, controlled
the shipping and the port in Maui - Kahalui -
because A & B is the biggest agency on that
island. American Factors controlled the long-
shoring in Fort Allen and ITawiliwili on the
island of Kauai; they are also a big sugar
producer there.
C. Brewer, the biggest sugar producer on the
island of Hawaii, the Big Island, controls the
v/aterfront there. Castle and Cooke, which at
one time v/as the biggest sugar producer on the
island of Cahu, still own Wailua Sugar Company;
268
LG: they also had another plantation which has since
merged with Oahu Sugar Company. They are the ones
who are the principal stevedoring company in the
port of Honolulu, servicing Matson ships, as well
as other ships.
There is an independent contractor, McCabe
Hamilton and Renney which was a local operation
hanging on "by its teeth, doing primarily army and
navy work and once in a while catching a ship that
did not belong to Matson.
So, after I became secretary, one of the things
I was really interested in was that we had these
locals to which charters had been issued ....
Ward: What do you mean, there had been charters issued?
LG: The Hilo longshoremen had an ILWU charter. The
Oahu longshoremen had an ILWU charter.
Ward: Oh, I see.
LG: And there had been a union in Port Allen. As a
matter of fact, they once had a six or eight
month strike in 1940, a strike which was broken.
, One of the rank and file leaders is still around;
he came from Port Allen. As a matter of fact, the
leader of the Port Allen strike was Jack Hall (who
was to become ILWU regional director) -
Ward: Oh, then he was a natural in the Islands?
LG: Jack Hall had gone to sea. He took part in the
'34 strike. In the '36 strike, he got off the
ship in Honolulu and that's where he settled. He
constantly tried to form a union down there, had
a small paper called the Voice of Labor. Now they
have an Island paper put out by the ILWU called
the Voice, of the ILWU. They were attempting to
organize in places like Port Allen.
Marcus Hyashida is the other guy who was in
Port Allen. I think Jack Hall actually got a
contract in one of the sugar plantations, McBride,
on the island of Kauai. It didn't last very long
but that was a contract, I think, in the name of
the old UCAPAV7A (United Cannery, Agricultural,
Packing and Allied Workers of America) .
269
V/ard: Really? Agricultural workers?
LO: Jack spent all of his time on just one thing -
trying to organize. Jack would recall how he got
by in those days; he would wait until another
seaman v/ould come in, a live one, and get a couple
of bucks. He'd buy meals, or he'd go down and get
some fish and poi, flop almost any place in down
town Honolulu. What did he do about washing his
clothes? Oh, he'd just dive in the ocean, sv/im
around for a while. (laughter) Apparently he led
a pretty rugged life, but not all that unpleasant;
he liked it.
But when the war came along, all that changed.
Organization stopped dead in its tracks. When I
became secretary, one of the things I did was to
start going over the whole structure of the union;
what we had chartered, where it stood. I spent a
lot of time going up and down the coast, visiting
the various ports; generally took the executive
board member of that area along with me, like
Prank Andrews from Clympia, a guy they used to
call "Sull of the foods' 1 .
U.M.
irW
(Interview 11: 25 April, 1978)
More About the California CIO
V/ard: All right, Lou, you want to go back into your days
as secretary with the State CIC Council; the first
thing would be I guess, the North American strike.
LG: There were three things that I did during the time
spent with the State CIO as secretary in addition
to the items I already mentioned, and in addition
to being the head of Labor's IT on-Partisan League,
which sort of automatically came with the title.
One was the role of the California CIO Council
in the North American (aircraft factory) strike.
Another was the attempt to organize the workers in
Hollywood on an industrial basis, led primarily by
270
LG: Jeff Kibre and supported by the State CIO, in an
organization called the USTG - that was the United
Studio Technicians Guild. The third was my appear
ance at the Tolan Committee in reference to the
evacuation of the Japanese from the west coast.
Ward: That was Congressman John Tolan, wasn't it?
LG: John Tolan, yes, I believe he came from the East
Bay. Those hearings took place just prior to the
evacuation, I believe around March 1942. He
conducted those hearings up and down the Coast.
Well, let me try to cover these things one at
a time. The USTG with Jeff Kibre and the North
American strike were pretty much in the same time
frame. The USTG was initiated by Jeff somewhere
around 1938 or the early part of 1939. It was an
attempt to use the National Labor Relations Board
for an industrial election in the studios.
We helped support it and put some money into
the thing; also Jeff managed to get a considerable
amount of help from rank and filers and people
around Hollywood. There was still a strong
progressive group around Hollywood. Remember, the
studios were broken up into dozens of craft unions.
My father worked in the studios, a member of the
Carpenters. One of my brothers, Sam, worked in
the labs there, particularly the Pox Technicolor
lab; I think he was a member of the IATSE,
(International Association of Theatrical and Stage
Employees). A brother-in-law, John Vigoreaux,
married to my sister, worked in Hollywood, primar
ily as a painter. He belonged to still a separate
local. I had another brother, Saul, who is dead
now; he had also worked around the studios. All
of them, of course, were of a progressive bent.
One of the things that was most obvious was that
some sort of an industrial union in Hollywood would
make a great deal more sense than the crazy craft
structure and pecking order they had there. Jeff
put together a perfectly sound approach to the
issue. He understood the nature of the craft
unions and the importance of getting a broad cross-
section of representation.
271
LG: He had a number of people who ranged all the v/ay
from electricians to grips to carpenters. Cne of
the groups there was under progressive direction
and supported the USTG; that was Herb Sorrell with
the Painters' Union. It was during that campaign
that the IATSE suddenly came to life again; it is
made up of a whole series of craft organizations.
They have the motion picture operators in San
Francisco -
Ward: They were a scandal-ridden union too, weren't they?
LG: The union had been taken over by two men, one of
them named Willie Bioff and the other by the name
of Brown. The man with the muscle who really ran
the thing was Willie Bioff. Later on it was found
he had all kinds of connections with mobsters in
Chicago and that area.
We're skipping a little bit, but what finally
happened was that Bioff made a deal with Joe
Schenck (a motion picture mogul). I forget which
of the large studios he was mixed up with, whether
it was Paramount ....
Ward: MGM (Ketro-Goldwyn-Hayer) , I think.
LG: HGM, yes. Joe Schenck did time on that. It was
a back door deal made by Schenck v/ith Bioff and
Brown to bring the IATS15 back in; Hollywood was
pretty well disorganized from the depression time
on.
The sentiment around Hollywood was for a union,
no question about that; but as to whether the IATSE,
with its craft appeal, would have the strength or
not was another thing. I am still convinced to
this day that had there been a completely fair
shake on the election, I think that the USTG would
have v/on.
Ward: Would that have been industry-wide or studio by
studio?
LG: I think it was industry-v/ide. The election, however,
was held at the old Gilmore Stadium. I did not
know until afterwards that the Stadium was not
within the city of Los Angeles. It was part of the
272
LG: county, with some sort of a different relationship
towards the police force. I am convinced that the
election was held there under pressure from the
employers and from the IATSE.
That's where a lot of heavy-handed guys were
used, within a block, a half a block, of the
election polls. Some of the good guys were
literally dumped. My brother, Sam, got beaten up
during that election.
This was Bioff's technique. Bioff later wound
up in Las Vegas, I believe. Some years later he
stepped on the starter of his car, and they
haven't found him or any part of the car since.
So, USTG was dumped - they got beaten in the
election.
Ward: Did you have anything to do with Walt Disney?
LG: No, that was later on; you're thinking of ...
Ward: The strike in '41.
LG: There was a strike later on by the cartoonists -
they had a Cartoonists' Guild. There was a Screen
Actors' Guild, Screen Writers' Guild, Screen
Directors' - there were a lot of guilds, as
distinguished from unions. Jeff's idea was that
the whole pecking order in Hollywood was such that
people thought of themselves as guildsmen rather
than trade unionists.
I don't believe the Cartoonists were part of
the USTG, but they were a progressive union. They
were led by some awfully good people. Disney had
really put the whole cartoon business on a chain
line; it was no different than a belt line in an
automobile plan.
The way the thing was broken down, photographing
a cartoon was simply going over all these drawings,
done by the cartoonists. It was a belt line busi
ness. Disney broke their back, you remember.
Ward: What did you do to help the USTG?
273
LG: We helped financially, met with some people I
still knew from the old days. I helped with some
of the literature, but primarily feeding a few
bucks in there, not a great deal.
V. r ard: There wasn't that much money?
LG-: Not much money; you rarely saw it. A lot of
things were "do it yourself". Nobody was terribly
upset if you wrote up a leaflet, typed up the
stencil, did the mimeographing, and then took it
out and distributed it the next morning.
Not too different from what had happened in
Warehouse. We thought it was an enormous step
forward when we managed to hire a part-time
stenographer. We'd always find people who could
do things. I recall the IATSS putting out some
literature to the effect that the USTG was being
supported by the CIO and that the Secretary of the
State CIC, myself, was in L.A. living in a second
class hotel, the Royal Palms. To the IATSE, the
important thing there was the second class hotel.
That's the way they thought.
That election failed. The net result, while
some of it was bad in the sense of bringing guys
like Bioff and Brown into the picture, was that
the unions were revived. My family was mixed up
in the USTG. People like my brother supported it
ardently; there was none of the family blacklisted
at that time.
Later on in the 40s you had the big movement
led by Herb Sorrell, an attempt to put together
the motion picture crafts around a progressive
program. When those strikes were broken you began
to see the beginning of a real blacklist around
Hollywood which, by the way, is one of the reasons
why one of my brothers, Sam, takes the name of
Gilbert. He was blacklisted out of Hollywood;
this was around '46 - '47 ....
Ward: Sam? Saul took the name of Gilbert -
LG: Saul and Sam took the name Gilbert - they both
did - because of the blacklisting in the studios.
Sam had to start from scratch. Here he was a hell
of a good technician. He had become head of the
night lab at 7ox Technicolor, pretty responsible job,
274
LG-: He had gone with my dad to the Soviet Union in
1937 or thereabouts. Around 1936, my dad and my
brother were offered jobs in the Soviet Union,
where they were setting up their motion picture
industry. They wanted them there primarily in
conjunction with set construction, something in
which my dad was really good. My brother went
along with him and they spent approximately a year
there under regular contract with the Soviet
government; monthly checks to support the family.
During the period they were there my sister
visited them. She was over in Prance and spent
a short time in the Soviet Union. Incidentally,
to this day Sam speaks good Russian. He got to be
just as good as my father.
As a matter of fact, when there was a delega
tion of Russians that came by the International
(ILWU office) three or four months ago my brother
happened to be up here and he came by; he v/as just
chattering away with them in Russian. He was
interested in getting a UCLA basketball team to
visit the Soviet Union for some exhibition games.
This was just recently. As a matter of fact, he
and my sister-in-law, Rose, chaperoned a U. S.
volleyball team over to Poland a couple of years
ago.
Ward: Rose would be Sam's wife?
LG: Yes. His first wife, Punny, died of cancer some
years ago. Sam and Rose sponsored this girls'
volleyball team and they came back with some rather
amusing stories. Apparently, the girls did fairly
well except that they played some of the teams
there which were actually slightly higher grade;
they were something closer to college.
This v/as a high school team, so that they didn't
fare so well. My brother complained that the
competition at least should have been on approxi
mately the same level. He told a rather humorous
story about an incident in Poland. Apparently,
some guy had too much to drink and was at the same
hotel where these girls were staying. He decided
that he was in love with some girl from the volley
ball team and he followed her and tried to break
into the room where this girl was staying.
275
LG: Finally, the gals got together and they didn't
hurt him physically, but they put him down and
said, "Let's teach him a lesson." They stripped
him of all his clothes, and there he was, bare-
assed naked in the corridor of the hotel.
The security guard came up and wanted to file
charges and haul the guy off to prison. He was
terribly disturbed; you just don't do this to
foreign visitors, you don't act this way. The
girls told the guard, "Look, leave him alone.
He's been punished enough."
Sam was trying to do some of the same thing
in the way of a college basketball team; they
had been having a lot of these preliminaries to
the Olympics. That was the reason he was up here
and was talking to some of the people who were
part of this Russian delegation.
Anyway, the USTG- just didn't make it. I had
met Jeff at UCLA, but he was in a completely
different circle of people than many of us. Ke
v/as very active on the school paper and he did all
the sports - was one of the editors of the paper.
He was considered a bit of a wheel around campus.
I might mention that Jeff and his family had
been attached to the studios for many years, too.
They used to make what are called "miniatures".
Yflien you see one of these big airplane disasters,
like the Hindenburg going up in flames, these are
done in miniature; when they are photographed,
they look big and real.
Ward: They were technicians, then.
LG: Technicians; all these miniatures had to be built
according to scale, painstaking and time-consuming
work, highly skilled. So, this family had a long
history of connections with the motion picture
industry, just the way mine did.
But at UCLA he was not any part of this left-
wing circle of youngsters. But after he got
started with the USTG, with the experience he pick
ed up there, he decided to stay with the trade
union movement.
276
LG-: Ee later became head of the United Fishermen's
Union; the awesome power of the U. S. government
put that union out of business by declaring the
efforts on the part of the fishermen to negotiate
a decent price for their catch, instead of being
taken to the cleaners by people like Paladini
(A. Paladini Seafood Company) and others, was a
conspiracy in restraint of trade; that they were
price-fixing.
Thurgood Marshall (prosecuting for the U. S.
Justice Department) pressed the charges against
them and the great victory he won was to destroy
this little union trying to get a couple of cents
for their days out there on the high seas. The
places where the union held on was in those areas
where you had the larger fishing boats like the
tuna fleet; there the men worked on shares and you
could negotiate the question of shares, rather
than the price of fish.
The North American strike took place around
mid-1941.
Ward: Early June, '41.
LG-: That's about right, I guess. The situation by
that time internationally was beginning to change.
The U.S. was already into making heavy supplies
for the British and I think 'we were supporting
some of the armies in exile, like the French, as
well. The whole posture of the administration -
they didn't call them "war plants", they were
"defense plants". Then, there were groups work
ing out of London, like the Dutch seamen.
Ward: Poles?
LG: Yes, people who had not gone along v/ith the capi
tulation of Leopold (King of Belgium). The
feeling on the part of most progressives, at least
when the war broke, was that in many ways this was
just another imperialist war. Things people like
myself were very conscious of were efforts on the
part of the Soviet Union, and Litvinoff particul-
arily, to set up collective security pacts;
attempts to reach agreement with the French and
the British to try to stop Hitler before the wave
really took over.
277
LG: We all remember Chamberlain and "peace in our
time." There was also the feeling that the
Russians were left with no alternative. I'll
admit that things like the Ribbentrop-Molotov
agreement were awfully hard to handle, although
there again it fell within the same set of con
clusions; all the efforts on the part of the
major powers - particularly the British, who
dominated foreign policy, at least in the European
end of things - were directed towards appeasement;
doing nothing to stop Hitler.
It didn't in any way diminish our feelings
about Hitler; everything from the boycott of Nazi
goods; the picket line around the Karlsruhe when
it visited in San Francisco; the resolutions that
had been adopted against Hitler, the whole feeling
we had about fascism.
In retrospect, I think we over-emphasized some
of these developments and failed to see the broad
er picture, particularly the extent of Hitler's
appetite. Basically I think where we were mis
taken was where we failed to measure certain deep-
seated democratic feelings in countries like
England, which were simply not going to break in
a situation like that.
When the North American strike broke, I remember
being in San Francisco and getting a call on the
thing. It hit the headlines very quickly; Roosevelt
called the army out against the strikers.
I remember heading down there almost at once
and meeting with Dick Frankenstein; he was one of
the officers in the United Automobile Workers. At
that time I think he was in charge of the Aircraft
Division; he was an effective guy. He had been a
side-kick of Walter Reuther (president of the UAW
at that time) for many years; v/as one of the guys
who was beaten up by Henry Ford's (founder of the
Ford Motor Company) goons.
Frankstein was a tough egg though, a strong guy
and had a lot of guts. He was at the Biltmore
Hotel (in Los Angeles), and I went by to see him.
First thing I did v/as to make it plain to him -
on that score I v/as also relaying Harry's message -
278
LG: that we couldn't see the strike as a winner; any
attempt to take on the U. S. Army was just insane,
wouldn't work and ought to be called off. The
main issue there was an attempt to get something
like two-bits an hour increase in pay -
Ward: They v/ere getting 50 cents and were asking for
75 cents.
LG: That was probably the minimum wage.
Ward: Yes, it v/as.
LG: Anyway, the session with Frankenstein was whole
some. Cn the one hand he v/as very much in support
of the workers; on the other hand, as a trade
unionist he knew perfectly well that they v/ere
heading for disaster. It would be the kind of
strike that v/ould completely unravel; and if you
let the thing unravel to that degree, then you
would take another risk, namely, that a group of
guys who were going to hang out to the end v/ould
be the ones to be victimized.
They are the best trade unionists, generally
the best leadership material inside the plants,
and they are the ones who get it in the neck. It
is one way that employers manage to behead
effective unions in some of the big plants. After
this session, I remember going down and talking
to (Philip) Slim Connelly and Kichener -
Ward: Lev/ I-Iichener.
LG: The head of the Automobile Workers down there at
the time. I said, "Look, this thing ain't going
to v/ork, that's all." They knew it too, but
nobody wanted to say it; that was the problem.
It's understandable, in every beef and in every
strike. The best trade unionists are the most
reluctant to say, "Fellows, it's time to back up."
It is the responsibility of a trade unionist;
if he is not prepared to take it on, he has no
business being there. If the only job is leading
the charge and carrying the banner with the martial
music playing, hire some majorettes and some
drummer boys; you don't need any trade union
officials or any leadership material.
279
LG:
Ward :
Ward :
LG:
There was general agreement that something ought
to be done. I remember going out the next morning
early to the North American plant -
Lid you go to the beanfield meeting where Franken
stein spoke? And was booed down?
Wo, I was not there. I know that he was booed
down. It was the next morning that I was out
there. I remember having parked the car about a
mile away from where the union headquarters were,
because the streets were blocked off by the army,
and walking the rest of the distance. They didn't
stop you or ask any questions.
I went to the union headquarters. I was on the
phone to people primarily like Slim Connelly; I
v/as talking to San Francisco, keeping Harry advised,
I was talking to a number of local people; at a
stage like that you are reaching for almost anybody
the National Labor Relations Board, people you
know, what-have-you, to see if something could be
done. Call a stand-off on the thing.
I'd been on the phone, for about an hour and a
half, and I got off and suddenly realized that the
office was empty. I looked outside; we were
completely surrounded by the troops. They just
decided that when this guy gets through, we're
just walking in there, too.
So, I managed to get the leadership of the local
(CIO) Council. We figured the only thing to do was
to call a meeting at the CIC headquarters. The
meeting v/as too big to hold inside.
That was the following morning - it was a Tuesday?
Right. There were several thousand people there -
what we did was rig up loudspeakers and took over
the whole back street behind Aval on Blvd. The job
pretty well fell on me to break the news that there
was no daylight in sight; it would be just a ques
tion of time before the army took the strike apart;
guys v/ould start drifting back to work.
Then those who v/ere good and solid would
probably finally be victimized, and it would be a
double loss. The only thing to do v/as to go back
to work, and to go back intact.
280
Ward: Well, the army had dispersed the picket line the
day before.
LG-: Yes, they had dispersed the picket line, but had
not started a major back to work movement - a big
difference. I'm sure, had the strike gone on even
another 24 hours, the announcement would have been
made by the army or the company, or by both, -
saying anybody who wants to get back to work would
be completely protected, etc. etc. - the usual crap,
Later on, it had a peculiar windfall for us.
I'm not sure if it was an un-American Activities
Committee hearing, or some (other) Congressional
hearing, or one of Harry's trials, where Franken
stein was questioned about the 1941 North American
strike.
Cne of the traditional enemies in Congress
decided to hang this one on Harry. Frankenstein
said that exactly the opposite was true, that I
had been down there, that I had talked to him and
that I had been in touch with Harry and that our
position was to call it off.
Bear in mind that we're still talking about a
period when the harassment of Harry and attempts
to get him deported were on full blast. It did
peter out during the war, but at that time the war
was not on. Frankenstein turned out to be a very
stand-up guy. Anyway, that's where the North
American strike ended. Shortly thereafter the
Nazis turned against the Russians.
Ward: The 22nd (of June) ;just a few days after the strike.
LG: A few days afterward. From that point on there
were all kinds from Socialists to Social Democrats,
attacking the left on the grounds that the moment
the Russians v/ere attacked, why then ....
Ward: We were talking about Hitler's attack on the
Soviet Union on June 22 and the changes in policy.
LG-: Vie made up for our mistakes pretty rapidly. It
was a loyal and devoted group that pitched in to
help the v/ar effort. The whole orientation of the
281
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward;
LG:
Ward;
LG:
trade union movement and of everybody in the
country changed. It changed to a large degree in
June. Then it completely changed in December when
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Doubters were still around; the only one from
whom I've never gotten a firm opinion - just my
own reluctance to ask the question - was John L.
Lewis. John L. Lewis remained opposed to the war
even after June - I know that. To what degree he
changed his position after Pearl Harbor, I'm not
sure. And Lewis still had this very hostile
attitude towards Roosevelt -
And also against the British.
He never trusted the British.
Perfidious Albion.
Yep. Later he saw nothing wrong in pulling the
coal miners out, because they had some things
coming to them.
Even though the progressive element which he' had
once headed was aghast at that strike.
They were aghast at it. Harry issued a statement
which, I'm sure, he regretted the rest of his life,
that Lewis was in effect aiding the enemy. Lewis
didn't see it that way. He was helping his own
people.
Concentration Camps for Japanese
LG:
That covers two of those items I wanted to talk
about. The third has to do with the Tolan Commit
tee. After Pearl Harbor we had the headlines and
newspaper stories, inventions and fabrications, the
lies, the unbelievable bullshit that went on about
the Japanese.
It was a weird period, actually insane; somebody
with a bellyful of rock-gut would sight Japanese
submarines and that would make a headline. Some
282
LG:
Ward
LG:
Ward:
LG:
reporter doesn't have anything else to do in Hawaii
so, he writes a story on how the sugar workers
cut the cane in such a way so that they made
arrows pointing to Pearl Harbor; as though the
Japanese didn't know where it was!
All kinds of things were going on about the
huge Japanese menace, these people who were pledged
to the Emperor. No question but that the Japanese
as a group made a very distinct effort to maintain
their own language and culture. You didn't expect
them to adopt the white man's culture in Hawaii;
they were there as contract laborers.
They were economically unpopular, too.
There was a background, particularly on the West
Coast, of hostility toward all Oriental laborers.
It started off not against the Japanese but against
the Chinese, who were brought here to help build
the railroads and to do some of the dirty work that
they couldn't get anybody else to do.
During one of those periods of economic crises
one of the groups that helped to launch this
anti-Oriental campaign that resulted in the Orient
al Exclusion Act was the American labor movement;
particularly the San Francisco labor movement.
It's not a happy chapter in Jack London's life.
Jack London was active in the San Francisco Labor
Council. He was a very outspoken -
He voted against the Yellow Peril (an anti-Oriental
phrase of those times).
Yes, he voted against the Yellow Peril. As a
matter of fact, there are other things that Jack
London did that were pretty well screwed up - the
time they got him to cover the American invasion
of Mexico; Vera Cruz. He wrote about the great
heroes who were taking over Mexico as opposed to
the Carranza government.
Then there was the Oriental Exclusion Act.
That did a couple of things. People like the Issei,
born abroad, had great difficulty or couldn't be
come American citizens - I'm not quite sure which
it was. Their children born in this country were
283
LG-: citizens by birth, but under the Oriental Exclusion
Act there were no further admittances of Chinese
or any other Orientals.
The balance of the hostility against the
Japanese was a direct outcome of the Hearst press
and the McClatchy press (a powerful factor in
California's agricultural regions). Their constant
perorations against the Japanese and the yellow
menace had gone on for years.
True, very few people replied to it, because
there was no editorial opinion coming from other
sources saying, "Look, you're full of beans - none
of this stuff is true."
The Japanese lived among themselves and by them
selves. That was understandable; then, of course,
you had plain, simple capitalist greed. Japanese
had taken land which had been marginal and didn't
lend itself to easy, mechanized agriculture;
things of that sort.
They were the ones who by plain hard, stoop,
sweat labor had made that land profitable. I'm
talking about particularly that whole coastal
section - Half Moon Bay clear down to Santa Cruz;
it was the Japanese, primarily, who were raising
the produce there for the American people.
Ward: They were hard-working and very frugal.
LG: Yes. And they knew what it meant to sacrifice.
The Japanese were part of the fishing fleet out of
San Pedro. Well, under the Oriental Exclusion Act,
Japanese were not permitted to own boats, what
were considered deep sea boats. The action taken
against the Japanese included "libeling" these
boats. That's a legal term.
By libeling a boat, it was, in effect, attached
on the grounds that while the boat was ostensibly
in the names of the children or even in the name
of Van Camp Co., they were actually owned by the
Issei, foreign-born Japanese. The economic vul
tures moved in from every direction. This was
some of the background.
284
LG: With Pearl Harbor, the public got all the images
of the sneaky Japanese stabbing you in the back;
the inscrutable Orientals with their evasive
foreign policy; the kamikazes and their adherence
to the Emperor.
That's the sort of thing you could write in a
bar-room and it didn't take a great deal of work.
The net result was General (John L.) DeWitt's
reaction, and the President's, that the only
thing to do was to evacuate all the Japanese from
the west coast, a sensitive area.
Terry and I went down to Manzanar this last
weekend. It was primarily a pilgrimage; also it
was a celebration honoring some of their old
friends who had taken a stand against the Japanese
evacuation. I was asked down.
But later on Roosevelt appointed a man who was
in charge of the War Relocation Authority, a man
named Dillon Myer, He was really an outstanding
man who did everything humanly possible to abolish
those camps; to get the people out of the camps;
get jobs in places like Salt Lake, Chicago; you
name it. He couldn't get them back to the west
coast; he knew that. Roosevelt by that time might
have decided it was all a mistake. That is some
of the background.
I was still secretary of the State CIO at the
time and when the Tolan Committee came to San
Francisco I decided I would testify against the
evacuation. It was just a gut feeling that you
don't kick people around. If there were any enemy
aliens among them, they'd find just as many Ger
mans in Yorktown - that part of New York City
where the Nazis used to hang out - as they'd find
among the Japanese.
As to where the Italians stood, I doubt if any
of them thought much of Mussolini. Perhaps the
most they knew about him was that he made the
trains run on time, because he kept saying so.
Anyway, it's a fact that there v/as this wholesale
dragnet against all the Japanese, uprooting all
these people, destroying their life-v/ork on farms .
285
Ward: Confiscation of property -
LG: They didn't confiscate their property, exactly.
What happened was that the hysteria mounted to a
point where some of them made forced sales; of
course the vultures were hanging around, including
the Associated Farmers, ready to pick it up as
quickly as they could.
But when they announced the evacuation, they
had these hearings; they were at the old Post
Office Building across from the Greyhound on
Seventh Street. Anyway, sure, it was an uncomfort
able moment going down there to testify. People
like Earl Warren (who was to become Chief Justice
of the U. S. Supreme Court) had just testified
that they had to be moved out of here, that they
couldn't be trusted.
Ward: He was attorney-general then.
LG: Right. Jack Shelley (then a State senator) testi
fied against them. (Angelo) Rossi was mayor of
San Francisco -
Ward: Yes, he was.
LG: This whole parade of people, all figuring why not
get in a couple of political licks against
defenseless people. As I remember the hearing,
(Congressman John H.) Tolan simply assumed when I
got up that I would testify the same way. The
hearing room was packed; a lot of Japanese were
there. He was pretty much taken aback when I
started peeling off -
Ward: Who was?
LG: Congressman Tolan. When I started taking off on
the Hearst press, this screaming about the Yellow
Peril, the whole attitude we were taking towards
these people. I said that it would be a dark
chapter in American history; actually the only
people who showed any class in the situation were
the Japanese. Many of them said, "Maybe there
isn't a damn thing we can do about this, but the
quicker we can get into the army and defeat the
Emperor, the better."
286
LG-: The moment the U. S. Army was opened up and a
chance was given to them to volunteer they did so
in high percentages. As everybody knows, some of
the heaviest casualties suffered in the war were
from the men in the 442nd from Hawaii. They
handled themselves with a great deal of dignity.
Tolan was not hostile to my testimony. At the
end he was very flattering and said, "Well, I'm
really glad you are not against me." I wanted to
go on with some further testimony quoting some
lines from the Statue of Liberty and he said,
"You've said enough - you're quite wonderful!"
And let it go at that. The testimony got nowhere -
Ward: You did this as an individual? You wouldn't have
been asked to testify if you hadn't been secretary
of the California CIC Council?
LG: I wasn't asked to testify. People volunteered to
testify.
Ward: Oh, I see.
LG: Naturally, of course, your politicos got in the
act right away; another headline for them. We
might have gotten a communication; I think they
advised everybody in an area, like they conducted
hearings in other places. In Tacoma they had a
hearing because there were Japanese there; places
like Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, Al Wirin
testified against the internment camps.
I'm not saying I went down there unbeknownst to
the executive board of the CIC Council. I talked
to most of them on the phone. I remember talking
to Harry about the thing, too. The reaction of
most of the guys I talked to v/asn't one of hosti
lity. They said, "If you feel that keenly about
it, go ahead."
Ward: In other words, there was no backlash.
LG: No backlash; nobody said, "Look, you bastard, if
you do this, we're going to start a recall." I had
a good rapport with the guys and it was very
friendly. Their general attitude was "Look, it's
your neck, you know." But neither did they
volunteerl
287
Ward: Did you get any backlash from the Communist party?
LG: No, I didn't -
Ward: Although that was not their policy, was it?
LG: I don't think they had a policy in any particular
way. The Communist party's policy was all-out
support of the war effort. I don't recall the
party ever taking a position in favor of the
internment camps. I don't recall them taking a
position against them, either. I did it on my
own; I felt it was the right thing to do.
When I went down to Manzanar this weekend it
brought back a lot of memories. There's nothing
very comfortable about a hearing of that sort,
even though not nearly as uncomfortable as some
thing like an un-American Activities Committee or
a (Senator John L.) McClellan hearing, or an
(Senator James C.) Eastland Committee hearing,
where I had to make appearances.
It's not that bad; but you're facing a hostile
atmosphere - no question about that; and a lot of
prestigious people, from General DeWitt to Earl
Warren and what have you. You take a position
which is pretty close to defying the nation. There
is always a certain amount of trepidation. You
walk into one of these hearings hanging on to your
balls and hoping you come out with them intact.
At Manzanar - our neighbor here, (in Mill Valley)
Steve Skloot, worked on this motion picture
documentary "Farewell to Manzanar". It was an NBC
documentary and it's a rather a good job. When he
was talking to me about it one day, I said, "Well,
I know a little bit about what happened at the
time. "
I loaned him a book by (Allan R.) Bosworth. I
think he called it, "America's Concentration Camps."
Bosworth was a commander in the U. S. Navy. I
think he was married to a Japanese. He wrote this
book after the war and later on at a talk show I
was asked to come down there because they were in
terviewing the author and perhaps I would want to
contribute something about what happened during
that period.
288
LG-: I got down there all right and Bosworth said,
"Gosh, when I read your testimony, I threw my hat
in the air." Ke gave me a copy of his book. He
quoted me in great detail; the humorous thing
about the talk show was that as these questions
came along, Bosworth would defer the questions to
me. It was during the beginning of the Vietnam
War - or one of those ....
Ward: The Korean War?
LG: No, it was later; it was one of the first books
written on the thing. Anyway, I loaned this copy
to Steve Skloot, my neighbor. He read the thing
and gave me a copy of a book, "Farewell to Manza-
nar," on which this documentary was based. "Cne
question," he said, "how did you happen to do it?
Why did you do it?" I asked myself the same
question at Manzanar. In retrospect, the thing
that bothered me the most is: "Why didn't we all
do it?"
The business of the get-together at Manzanar
was very impressive. There was a small group of
older people, many of them in their eighties;
these were people who spent the whole war there,
including one guy 88 years old, a stone mason.
He had built some new stone entrances to the old
Manzanar camp; somebody gave me ....
Ward: The plaque is still there.
LG: Right. It took them years to get the plaque put
up there. Karl Yoneda (a longshoreman and war
veteran) had invited me down there, and he took
some photographs. Somebody like myself testifying
about this thing is really no big deal, if you
measure it against the indignity done the Japanese,
the hardships imposed on them, the kind of
patience and suffering they were willing to take,
including volunteering for things like the
strategic services and for combat duty.
People like Karl Yoneda went into the Office
of Strategic Services - that was what I was trying
to think of when I talked about that study on war
shipping. They volunteered at once. Here were
Elaine Yoneda - Elaine Black (Yoneda 1 s wife) -
289
LG: and their four-year old child; he was considered
an enemy alien; yes, Tommy. So they wound up in
Manzanar; that was the only way to keep the family
together.
After Karl went into the service, they wouldn't
let her go back to San Francisco! "No," they said,
"You can go anywhere else you want;" it took some
months "before she could go back to San Francisco.
I think of what these people went through and of
the horrible indignity that this country did to
itself.
Actually testifying in one of these things is
really small potatoes. What I was really impressed
about was that for years the Japanese who suffered
through the concentration camps wouldn't even talk
about it. But in recent years it's the younger
Japanese who decided that they wanted to find out
all about it. They are the ones, together with
people like Karl Yoneda - who never has forgotten -
who really began these pilgrimages to Manzanar.
Karl, in his own quiet way, continued as a long
shoreman after the war. He's retired now from
longshoring. He had the most effective exhibit at
Manzanar; these were things posted around the
windows of this Volkswagen Karl has. One of them
is called "Jap Hunting License," a poster put out
by some guy who was making a buck in San Francisco;
"Open Season At All Times." The headlines of a
Japanese sabotage ring broken up in Vallejo. All
of these, pure fabrications.
All Karl did was put them up. Everybody who
came down there stopped by and looked at these
things. Here was this small group of older Japanese;
I had some chats with them because luckily they got
a fairly decent day. They have days down there
where the wind blows so hard; it blows off the
desert.
Right near Lone Pine - it's pretty barren country,
about the first area you get to after a long stretch
of desolation around the edges of Mojave. Anyway,
there must have been about 500, maybe more, of
younger people, most of them in their twenties and
barely in their thirties - Japanese youngsters,
militant. That is a most encouraging thing.
290
LG-: This was so different from the Japanese-American
Citizens League which sprang up at the end of the
war. A lot of it was rooted in the old 442nd.* It
took the Japanese American Citizens League 25 years
to finally get around to asking me to some affair
where they gave me some goddam certificate. I have
it downstairs somewhere.
Ward: They gave you what?
LG: Some sort of a certificate of honor. I recall one
time they were meeting in San 7rancisco and Harry
must have had nothing but mischief in his system
that day; he started running down the people who
were in charge of the affair. He said, "I think
you ought to invite Lou Goldblatt, the secretary-
treasurer of the ILWU. He's the one who testified
against the evacuation." And they fell all over
themselves, but there was no invitation forthcom
ing.
They were so damn anxious; gee, not just 100%
patriotic; 180 proof wouldn't go. They were so
determined to become completely assimilated into
the capitalist structure. Not so these youngsters:
they are learning something which is so important -
if they turn their backs on any other people,
whether it be blacks in South Africa or people in
Chile, or people - the Wilmington Ten - they are
just turning their backs on themselves.
Driving back, I couldn't help but think of some
of our earlier conversation. You recall that I felt
a number of things because of the whole background
of my parents and the Jewish tradition.
Ward: Yes.
The Power of Jewish Tradition
LG: It had a specific effect on me; a great deal of an
effect. I could understand why my reaction was when
somebody asked, "Why did you do it?" I recall some
of the things I picked up; I don't think it's any
* A military combat unit in World War II.
291
LG: accident that over the years you found Jews identi
fied with almost every spin-off movement you could
think of, as well as major political movements.
They were not only leading Socialists and leading
Communists. They were also leading Vegetarians;
they became disciples of Robert Cwens, who formed
the first communes in America. They were also very
strong trade unionists. I recall reading a booklet
on the Jewish unions; there used to be Jewish trade
unions where the discussions took place in Yiddish.
This guy had the interesting theory that the
reasons for the Jews' participation in so many of
these revolutionary causes or changing movements
or what-have-you was because of a fundamental ethic
which he calls Messianic expectancy. This is not
new; it's one that is used time and time again and
it's not "god's chosen people" at all.
The whole idea of the coming of the Messiah is
the dominant theme in Jewish religion, "Next year
in Jerusalem," at the end of some of their prayers.
Some of them would do everything humanly possible
to make sure that they would be buried in the Valley
of Gethsemane. The graves there are all jumbled
together; this is where the Messiah has to appear.
It also accounts for some of the crazy aberra
tions among them, like some of these religious Jews
who continued in practically a straight line from
the Jewish kings; never did leave what is now
Israel, particularly Jerusalem. They would not
take part in the 1948 struggle for independence.
"This can't be the time; the Messiah has to come
first."
This is an entirely different concept than what
this guy was trying to explain in this book. A
Messianic expectancy is that you have to live with
a code in your own head so that if the Messiah came
tomorrow, you could make an accounting.
ard: Make a what?
LG: Make an accounting of yourself, which I think ex
plains some of these things. A large number of
them are not only non-religious but pretty violently
292
LG: atheist. There's no contradiction in these things;
it's only when people like the Jewish synagogues
try to take over the Jewish culture that I get
particularly irritated. They've got no property
rights.
It's also one of the reasons why my folks and
those who thought alike felt that when a group of
people like the Jews were in struggle over the
years against what they called the disabilities -
various forms of discrimination, progroms and what-
have-you - that somehow the Jews did not have the
same right to "be sons-of-bitches that other people
have.
It is something that I have carried most of my
life. I feel the same way about the Black move
ment. It's gotten me into some hot water, but it
has also made me some very warm friends.
I can understand people who say, "My idea of
freedom is to get my share of the action" - period.
"I want the right to be just as big a son-of-a-
bitch as anybody else - just as big a thief - just
as big an exploiter." That's not a fight for
freedom; that's simply a primitive form of nation
alism. It has nothing to do with revolutionary
struggle or with progress.
The worst thing that's happening in Israel right
now really goes back to the same thing; the one
group in Israel really dedicated to something quite
different was the Kibbutz movement, which is a
pretty genuine commune, they are self-supporting;
they work the land. The whole idea was that they
were going to live different lives.
But they have become a smaller and smaller min
ority in Israel. A type has taken over; what some
people in Israel would call "the all rightniks."
They are doing all right; "I'm fine, Jack - screw
you." There is a fundamental struggle. I don't
see any way of reconciling these two things.
The same code applies to other movements, whether
they be Black or Japanese. Cnce in a while you
begin to see the whole thing emerge again. You
293
LG: remember the black riots, including Watts, where
they burned up a good part of the town and which
many people thought, "My God! how terrible - how
terrible!" The blacks did not feel that way -
quite the contrary. They said, "Okay, we're giving
you a bit of a demonstration on how in the hell we
feel."
I happened to be in L. A. about that time and I
called our (Warehouse) Local 26 headquarters. The
man who was president of the local, a black, was
there and he says, "Look, we decided that there
was no use keeping the staff around here today -
things are a bit rough. I wouldn't be too concern
ed. I plan to stay here." His was one reaction.
I go out to see my brother, Sam, who lives not
too far from Pacific Palisades - just north of that,
One of his neighbors rushes in and says, "They're
coming, they're coming!" And I sat there and said,
"Who's coming?" He says, "You know who I mean."
My brother kept his cool and said, "Why don't you
go home?" See, just the two different attitudes.
There v/as a writer who put out a very brief
booklet; it was a sermon which certainly was right.
I think it was called, "Ky Brother Esau." Esau was
a black brother; tells the people like the Jewish
merchants in Watts, "If you want my advice, I'll
give it to you - get out."
He was really telling them only one thing;
everything else is bullshit. None of this business
of stick around, be a little bit better on your
credit; don't charge them quite as much interest -
any crap like that. Don't keep giving them the
rejects - the worst crap there is around. He just
said, "Get out."
All these things I kept thinking about as I was
coming back from Manzanar; the fact that here are
a bunch of Japanese kids who are determined that
this thing will not be forgotten. I know there are
a lot of people going around saying that life is
too short to hold a grievance. It is equally true
that life is too short to forget some grievances.
294
Ward: So many people have felt that Judaism is synony
mous with being a son-of-a-bitch in commerce. I
have run into a great deal of that.
LG: Sure. I understand the anti-Semitism of the blacks
in Vv'atts. The Jews there are not a good example of
humankind .
Ward: That's why this writer said, "The best thing you
can do is get out"?
LG: Yes, "get out"! The Jewish merchants probably had
the first stores that were ripped open, and they
had it coming.
Ward: Did you ever run into a feeling among workers that
outside of the needle trades no Jew ever worked
with his hands?
LG: Yes, you get some of that feeling once in a while;
plus a feeling that how come you're active in the
unions, you could have done this - you could have
done that; that sort of thing. Not hostile, just
curious . . .
Ward: Israel has done a great deal to wipe out that
feeling that Jews are not workers.
LG: The building trades in. Israel at one time were
almost entirely Jews. Jews are good building
trades workers. Ky dad was a very good carpenter.
The guys would come by the house to fix the plumb
ing and things of that sort, most of them were
Jews and they were good workers.
Now, I think, the overwhelming majority are
Arabs. I hope they are not drifting back so as to
undermine the essential feature of Israel. The
real pioneers, the real challutsim as they are
called, challutsim, were the guys who were deter
mined to go to Israel; they were not too interested
in the orthodoxy or the religious side of the
thing.
?or awhile, you know, the Zionist movement
played around with all kinds of places. Baron
(Maurice de) Hirsch (of Germany) had a movement to
settle them in South America, Brazil or Argentina.
295
LG: There were movements to try to get a Jewish home
land in parts of Africa. So it isn't as though
all was focused in there; later on guys like
Theodore Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement,
and some of the people around him, felt that the
closest tie was that of Israel. I doubt whether
Israel would have grown to anything like its pre
sent shape or form or policy had it not been for
the Holocaust. That made all the difference.
I am not a Zionist. I have made that very
plain to people.
296
YI THE HAWAIIAN DRAMA OPENS
(Interview 12: 2 Kay, 1978) ##
Aftermath of the Tolan Hearing
Ward: Lou, you had something you wanted to refer to in
regard to the Tolan Hearing.
LC-: There is one small item which is of a bit of
interest. In the latter part of World War II the
man who was placed in charge of the War Relocation
Authority was named Dillon Myer; his objective
was to try to empty out those camps -
Ward: Yes, you did mention that -
LG: Completely unsolicited, he sent me a very warm
letter. Now, skipping a few years, after winning
the sugar strike, (in Hawaii), we took a set-back
in pineapple in 1947.
In 1948 there was an attempt to try to get the
Hawaii workers to disclaim any connections with
the west coast and build Hawaii for the Hawaiians,
one of these strictly company-union ideas. We
decided that rather than just ignore it, we'd be
better off to take care of the thing in the
initial stages. We did that by calling a special
convention of the ILWU in Hilo. During this con
vention I took out this letter from Dillon Myer
and read it to the convention. After all a lot of
the leadership in the formation of the union had
been Japanese, particularly second generation
Japanese.
297
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward :
LG:
The letter had an enormous impact. We insisted on
putting the thing to a referendum vote. The
results were something like 98 percent or more to
stay with the ILWU. I mention that "because the
appearance before the Tolan Committee, in its own
peculiar way, came back to be of great benefit some
seven years later.
Let's see where we are.
Ckay. In 1943 I returned to the west coast and
Gene Paton, who was secretary at the time, had
decided to volunteer for the army. I took over as
temporary secretary until the election in the
union convention.
The International?
Right, where I ran for secretary- treasurer; I was
unopposed. After I became secretary, it was
obvious that a lot of things had to be done, along
with a complete re-structuring of the union. We
needed something in the way of a research depart
ment; we were going to continue to expand and move
into new areas. We decided we had to have a
newspaper. That's where Morris Watson came out to
the west coast to edit The Dispatcher.
V/e moved to new headquarters down at 604
Montgomery Street, (San Francisco). There was
also the business of trying to centralize the
structure of the International: it had been
splattered all up and down the coastj for example,
having the secretary's office in Seattle and the
president's office in San Francisco.
Part of it stemmed from the structure they had
when we were part of the ILA, Pacific Coast Dis
trict, and the attempt to keep the coast unified.
From an operational point of view, it was really
quite hopeless.
I began to go over all the records we could
find on the union itself; where it had started;
where it had stopped. I knew a good deal about
the warehouse end of the thing. By that time,
particularly in L. A., the friction between the
298
LG-: Teamsters Union and the ILV/J was pretty intense.
There v/ere a number of street fights and everything
else going on; getting some sort of a solid
structure in Los Angeles was one hell of a job all
by itself.
There was a good deal of turnover of leadership
and we just did not have the same quality of people
we had in the Bay Area. Still and all, they made
a lot of headway; they did have a growing organiza
tion, and that held on as ILWU Local 26.
Studying Hawaii
LG-: I began to read up on Hawaii because I was fascina
ted as to v/hy we did not have well organized
longshore groups covered by contract or tied in to
the Pacific Coast agreement. After all, Hawaii
was dependent almost entirely, at least 85 percent
to 90 percent, on west coast shipping; Matson had
about the nearest thing to a complete monopoly on
all trade to Hawaii.
The thing struck me as peculiar. I realized
that we had martial law there, and consequently
our unions at best, were just on paper. In some
ports they were fairly active like in Hilo, because
Hilo did not get the kind of military cargo that
you had around Pearl Harbor or around Oahu.
I also found out that we had a long strike at
Port Allen, that had been led by Jack Hall. Jack
Hall had taken part in the 1934 strike and ....
Ward: In the '36 strike, too.
LG: And in the '36 strike, he decided, as a lot of
seamen did, "V/hat's wrong with doing your picket
duty down in Hawaii?" It was quite a bit more
comfortable.
\vard: He jumped ship in Hawaii?
LG: Actually, though, in 1936 I think they took off
and struck in Hawaii. I think Jack had pretty
299
LG: well decided to live there. When the war "broke,
Jack's activities were directed toward organization;
he had no specific plan as to which group they
would be affiliated. Naturally he was very close
to the trade union movement and particularly to the
left.
For example, one plantation that did organize as
I recall - that was on the island of Kauai, McBride
actually had a UCAPAWA contract. I don't think he
himself was too sure what final form all this would
take. It was just a matter of feeing dedicated to
the idea of organizing, knowing damn well that it
would be rough going but once it was done, it
could be an effective organization.
Well, our contact with Jack Hall was a little
bit fortuitous. Initially, I suggested sending
somebody down there to look over the scene. This
might have been early in 1944 or late in 1943. We
sent down an old timer named Bill Kraft. He looked
over the scene, came back and told us that things
didn't look bad. He thought the longshoremen by
and large wanted to be in the union.
Not too much later on, we asked Matt Meehan to go
down there. Matt Meehan had formerly been secre
tary of the International Union; he was from Port
land. Matt Meehan was also a veteran of the 1934
strike and had been a very effective leader.
Matt went down there and he came back with a
very specific suggestion that we ask Jack Hall to
go to work for us. Jack Hall did not go back to
the merchant marine, nor was he in the army. He
had very, very bad eyesight. Jack Hall wore these
lenses that were extremely thick; I don't believe
he ever drove a car, although when it came to
reading and things of that sort, he managed very
well.
He went to work for the Fair Labor Standards
Act in Hawaii - it was a Federal position - and
this is a matter of importance because it comes
along later when we filed a suit under the Fair
Labor Standards Act against the sugar plantations.
300
LG-: But Matt did a much more thorough job than Bill
Kraft. He v/as not confined in his thinking to the
waterfront alone. Bill Kraft was a longshoreman,
a good one, loyal union guy, but the union
movement began and ended right at the piers.
In Hawaii the economy was quite different and I
recall that I finally got everything that I could
lay my hands on about the Hawaiian economy and its
structure. A man who had been with the Department
of Labor named (Dr. James H.) Shoemaker, had done
this economic study of Hawaii which shov/ed this
enormous concentration of wealth in the hands of
the Big Five.
The Big Five started off as factors - it's an
expression you don't hear very often anymore, but
factoring used to be a way that a number of in
dustries were operated. For example, the garment
industry in the East was a factoring operation for
years.
The factor was the man who would supply the
equipment, in say, a clothing factory. He might
advance some of the money for raw materials -
somebody else took over the responsibility for
running the thing. The factor scooped it off the
top and still owned the machinery. In the event
his guy went belly-up, the factor would then have
somebody else give it a whirl. So, factoring wa's
a form of American enterprise.
The factors in Hawaii started off putting in a
lot of money into whaling fleets supplying all the
goods, the food and so on that vould be required
for the trip. They would husband the ship. They
would also advance money. They would handle cer
tain products that were brought back. They did
not directly own the ships, they were factoring
some of the enterprise being done.
The missionaries had managed to take over a
great deal of the land there. In 1855, there was
something called "the great mehele". Kehele was
a system of dividing the land between what the
Zing owned and the commoners. And it was hailed
for a while as a re-division of land ownership.
301
LG: Part of the reason for the "great mehele" was be
cause there was a question of firmly establishing
title to the land. This was something the mission
ary families were interested in because they had
become quite worldly, apparently so worldly that
at one time there was some threat of expulsion from
the churches, most of which were founded in New
England ....
Ward: (The writer, James H.) Michener talked -
LG: Yes. The feeling was that the missionaries had
gone down there to do good and did well. The
"great mehele" resulted in a division of land among
the Hawaii ans, the big thing being that the royalty
wound up with all the prime land. The commoners
wound up with some small bits and pieces and some
valleys, places where they could maintain a taro
patch and have subsistence living, which is not the
worst in the world.
When Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii, the
estimates are that the population was as high as
half a million to maybe seven hundred fifty thous
and; these were not people who lived on imports or
exports.
Sure, they were great navigators. It was quite
common for Hawaiian seamen to sail from Hawaii down
to Samoa, two thousand miles of open ocean, so as
take in a royal wedding or a celebration of some
kind. And they navigated by fixed stars, really
much more outstanding seamen than the Phoenicians,
who sailed within sight of land.
The Hawaiians had a self-sufficient form of
existence - a lot of fish. They grew taro, a basic
root. Bananas had somehow gotten there. Coconuts
float all over the Pacific and take root by them
selves practically. They brought a few animals in
there; pig, maybe some chickens, in some of their
initial migrations. Nobody is quite sure when
Hawaii was settled, but the estimates are maybe
1100 years ago.
V/ell, anyway, the "great mehele" title was
established on the part of royalty to specific land
areas. ?rom that point on, the missionaries began
302
LG: to move toward the acquisition of the land; the
combination they used was the bed, the Bible and
a deck of cards.
V7ard: The Bible, the bed and a deck of cards. V/here did
the deck of cards come in? The rest I can figure.
LG-: Yes - the bed is easy to figure out; in other words,
they married into some of the Hawaiian royalty;
the Bible you are familiar with; that runs to
everything from the nrumus to the speed of the hula.
Sterling Mossman, part Hawaiian and a very good
entertainer, has a piece of how they're looking up
to the heavens after being told to do so by the
missionaries while the missionary is taking away
the lands, down below.
The deck of cards came in - there were a number
of Hawaiian royalty who got quite fascinated with
gambling - missionaries prepared to teach them.
I recall a visit one time to a home of Paul Fagan.
You might have heard his name because at one time
he owned the baseball team of the San Francisco
Seals.
He was married to a descendant of the Irwin
family. The Irwin family you still read about
because they had very large holdings here in Cali
fornia. The Irwins owned half the island of
Molokai. They also owned, or she did, a place
called Hana Haui. I don't know if you've ever
been there; it's a very beautiful location.
Paul Fagan had a home on Diamond Head, a very
lovely estate, one of the most beautiful homes
there. He and his wife lived mostly on the Penin
sula, down around Atherton. When he was showing
me around the house, there was a round table, a
little bit bigger than this one here, (a round
table about four feet in diameter) but very
similar in style and from almost the same period;
it looked quite old.
I said, "What's that?" He said, "I just keep
that around; thousands of acres changed hands at
that table; it was used for poker." Prince Kuhio,
one of the Hawaiian royalty, was an inveterate
poker player. It was common for them to bet so
303
LG: many thousands of acres. As a matter of fact, Paul
Pagan and I got to be pretty good friends after a
while. That came about after the 1949 strike.
Ward: You had been reading a lot about Hawaii before you
visited there - isn't that so?
Feudal Power - The Big Five
LG: I read everything I could put my hands on in terms
of the economy. The key was very apparent; the
power did not lie in the shipping industry, or in
one particular type of business; the power lay in
the hands of the Big Five. Those were Alexander
Baldwin, C. Brewer, American Factors, Castle and
Cooke and Theo Davies. Theo Davies was primarily
held by British capital and British royalty.
Castle and Cooke was founded by missionary
families. Alexander Baldwin was primarily founded
by the Baldwins, also from missionary stock,
primarily on the island of Maui. There are some
very colorful accounts about the Baldwins. They
were a pretty adventurous, daring lot. And you had
interlocking directorates, at least when we got
started. Now, there has been a diversification,
primarily because the ILWU helped to break their
grip.
There was an interlocking structure of capital,
so that everything went back to the Big Five; the
banks, and utilities, they held places on the
board of directors. Each of the Big Five was also
a general agent for insurance companies; one would
be Prudential, another would be John Hancock, you
name it. They would handle all their insurance
themselves.
Outfits like C. Brewer, for example, did all
their trucking themselves, again through a C. Brew
er subsidiary. All the way down the line you found
these interlocking directorates v/ith the power
leading back to this same circle. This man Shoe
maker had done quite a thorough job in researching
it.
304
Pineapple, again; there were two mainland outfits
which were not controlled by the Big Five; Del
Monte and Libby; they had pineapple operations in
Hawaii. But the biggest pineapple operation in
Hawaii is Hawaiian Pineapple, owned by Castle and
Cooke. Waialua Sugar Company was owned by Castle
and Cooke. Ewa Sugar Plantation was also owned by
Castle and Cooke. Castle and Cooke had a large
interest in Matson, somewhere around 25 percent,
maybe a little higher. Hawaiian Tuna Packers, the
fish cannery, owned by Castle and Cooke.
This went so far that in a place like Maui,
Alexander Baldwin even owned the little railroad
that ran from some of the plantations down to the
port of Zahului, and also carried some passengers
once in a while.
'/hen you started studying the economic structure,
the one thing that became apparent was that when
you are going after shipping only, it was like
trying to throw a bull by grabbing hold of a pimple
on his tail. You had to tackle them right at their
base.
Well, land by its very nature is the key ingred
ient of all wealth in any island, partially because
you have no frontiers. There's only so much there
and after that you're in the water. The same thing
was true of Hawaii, and we were primarily concerned
with this huge financial grip.
I'm not saying that the Big Five had taken over
all the land, but they were the effective owners
or factors running this land. For example, a good
deal of land down there still remains within cer
tain estates like the Bishop estate, an old Hawaii
estate. It was started by missionary families,
but later became dominated in the main by the
Hawaii branch of the family. The Bishop estate
must be by far the wealthiest down there. It's
almost impossible to buy land from them; land is
only leased from them. Even a beautiful section
of Hawaii called Kahala beyond Diamond Head
t owar d s
Ward : Ch , Oahu .
305
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Yes, it's on Cahu beyond Diamond Head, very lovely
homes, beach homes. Some of the employers I got
to know, after a couple of drinks, would start
grumbling about the Bishop estate because they were
on leased land.
I said, "What happens when the lease runs out?"
They said, "Well, they will tell you what the new
land rent will be. They feel they have a certain
amount of public responsibility so they don't hit
you too hard. Cn the other hand, they decide it's
time they hit you, so you get hit. So what do you
do? You own the house and you can pick it up and
move anywhere you want."
The conclusion we came to was that there was no
way of breaking the grip of the Big Five if we
confined our operation entirely to the waterfront.
In other words, the waterfront was merely a trans
portation division.
Let me give you an example. Here's a huge steel
mill. They decide to ship out steel by truck. The
trucks obviously are only a very small incident to
the manufacture of steel. Where is the source of
strength in that case? Not in that truck. Sure,
you can harass the company but you don't really
get at the heart of its power.
The same thing applied to Hawaii, except many,
many times over because of the interlocking boards
of directors they had. These things spread into
everything you could think of, like American Fact
ors was a very large holder in the retail field -
the Liberty Stores down there. Now, you see them
over here.
You have an interesting development going on.
This is one of the rare cases of a colonial country
reinvesting its money in the home country! A rare,
rare thing! Liberty Stores are the ones who bought
City of Paris (a San Francisco store) ....
Well, some of the big stores in San Francisco were
constructed with Hawaiian money, weren't they?
The Dillingham interests started off in Hawaii,
primarily in building. They have become builders
all over the world. They're a very successful
construction outfit.
306
V/ard: Okay, let me ask you - first, Bill "Kraft was sent
over there, then Matt Meehan. At whose initiative;
was it yours?
LG-: Primarily my prodding, yes.
V/ard: You first suggested it to Harry, or what?
LG-: Suggested it to Harry, right, and Bob Robertson.
V/ard: So, it's fair to say that it was your initiative?
LG: I thought it was one of the places that we ought
to tackle. Bear in mind, you were in a war
situation. Organization on the mainland was sort
of limping along because we had taken the no-strike
pledge for the duration. Consequently, you fell
back on the NLRB and you did do some essential
organizing.
The principal reason for the growth of unions at
that time was by natural accretion. Take some
tiny unions in the shipyards; all of a sudden a
war comes along and you have to turn out a Liberty
ship every three days. All of a sudden where they
had 200 or 300 people working in a shipyard, now
they have 25,000. The union just grov/s and grows
by accretion. The employers weren't fighting the
unions, either; they were too busy doing their job
and making their money.
V/ard: This natural accretion didn't occur in the ILV/U so
much?
L3-: To some extent, yes. For example, the waterfront
membership grew very rapidly during the v/ar. V/hen
the war was over, it was one of the few times that
they had to let go some longshoremen, like in San
Francisco. The v/arehouses would not grow as rapid
ly as the shipyards because you didn't have a
sudden flood of work of that sort.
Vie still tried to hang on to the locals in
Chicago and Minneapolis, New Orleans and a couple
of other places. But it was rough going in terms
of any real growth. The kind of organizing we did
could not be as we had done in San Francisco. It
was practically out of the question, so that it
307
LG: meant organizing and then waiting. I recall get
ting very friendly with the head of the NLRB in
Chicago, spent a lot of time on Sundays, just
sitting around in that heat and drinking beer. He
was a heck of a good guy and anytime we got any
organizing done, staff was assigned very quickly
and he tried to move the process along; quite
different to the situation you have today where
the NLRB seems to specialize in every kind of
dilatory procedure you can dream of.
Ward: Oh, the structure and staff of the NLRB has
changed entirely; the motivations since that time -
LG: Oh, in those days, you had the Smith brothers in
the NLRB; Ed Smith and I forget the other one.
They called them the Smith Brothers.
Ward: Nat Witt -
LG: Nat Witt was v/ith the NLRB; there were some very
good people in the NLRB, a number who had been
with the La?ollette Committee. So, they thought
in terms of being pro-labor.
That's what the National Labor Relations Board
is all about. It is set up for the purpose of
giving the workers a chance to seek their own
representation. They found it was their job to
do it; entirely different to the composition of
the NLRB right now. At times they were okay like
the one I mentioned in Chicago.
They were not bad here in San Francisco. Madame
Alice Rossiter was a very dignified, older woman,
very friendly, rather stiff; so that it was a
different composition; much more helpful. Nothing
like the situation with which the ILWU is confron
ted today.
We have a hearing that's been going on with the
Crocker Bank on getting an election for their
computer servic.es. We have them organized, you
know. The hearing has been going on for one year
now and there is no end in sight.
These are things to which the NLRB lends itself
and that's the reason you have such a scream in
Washington where the labor movement is trying to
308
LG: get some basic reform; the National Labor Relations
Act and particularly its procedure - that's the
key; and, of course, the composition of the Board.
Discovery of the Natural Leader
LG-: Anyway, getting back to Hawaii. Matt Keehan's
recommendation was that we put Jack Hall on and
we did; gave him enough dough to get a small
staff, a little tiny office - a store front. It
was right across from Pier 11; I'm not sure if it
was Maunakea Street or some other street. Kaunakea
Street was where a lot of the flower makers used
to make the leis. The women wcu Id sit around,
starting at daybreak when they'd get the fresh
flowers in.
Ward: Did you go over there and help Jack Hall in setting
up the office?
LG-: Not particularly. Jack Hall knew a great deal
about organizing. He didn't have to be taught.
He knew an awful lot about government structure,
infra-structure. His time spent at the Fair Labor
Standards Act was not a waste. V/e sent over sup
plies; we didn't trust the regular mail for the
supplies because a lot of things that went to
Hawaii were on a so-called priority shipment. In
other words, if yours wasn't so terribly important,
that went to one side.
Ward: Did you suspect tampering with the mail?
LG: V/e knew it was under martial law, but actually I
don't think the letters themselves v/ere tampered
with. Jack and I started a running correspondence
that went on for several years on almost every
issue that arose in Hawaii. There's a whole folder
of correspondence between Jack and myself - in the
ILWU library.
Later Sandy Salberg, a reporter for the Star-
Bulletin, got a leave from the paper to do a book
on Jack Hall. Y/hen he hit this correspondence,
he hit the mother lode and was able to get a great
309
LG: deal of our thinking; the structure, the tactics
and everything else. So, Jack hired one secretary
and later on two as the organization began to move,
The organizers were in the main local people who
did a lot of it on their own time. Great". It's
interesting the number of highly educated guys
that bounced along, guys who had been active in
trying to form a longshore union; they all pitched
in.
These Hawaiians are not only dedicated union
men, but tough; lots of courage; they knew what
it was to fight the Big Five. I remember Freddie
Zamahoahoa and Jack Kawano at one of the ILV/U
conventions; they were determined to get back over
the hump. They had finally gotten an NLR3 certi
fication, after an election I think around 1940-
'41, but before they could even get a contract
under their belt, the war came along.
During the war Jack Kawano v/as put on some sort
of a manpower commission, but obviously that was
more for appearances than anything else. The real
operation was run by the same shipowners in mili
tary uniform.
LG: I was talking about Jack Kawano, who was the
president of the longshore local in Honolulu. Dur
ing part of the war he was raising tomatoes in
addition to serving on this manpower commission.
There was only so much he could do because of the
restrictions of martial lav/; also a strong feeling
of animosity on a number of scores.
The Japanese, for example, felt that the indig
nity inflicted on the Japanese on the west coast
was intolerable. The manner in which martial law
was applied in Hawaii, was to freeze people on the
job, including housemaids or laundry workers, so
that the Colonel's shirts would get out on time.
Ward: They couldn't even quit?
310
LG: People v/eren't allowed to quit and of course a
lot of them wanted to quit "because there were
jobs available in Pearl Harbor. Sure, those ;jobs
they had weren't paying a great deal of money.
There was a real working class song that came
out of the war in Hawaii called "USED" - United
States Engineering Department, I guess. A number
of Hawaii ans went to work for them and the song
went along something like this: "USED, sucker
every day, 50 cents an hour, 4 bucks a day, they
make you whistle for your money." In other words,
money always came late.
They had all kinds of different ditties to that;
USED was one of the first songs I heard when I
went down there; it's not one of the typical
Hawaiian hula songs. It was written to this sort
of hapahaole music.
V/ard: When did you first go there?
A Boat-Ride To The Islands
LG: I went down there in 1944. oack went on in 1943,
late; we had begun to make some real headway. It
must have been 1944 or early 1945. There was no
way for me to get a plane down there and I went
on a Hawaii freighter.
All they had done was to build a doghouse on
the after deck. Ch, the thing was about nine by
tv/elve and it slept six people - six or twelve
people - I'm not sure myself. They were just bunks,
Ward: Sort of like an army troop ship?
LG: That's right, and slower than the second coming
of Christ. It was a big vessel and carried around
14,000 ton of freight. It operated on black-out
rules.
I v/ouldn't say it was a luxury voyage because
we had a deck cargo of pigs and they had some cow
boys on board. Just like they do with cattle,
311
LG: you know - they'd bring some cowboys on board and
they'd build a corral on the deck. They had the
pigs there where they could feed them.
When we got outside the Gate we hit some very
heavy water. Well, I had had a bit of a going
away party so I felt no pain and just went to bed.
Bunk or no bunk, getting some sleep was no problem,
but I could hear these guys running and screaming
and pigs squealing during the night. No question
that the seas were rough.
I got up in the morning, some of these corrals
had broken in these heavy seas; pigs had been all
over the goddam deck; pig shit was flying in every
direction. A goddam mess and these guys v/ere in
bad shape and chasing the pigs. That must have
been quite a sight out there in the dark - they
weren't even allowed running lights. This was on
account of the Japanese submarine menace, which
was all a lot of bullshit. Anyway, talk about a
mess - that was it.
I guess some of the seamen had had their share
too, because in those days a ship hung around in
San Francisco for oh, eight days or thereabouts;
that entire ship was handloaded - there were no
containers. So, the seamen had a chance to get
around themselves. Well, anyway, one of the by
products of the storm was that somebody had left
the door of the dining salon open and, hell, there
must have been at least six inches of water in the
damn thing. Every time the ship rolled the water
would go to one side and roll back again.
But I determined to have breakfast and got in
there, keeping my feet off the floor as best I
could and lifting every time the ship rolled. I
was served by one of the stewards and he must have
had one of the world's greatest hangovers. He
started off with a tray, heading for the table;
then he'd wind up in the other corner, turn around;
he could never quite make the table - he just moved
with the roll of the ship.
Ward: Did the pigs get sea-sick?
LG: I'm sure, pigs get seasick. All I know though is
that they shit all over. The skipper just didn't
give a damn. I don't know; the guys aboard the
312
LG: ship said they spread the skipper out first and
then built the ship around him"; (Henry E.) Pas-
quale was his name - quite a lush. As a matter
of fact he didn't even turn up in the dining
salon until four or five days out, and when he
did turn up he wasn't in the best of shape.
Some guy walked in there wearing no undershirt
you know, just sciwies. "Get the hell out of
here," Pasquale says, "If you want to eat that
way, eat by yourself. You sit down in the dining
salon with me, you wear a shirt. I don't want
your sweat all over this goddam table." This guy
had been working in the engine room.
But Pasquale was a tough old bloke. When he
found out I was on board, he stuck around, just
talking generally about the unions. He belonged
to the Masters, Mates and Pilots. I don't think
he showed up again until the ship was coming into
Pearl Harbor. And he brought the thing in just
like parking a car. He was a good skipper, appa
rently, but he'd rather relegate his other duties
to the mates.
So, that was the first time I went down there.
As a matter of fact, before then I was in contact
with a number of seamen because I wanted to get
supplies down there. I had an arrangement with
one of the seamen - Acevedo was his name -I'm
not sure if he was Nicaraguan or Panamanian - he
came from some Central American country, but he
kept changing the place all the time.
Acevedo was in a little business for himself.
He'd bring things down like silk stockings, you
know, a few watches, what have you. He'd make a
couple of bucks on the side. He wouldn't take
any money for delivering our stuff. He was a good
union man, but believed in a bit of free enterprise,
As a matter of fact, there's an interesting
story about Acevedo. He found out that moving
fighting cocks from one part of Hawaii to another
part of Hawaii was a heck of a lucrative business.
After all, cock-fighting was and still is a favor
ite Filipino sport -
313
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Filipino and Chinese.
Yes, but primarily Filipinos now. For example,
when the ship made a call at Honolulu and then
had to make a call, say, at Hilo, he would take
over some of the fighting cocks. The advantage
to a guy who brought in a cock that way was that
he had a ringer; in other words, nobody else would
know how good that cock was.
The fact that you own the cock gives you first
crack at all bets. For example, if you own the
cock and you enter it, you match it; this includes
the cocks pecking each other to see if both of
them are in fighting trim. Then, you as the owner
of the cock, have the right to cover all the ini
tial bets to the amount you decide.
Let us say, you decide you are going to venture
$500, you get first crack at all bets. After that
everybody is in the act for himself - just betting
each other.
Well, was there any restriction that he had -to
sneak these cocks on and off?
Sure, cock fighting was illegal. So, I get the
story from Acevedo that he is moving a cock from
the port of Hilo over to Oahu. He had brought
the cock on board the night before and put it in
a secure place, covered. I think the same skipper,
Pasquale was on that ship.
Somehow the covering on the cock got a bit
loose, so that when daybreak came and the ship
was going out, this cock starts crowing like mad.
Acevedo was also the room steward for the skipper
and the skipper calls him, saying, "Why the hell
is that cock crowing?" Acevedo says, "We haven't
left port yet."
But unfortunately the skipper, after having a
cup of coffee, lifted himself up on his elbow,
looked out and saw they were outside the break
water and the cock was still crowing. He calls
in Acevedo and says, "If we don't have chicken
for dinner tonight, you're fired." I don't know
if you can cook a fighting cock in that length of
314
LG: time and soften it up. Anyway, Acevedo took in a
lot of supplies for us. Before I went there, we
had sent Frank Thompson down there. Prank
Thompson was (an ILWU organizer) from Sacramento.
Ward: When you went down there, you had not met Jack
had you?
LG: No, I had not met Jack.
Ward: You took a personal liking to each other?
LG: Yes, we got along very well; even before then we
had been in steady correspondence. I was spelling
out some of my thinking, Jack was spelling out
his; basically they coincided. For example, we
both reached the same conclusion on a couple of
things - one was that the history of economic
struggle had been to a large extent racial
struggles; they v/ere racial unions.
Part of this was literally a by-product of the
Big Five's calculated importation of people who
could not very well communicate with each other.
Also, the whole pecking order on the plantations.
There had been some mighty efforts made to organ
ize down there. For example, in 1920 there had
been a strike of Japanese workers on the Island
of Cahu -
Y/ard: Yes, you told about that.
LG: That's where they dumped all the families into
Alaa Park and let them die there, during the 'flu
epidemic. They broke the strike. In 1924 there
had been a strike of primarily Filipino workers
led by a man called Kanlapit.* I think there were
14 guys killed. It isn't as though the workers
weren't willing to struggle; it was just the fact
that they didn't have the handle.
Battle Plans
LG: Jack and I reached the same conclusion that the
time was ripe for organization. Even though the
war v/as on, no great harm done in going out in a
* (Pablo;
315
LG-: terrific organizing drive. The sentiment was so
deep - a good deal like what we hit in 1936 with
the warehousemen - that the guys would join and
spend time organizing. We'd tell them frankly
that the chances of striking as long as the war
was on were not awful good, but first chance that
came along we would really move.
Secondly, we reached the conclusion that we
had to tackle sugar, still the number one industry
as far as the Big Five were concerned. Sure, the
military was big, but we had no plans to try to
organize them. You had some unions in the mili
tary, by the way; all kinds of top boilermakers,
pattern makers -
Ward: Seabees, that sort of thing?
LG: Some of them v/ere Seabees, some were just con
struction workers or shipyard workers and they
just went to work directly for the government.
They weren't in the armed forces at all.
The military was not the economic stronghold
of the Big Five. Sure, they had a lot of
influence with them. Your generals and colonels
and people like that scrambled like mad to be
even partially accepted by the Big Five social
circle.
That was a big deal, just like the Big Five
took Michener in tow. They sold him a bill of
goods out of this world with their hospitality,
their own technique, and as a matter of fact they
even sold a couple of people who came that way in
1948. I'll tell you the story when we get to it.
Anyway, we reached the conclusion that one,
we had to tackle sugar; two, that an idea which
apparently had been developed among previous
attempts at organization that they would be better
off to strike on one island and have the workers
on the other islands help them financially had to
be knocked down.
A terrible mistake in theory, because that is
like matching dollars with the employers. You
can't win. Sure, they would get a couple of bucks
316
LG-: to help them from the other plantations because
the workers are very generous and there's a real
feeling of solidarity. What they weren't aware
of, of course, is that if you shut down plantations
on one island, or one plantation owned by one of
the Big Five, with all the others working, then
your economic strength has been cut proportion
ately.
The chance of the employer holding cut is
multiplied accordingly. You're not going to win
on a dollar matching program.
The third conclusion is a very obvious one,
that it had to be a completely inter-racial union;
there would be absolutely no toleration for say,
different chapters of Pilipinos, or Japanese, or
what have you. We went so far as to lay down
basic rules that as sugar units were set up, the
composition of the leadership had to be mixed.
There was also another feature of this thing,
not to be overlooked. Initially, we had started
organizing all the sugar mills but we realized
very quickly that there was no reason v/hy v/e
shouldn't take the fields in with them; they were
all part of the same company; it was just another
division, another division.
On the other hand, we knew perfectly well we
could not get NLRB elections for the field workers
because the field workers were and are still
specifically excluded from coverage under the
National Labor Relations Act; one of the things
that the farmers have been able to do. It has
finally been turned around a bit in California by
the Agricultural Labor Relations Act.
Jack v/as very shrewd politically, he had good
feelings for things and he knew the islands and
the people. He had a technique of his own; he was
never reluctant to simply move around the islands;
where he might sleep for the night didn't make
any difference to him. Cne flophouse v/as just as
good as another. He made the rounds, doing very
little talking, and he'd come back with conclusions
on what could be done; ninety-nine times out of a
hundred he'd be right on the nose.
317
Ward: That's unusual - be right to that percentage.
LG: And particularly this faculty he had of not
lecturing, not agitating, very quiet. He could
make an effective speech when he had to, but jus t
quietly asking questions. He would blend right
into the scenery. Although Jack was very conspic
uous among our Japanese and Filipino workers because
Jack was about six foot two. Host Japanese, of
course, are not that tall and very rare for a
Filipino to be that tall.
Anyway, they v/ere still holding elections there,
notwithstanding martial lav; - Territorial govern
ment elections. There was a lot of steam and
resentment among some of the national groups,
whether it was Japanese or Filipinos or Kawaiians,
the kicking around by martial law. So, in the
1944 elections we came out with quite a substantial
victory in both houses of the legislature, and
passed a little Wagner Act down there.
There was a good deal of discussion between
Jack and myself because some of the features of
the bill didn't sit too well v/ith us. The
question arose how much of a struggle do we put
up around this thing? And finally I developed
the position, "Oh, the hell with the goddam
details, use this act once and then throw the
thing away . "
Because once we organized in the fields like
sugar and pineapple, the rest of agricultural
organization didn't amount to a hill of beans -
maybe a dairy here and there, or a horticultural
company raising flowers. In other words, you're
not just going to get into many agricultural
things. Parker Ranch, which was just strictly a
ranch, we tried to organize some years later, but
we got whipped by the Catholic church.
So, we decided we'd run that bill through in a
hurry. That would give us a chance to move in the
fields because we decided that the fields ought
to come along.
318
Grass Roots Political Action
LG-: Well, a bit ago I mentioned Prank Thompson; Prank
was an old, old friend of mine dating back to the
thirties, a Y/obbly right down to his toe nails.
He ' s a highly individualistic guy, could be very
high-handed at times but honest as the day is long.
He could be very tough when he had to be.
There are all kinds of stories about Prank. At
one time he used to drive one of these big touring
cars up in the woods and he could make a couple
of bucks to get by on just by bringing in the
lumberjacks for a night at the whorehouse and
drinking establishments in Sacramento and then
make sure they got back in time to go to work.
Frank knew that whole motherlode country like you
know your city block.
Anyway, Prank, I thought, would be a natural
to be an organizer down there. I didn't think he
would mind that in some of these little towns he'd
get a night's sleep in a flophouse. Prank was
just born for that sort of thing, so I got Prank
to go down there; some of Prank's accounts are not
only fascinating reading, they were actually hil
arious.
For example, the employers decided to challenge
us in terms of representation so we had to go
through a whole series of NLRB elections, in every
one of the goddam plantations. Prank would go
ahead and have a rehearsal of the election with
our guys - because of the language problems and
everything else.
He would print up his own sample ballots,
mimeograph them off and distribute them, have a
meeting and go over the v/hole thing with the guys,
item by item, where you vote and how you vote.
Then they'd have a rehearsal and if the vote came
out say, 97 percent, he'd say, "Ckay, there are
three percent who don't understand this - we have
to do this thing again!" He'd do this sort of
thing and the HLRB election victories down there
must be the most startling in the country. We
would knock over these elections, 98 percent, 100
percent in some cases.
319
LG: Frank loved the job and he stayed on there until
the '46 strike. In the meantime, we were setting
up the structure, organizing these units, getting
them to function. Even though a group might have
voted 100 percent and said, "Okay, we're ready to
go, we want to fight now," our admonition was
always the same, "You are not going to move -
that's all."
We just kept pounding the same program; we
would make no real move on the Big Five until we
were sure we could shut down every single planta
tion and keep it down, on an industry-wide basis,
on an island-wide basis, all the nationalities
and races united. So there was a long process;
in many cases guys were unhappy. But the disci
pline was maintained. The guys were very good
and Jack knew exactly where we were going.
Pretty soon under this Agricultural Act we had
the field workers and swept over to pineapple and
began to organize that pretty rapidly too. On
some places, our guys would have to get themselves
smuggled into some of these islands like Lanai.
Lanai is an island by itself.
Ward: It's privately owned, isn't it?
LG: It's owned by Castle and Cook or Hawaiian Pine
apple - same thing. Hatter of fact, the post
office used to lease from the company. They owned
every inch of land on the island.
Cur guys arranged to get themselves smuggled
in by sampan; the fishermen took them in from
Maui. They'd meet at night; a plantation road
somewhere, basements; there was a very thorough
underground movement. We hit the wave just right
and the guys were coming in by droves.
How To Quell Racial Friction
LG: Frank stayed on and I've got to tell you about an
incident that happened to him and a man named Yasu
Arakaki. They were setting up the unit at Olaa
320
LG: over on the Big Island and Frank was handling the
meeting for the nominations. They nominated a
chairman, a Japanese. He says, "Ckay, nominations
are open for vice-chairman, and another Japanese
was nominated. And Frank drops the gavel and says,
"No, he's not eligible."
"V/hat do you mean he's not eligible? He's one
of the founders of the union; the guy worked his
ass off, he's competent." "He's not eligible
because my instructions are that v/e are going to
have all nationalities. Pick somebody else but
he can't be Japanese."
He damn near came to blows with Yasu Arakaki,
but Frank is the kind of a guy who says, "Look,
those are my instructions and that's the way it's
going to be." You can call it forced assimilation
anything you want. It didn't result at once in
social assimilation. The employers had done a
very thorough job of dividing the people.
Bear in mind, Japanese and Filipinos are not
going to find it easy to communicate with each
other, neither one of them finds it easy to
communicate with the Portuguese and none of them
can communicate readily with an Hawaiian. Cne of
the net results was a pidgin - you have pidgin
English with some Filipino words thrown in, some
Japanese words. For example, they won't say, "I
have to go take a piss," or something like that.
"I go shi-shi." Because that's the Japanese
expression.
So, the agglomeration of the different languages
resulted in a peculiar hybrid pidgin. It's a
pretty demeaning language in the sense that it's
not really a comprehensive language. The grammar
is missing, syntax is not there. The use of words
is so completely different. Just let me give you
one example of pidgin - if you call somebody on
the telephone, and a Japanese answers, "Ckay, is
so and so there?" He answers, "ITo, he no stop,
he stay go."
I remember one time at a late night session
between our committee and the employers, we weren't
getting anywhere and I was irritated by everything,
321
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
V:ard :
LG:
so I decided to just go off by myself and get a
bite to eat in a Chinese restaurant which stayed
open late. And I'm sitting there by myself,
having some soup, and a couple of local kids v/ho
looked Portuguese or part Hawaiian, a mixture,
were talking in the next booth; both obviously
had had enough to drink.
Cne kid is telling the other one about his
good fortune and this new job he's got. And his
friend is saying, "Gee, number one good kind, gee
no find no bettah." So, this kid is talking some
more about this new job and making enough money
so maybe he can get married. And the other kid
says, "Ch, some lucky you - you no need nothing
forever already." Jack would never talk pidgin,
but he understood it very, very well.
He wouldn't talk pidgin?
No, he never would.
Well, did he talk to a Filipino in Filipino or
what?
No, he's simply talk in plain, down-to-earth
English. I would never try to speak pidgin. I
don't think - well, you don't talk down to people -
They know it if you do?
That's right, they know it. They may answer you
in pidgin. That's another story. Just stick v/ith
your own v/ay of talking, but make sure you are
understood, that's all. And it might take a little
longer to do it.
The one guy I know of who picked up pidgin very
well was Henry Schmidt. He had an ear for the
goddam thing that was out of this world. When he
was down there for the '49 strike, he'd put out
menus of what was being served in the soup kitchen,
and wrote the thing all up in pidgin; these are
priceless exhibits. Henry would make sure they
were distributed to all these rich bitches who
came down there as part of the broom brigade
which was picketing the union headquarters and
invite them all for lunch.
322
V/ard: You were gearing up for the '46 strike?
LG-: We got an agreement from the sugar industry in
1945. By that time the employers had brought
down Jim Blaisdell who had got to be head of the
San Francisco Distributors Association, which
dealt with us.
Ward: You mentioned him before.
LG: During the war he and Eagel were in charge of T ,, r ar
Manpower. It was during the war too that Sam
Kagel decided that he would pick himself up a
law degree and later work in the field of arbitra
tion.
So I knew Jim fairly well, always liked him.
Later on, I guess he and the Big Five had a
falling out. It seemed to me that being a labor
relations guy for the employers down there would
be a most murderous undertaking.
You not only had the Big Five second guessing
you all the time, their position was as close as
possible to royalty; the net result was that if
things had been miscalculated, none of them was
going to take the responsibility. Somebody else
had to be the fall guy.
Jim was a different kind of a character than
most labor relations guys. He was not going to
sit around and v/ait until the employers had
given their general consensus of what ought to
be done. Jim was the kind of a guy who, if he
thought a certain program was right, would be
very tough. He would walk in and tell the em
ployers, "Look, that's the score - that's the
way I see it. ri He would fight for his position,
and I think it was bound to result in a rupture
between him and the Big Five.
V/ard: But he had something to do with your getting this
contract in '45, is that it?
LG: Vhen they saw the big swing to organization, the
employers must have gone to Jim Blaisdell and
offered him a job in Hawaii. He became the head
323
LG:
of the Hawaii Employers Council and he was setting
up the whole thing. And there the Big ?ive think
ing manifested itself. For example, they took an
adamant position on something like the union shop.
They were hopeless. The most they would ever go
for was maintenance of membership, which was in
vented in World War II by the War Labor Board.
The Q-arbage Can Agreement
Ward: Okay, we're talking about Blaisdell and the
agreement.
LG: Right. Actually, our first sugar agreement was
simply a holding action. We got recognition, and
I'm not sure whether all the field workers were
covered.
Ward: You got maintenance of membership?
LG: Maintenance of membership, that's all we got, but
we got recognition of a few things such as senior
ity, at least in general, and a couple of other
items.
Ward :
G:
Ward :
LG:
This was obtained without a strike?
We got that without a strike. We also picked up
a longshore agreement in 1945 for the first time.
The organizational process was still going full
steam; sure, there was a lot of concentration on
sugar, but longshore fell into line very quickly.
Hall was also involved in that?
Ch, sure, because Hall was our regional director.
A lot of Hawaiians were very active in putting
together the longshore group in a hurry - people
like Levi Kealoha that I mentioned to you; Julian
Napuunoa, Benny Big Nose, Sam Hanu, Joe Keawe,
Freddy Kamahoahoa.
324
LG-: I recall that the session with the longshoremen
took place outside a small house where 7rank
Thompson was living just back of V/aikiki. Those
days housing wasn't terribly expensive. I think
it was on Seaside, that was it. Anyway, Jim came
out there and we signed the agreement on the back
of a garbage can. The guys thought it was okay;
at least we made some progress.
Jim was a relaxed, easy-going guy and I think
he understood what v/e were doing. I think he
also already decided the union was going to make
it. He knew there v/as this tremendous impetus
down below and he knew damn v/e 11 what martial lav/
had done.
The one plantation as I recall that was hold
ing out v/as Waialua - V/aialua Plantation was a
very profitable plantation, out at the western
end of Oahu. It's still there. The manager of
the plantation was a man named Midkiff*, fairly
prominent family down in Hawaii. I bumped into
him one day and he said, "Look, I know what you
guys are doing; why don't you come out and v/e '11
have a bit of a session at the plantation tonight.
I think it might be worthwhile our sitting down."
So, I took Jack Kawano with me from the long
shore local, because everything was mixed up in
the same pot; nobody v/as thinking "longshore for
longshore", "sugar for sugar." It was all one
big movement, one crusade. Jack Hall might have
been tied up in something else. V/e were terribly
busy - no such thing as an evening or a weekend
without a meeting. Jack had the same feeling we
all did - this was the time to move; you did not
slow up.
So, we went out there and he was a very
gracious host. V/e had dinner and he opened up the
subject after dinner. He said, "I know what you
fellows are trying to do. You want to get these
members down here and that means dues. I'd like
to work out an arrangement with you so that
whatever your dues are, I'll pay that much a month
to the union. Don't bother my people."
*John H. Midkiff
325
LG: This guy had this thing so firmly in mind there
was absolutely no way of shaking it - I figured
what's the good of telling him that that wasn't
what we wanted at all; that a union isn't made
up of collecting so much money, it is made up
of people and it's people who get into action and
that is where the strength comes from - not be
cause you can collect a couple of bucks.
I finally told him, "Look, Mr. Midkiff, it's
been a pleasant dinner and I understand what
you're saying, but I'm afraid it just isn't
acceptable." He said, "Well, why?"
I said, "Because we are not interested in get
ting money from the company, except through the
union and only for the membership. I know that
you are very strong here, and that people around
here are a bit concerned about joining the union.
You do pay more money than the other plantations,
about 5 cents an hour more in all categories. The
best I can figure out is, just like the automobile
industry had a Henry ?ord, the sugar industry is
going to have a Midkiff. All we can do, I sup
pose, is hold you up as a bad example of someone
who is determined to break the union."
So, he says, "Well, that's too bad." "Yep,"
I said, "In view of what you're saying, we really
don't have any choice. It's not that I have any
hard feelings for you, but there's no other way
of going at it. Our organizers will be out here
next Saturday morning."
And v/e gathered together a whole team of
organizers, about twenty of them, and said, "You
go out there; you might have difficulty if this
guy decides to fight. On the other hand, he might
decide he doesn't want to be another Henry Ford,
and you'll find out very quickly."
I said, "Under no circumstances, do you take
any back talk from self-appointed guards around
the housing projects. If the police come along,
just tell them you are exercising your rights."
And sure enough, when they hit town there, an
awful lot of curiosity but no attempt made to
interfere with our guys. So, V. r aialua fell in
place, too.
326
LG-: What was really important was Ms thinking, with
out any real understanding of what kind of impetus
was down below in terms of a union that represents
the membership and gives them a new kind of digni
ty. That is the one thing he could not buy, that
kind of paternalism was so deep in those em
ployers.
L
327
VII MEANWHILE, ON THE MAINLAND
(Interview 13: 9 May, 1978
The Party Connection Dissolves
Ward:
LG:
V/ard:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
Lou, you were saying from the beginning of the
war your party activities diminished. Do you
want to talk about that for a minute?
I'd say they not only diminished, I had practical
ly no contact with them for all intents and
purposes. While my sympathies still lay with
them, whatever contact I had would be very casual
and occasional. For example, in the case of the
North American strike, it was just a peripheral
thing, no more than that.
When you say peripheral thing, you mean to say
that you didn't necessarily consult with them?
That's right, yes - oh, they might -
You still talked to them?
Oh, sure, I always talked to them, still do. They
might have some ideas, some suggestions or concerns,
but there was really nothing in the form of an
organizational connection with them. My life was
really wound up with the ILWU. Then, some of the
things that you get mixed up in with the war
going on, related to the war effort -
Well, you were pretty busy.
328
LG: Yes, I worked on this war shipping report, got to
see most of your top brass.
Ward: You saw a couple of admirals, I know.
LG: Admiral Land, I told you all about his reaction.
Cn the other hand, somebody like Lew Douglas,
head of War Shipping Administration, his attitude
was really quite different. Forrestal's attitude
was one of curiosity. Anyway, we covered a lot
of ground, including some of the people who were
in charge of military cargo' movements.
Work On The War Labor Board
Ward: What about the War Labor Board experience? That
was the Regional War Labor Board, wasn't it?
LG: Yes, headquarters in San Francisco and I think it
covered the western region - they might have had
another group in the northwest. I don't recall
spending much time with the War Labor Board on
problems that concerned Oregon and Washington.
Either they had a separate piece of machinery or
things v/ere handled pretty much pro forma through
the San Francisco region.
I became a labor member of the War Labor Board
for this region which covered California, Arizona
and Nevada, because I recall making a trip to the
Westward Ho Hotel - the one they used to call the
Westward Ho House - in Phoenix.
Anyway, I was serving on the War Labor Board
and at the same time I was doing my ILWU job,
setting up headquarters on Montgomery Street,
filling out the staff, getting some form of
organizational structure, finally resolving this
question of having a divided International, San
Francisco and the northwest, where part of the
International office was up there and part of it
down here; working out an organizational chart
that would be something around which we could
operate.
329
LG: The War Labor Board job was an additional duty,
extremely important for us; we had taken the no-
strike pledge, although that came back to haunt
us a bit, particularly after Harry decided that
the no-strike pledge ought to continue after the
war. That was just going overboard. Life itself
wouldn't have made it possible to adhere to that,
no matter how many times you had taken the pledge.
V/ard: I didn't realize he took that position.
War Labor Board Activities
LG: Yes. Anyway, the main objectives as far as I
was concerned were the issues around which you
could get adjustments on contracts, which were
pretty narrowly defined by the War Labor Board.
One of the basic issues was one of inequities.
If you could prove that inequities existed either
within an industry or as related to other indus
tries, adjustments could be made. The general
idea - and you had to see that it worked - was
that the War Labor Board was for the purpose of
taking care of legitimate grievances as far as
the unions were concerned.
Simultaneously we also had pretty effective
price control. Your OPA (Office of Price
Administration) was in business and you also had
a Manpower Board. The Manpower Board in some
cases worked with the War Labor Board because man
power had to be moved from one area to another.
We were pretty deep into this thing. In some
cases you took an awful kick in the pants.
I remember one specific situation involving
Chili Duarte, who was active in our union. I
guess he was business agent for Local 6 and pretty
much in charge of the Oakland operation. I don't
believe he was president after Gene Paton - I
think Maguire, Donald Maguire, was there instead,
v/ho sort of faded out of the picture.
The Navy v/as setting up a supply depot in
Oakland and they were determined to get as
competent a staff as they could to set up a huge
330
LG: supply operation. They worked with Chili who
managed to get oh, 400 to 600 of our warehousemen,
key guys, out of the warehouses to go to work at
the depot.
They did a fine job. Yet, toward the tail end
of the war these guys were suddenly laid off and
the depot began to hire civil service people
instead.
I remember taking a trip over there v/ith Chili
to talk to the admiral in charge of the base. He
was very flattering about the job our people had
done, very appreciative of it. "Why the devil
are you letting them all go?" we said. "V/e'll
take care of them, they have seniority still from
the job we took them out of, but why the hell are
you letting them go? There's still a great de
mand for competent warehousemen."
"Well," he says, "You've got to understand; my
table of organization requires that I have a
certain number of people on the base." Another
way of saying that unless he had a certain number
of people, it didn't warrant an admiral, or what
ever he was, being in charge. He was determined
to fight out the war in the foxholes of Alameda
and nobody was going to change his mind about
that.
So, you would get situations like that which
were not too happy, but inside the War Labor Board
itself, we managed to get a couple of things done.
Part of it became a technique of doing an awful
lot of homework to make sure that you had all your
facts in hand; making sure that you held the trade
union group together.
There were the union members on the board, the
public members and the employer members; a tri
partite board. The public members, oh, most of
them were quite good; the instructions were taken
absolutely literally. No way of moving them
around, even though we knew from a realistic point
of view that in some industries you either took
care of problems or the net by-product would be
either a major slowdown or all kinds of difficul
ties in getting the job done.
331
LG-: One of the interests I had during the time I was
on the board was to abolish regional differentials
for warehousemen. For example, places like
Stockton and Sacramento were part of the ILWU,
the warehouses, but were not getting the same base
rate because they were considered farm areas.
This is behind us now, but in those days there
was a rural differential and it came up in many
industries. I was determined to get them all in
line with the master contract rate, which we
eventually did on the inequity theory. This
took lining up a lot of support on the part of
the other labor guys, as well as getting some of
the public members and industry members to go
along.
We got those things done all right. But it
meant putting in an enormous amount of time, let
us say, on some problems Steelworkers had.
Thimmes was on the board - Jim Thimmes.
Ward: Oh, on the same Labor Board?
LG:
Yes. Paul Chown (who was to become an official
of the United Electrical Workers' Union) worked
as a staff member on the board at the time.
There's an interesting item about the board:
Bob Treuhaft, the husband of Decca Treuhaft,
(Jessica Mitford, prominent writer) heck of a
good lawyer and an awfully good man, had come out
to the West Coast some time in the early part of
the war and wanted to apply for a job at the War
Labor Board.
Later on he was told that one of the reasons
he didn't get the job was that he was a friend of
mine. During that time, he was not a friend of
mine; I was one of the people he wanted to meet.
And Bob Treuhaft found himself guilty of willing
ness to associate, one step removed.
Chown was very helpful on the Board. Wendell
Phillips of the Bakery Wagon Drivers was a member
of the board with me and he was an interesting
character. For one thing, Wendell Phillips was
a very diligent, hardworking guy. He came into
the board perhaps as well prepared as any member
332
LG: on the board. Wendell Phillips wound up with us
on most of the issues.
Ward: He was a Kidwell protege.
LG: Yes, and Jack Shelley. Wendell was good. Ch,
just after I retired Wendell also retired. One
of the outfits in San Francisco which calls itself
Industrial Relations Research Association, people
connected with labor, attorneys, arbitrators,
personnel men of some of the companies; it's a
peculiar mix; they get speakers in for special
occasions, usually luncheon meetings. They
decided they wanted to have a bit of a dinner
for Wendell and myself; it would take more time
than for a luncheon.
Anyway, Wendell spoke and among his remini
scences was the time of the War Labor Board. Cne
of the reasons he could get results from the board
was that the employers did not do their homework.
When I was asked to speak, I mentioned that I
owed Wendell Phillips some thanks for an incid-ent
that occurred many, many years ago. The board
was meeting in Los Angeles and we stayed at the
Biltmore Hotel. Apparently, the main reason v/as
that the chairman, Thomas Pair Neblett, had
something going with this hotel.
Many years after the board he turned up in
Hawaii with one of these "training in industry
programs"; the business of training people to
become hotel workers after they have been planta
tion workers. He decided he'd better work with
the ILWU, at least on the outside, and with the
Teamsters, (Art) Rutledge, who had most of the
hotel workers on the island of Oahu.
Neblett came to me and said, "Look, I know
perfectly well if you and I start bucking heads
the whole thing will fall apart. I want to get
along with you." I said, "That's pretty simple,
just work v/ith our people, at least on the out
side islands," which he did.
Anyway, back to the Biltmore. I happened to
see in the paper that Katherine Dunham (leader
of a famous dance troupe) was in town. I had met
333
LG: her in the northwest some years before, so I
stopped by there and said, "Hello", and told her
if the show gets over at a decent time, come by
and we'll have a drink at the Biltmore.
She walked in; there's a big bar in the Bilt
more where the politicians used to hang out, and
everybody else. I sit down with Katherine Dunham,
and I guess in those days it was still a little
bit unusual for somebody to sit down with a black
person. Well, I noted out of the corner of my
eye that members of the board v/ere drifting over
to the bar; but they didn't come over to the table.
Wendell Phillips did.
He sat down and said, "What are you drinking,
and who is this friend you have with you?" It
was just that simple. I mentioned that with
belated thanks to V/endell Phillips, not that I
think he suffered any penalty by meeting Katherine
Dunham. She was a very beautiful, attractive and
talented person.
Anyway, in the course of my remarks I said it
wasn't that I put all the employers in one camp;
that they came home at night, slapped the wife
and beat the kids, but some of them were just
stuck with the policies they had to carry out as
employers, and a great many were still troglodytes
in their thinking.
'o'
The most amusing remark made at this dinner
for Phillips and myself came from Dwight Steele,
who at one time had been head of the warehouse
employers' group here and then later had gone to
v/ork in Hawaii. Now, he is very active in things
like the Sierra Club. He got up during the
question period - Sam Kagel was chairman - and
said, "Well, maybe not really a question but maybe
it is, why did I put out $10 bucks for dinner to
hear a couple of guys say that I'm a troglodyte
who doesn't do his homework?" So, he sort of
topped both of us.
The V/ar Labor Board was an experience by it
self. One of the characters from the public side
was Paul Shoup; he was (the head of) Southern
Pacific Railroad. Like Southern Pacific management
334
LG: over the years, he was ferociously anti-union and
yet he was an odd character. He was getting along
in years, perhaps the general war situation
or what he saw going on had some impact on him.
He used to hunt me out when we were in L. A.
and we would sit and talk. As a person, he didn't
have the horrors, but he knew perfectly well how
to use them. For a number of years afterward,
come holiday time, there would be a case of
grapefruit arrive. I guess it was just his way
of saying "hello". He never expected anything
and of course he never got anything.
Ward: Well, what did he talk about?
LG: His curiosity was about a lot of things; for
example, what kind of trade unionism was I talking
about? He knew it was not the same as the others;
he knew it was a very deep, rank and file kind
of trade unionism. Where did we expect it to go?
What did I know about the Russians?
Ward: He was trying to find out something.
LG-: He was saying, in effect, "look, all of a sudden,
here we are allies with the Soviet Union." I'm
sure he had been an enemy of theirs from the
moment he heard the word "Bolshevik" ; maybe I knew
something about what made these people tick. I
think it was that sort of curiosity; to him, this
would be a completely new world, something dif-
erent. Those couple of years I spent on the board
were profitable. I was fairly lucky because with
people like Paul Chown around - he worked full
time for the board for a while - staying abreast
of developments was a lot easier.
Ward: Ten minutes of talking to him would prepare you
for a board meeting, so to speak?
LG: That's right. We got some of the things we wanted
for the HWU; we also managed to get quite a few
things for a number of the other unions.
Ward: And you got a case of grapefruit once in a while.
335
LG: We got a case of grapefruit once in a while and
some terribly humorous experiences. I was men
tioning this incident with Catherine Dunham. As
I recall, she asked me if I wanted to go to a jam
session that began somewhere around midnight, and
I said, "Pine, but I don't have any transporta
tion." She said, "Oh, I'll pick you up."
We went out to the Sunset Strip, some spot
where a lot of these musicians and singers were
gathered. It was an awful lot of fun and then
all of a sudden, it's damn near four o'clock in
the morning. And she says, "You know, you're not
going to be able to get back now." I said,
"Maybe I'll get back in the morning - get at least
a couple of hours sleep."
She says, "That's all right - I've got this
house up in the hills and there's a place down
stairs and you can get a nap." So I go up there
and set the alarm for six in the morning. All I
know is the address of the place and generally
where it is.
I woke up early and decided I better get some
body who is going to be able to get me downtown.
Getting a cab up there was out of the question;
they were all working on gasoline rations.
So, I called Jimmy Slavin, who was working for
the ILWU as an organizer. He was an interesting
little guy. Jimmy stood around five foot three
or four; he had been a fighter and he had one of
these rare facial characteristics, matched
cauliflower ears. He dressed meticulously.
When he and Bill Gettings (another ILWU organi
zer) walked down the street, side by side - Bill
weighed about 260 or 70 and stood around 6 foot
3 - it was quite a combination. I knew they
stayed at the Figueroa Hotel, so I called. I
knew Jimmy was an early riser, and he was up.
I said, "Jimmy, you've got to do me a favor.
I have to be back at a War Labor Board meeting
at the Biltmore Hotel." I had some work to do
before the hearing on some case of the Steel workers,
336
LG: I said, "ill you come pick me up?" He said,
"Sure, where are you?" Up in the Sunset Hills;
I told him to take a certain street and stop on
top of that hill; there was a cross street
where I would meet him.
He drives up there in an overcast and misty
morning. There are no houses around there;
Jimmy arrives right on time to pick me up. He's
looking around and says, "By the way, where did
you spend the night? In a cave?"
Ward: Okay, now did you have anything else before we get
back to Hawaii?
War's End Brings Changes
LG: Well, there are a couple of things. A lot of things
happened the minute the war was over. Gene Paton
came back and assumed the presidency of Local 6;
OPA was repealed over our very strenuous objections.
Ward: Trade union objections?
LG: Oh, sure. The big argument of the employers and
the whole press campaign was that prices would go
down the moment OPA was repealed, because then
free competition would be at work again. Of course,
the opposite happened.
Pat showed a real sense of timing and acute-
ness; even though he had a contract in effect when
OPA was repealed and the prices started going up,
he led a series of slowdowns, stoppages and just
general harassment of the employers until they
began granting voluntary wage increases in the
middle of the contract. By and large we made them
stick.
Right after the war the Machinists in San
Francisco went on strike.
Ward: You were pretty friendly with Hook and Dillon,
weren't you?
337
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Yes, I had known them a long time and I liked
them. They were both in my opinion damn good
trade unionists. That was Lodge 68, one of the
friends of the HWU before we were expelled from
the AFofL: they continued their friendship long
afterwards.
They served as a bridge between the AFofL and
the CIO.
They were one of the groups that did. The Mach
inists at one time, because they had waterfront
machinists, were part of the Maritime Federation.
Hook and Dillon led the strike, and they made
a decision that the strike should be spread as
rapidly as possible. That was not too difficult,
because there is still a great deal of craft
unionism in the whole labor movement.
Many of the warehouses were not warehouses in
the old sense of the word. We had all the coffee
houses, places like Consolidated Chemical that had
all kinds of glue products and what have you. In
any number of places you would have one or two
machinists. Hills Brothers had a good number of
machinists. What Hook and Dillon did was shut
down, every place where they had machinists, so
that you have the anomolous 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 Hook and Dillon, and then the
(Communist) party got in the act too -
You thought they were mistaken?
Terribly mistaken. I kept trying to tell them,
"Look, you're going to lose the strike on account
of this." They wouldn't buy it - they said, "How
in the hell can it hurt us when we've got that
much economic pressure going?" Some four or five
thousand machinists out, plus a total of some
45,000 other workers who were also out.
I'll admit that at points the argument got
pretty violent. There were a couple of party guys
in the Machinists Union who felt that this was the
338
LG: greatest thing since the wheel - the ability to
pull out that many workers. I said, "It doesn't
work that way. When you go through a battle the
first thing you do is carry the fight yourself;
that's the number one job. Explain the issues
to the workers involved. If you have issues
covering other workers as well, you're just that
much better off. You don't ask somebody else to
put his job on the line unless certain things
happen.
"One, for example, if they try to run strike
breakers, that's an entirely different situation.
Then calling on the rest of the labor movement to
put their paychecks on the line is perfectly sen
sible and you'll get that support; but to start
off a strike by saying okay, we'll show you what
economic power we have, our craft can tie up
45,000 workers, will not work to your advantage.
"Instead it's going to pull you down because
those 45,000 workers will be right on your back,
not helping you." I just couldn't drive it home.
We got into some pretty violent quarrels in
the ILWU. When I spoke openly about these things
at a large meeting of Local 6 some officials were
yelling at me, "Are you saying that we ought to
go through their picket line?" I said, "Absolutely
'No'. I'm not saying we should go through their
picket line. I do think it is our job to tell
them they are making a damn foolish mistake."
Ward: Well, the Machinists were putting Local 6 members
on the bricks, weren't they?
LG: Right. There were several things they could do,
any one of which would make sense. One, just let
the machinists stay in those jobs if you have a
commitment from the employer that they will meet
whatever the new scale is. A second one would be -
let them withhold their labor, but don't picket
the place.
##
339
##
Ward: You were talking about this meeting at which you
discussed the Machinists' strike.
LG: Yes. The concomitant to withholding their labor
would be the guarantee from us that none of us
would do any of their work, nor would we allow
any foreman or anybody else to do their work.
Although most of our members understood 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 the craft type of unionism
unless it handles itself intelligently.
You are not telling our people okay, we'll
see what we can do in the way of protecting your
interests and we're not going to ask you to get
into the melee until you have to. Instead, you're
saying, "Look, you are going to be a good union
man and respect the picket line."
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 establishment that is
on strike, and sooner or later a crisis occurs.
The Machinists' International moved in, and I
guess all kinds of unions by that time were really
bending their ear at whoever was the head of the
Machinists' Lodge 68.
It was put in receivership, Hook and Dillon
were out, and it was the loss of a good ally. It
was the last time that I know of that the Machin
ists tried to do anything on that scale. The man
who has been in charge the past few years is quite
good - Stan Jensen. He understands these things
a lot better.
Except for one incident where they did strike
the Machinists at Hills Brothers, our guys were
really storming mad about the whole thing because
there was no need for it.
The company was prepared to sign any kind of a
stipulation they wanted on giving them the same
rates of pay, but no, that was not it. The group
340
LG: they negotiated with was primarily based on the
machine shops and the warehouse employers did not
"belong to it. As I remember, George V alter, who
was still working at Hills Brothers, had all the
machinists up to local 6 for a meeting. We asked
their representatives to be there and really had
a donney-brook. It went on for about four hours
on these same basic issues.
George was so angry he said, "Let's sign them
all up in the ILWU; they know this damn thing is
wrong." I said, "No, you can't use a situation
where a union is on strike to start a raiding
operation, for Christ's sake. Just see what the
devil they'll do themselves." Sure enough, the
machinists worked out something and went back to
work.
It was the old craft argument that the Wobblies
had argued about years before in old Wobbly
literature. This showed how a plant could be
broken down into various crafts, that comprised
only a handful of members.
You could take one big industrial establishment
and if you started to carve the thing up by crafts,
you'd have everything from the Janitors' Union,
waitresses in the cafeteria, a moldmaker, a plumb
er, an electrician, a carpenter; and this goes on
endlessly. Of course, that is the fundamental
weakness of craft unions.
Incidentally, that lesson is one we learned
pretty damn well when we were organizing in Hawaii,
even though once in a while you'd have noises in
the crafts. There's no question but that the
pecking order in American society and the craft
consciousness of some groups of workers - even
when they belong to industrial unions - is some
thing you can't ignore.
Skilled vs. Unskilled
Ward: But what did you do to overcome the pride of the
skilled craftsman as compared to the unskilled
and semi-skilled? How did you work that?
341
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
There were several things you could do. For
example, we still have a lot of maintenance
machinists in the warehouses. We finally decided
rather than negotiate for them separately, we
would simply write a provision in the agreement
whereby they would automatically get the prevail
ing rate that the Machinists established in their
basic agreements.
Another way, as we did in Hawaii, was set up
a series of labor grades. A journeyman mechanic,
whether he be electrician, moldmaker, machinist,
or pattern-maker, does feel that the years he
spent as a journeyman entitle him to something
more; on that score he's right. You simply set
up the labor grade system; every once in a while
you might have to bend that curve, tilt it a bit.
Some unions try to handle the thing on an
industrial basis by percentage increases, something
I'm very much opposed to. If you keep negotiating
percentage increases, the differentials between
top and bottom expand. However, periodically we
take up the question of adjustments for the crafts.
The Auto Workers, for example, which are bound
to have a lot of skilled tradesmen, literally have
separate bargaining for the craftsmen. I'm not
sure they have a veto power over the agreement as
such, but something that comes very close to it.
Yes, and it has caused some trouble at times, too.
There were times when they thought they would have
a wide open split. It's not an easy one to handle;
if you ignore the thing you're just setting your
self a time bomb.
Let me ask - I think you told me that the ILWU now
has Trona (a chemical plant near Death Valley)?
Yes.
What did you do then, because a number of
organizations have had Trona since the Mine-Mill
(Union) originally organized it. Did you have to
meet the conditions of the first contract the
Mine-Mill got there where after 20 years seniority,
the common laborer made as much as the highest
skilled mechanic?
342
LG-: No, I think that's been pretty well abolished;
they have labor grades.
Ward: I would think so. It was recognized as a fallacy.
LG: Right. And mentioning Trona, there was an attempt
there - oh, seven or eight years ago, thereabouts
some union tried to raid Trona again, basing their
appeal primarily to the machinists and groups of
that sort - and that's the sort of thing where
you have a built-in time bomb unless you do
something about it.
On the other hand, to merely kowtow to the
highly skilled groups is a mistake. Some unions,
for example, wind up with their bargaining
committees entirely from the higher groups; they
negotiate for themselves first before the rest of
the people get anything. It's one of the inter
nal problems; if you handle it, it's not going to
be that much of a headache. If you decide to
brush it aside or kick it in the head, then you
are in trouble.
In Hawaii we had some screams on the part of
the machinists because we had not bent the wage
line for some five or six years and had not
gotten them anything in addition. Then you had
guys on the committee who, because they worked
in the fields, - and in the fields, the operations
in the main are still incentive, but you can't
have incentive operations for a machinist or a
carpenter - would say, "V/ell, if they don't like
what the hell they're doing or how much they're
getting, they can get out here in the hot sun
and make as much as we do." You had situations
where they're making more than the skilled man.
I mention this thing about the machinists
because this is the culmination of the whole damn
fight that had gone on in the A F of L on the
question of industrial unionism.
Although we never saw the possibility of try
ing to move industrial unionism into certain
established fields where the unions were not
industrial, but they were clean, they believed in
workers' solidarity; they helped out, they took
343
LG-: progressive positions, they would support
industrial unions, but they were not about to
destroy their craft unions.
What happened is that some of the craft unions,
even though they have a craft base, will still
become industrial unions, because they recognize
that the industrial form of bargaining, and
organization makes sense. The Machinists Union
could make a blunder such as the one I mentioned;
then that same outfit goes up to Boeing (Aircraft
Company) in Seattle, organizes the plant com
pletely on an industrial basis -
Ward: And made a success of it, too.
LG: Yes. They did not organize a damn bit differently
than the Auto Workers did when they organized the
airplane manufacturers in Southern California.
Neither did they abandon the old craft locals, and
I can't expect them to.
344
VIII SCARING THE BIG FIVE
A Smashing Political Victory
Ward: Now, can we go on to Hawaii?
LG: Well, we'll go on to Hawaii. The Shoemaker re
port I mentioned concluded that 85 percent of
the trade and commerce and manufacture in Hawaii
was in the hands of the Big Five.
Ward: But, you said the other day that in 1945 some
sort of Hawaii Labor Relations Act was adopted.
How could that have happened with this tremendous
anti-union power of the Big Five still in force?
LG: Because one of the by-products of the whole
upheaval against -martial law, the kicking around
the people had gotten from the Big Five, took a
political turn.
Ward: Something must have happened in '44 - that was
the last time Roosevelt ran for president, wasn't
it?
LG: Right. And it was also a big upheaval in Hawaii
with a lot of local people elected for the first
time. Jack was very astute on that; he spent a
lot of time lining up certain people he thought
could make it.
He knew a great deal about the exercise of
leverage, so that in the plantation communities
there was such a wave that there was no problem
electing our people, although in some cases you
might deliberately pick a Republican because he
might swing certain weight that you wanted.
345
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
There was an overwhelming victory on the outside
islands in all the plantation communities. These
were Territorial elections. Bear in mind this was
still a Territory at the time; it was under an ap
pointed governor, named (Ingram) Stainback. He was
no pal of the ILWU. In the 1944 election we got a
good majority in both houses of the legislature.
That must have scared the hell out of the Big Five.
It did, it did. There I think the union used
good judgment. Jack's conclusion was, "If we
start pushing too fast on a lot of things, we're
going to lose a lot of people." There were
certain basic things the/ wanted in the way of
improvement in workmen's compensation; we made
some headway there, but the biggest thing we
picked up out of the election was a Hawaii Labor
Relations Act.
It was important to us; we started off by
signing up the sugar mills because they were
covered by the National Labor Relations Act, but
we very quickly realized that we had to have the
field workers too, and they were not covered.
Then we were also beginning to move in pineapple
where the field workers were even more important
because pineapple is much more of a seasonal
operation.
I recall getting some guys elected who might
not have been the finest legislators in the world,
but they sure as heck knew what they ought to do,
including a number of union men like Joseph Alapai
Kahulakula, Jr. I remember him from the Island
of Maui. We elected Bill Paia who was from Kauai,
elected Hisaoka and Pule from the Big Island and
Yamasaki from Maui.
Now you were dealing with people from different
ethnic backgrounds and quite a racial mix. Were
there not some problems with illiteracy, and so
forth?
Well, I'd say there might have been some problems
of illiteracy. A good deal of the material we
put out in those days would be in more than one
346
LG:
language. There were regular translations, for
example, on certain key issues in Ilokano, the
primary Filipino dialect that is spoken there.
The basic Filipino groups there were - first
there were some Visayans. We never bothered to
translate in Visayan. They had been there quite
a long time and most of them got by pretty well
in English. The later groups that came there
from the Philippines were from Ilocos Korte -
they spoke Ilokano.
Ward: Well, when it came to the actual ballot, did you
have study grour>s to teach the guys what to do
with that ballot?
I"2: Oh, yeah, they went out, just like Frank Thompson
did; Filipino leaders, Japanese leaders, some
Chinese and a number of Hawaiians. That paid off
because these people could correspond directly
to their own groups.
Ward: They were like party whips?
LG-: Yes, Filipino guys would go out and talk to
Filipino guys, house to house. I recall the
meetings at that time, trade union meetings in
the main, but after the main report, they would
break up into political rallies by language groups.
You would take 150 people over in one corner
of a big ball park, 200 people over in another
corner. You'd have translations going on in
Japanese, in Ilokano and so forth. One of the
people we had was a Reverend Yadao.* His daughter,
Priscilla, later became our union librarian.
Ward: What nationality?
LG-: He was a Filipino and he spoke Ilokano; he did
our radio program as well. I recall having him
on the radio program during the 1946 sugar strike,
and I think he was on the radio program before
then. When that radio program was first started
^Reverend Smilio Yadao
347
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
in Ilokano, it had an enormous listening audience
because it was the first language broadcast that
had taken place in Hawaii.
They would all listen. Everybody knew what
time people got up in the morning on the planta
tions. It was an early morning program and they
would automatically switch on to that, you see.
I've had my own experiences with radio programs
in hostile territory. How did you find a station
that was willing to put you on?
I don't recall whether it was one of the big
stations. Radio was not one of the fields where
the Big Five had taken over, newspapers, yes. I
don't recall their having the same degree of
control over radio. I think a number of independ
ents broke in there. I don't recall our having
that much trouble, getting radio time.
Any censorship problems?
No, because most of the stuff was cleancut trade
union or political stuff.
I mean, if you criticized the Big Five, would the
radio station be breathing down your neck?
No. Well, yes; we were supposed to make a
preceding submission. I think it was more
observed in the breach. It wasn't that much of
a headache. One of the most interesting radio
programs we ever had there was during the 1946
sugar strike.
But in answer to your question: in 1944 we won
hands down on the questioi of the Hawaii Labor
Relations Act. We used it to complete the
organizing campaign -
In '45 - and aust as the war was ending you were
ready to go?
We didn't have the single, merged local as yet,
but in terms of having a framework of organization,
leaders elected, a lot of good leadership develop
ing, a real broad-scale campaign of organizing, of
knowing what the hell we were trying to do, we had
everything tuned up.
348
The Tension Rises
Ward: You had some problems with the eager beavers who
wanted to strike right now, didn't you?
LG: Yes, there were a lot of hectic discussions. By
the end of the war a number of our units were
really practically full-fledged affairs. All we
pushed for in 1945, at about the same time that
the war was ending, was for an interim contract;
we didn't feel that we could make the big push at
that moment.
By that time the Hawaii Employers Council had
been set up led by Jim Blaisdell. When we did
sit down it was in what amounted to industry-wide
negotiations; the 1945 agreement wasn't the
biggest thing that ever came along, but at least
it was a break-through in terms of recognition
and without having to go to a strike.
V/ard: Did you say something about the great informality
with which that agreement was signed?
LG-: ITo, it was the longshore agreement.
Ward: Ch, signing on the garbage pail?
LG: Right, yes, that was the longshore agreement down
there in 1945.
V/ard: Did you negotiate it, or Harry?
LG: I did that time. At least it recognized the re
organization of the Longshore Union. Remember,
we had won an NLRB election for the Hawaii
Longshoremen and had an initial agreement just
before the war broke and the military took over.
The union was revived very, very quickly because
of the basic core of leadership I guess - we must
have had more pure Hawaiians in the ILWU than in
any other section of industry. Hawaiians had been
very prominent in longshore work over the years;
very strong, big men like Julian Napunoa, Freddy
Eamahoahoa, Benny "Big Nose" Kahaawinui, Levi
Kealoha, Harry Komoko.
349
LG: The number of Hawaiians we had, I think indicated
something more than just organization. How deep
it was, I don't know; even guys like Joe Kealaleo -
Ward: A special link between union organization and the
Polynesian tradition?
LG: I think they saw it as a fight for what the
Hawaiians thought they had been cheated out of;
that feeling went very, very deep. Let me give
you a story and you'll just have to interpret the
thing as best you can.
We had a store front as I told you right across
from the docks in Honolulu, not very far from
Pier 11. Cne of the organizers was Freddy Eama-
hoahoa. He'd been a longshoreman and he must have
been one of the strongest men I ever met in my
life; also a bit disturbed at times; one of the
things he could not do is drink.
Ward: Although he tried?
LG: Yes, every once in a while because I recall one
day as I was approaching the office the two girls
we had working there, Betty Bristow and Pauline
Rosenthal were outside. I said, "What's the
matter?" And they said, "You better not go in
there; Freddy's in there and he's not in good
shape; he's taken over the back part of the office
and he's been rearranging a lot of things". I
said, "Well, I'll go in and see if I can talk to
Freddie." The store had been divided so that we
had a little office in front and a small meeting
hall in back where we could get together after
work with some of the key guys.
So, I go back there and sit down on a chair.
Freddie was a very good calligrapher and he had
been writing out things in Hawaiian. He had gone
to the Kamehameha School and he knew Hawaiian
very well, spoke and wrote it beautifully., and
here he was writing these slogans or statements
across the back of the auditorium.
There was a blank wall there and he had several
of these great big wicker chairs with the high
backs to them; where he had gotten them, I don't
350
LG-: . know. So, I said, "Gee, that's good work,
Freddie." At first he was looking at me very
suspiciously. "You like the work I'm doing here,
huh?" "Yes, it's beautiful", I said, "I think
it's fine. I don't know what it means, I wish I
did. Unfortunately, I don't know any Hawaiian."
"Ytell, I'll explain to you - this is what we
need here when we have the king and queen again."
I think it was going on through his head that he
was going to help restore the monarchy, even
though it was the monarchy itself that, after all,
had done in a lot of Hawaii ans.
Ward: And sold out to the missionaries?
LG-: Sure. I think what was coming out of his system
was the fact that they had lost the islands to
the missionaries and to the haoles and they
wanted them back. They saw the union as the first
effective fighting organization to come along.
These Hawaiians at various times dropped off
by the wayside, but never for non-union reasons;
whether it was because they felt the union had
done as much as it could - couldn't swing it or
Ward: I was going to ask you: does that yearning for
the monarchy still obtain among the Hawaiian
union members?
LG-: Hot that it's expressed that way. I've never
sat down with any groups and said, "Look, one of
the things we've got to do is restore the
monarchy." But their feelings about the haoles
in some cases can be pretty brutal - they have a
big contempt for them. Their feelings about the
land - no question that there is still deep, deep
resentment for what went on.
Ward: I've reason to believe that white children have
trouble going to school because of the resent
ment against the haoles.
LG: There was a lot of resentment between the local
guys and the navy and the army, the guys who were
there on "rest and recreation." There were all
351
LG-: kinds of fist fights. If, for example, some army
and navy men out for a good time would wander
into one of their areas, bars where Hawaiians
would hang out, they would just find some reason
to dump a sailor or a soldier.
Ward: Isn't it true that Hawaiians have a lot of trouble
with drinking?
LG-: Not true. Some of them did and some of them
didn't, just like anybody else. A lot of Hawaii
ans I knew didn't drink at all or they drank
moderately; some would drink an enormous amount
of beer.
I remember a party that the guys put together
for me when I was staying at the lliumalu Hotel
on my birthday. I had been spending an awful lot
of time in the Islands and I had this room that
was right on the floor level and you walked out
on to a grass plot.
The guys figured well no use Lou having a
party by himself on his birthday, so they borrow
ed some instruments and other people's girl
friends and gathered up some booze and came out.
It became quite a shindig - a lot of fun and a
lot of singing.
People started wandering in from hotels further
up the strip to watch the Hawaiians carry on. It
was really a hell of a good party with a lot of
Hawaiian songs, a lot of their working class
songs. An amazing sight to watch some of these
guys over 200 pounds do the hula.
Ward: You mean the old-fashioned hula?
LG: The old-fashioned hula with the greatest of grace;
nothing very fast, no big ass-shaking stuff. It
was different. Abe Kaunakea, a great big Hawaiian
he must have weighed close to 300 pounds, a big
man in all directions - didn't drink with the
others.
He took a case of beer and went over to a
wooden fence between where I stayed and Jack
Hall's house on the beach, where Jack lived with
Yoshiko (his wife) and their kids.
352
LG:
The next morning I happened to go out and saw
that Abe Monakea, every time he finished a can of
beer, he'd set it down, and he finally formed a
pyramid. This guy had gone through two cases
of beer. I guess he was unloading the by
product against the fence, (laughter) Can you
imagine some guy going through two cases of beer?
And I recall him saying goodnight and you would
never think he was drunk.
Ward: So, now, we're getting along toward the 1946
sugar strike, I guess.
LG: Yes, '45 was a holding operation and we got the
initial agreement in sugar; we got an agreement
in longshore. Hilo was always well organized.
Ward: That was where the whole thing began, really?
LG: I think that was the first local of the ILWU in
Hawaii; they're the ones who had gone through
the 1938 inter-Island strike. Jack got organiza
tion completed in Port Allen, where he had gone
through a ten-month strike in 1940; and Nauwili-
wili, that was the port close to Port Allen.
Kahului on Maui was organized, even though
there was a very rough cat there by the name of
Buster Burnett. He was the labor relations man
in charge of Kahului railroad. Kahului railroad
also controlled the port.
Stories About A Wobbly
LG: He and Frank Thompson got into some real ass-
tangling affairs because Frank would not back
away from anybody. He was just that kind of a
guy. When we first sent Frank down there - I
don't know whether I mentioned the fact that vie
couldn't get plane space for him so we sent him
down as a member of the Marine Cooks and Stewards.
He worked on board the ship and when it got to
Hawaii, he said, "Pay me off as best you can."
You don't get your full pay because they hold back,
353
LG: but he got off with whatever dough he could. He
gets off - he knows there is martial law - he
walks up to the office of the military governor
and introduces himself, slaps his union "book on
the desk and says, "I'm here now, what are you
going to do about it?" He wouldn't wait for
anybody to say to him, "You can't come in here
because of martial law." Prank was that kind of
a guy; he and Buster Burnett tangled ass over in
Kahului .
##
Ward: Now, Burnett and Thompson -
LG: We organized the railroad there and we found we had
to go through the Railway Labor Act. The exper
ience with that, if anything could drive you nuts,
that's it. We did okay there and we had the main
port of Kahului well organized - Buster Burnett
later became a good friend of the ILWU, oddly
enough. At first he was very bitter about it.
Ward: What was he? Labor relations guy for somebody?
LG: Right. And he was also a pretty competent employ
er. He ran the dairy as well as the Kahului
railroad. After all, that whole secti'on of Maui
was under the control of Alexander Baldwin.
Ward: He was their man -
LG: Their man. I remember during that time going up
and visiting Asa Baldwin - he was one of the
descendants of the Baldwin family. Just curious,
that's all; who the devil we were and what we were
like.
Burnett was tough. Later on he decided
the job we had done was really worthwhile. He
became a very good friend of Jack Hall's and my
self. The only testimonial dinner arranged for
him when he retired was done by the ILWU, years
later. But Prank of course was not going to
tolerate any stalling, didn't waste any time on
aloha.
354
LG: I was stuck down there over the holidays and I
sort of connect that with the Fair Labor Standards
Act suit we had going. Anyway, Frank and I
decided we'd spend New Year's Eve together and we
ran into a whole series of parties. We had more
than our share and there had been some Chinese
girl at one party whom I had gotten into a conver
sation with, something she said about Chiang-Hal -
Chek that I didn't like.
I was talking about the Long March (a key
episode in the Chinese revolution); she had no
use for that. I had been reading about develop
ments in China, about the movement of Mao Tse Tung;
Chu Teh was our hero. I kept brooding about this,
but we got back to Frank's house just about dawn.
I said, "V/e really have to straighten these people
out; you have some records here, do you have Chi
Lai?"
V/ard : What?
LG: Chi Lai; you remember, Paul Robeson did a record
on that. It was one of the songs being used by
the Chinese Red Army. Yes, Chi Lai - "Forward",
I think it means. He said, "Yeah, I've got that
record." So we gather up his record player and
this record, Chi Lai, and a case of beer and
start walking down the street towards Waikiki. I
was staying at the old Moana Hotel.
I had the address where this girl was staying
and we get there and we find an outside plug. V/e
plug in the phonograph and put on Chi Lai. Finally,
we were told by the neighbors we had better move.
So, we pick up the phonograph and thought we might
as well walk down to my hotel.
So, we're walking down - and we meet the man
who was in the military government, a brigadier
general. I got to know him fairly well, but not
on a business basis. lie didn't know much about
the army, he just had the title. As far as he was
concerned, he was just interested in having a good
time. He didn't see any problem in serving out
the war in Honolulu.
355
LG-: As we were walking along the street, he suddenly
comes out in his sciwies. He had parked his
car in the middle of the street. He'd had quite
a night of it. He said, "Where are you going?"
"We're going over to the Moana Hotel." He said,
"I'd just as soon come along, have you got any
good records there?" I said, "Yeah, we've got
several records and we'll play them."
So, we get back to the Moana Hotel; Prank
decided he ought to go to sleep. So, the general
and myself were playing these records. He said,
"Oh, they ought to be played louder." There was
no air conditioning. We opened up all the
windows in the room and here we are blaring away
first thing in the morning.
Pretty soon, there's some MPs (military police)
at the door. The general says, "You just tell
anybody that's complaining to shut up." That was
the end of that incident.
The other incident I was going to tell you
about Prank. In 1946 he was still there. Frank
did quite a stretch for us there. If you ever
get a chance, you ought to read some of his
reports. They're priceless - very thorough, not
only names, places, details, dates, who's what,
how they think and amazingly good judgment in
almost all cases.
Anyway, you could tell Prank was getting a bit
irritated about the whole stretch he's had in
Hawaii by 1946. I went down there somewhere around
the middle of '46 and it looked as though we were
going to head for trouble because the sugar con
tract was open and there was no way of seeing how
we could get the things we wanted without a battle.
Prank was thoroughly convinced we could win it.
He said, "The job has been done, these people will
stick - one thing you don't have to worry about,
they're not going to break ranks on you." And
he'd picked something up among the Japanese. "Don't
worry about us, we know v/hat it is to sacrifice."
And they saw it that way.
356
LG: He wasn't even concerned about the new group of
Filipinos who were brought in a couple of months
before the strike took place. Most of them were
signed, up on the ship coming over to Hawaii. We
had some men put to work on the ship and when
these men were being transported on the old Mauna-
wili they were being signed up; depending on v/hat
plantation they were assigned to, told how to go
find the union. So, they were well organized by
the time they got off the vessel.
And he says, "You know, if I have one more
teriyaki steak, I'm just going to jump out the
window." Prank was always strictly a^ steak and
potato man, but teriyaki steak and rice had
finally gotten to him.
So I said, "Prank, I don't want to get into an
argument with you on this, but promise me one
thing at least, that you will talk to me before
you leave; everybody here realizes we're heading
for trouble. You have so much at stake and the
union has so much at stake, we sure as heck
shouldn't take any chances. And you might have to
stay on and see this battle through." He said,
"Well, that's another thing." I said, "Well, at
least promise me you'll talk to me before you
take off." He said, "Ckay, you have my promise
on that." And the strike, I think, was only two
days old so that had to be some time around
September -
Ward: About 1946.
LG: Forty-six - when I get a call and it's Frank. I
say, "Gee, it's good to talk to you, Frank, I
haven't seen you for a few days." He said,
"Remember, you and I talked months ago and I told
you that I wouldn't leave here until I talked to
you first." And I said, "Yes, and I appreciate
that." And he said, "Well, I thought I ought to
talk to you before I leave."
I said, "You want to come by the office?" He
said, "No, I can't do that - they're calling the
plane right now," and said, "Goodbye. " He had
talked to me and that was it! He took off.
357
(Interview 14: 16 May, 1978)
The Pre-Strike Legal Victory
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
ow, about that lawsuit that you were interested
in.
Let me describe to you what the suit was all about,
You recall that during the war Jack Hall worked
for the Pair Labor Standards Act in Hawaii. I'm
not sure exactly how long he worked for them
because Hawaii went under martial law very quick
ly after Pearl Harbor.
Finally martial lav/ was knocked off by the
very courageous judge there, Delbert Metzger;
marvelous old guy who later testified for Jack in
the Smith Act (anti-Communist) trial. He was a
character witness; he was very fond of us. I got
to know Delbert Ketzger much later. He was well
in his eighties when I knew him.
I remember; he was entertained over here.
That's right and Symonds - you know, one of our
lawyers down there -
Meyer Symonds.
Meyer Symonds and Metzger got to be very good
friends; Meyer would stop by to see him at least
once a week. And he told a hilarious story about
the judge.
The judge was cited for reckless driving, not
driving fast, but driving erratically. Meyer
asked, "What actually happened; are you going to
pay the fine?" And the judge said, "I guess I
ought to, really." "Why", asked Meyer. "Do you
think you were guilty of reckless driving?" He
says, "Only after a fashion; there was a very
attractive lady sitting next to me and I put my
hand on her knee and I guess I wasn't paying too
much attention to my driving." In his eighties!
358
LG-: He was quite a vigorous old goat and a delightful
character. But that is just an aside.
When Jack was with the Pair Labor Standards
Act, he reached the conviction there were innum
erable violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act
by the plantations. There was no great problem
in terms of the mills themselves. The employers
realized the mills where you grind the cane are
clearly covered by the 40-hour week provisions of
the Fair Labor Standards Act.
On the other hand, there were an endless number
of borderline operations. Let me give you an
example. There's a truck driver who takes a big
rig of sugar out of the field to the mill. Is he
covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act or is he
excluded because of the agricultural exemption?
Take the large number of people we had working
around the camps. They did everything from build
ing the houses, repairing them, painting them,
carpenter work, plumbers and what have you. Were
they covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act or
were they under the agricultural section?
Maintenance men, for example, out in the fields
in all kinds of equipment would be a problem.
So, there were a whole series of questions that
Jack was convinced were clear and outright
violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and
that the obligation of the employers would be
enormous. The method used to value perquisites
for fair Labor Standard Act compliance purposes
was another major factor.
Jack was the one who suggested that this suit
be filed; we used the attorneys for the Internation
al. They were Gladstein, Andersen, Resner and
Sawyer. The actual preparation of the material,
knowing the operation, was obviously done by Jack.
It would have taken the attorneys months to go out
in the fields and study each one of the operations
separately, whereas to Jack, all these things were
at his fingertips.
Obviously the thing to do was to pick the
strongest cases first; those would be where you
have a very thick interlocking between the
359
LG-: plantation and the mill. In those days a great
deal of sugar was still being transported by rail
and they had these tiny plantation railroad lines.
Were they agricultural or were they industrial?
Ward: Were they under the Railway Labor Act?
LG: Whether they came under the Railway Labor Act was
another story again, you see. As a matter of fact,
in one place, you had a separate railroad, the
Kahului Railroad. There we had to go through the
Railway Labor Act. Later on, the railroad was
washed out and they went to trucking, which made
much more sense because the rails were too diffi
cult to get into all kinds of corners.
Sometimes it meant bringing the cane down by
flume, as they did on the Hamakua coast; they'd
build these flumes going clear up into the hills.
The cane would come flying down through these
flumes with water almost as far as the mill, and
there were some jobs there that were terribly
dangerous.
The guys were hardly paid anything at all, such
as the carpenter work that went on, building
bridges across these arroyos. These flumes in
some cases were built, oh, I'd say, to a height
of 200 or 300 feet, all on gravity flow. Of course,
the stuff would require repair and here you'd see
someone repairing one of those flumes and he looked
like a tiny little midget up there trying to do
his carpenter work under some very risky conditions.
Well, again, that would be the question, "What
is this man? Is he an agricultural worker or an
industrial worker who is building a flume?" After
all, if you take an industrial worker and put him
to work building a sugar mill, that doesn't make
him an agricultural worker, or if he's building
a road that doesn't make him an agricultural
worker; he's an industrial worker covered by the
Fair Labor Standards Act.
So, Jack is the one who put together the basic
ingredients for the suit. The suit then was filed
against all the plantations, all of the Big Five,
by our attorneys in San Francisco. The whole
360
thing was on some sort of contingency basis. As
to whether it was too much, too little, we didn't
pay much attention at the time.
Somewhere close to the holidays in 1945 I got
a wire from the employers, and also a wire from
Jack Hall, saying that the employers wanted to sit
down and discuss a settlement of the suit. I
remember managing somehow to get transportation
down there, even though it was still very diffi
cult. It might have been that same period when I
was stuck down there with Prank Thompson and began
to make the rounds on New Year's Eve.
Jack and I met and discussed the question as to
what would be a fair settlement. We weren't quite
sure, but we said, it ought to be something ovar
a million dollars, because the potential liability
of the employers is enormous. ?or years they had
been working certain of these people anything from
46 hours to 50 hours.
The bookkeeping work v/ould be unbelievable;
the total liability, if they were covered by the
Fair Labor Standards Act, would run into millions
and millions of dollars. So, even though a mil
lion bucks sounded like an awful lot of money, we
felt that there ought to be something more than
that.
We held our meeting with the employers about a
day or two before Christmas, and there the
employers offered us a half a million dollars to
settle the suit. Jack and I just looked at each
other and didn't call a huddle. I said, "Look,
as far as I'm concerned, you brought me down here
on false pretenses, you brought me down here
saying you were interested in the settlement of
the suit and you're wrecking my holiday season.
"Obviously this is not an attempt to settle at all,
so goodbye; I'm catching the first plane out of
here, as soon as I can get myself priority." And
we walk out. And the committee all agrees with
us - there were a number of rank and filers in
there.
361
LG: The next day we get a call from the employers
saying, "Well, we've been looking at the thing
and we want to discuss it further." So, we went
back to another meeting with the employers and
they raised the ante to $750,000; again we told
them the same thing, that was just no settlement;
we'd just as soon see the thing go to court.
We've got a good case; if we lose, we lose; we
had nothing to lose in the first place.
Frank Thompson was around at that session
because I remember we walked out of this session
after telling the employers that they could for
get their $750,000 and I was going through my
pockets and didn't have any money with me. I
said, "Prank, do we have enough for coffee?"
Prank always carried dough. So, here we were,
just rejected three-quarters of a million dollars
and here we were trying to get a dime for coffee I
Once again, the employers asked for a meeting,
indicating that perhaps they would settle the
thing for the round figure of a million. Dick
(Richard) Gladstein was down there at the time.
Sure, when the employers began to offer a million
dollars, the thing was tempting. It looked very
big to our guys in the sugar plantations. Eere
we were talking about wages in the plantations
that were as low as 24 cents an hour and here's
a million dollars; although a million dollars
spread across a lot of men isn't all that much.
One of the things that was bothering us in the
union - the union I'm talking about, not the
attorneys - was the distribution of the money.
You'd be in a hell of a jam because obviously not
all the workers would be entitled to it. If we
could lower the distribution problem on the backs
of the employers, fine; then if something was done
wrong, the union could take the position: those
sons-of -bitches are still trying to screw you.
But the employers had already mentioned that
if the settlement was made we would take on the
responsibility for the distribution, or at least
the determination of it. We weren't too jubilant
about it, but we could see how that could very
easily be the problem we'd have if we finally got
a settlement.
362
1.G: There's where I think you picked up the story
that there were some sharp differences "between
myself and Richie G-ladsteln.
Ward: They still talk about it.
LG-: les, I wouldn't "be a "bit surprised. I don't talk
about it because it finally worked out. But at
the moment, of course, I was extremely unhappy
because I found out that Richie had been talking
to some of our guys on the committee, without
consulting either Jack or myself, that if the
employers offered a million dollars, perhaps they
ought to take it.
I can see where the attorneys would think that
was a hell of an attractive settlement because of
their contingency fee - that's a lot of money.
In those days, that was the biggest case I guess
the attorneys had ever had. The attorneys were
entitled to a fee, of course, even if you wanted
to call it a windfall. After all, ever the years
they had been a pretty loyal bunch and they had
done a good job. They handled everything from
the Bridges' cases to a lot of the strike
situations and everything else we got mixed up in.
But caucusing our guys - that was a no-no. You
don't do that.
Words got very sharp; some of the guys said,
"What are you going to do when they get to a
million bucks?" I said, "We're going to turn it
down." I said, "The way these guys have moved so
rapidly from that lousy half million they started
with and v/ithin a couple of days, they're up to a
million, there's a hell of a lot more money there.'
They said, "Gee, you're going to risk the million."
I said, "So what, you ain't got it, have you?
If you don't have it, you have nothing to lose."
It's like the business of people telling you that
if you go on strike you lose so much money. How
can you lose something you never got? You didn't
work. Sure it takes a certain form of thinking,
but it's still a correct form of thinking. Other
wise, you never make a move.
353
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Y/ard :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Jack and I were very firm with Richie. We said,
"Knock it off, we're the ones who'll settle this,
that's all; if we say 'no 1 ,
it's 'no.
T It
The net
result was that we finally got the employers up
to a million and a half dollars plus the attorney
fees. So, we picked up a million and a half bucks
for distribution to the workers.
By that time even the attorneys realized that
the union was entitled to a hunk of this money.
Jack was the one who not only conceived the thing
but had the information and the material to put
the damn thing together. And to think they could
have done it without him, I doubt it.
I want to ask a question here. Are you sure the
contingency fee agreed upon was 30 percent? I
heard it was 10 percent.
No - no. It couldn't be 10 percent.
That's the story I go
t.
Well, the reason I don't think it was 10 percent
is because when the case was settled for a million
and a half, the union got $150, 000 and the
attorneys got $150,000. That would be 20 percent
of a million and one-half dollars; ,300,000,
right?
What became of the rest of it?
It was distributed to the workers.
Ch, I see. This is interesting because the story
I got was that the settlement was for two million
dollars and that the contingency fee was for ten
percent which would have been $200,000.
I don't recall the settlement being at two million
it was a million and a half, plus the 300, 000.
That could be checked on, I suppose?
Yes, no problem at all. I recall when I got back
to San Francisco I was still steaming about this
thing; an awful lot of argument going. The guy
who seemed most amenable to trying to v/ork the
364
LG: thing out was George Andersen. He and I continued
friends. Andersen, of course, always liked a
buck; his whole "background was one of extremely
hard work; not penury, but he sure was prudent
with his money, to put it gently.
I do know v/e distributed the million and a half
bucks to the workers involved. Then we got part
of the attorneys' fees, because even they realized
that we had gotten a good deal more than what they
were prepared to settle for. If they thought we
ought to grab a million, obviously they shouldn't
be entitled to any fee on dough we got over a
million. It was a roundy-go-roundy and it wasn't
very friendly, I'll admit.
Mostly I was tee'd off about what I thought was
much more important to us than the money. You
don't go over the head of the union, that I know.
The figure of $150,000 to the union sticks at the
back of my head.
Both the suit and the money then keeps popping
up in funny ways and just let me tell you about
the follow-up on some of these things. That money
was used later to buy the land on which 451
Atkinson Drive was built - the ILWTJ headquarters
in Hawaii.
Ward: That's where the taro patches used to be.
LG-: I'm not sure whether they were taro patches or
part of a swamp area.
Ward: Well, I was in that hall 19 years ago when it was
quite new and thinking it was about where the
streetcar from Honolulu used to come through the
taro patches on its way to Waikiki.
LG-: That could very well be. Have you been in Hawaii
since they built that huge Ala Moana Shopping
Centre, the biggest shopping centre in the world?
Ward: I was there 19 years ago.
LG-: No, it wasn't built then; but the land on which
the Ala Moana shopping centre is built was swamp
land. They wanted a yacht harbor, not too far away,
365
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Dillingham, one of the big corporations in Hawaii,
now an international "building corporation, got the
contract to clear the coral to open up a yacht
harbor. For years every time you drove by that
area, you could hear these pumps going; they were
going all night. He got so much a yard for digging
out the coral, bought this swampland for almost
nothing - took the coral out, filled in the swamp
land, and got one of the most valuable hunks of
real estate in Hawaii.
It has been built up enormously. For example,
right across the street from the building is the
Ala Moana Hotel, owned by American Airlines, I
think. It's about 36 stories high. There are
two twin towers built on the other side of
Atkinson Drive and they go up to around forty
stories. Here we have a modest building four
stories high, and it looks dwarfed by everything
built around it.
It's pretty obvious that the 150,000 went for the
land for that building.
Later, later - that's a story by itself. The
reason I filled that in for you is because it
became an element later in the sugar strike. We
held on to that money; we didn't buy any land with
it at the time. We used that dough, in part, for
helping to run the strike.
Ward:
In '46?
366
IX A TEST OP UNION STRENGTH
Striking On The Big Five's Money
LG: In '46 - sure, not too long after the settlement.
We had a couple of growls back from the planta
tions; some guys got more money than others,
but generally they accepted the idea that the
union knew what it was doing, that somewhere along
the line there would be a showdown, that the
union would make demands, particularly in terms
of changing the whole sugar industry.
That money was used for all kinds of purposes
during the strike. We lent it to some of the
units that needed dough. They all set up soup
kitchens. One of the features of the 1946 strike
in sugar was the soup kitchens which were set up
in all the various plantations.
Most people would eat there, they would come
down with their own utensils, take their food
home to eat. But in many cases the families got
to the point where it was more sociable and the
kids enjoyed it more to be down there where every
body was eating together, so it became a real
social thing.
Even before the strike began the guys had
already begun planting vegetable gardens. By the
time the strike got under way, almost every sugar
unit had a crew of men and women working a
vegetable garden. You had a crew assigned to the
kitchen and the cooking. You had a crew assigned
to hunting; they could still go into the hills
there and get things like wild boar.
367
L3: You had a crew assigned to fishing; so that
actually they had a better diet during the 1946
strike than they had during ordinary times. We
had all kinds of good people helping out in
plantation soup kitchens.
Every once in a while, Jack and I would make
the rounds of the soup kitchens to talk to the
members and see what the general feelings were
like, whether the thing was holding together.
This was all in addition to the picket duty,
remember.
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 plantations
getting down to the range of under ten cents per
person. And a fairly good meal at that -
M.J1
rrfr
Ward: All right, so we were at the soup kitchens at 10
cents a meal or more.
LG: Right. It's true that most of the food that
people bought in Hawaii is brought down from the
mainland and is more expensive. ?or years you
used to have an Island differential on things like
Federal pay, army and navy; even civil service
people would get an Island differential that
applied for both Hawaii and Alaska.
But other than staples such as flour, condiments
and a few other things that you have to buy, these
plantations were just about self-sufficient. They
have gone back to a primitive form of economy
where you lived by your wits and by your hands and
by your fishing and hunting.
They were doing extremely well; the kitchens
were huge outdoor areas, sometimes with a tent on
account of rain. Where they got these enormous
kettles they cooked in, I don't know.
They were very ingenious. Every once in a
while they'd get a real killing when some guy who
ran cattle would find several had been lost, broken
through fences. They would make a deal with the
368
LG: farmer; "Look, we'll get your cattle "back if we
get one." Of course, the guys would do their
own slaughtering; they were very self-sufficient.
Some of our members would do share cropping -
small farmers; there were a handful on Cahu, on
the outside islands, a good many. Our guys would
go out and say, "Okay, we'll give you a day's
work, but we want a share." So, food was coming
in from all directions; in a number of cases,
small merchants helping out.
We had what we call "bumming committees."
Sometimes you'd need a few nickels, say, for
school lunches. Sometimes you could put enough
pressure on the Board of Education to give the
kids lunches; sometimes people were too proud
and they just had to give the kids enough to buy
the school lunches. But the atmosphere was good,
around the schools and everywhere else.
Ward: Any strike-breaking attempts?
LG: Only on one plantation and that was Pioneer.
That's a story by itself, where they fired some -
I think it was nine or ten of our men, charging
them with having beat up some supervisors who were
trying to irrigate. That was resolved after the
strike. When the strike was settled the workers
at Pioneer Kill continued on strike for another
30 days. They wouldn't go back to work without
the strikers who had been fired.
Ward: Did they win that one?
LG: Yes. That was sort of a peculiar case. Nate
Feinsinger had been sent down there by the govern
ment. Feinsinger was the dean of the Wisconsin
Law School, and he was used on special assignment
by the Labor Department as a conciliator. He got
to be a fairly good friend of ours over the years.
Feinsinger didn't get any place; neither did
the federal conciliator who was sent down, Stanley
Von White. I finally found out what the "T" stood
for. Stanley was a heck of a good man and a very
honest guy, straight as a die. He tried like the
devil to get negotiations under way.
369
LG: There's a sort of amusing story. Stanley White
decided he ought to try to convene a session of
the parties and we were perfectly happy to be
there. I felt we wouldn't find a situation where
the mediator was leaning on us.
You know, this is something you have to watch
in every mediation session; apparently their
basic order of instructions is that they should
look around and see which is the weakest party,
and then lean on him. As long as the thing is
settled, it is a victory for the Labor Department.
It might not be a victory for the workers, or
anybody else.
I wasn't concerned about that, but White set
up the meeting for someplace in downtown Honolulu.
Jim Blaisdell was there from the Employers' Coun
cil, and the man who was working with him was
Dwight Steele. He had been Blaisdell 's successor
with the Distributors Association in San Francisco.
V.'ard: There was a lot of respect between the two parties?
LG: Yes. Steele was a little more difficult, and
Blaisdell could be a first class mean character
when he got going. He saw the thing in very
simple terms. He didn't see any good reason to
have an Employers Council launch a crusade to
destroy the unions. On the other hand, he felt
it was his job to represent the employers, and he
did it well. As an individual, he was really a
very likeable guy; at least I enjoyed his company.
Ward: Well, there was mutual respect anyway.
LG: Yes - he had known me, and so did Dwight Steele,
from the mainland.
V/ard: Well, anyway, White wanted to get you together.
LG: He got us together at some downtown place, the
Commercial Club. It was an odd experience
because he decided that perhaps a few drinks
might help loosen everybody up; you know, the
usual bullshit. Of course, getting a decent
bottle of booze there was -
##
370
(Interview 15: 23 May, 1978)##
Ward: We are continuing with your account of a pre
liminary attempt at negotiations by Stanley White
between the employers 1 representatives in Hawaii
and G-oldblatt and Jack Hall. Lou, what happened?
The liquor didn't do any good, I gather.
LG: Stanley White brought three bottles of Pour Roses.
Blaisdell, obviously, was not ready to do any
serious talking. It could also mean that his
general attitude, and that of the Employers Council,
could have been that they weren't terribly interest
ed in having any outside party, whether it be the
Federal Mediation Service or what have you, inject
themselves into the situation.
Ward: They resented White?
LG: I wouldn't say they were terribly fond of him. As
a matter of fact, Terry and I got to know White
and his wife and their boys quite well afterwards.
Ward: I remember, we met him.
LG: Here's Stan White sitting in the middle of this
room. Steele and Blaisdell on one side, Jack Hall
and myself on the other side. Clearly, of course,
we were at an impasse. Blaisdell takes one look
at this little card table that had been set up with
the three bottles and Stan was sort of a little bit
edgy trying to get things going and Blaisdell broke
the ice by saying, "What the devil, is it just one
dozen roses?"
Anyway, nothing much came of this session. The
Pour Roses got down to substantially less than a
dozen. We finally broke up the session around
8:00 or 8:30 at night and we left this place which
is right across from the police station.
Steele remarked he used to ride one of these
things, these motorcycles. I think either Jack or
I said, "Well, in that case here's one you can
ride." And here he was about to get on the
371
LG: motorcycle when the cop whose motorcycle it happen
ed to be came out of the station, spotted us and
hauled us into the station house, with Stanley
White, of course, jogging along and terribly,
terribly upset.
After all, he had set up the meeting and he had
responsibility for the secure passage of the
participants. Here he was, running around: Could
he talk to the captain? Could he talk to the
sergeant who was in charge? After all, he was with
the federal Mediation Service and this was all a
big misunderstanding; there was nothing serious
about this.
And finally, the cops caught on to what was
going on and said, "Okay, just take off." We were
standing there; Blaisdell and Steele had gone one
way and v/e were about to go the other; I turned
to White and told him, "You missed one of the
greatest chances a mediator ever had." "What's
that, now, Lou," he said, "I do my best in this
thing."
"Oh, Stanley, I know that and I like you very
much," I said, "But imagine an opportunity like
that, what if you had worked something out with
the captain or sergeant, or whoever you were talk
ing to, to the effect that you would leave Blaisdell
and Steele in one cell and Jack and myself in
another cell until such time as the public forced
us to sit down and settle." That would certainly
have been a new twist to the role of mediator.
Stan didn't think that was terribly funny. He took
the whole thing very seriously.
Ward: This took place at about thirty days and the strike
actually lasted sixty seven?
LG: Something like that. It was about midway. And
Stan later issued a good statement at which the
employers took a lot of umbrage; he was persona
non grata.
The Mediation Service finds itself in a very
difficult situation if they step into any scene
and either party says, "Get this character out of
here." Then he's lost his value right then and
372
LG-: there, and particularly in the case of Hawaii. 1
am sure the Mediation Service knew what the devil
they were dealing with, that enormous, concentrated
economic control.
So, Stan finally left there. The man who was
outspoken in Stan's defense was w'.K. Bassett.
Bassett was a fine, upstanding progressive who put
out a paper down around Pacific rove or Monterey
or Carmel, the Pacific Sun.
Later on, he wound up in Hawaii as an assistant
to Mayor John E. Wilson, in Honolulu. Mayor Wilson
was and remained a good friend of the ILWTJ. Mayor
Wilson was a very distinguished man; he had been
responsible for building the first tunnel through
the Pali that went from leeward to windward side.
He was really thoroughly loved by the people down
there. He was along in years and Bassett was his
assistant.
Bassett made the statement that they ought to
build a monument to Stanley White down at Fort and
Merchant Streets; that was the -main intersection
of the financial district in Honolulu. Of course,
the papers didn't take kindly to that idea.
Ward: You enumerated a couple of bargaining points the
the employers were very worried about. One was
25 million dollars and the other was the union
shop.
LG-: Correct; we had a couple of items there which we
ourselves did not take very seriously. They were
not all that important to us if we got the rest
of the things we wanted in the contract. One was
a claim for 25 million bucks, a round figure that
Jack just took off the top of his head, I guess.
That's over and beyond the Pair Labor Standards
Act suit which had been settled.
This was money that was still owed for many,
many years of violation of the Pair Labor Standards
Act, particularly on the whole perquisite system.
One of the things we were determined to get rid of
was perquisites. The employers themselves were
also moving in that direction because of the
373
LG-: Fair Labor Standards Act suit; that resolved the
immediate issue, and included certain agreements
that were made between the union and the employers,
namely, that there would be further legal action
including continued appeal at the prerogative of
the employers until such time as they got what
they considered to be a final determination as to
what was covered or not covered by the Fair Labor
Standards Act.
Ward: I see.
LG-: There's a rather significant point when I get
around to telling you something about another facet
of the Fair Labor Standards Act suit and how it
happened to work out fortuitously to settle a very
complicated legal situation we were in, namely,
a suit by Juneau Spruce up in Alaska. It's an
interesting story as to how they finally dovetailed.
So, we had this claim for twenty five million
bucks on past violations of the Fair Labor Standards
Act. Then there was the demand for the union shop -
we knew full well the chances of getting a union
shop were extremely slim. We would have been
borrowing trouble for ourselves if we had actually
won it.
Bear in mind, we were riding such a powerful
movement in the plantations that it became a
question of status in the community, your whole
relation to your family, to your friends, even to
a little business in the community, whether you
were a union member or not.
On some plantations the men were using expres
sions which were completely unwarranted; some guy
hadn't signed fast enough, they called him a scab.
He obviously was not - he hadn't broken the strike
or done anything of the sort. In some cases
where guys might have been reluctant to join, when
they finally got around to it, the union men said,
"Well, we'll think about it." Or, "We'll figure
out how much dues you owe." The union had such a
prominent position on the plantation level that it
became a basic requirement to an individual if he
was going to get along on the job, in the community,
with his friends and everything else. It had that
kind of sweep to it.
374
LG-: We'd raise the question on the union shop and
some of the leaders in the units would say, "Look,
why don't you just take care of your part of the
thing; we'll take care of this local question."
So, actually some of these issues were stalking
horses.
We kept hammering away on the more "basic
things, namely, abolition of the perquisites sys
tem. What happens to perquisites once they are
converted to cash? How do you classify the
houses? What action do you take in the event of
dissatisfaction with the way the house is main
tained? What do you pay for medical care (which
was supposedly free, while at the same time they
were paying people 24 cents an hour)?
Ward: I think you should go into detail with what the
perquisites had been, how the employers worked up
a fallacious theory that these guys were getting
something for nothing, when really they were not.
What were the perquisites on the plantations?
LG: The perquisites on the plantation level included
housing; that meant both family housing and
dormitory housing. Single men, in the main, lived
as a group within something that was closer to a
dormitory; did their own cooking, and so forth.
Family housing was family units; in many, many
plantations the camps were separated along clear
racial lines.
When you would go to some of the plantations,
they would talk about the "Chinese camp" or the
"Filipino camp" or the "Portuguese camp." It
depended on when some of these workers had
arrived. A number of the Portuguese had been
early contract laborers; they had moved up into
either higher labor grades or they had families
and picked up better housing.
People at the bottom of the totem pole were
obviously the last group of immigrant contract
labor, mostly Filipinos. So, the question of
converting perquisites to cash was complicated.
How much is a perquisite worth to a family man with
375
LG:
V/ard ;
Ward ;
V/ard :
LG:
say a three or four bedroom house; how much are
those same perquisites worth to a single man,
sharing a dormitory with five other guys?
A basic question by itself; and with the
conversion of perquisites had to come guaranteed
wage increases, notwithstanding the dollar value
attached to perquisites. Another perquisite was
medical care.
Many of the plantations, almost all of them,
had what they called a plantation doctor as well
as a small clinic. In some cases those doctors
were pretty good and loyal to their profession.
In other cases, they were almost like remittance
men.
Company-minded hacks?
Company-minded hacks, including a number of guys
who had been beaten by the booze and wound up on
a plantation, you see. The quality of care varied
a great deal, but we couldn't do too much about
it at the time.
Later, we began to do more about the question
of the quality of care, specialist care; provision
to have people flown into Honolulu, because most
of your specialists v/ere concentrated there at the
time. A third form of perquisite included things
like firewood and in some cases, water.
Garbage disposal?
Garbage disposal was also done by the plantation -
whether that was considered a perquisite, I am not
sure.
Transportation? Any transportation?
No. Basic perquisites were housing, medical care,
fuel, although in some cases the man paid his own
fuel bill. In other cases, they were incorporated,
It was a big headache in Hawaii's whole economy.
All your fuel is generated by raw materials that
are brought in from the outside. They have no
natural gas. They have to produce their own
electricity, so that fuel costs can be extremely
high.
376
LG-: Later on, as tlie standard of living improved, a
lot of people bought electrical gadgets, and their
fuel bills went up accordingly. Those are the
main perquisites.
Also, the employers had to value these per
quisites in such a way that, where they knew a job
was covered by the Pair Labor Standards Act, they
attached a value to the perquisite so as to meet
the ?air Labor Standards Act minimum. There was
always this question as to whether or not they
had been valued properly.
Those were all part of the claim for $25,000,000;
also part of the Fair Labor Standards Act suit.
It was in these areas where Jack Hall was so
amazingly knowledgeable.
I don't believe there was much of a fundamental
resistance by the employers to getting rid of per
quisites, but the manner in which they were gotten
rid of, how the contract would be written, what
grievance machinery would be provided in the whole
area of perquisites - that was an enormous project.
The net result for example was that we got a
guaranteed v/age increase for every person; it was
substantial, based on what the previous wages had
been. We also got things in the contract like
grievance machinery, recognition of vacations.
We began to formalize the question of what they
were entitled to in the way of sick leave. For
example, sick leave was an outgrowth of the
perquisite system because the whole concept was
that the worker had one big daddy and that was the
employer.
The actual sick leave provisions were not too
bad. This was a time when most of the contracts
in the mainland had no sick leave provisions.
There, the workers got two- thirds pay after, I
think three days; the number of weeks they could
collect depended on their length of service. You
could go up to 54 days of sick leave. So, these
had to be formalized.
Ward: Racial discrimination?
377
LG-: Racial discrimination was a separate question; it
was a very fundamental thing to the life of the
contract. But let me give you a few examples of
some of the things that finally emerged from the
contract.
The 1946 sugar agreement when it was finally
completed had all houses classified as "A", "B",
"C" and "D". The best of all housing, as I recall,
was at a plantation called Olokele; that's on the
Island of Kauai. There they had comparatively new
housing, all inside plumbing.
It was fairly attractive housing and I think
the rents were $41 or 842 a month. Then, your
housing went down into other categories including
A's, B's amd C's, depending on whether they were
single partitions or very few double partitions,
inside plumbing or outside plumbing, certain
electrical connections, etc. These were all a set
of factors.
Now, I just have to drift a bit off the contract
itself. Those rents that were put in the contract
at the end of the '46 strike are still exactly as
they were at that time; no change.
Ward: No increase?
LG-: No increase. The employers tried several times to
reopen the thing in terms of the cost of replace
ment or cost of repair. Cur position was very
simple; there was only one way to change the rents:
they'd have to whip us in a strike.
Y/hen you stop to think of the importance of
this, you begin to see how it runs to the whole
heart of the plantation life. As soon as we had
a strike victory and an effective union, our guys
began to talk up. It was a legitimate grievance,
for example, if a man said, "My house hasn't been
painted for 15 years; have somebody out there to
paint it, it's coming apart." Cr the plumbing
doesn't work, or what have you.
So, we had housing committees on every planta
tion. Employers got to the point where they said,
"We'll give you all the supplies you want, go out
378
LG: and do the job yourself or get your friends." The
men said, "No dice, we're not going to take the
job of a union man; let him come out and do it."
On the company's time.
Eventually, the company found itself completely
frustrated, both on the matter of changing the
rents and on repairs, which just kept piling up.
The net result was that this was the single,
motivating factor that forced the employers to let
go of land.
The Passion For Land
LG: The land is the basic source of wealth in an island
community. And the land ownership goes back a
long ways. The Big Five never really began taking
over the land until the adoption of the plan
called the "G-reat Kehele".
Other things went with it too, such as fishing
rights. There were all kinds of complicated
things - what are called kunuiki rights, access to
water, because some are dependent on fishing.
The fundamental thing in the Great Mehele was
the determination of the ownership of land; then
when the Big ]?ive came along, with the mission
aries who preceded them, they knew who they could
deal with in terms of getting that land. A certain
amount of the land was set aside for Hawaiian home
steads; some of that land still exists.
The attitude of the Hawaiians towards the whole
question of land is so deep that it really reflects
everything that has happened in Hawaii. Only a few
years back a chap I've known for a long time,
Jimmy Keen, was running for Assembly and his bumper
stickers read "Restore the Monarchy." He knew who
he was appealing to - those Hawaiians!
There's a story about this old friend of mine,
Dan Haleamau, a longshoreman. He's retired now
in Hilo and we were sitting around one night, just
talking, and I said, "Where do you live?" And he
379
LG: said, "I live in a Hawaii homestead." I asked,
""What's your rent?" He says, "One dollar a year."
I said, "You paid up?" He said, "No, I haven't
paid for the last ten years." His attitude was,
they weren't giving him a goddam thing that wasn't
his.
Well, getting a piece of fee simple land was
almost impossible. The land was owned "by the
estates: Bishop Estate, Campbell Estate, the
II Estate. Most of the undeveloped land that
wasn't in their hands or plantations belonged
to the federal government. This feeling, about
fee simple land is one of the reasons why you get
these unbelievable land prices in Hawaii.
If you think things are crazy around here it's
nothing compared to what's going on down there.
The attitude of the members was that they wanted
to see land ownership change, but it had to be
fee simple, not lease land.
I recall an incident that occurred some years
after this - after '46 - where a man who was a
fairly good builder here, William Blackfield,
talked to me, "I'm going down to Hawaii and try
to do some building. You guys have really been
doing some organizing." I said, "Yeah."
He said, "You know, once I take a look-see at
the place, maybe you'll be interested in some of
the housing I put up." "Sure," I said, "We'd
like to know." I've seen a lot of the housing
people live in in Honolulu and it sure as heck is
nothing to write home about. Pretty bad housing,
a lot of them lived along River Street,
and the Kalihi district (in Honolulu); small
shacks, almost like warrens.
A couple of years later he got in touch with
me and said, "I'm about to start some development
just over the Pali," which is not too far from
Honolulu proper, perhaps a twenty minute drive.
By that time, things had improved a bit and I
thought the families would be interested in some
new housing. So, I asked, "What will it run?"
And he said, "Well, a lot depends on whether your
guys will buy this stuff in advance; then they
380
LG-: know what they're getting and it makes it very-
easy for me to get interim financing, as well as
FHA loans and what have you."
He was talking about a two "bedroom, two bath
house for $5,500. I said, "Is it on fee simple
land?" He said, "No, it's a 55 year lease."
What the hell, that doesn't make too much differ
ence - how many people are going to "be around 55
years from now on a lease?
Ward: We were talking about the houses and the lease.
LG-: The longshoremen all lived in the heart of
Honolulu and, of course, a large number of cannery
workers and others. I thought that was where the
interest would be, so I raised this thing with a
bunch of longshoremen; the interest was apparent,
"That sounds pretty good. What would the down
payment be?"
"I don't know all these things yet," I said.
"All I know is that this guy can offer an awfully
good package if this housing can be sold in
advance. Obviously, we'll have to make sure that
the housing is exactly the way he specifies it so
that nobody gets cheated."
At that time I suppose a i-5,500 house would
have had monthly payments, including principal,
taxes, interest, insurance, of somewhere around
$55 a month.
Ward: What would a longshoreman be making, bringing
home? About 8300 a month?
LG: Thereabouts. Work was good. It was before the
big container movement, so that wasn't the big
problem. All the reactions were positive until
one man - an Hawaiian - said, "We better find out
something else, Lou, before we go any further. Is
this fee simple land?" "No," I said. "It's a 55-
year lease." "Forget it," he said.
381
LG: It was as though you had turned off a spigot; all
the interest in this housing disappeared. Of
course, five, six, ten years after that a lot of
the guys were kicking themselves because housing
costs in Hawaii are completely out of sight.
The idea of land ownership was such a sine
qua non to the Big ?ive that exactly the same
feeling - "but for entirely different reasons -
ran all through the society, particularly the
Hawaiians. I think it was Woolworth or Kress
spent around five years getting a piece of fee
simple land in downtown Honolulu because it was
the only way they wanted to move in there.
A lot of that has changed now, but you still
have an enormous amount of lease land; some of
the prize residential lands near Honolulu, places
like Xahala; that's the area that goes beyond
Diamond Head. That's all Bishop Estate land.
Even some of the big employers just blow their
cork. I remember Blaisdell one time practically
screaming. He said, "My lease is up for renego
tiation." He further said, "If I can't get a
renegotiation that is satisfactory, I've got only
one right left." I said, "What's that?" "I can
pick up the house and move it." Where? And some
of those houses, you couldn't pick up anyway
because the termites would let go and the whole
thing would fall apart.
Now, back to the question of what happened on
the plantations. We had the rent control in the
contract and it's still in there. It finally
meant there was only one alternative left to the
employers on the question of housing: sell it off
or build new housing. And it would have to be fee
simple.
Well, I recall being there when a group of guys
were talking to Jack. These were some of the work
ers and some of the leadership from Waipahu. It's
not very far from Honolulu, about 20 minutes; the
big Waipahu plantation, it was right next to Ewa
Sugar. Later they merged and it was called the
Cahu Sugar Company, an American Factors plantation.
382
LG-: These guys were raising the question with Jack
as to whether they ought to buy the houses; the
housing had been put up for sale and the first
option was for the guy who lived there, the sugar
worker. Jack knew a great deal more about this
thing than I ever would know because he understood
this housing thing.
I think the employers were asking somewhere
around $4800 for some houses, $5000 for others.
Jack says, "Look, I think there should be an
extra push on this thing. If you guys hang tough
you can pick up this housing at $4,000." And
they did.
Some of it wasn't the best housing in the .
world, but the guys, of course, once they owned
the house, it was another story. They began
keeping them in good repair. A lot of it turned
out to be very attractive housing. The big thing
that happened there, of course, was the move to
fee simple housing.
Some of our members also made some terrible
mistakes because, as I recall, not too many years
after these fellows in Waipahu picked up the
housing, a lot of navy men who worked in Pearl
Harbor, a couple of miles away, came along and
offered a guy f>40,000 for his house.
Well, $40,000 was a fabulous amount of money;
the guy had never seen anything like it in his
whole life. Some of them made the mistake of
selling and then discovering that once you had
the money, what the hell can you do with it? You
still need a place to live. Most of the fellows
thought it through pretty carefully and realized
that you don't let go of what you are living in
until you have something else.
But it also resulted in a certain amount of
mobility in the plantation itself. Once the guys
had fee simple housing, their attitudes could
change in other ways. If the kids grew up and the
guys decided they wanted a smaller place, they
could get rid of the old place. On some of the
other plantations as housing reached a certain
age the companies, like on Maui, built a place
383
LG: called Dream City. It's concrete block construc
tion and attractive housing, very attractive;
fairly decent sized lots, up to 8,000 to 10,000
sqnare feet. They were beautifully kept up in
almost every case. The men had also built out
door living areas. They had carports which became
part of a patio arrangement for outdoor eating,
entertaining their friends and so forth because
the weather lends itself to that.
The Dream City housing ran about $5,000 or
36,000 to start. I remember a place like Pioneer
Mill over on the Island of Maui, a few years lat
er, and they ran around $15,000 or $14,000; some
of my good friends live there.
Yet, I remember visiting the same plantation
some years later. Terry and I went down there
for some rest. I decided to drop by and see an
old timer who used to be very cantankerous and
almost impossible in negotiations. They kept
calling him a kamakaze.
It's on an old, broken down road, practically
boulders in the middle of it; the. guy I'm with
said, "This is where Micaiso lives." I said,
"Fine, let's go in." Micaiso was completely
taken aback - I had never visited his house
before.
He had just gotten back from work, hadn't even
cleaned up yet. He found a bottle of Scotch or
something, because your Japanese are very hospi
table people, and he says, "Oh, not too bad,
he says, "Still something lousy." I asked, "What's
that?" "Too much work and too much money." He
didn't like the hours - the guys were putting in
ten hours a day, sometimes six or seven days a week,
He says, "Contract's good, okay, it's all right,
but too much work."
And here's a machinist, a skilled craftsman -
"How come you're still living in the same
plantation house?" And that's what it was, still
covered by the rents in the contract! He said,
"Oh, maybe I should have bought one of the others
earlier; I just didn't feel like it." I guess as
384
LG: far as lie was concerned, his attitude was that
he'd rather "be in a plantation house, rely on the
power of the union, than go out on the free
market.
Ward: Afraid he might "be outsmarted by other people?
LG: He had confidence in the union and he'd been
through the thing long enough. There were always
a real bunch of rebels up there, that is at Pioneer
Mill. Pioneer Mill is in Lahaina on the island
of Maui. Some old timers around there still talk
about Big Bill. Big Bill by the way is Bill
Bailey, the longshoreman.
Ward: I didn't know he was down there.
LG: Ee was down there on a ship, I guess taking on
sugar. For some reason or other he went out to
Lahaina; a big banyan tree there. The guys still
remember his speech calling for a Soviet America,
(laughter) Bill, you know, was one of the most
amazing guys; he fought in Spain.
I'll never forget; another guy came back from
Spain, and of course he was pretty well lionized.
Bill came back and found out about this. He says,
"Yeah, that guy is a real hero; both of us figured
out that this farmer must have had some wine in
in his cellar, and we were crawling through a
small opening to get some of this wine and this
character got shot in the ass I" You know Bill was
the guy who climbed the mast of a German training
ship right after Hitler came into power?
V/ard: Yes.
LG: Imagine climbing that mast and tearing down the
Nazi flag with all those Nazis waiting on the deck
below. They really worked him over.
Smashing Racial Discrimination
LG: Another fundamental thing that we fought for in
the 1946 sugar agreement was a provision for no
racial discrimination. This was a big thing on
385
LG: the Mainland, of course, and initially we assumed
there shouldn't be any headache with it. To the
contrary, it "became a very contentious issue. As
we moved along in these discussions I began to
realize why. These plantations had this facade
of complete racial equality, you know, the aloha
spirit in Hawaii, but that wasn't even a half-""
truth.
The fact of the matter was that you not only
had the pecking order, depending on when the
workers had been brought in as contract laborers,
there v/as an unwritten rule that every job,
beginning with the first grade of supervision,
what they called lunas , were all held by haoles.
There were a few exceptions, but they were the
rare ones, let me tell you.
We just took a non-discrimination clause for
granted - after all, the whole union had been
built that way. The question of integrating the
people on the plantation was so essential to
putting together any kind of effective fighting
machine, and 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.
In some plants on the mainland we had the
foremen in the union. In the case of the water
front, you've got the walking bosses, who are
substantially above a gang foreman. Not there;
we never managed to get the lunas in. There was
an awful battle on anti-discrimination and we
finally won that clause.
Now, your local foremen are a pretty thoroughly
mixed group of Japanese, Filipinos, Hawaiians and
what have you. There has been a general moving
up. After years went by this began to penetrate
into the Big Five, where some of the men in
charge of industrial relations for these same
sugar plantations are not haoles; people like Ed
Wong, Chinese.
He is a vice-president now in Alexander-Baldwin,
a man who really has the ambition to be the first
Chinese head of an agency. I don't know whether
his family ever came off the plantation; he is
at least third or fourth generation American. I
know that at one time his family lived down
386
LG: somewhere around River Street and he even knew
some of the people who grew up in the same area -
guys like Joe Kealaleo and Sook Moon.
The interesting thing is that these break
throughs occurred as a by-product against racial
discrimination; a man like Mits Fukuda; he's a
Japanese, and an officer now at Castle and Cooke,
I believe.
Ward: Someone else became an industrial relations man?
LG: Right. Harold Hee is an industrial relations
man for Brewer; obviously of Chinese background.
Sugar was a very successful strike. We emerged
with a good, solid, well- organized union.
Ward: When you got through with that strike, about how
many members did the ILWU have, all told, in the
Hawaiian Islands?
LG: Well, at the time of the 1946 sugar strike, the
industry I think had begun to pass its peak.
During the early organizing days there were some
thing like twenty-five or twenty-six thousand
sugar workers, but even during this period you
had the beginnings of mechanization. There is
no question that in many ways the union itself
pushed this mechanization ahead.
My own feeling is that you can never get any
basic improvement in agriculture without mechani
zation; there is nothing socially uplifting about
hand-cutting cane. It's oust a dirty, messy and
terribly tough job. The employers themselves I
think realized that the union was not going to
stand still; we were going to continue to push
for wages and other benefits, which we have, so
that our members are the highest paid agricultural
workers in the country, if not in the world.
The employers were, in effect, pushed into
mechanization, which meant finding ways and
means of taking the laborious hand-processing
and changing that to mechanical harvesting;
instead of the flume in transportation to begin
to get roads and turna-haulers and things of
that sort.
387
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
As to how many members we had at that particular
moment, I'd say that we had somewhere close to
20,000 in sugar; pineapple must have been at
least another seven thousand. The longshoremen,
prior to mechanization, must have had around, oh,
four thousand. Add that together you must have
had -
About 30,000?
Yes, a large group.
How many members did the International have, all
told?
Warehouse had been a big organization, about
13 000 members. Longshore, prior to mechanization
on the mainland, must have had somewhere around
twenty-five to thirty thousand.
So, in a very few years, Hawaii had become almost
half of your membership.
Yes, but not quite; but having your membership
and having it under contract are always two
different things. It's like getting somebody to
register to vote and how to vote. Every outstand
ing scholar who has done any work on Hawaii
recognizes that some of these basic changes we
made are part of the underpinning to a whole
democratic change in Hawaii, on land ownership,
distribution of wealth, unionization, the role
in the political community; it went into every
facet of the whole structure in the Islands.
There are a couple of other items on the sugar
strike that are worthwhile mentioning. One was
an incident involving Jack Hall who had been
appointed to the Police Commission, of all things,
somewhere around 1945 -
The Police Commission for Honolulu or all the
Islands?
I think it was just Honolulu. During the strike,
Judge (Phillip L.) Rice on the island of Kauai
issued an injunction on picketing that went back
to the unlawful assembly act concept. When we
388
LG: took the case before a special three-man panel
of the federal court, they knocked down the
law, pointing out that the statute went back to
the time of King George. In other words, an
assembly of over three people could be declared
by a justice of the peace to be a potential
danger to health and safety, or whatever it was,
and thus outlaw picketing.
##
Ward: We were talking about the unlawful assembly act,
the injunction and Jack Hall's position on the
Police Commission.
LG: Anyway, Jack Hall let go quite a blast at Rice,
calling him a lawless judge. Afterwards Jack
said, "You know, that means I resign from the
Police Commission; what the hell!" That was
almost automatic.
We decided that we would observe the injunction
in part; instead of having regular pickets, we'd
have a parade every day. The parade included
all the workers, the kids, the wives, and the
strike leadership would do a head count and make
sure that everything was holding up well.
Anyway, the strike finally fell into place,
including a settlement. The one place that
refused to go back to work was Pioneer Mill.
I mentioned that earlier - that's the place, where
they remember Big Bill. Pioneer Mill is located
on the Island of Maui and the main town there is
Lahaina.
The manager was Jack Moier, a Scotsman, a very
tough egg in his own way, a very determined guy,
knew sugar and was a competent manager, but a hard
guy to get along with; although later on he became
quite a friend of the union. I got to know him
personally and sort of liked him, once you were
able to get past some of this hard shell of his.
I want to tell of this small incident that
occurred after we finally settled sugar. Pioneer
Mill continued on strike for about a month after
389
LG-: the other workers had gone back to work, the
reason for it being that some eight or ten of our
members had been fired. They were accused of
assault and battery on some lunas who were trying
to do some irrigation in the fields.
Nate Feinsinger was still in the picture, and
he got Clark Kerr, later the head of the
University of California, to go down there as the
arbitrator. We felt that if Feinsinger was
recommending Clark Kerr our chances wouldn't be
too bad. Ve knew better than to try to get the
guys back to work until this issue was resolved,
because they were an awfully tough and determined
bunch and they just weren't going back and not
until all strikers went back with them.
Well, I went down to handle the arbitration
before Clark Kerr. The thing I discovered pretty
quickly is that there was just no way to get
these guys to lie - you know, a little bit. You
know what I mean on an arbitration case. One of
the key members there, an officer of the local,
was a Filipino. I said, "Were you in the field?"
And he says, "No, no, but there's no question, I
whacked that supervisor." I said, "Where did you
do it?" "Oh, downtown, next to the movie house."
"And what happened out in the field?" "Well,
there they were trying to irrigate and some of
the guys went out there and talked to them and
said, 'Look, you shouldn't be doing this, you're
breaking the strike - it's not your work.'" I
said, "Any of these lunas have tools in their
hands?" He said, "Yeah, sure, some of them had
hoes." "Did they make as though they were going
to hit you with them?" He said, "No, I wouldn't
say that; maybe they used some hard words."
The issue wasn't what had happened in the
field at all. The issue was this background of
the relations on the plantation, the attitude of
the workers towards the lunas, the whole policy
of hiring these guys out of the navy and army as
lunas ; their attitude towards people like the
Filipino farm workers. This was really the
issue.
390
LG-: Finally, after digging around a long time with
these strikers, I went back to the same one who
whacked the supervisor and I said, "But this
didn't happen on the plantation?" and he said,
"No, it happened at the motion picture house."
I said, "What happened? Why did you do that?"
He said, "Well, I live in the Filipino camp and
this luna used to go "by all the time, walk "by my
house, and every time he'd see me - he knew I was
active in the union - he'd call me 'monkey dog'".
Apparently this was an insulting expression
that these haoles used against Filipinos. He
said, "I kept thinking about it and thinking about
it and one night I was down there - you know, we
don't have too much to do - near the movie house
and I see this luna and I step right up and I hit
him." I said, "Well, who was around?" He says,
"Well, the cop was there. He is the one who
arrested me." (laughter)
The thing to do was to get the man to tell his
story just the way he told it to me. After he
told the "story, Kerr realized he wasn't dealing
with the simple question of someone deliberately
going out and beating up some foreman; he was
dealing with something that ran very, very deep.
And the men were reinstated. Then, Harriet Bouslog
worked out some sort of understanding with the
district attorney that our people would do several
weekends in jail.
This whole system of paternalism in contract
labor had so many crazy off -shoots. For example,
it had been quite common long before the union
came along that if contract workers happened to go
off on a tear, or if they got into a big beef on
a Saturday night, the employers did not see this
as much punishment, going to jail and sitting on
their fanny, having a vacation and eating.
So, they devised a penalty which was quite ac
ceptable, weekends in jail. A guy, in other words,
lost his time off. Come Monday morning, daybreak,
back on the job. This occurred in the case of
Maui. Later on it also occurred in Honolulu, some
jail sentences that grew out of the longshore
strike; guys did weekends.
391
LG: An old friend of mine, Simeon Bagasol, was one of
the men who was indicted - wonderful old-timer.
I remember being down there once when the guys
were serving their time. This was in '49. Some
body said, "Maybe you ought to take a ride out
there to the jailhouse." I said, "Sure."
So, I go out there and here are a couple of
guys with guitars and some women, food and a few
drinks. They had a little party, sort of a send-
off for the weekend. Then, I'm talking to one of
the men about that and ask, "How do you feel about
it?" "Oh, not too bad - first time in my life
I ever saved money."
I mentioned something about Jack Moier. About
six months later I bumped into him and he said,
"You know, I'm glad this strike is over and the
guys are back to work. Fundamentally, they are a
good bunch. I'm having a rough time with the
company. They don't have any confidence in me."
He had a plan to clear out a lot of boulders on
the slopes behind Lahaina and to roll these rocks
down the pal is to the small valleys between the
hills. He was convinced that what you would have
then would be virgin soil, because the rocks held
the soil in place. He got some stands of cane
that were actually spectacular; 80, 90, 100 tons
to the acre.
The company was on his ass. Pioneer Mill was
owned by American Factors, but he was in hock for
four million bucks, something like that. As a
matter of fact, he was one of those who pleaded
inability to pay in the 1947 or '48 sugar nego
tiations.
We had a research team go out to examine their
records. Teddy Kreps, who worked for us in the
research department was part of that team. Jack
and I had the material that Teddy had pulled
together and we started asking Moier some questions:
"You're convinced that this thing will work, aren't
you?"
He said, "Yeah, the agency just said they're
going to cut off the money; that's the reason I
can't pay." I said, "Will you kindly explain the
392
LG: difference between your situation and say, a guy
who is just opening up a store and he's got an
inventory that's worth a million dollars and the
product he's got is so successful that he knows
damn well that a week after he opens up the store,
it will all be sold for two million. Jfow, the day
before he opens the store, he owes a million
dollars; he's broke. But a week later, he'll
probably double his money. Now, aren't you in the
same position?"
He says, "Yeah, but the agency doesn't believe
that." We were thinking more like he was than the
agency. After the hearing, he took me aside and
said, "Look, we haven't been friends, but things
are straightening out here, and ''I want you to do
me one favor." I said, "What's that?" He said,
"You know, Pioneer Mill (he'd been there for many
years) had the best soft ball team on the Islands.
Since the strike, the guys won't play for the
company any more. Would you please talk to them?"
I said, "Sure." This gives you a bit of a picture
of plantation community life.
Ward: So, you got the guys to play?
LG-: I asked them to, and they probably did, although
by that time the ILV7U was setting up its own rival
leagues all over the place. They had all kinds of
company sports.
Oh, one small item on the Sugar strike: During
the strike there was a good deal of redbaiting,
not to be surprised at. But a lot of stuff in the
papers had anti-Semitic overtones.
Ward: On you, personally?
1G-: Oh, deliberate use of Goldblatt and G-ladstein. It
was pretty clear by some of the cartoons they ran
that there was a real under-current of anti-
Semitism and, of course, I was unhappy and dis
turbed. Towards the tail end of negotiations,
when there was no question in my mind that we had
the beef won, I decided that we would deliberately
hang tough on a couple of items.
They didn't value out to a great deal of money,
but when you're talking about 20,000 - 25,000
workers, a penny an hour costs about a half
393
LG: million dollars a year. I figured to hang on to
at least one of these things. It was only dragging
the settlement on a bit longer, and finally they
gave in on this item, whatever it was.
About a year later, Jim Blaisdell was asking,
"I could never understand why the devil you hung
so tough on that one little item there at the end
of the negotiations; it wasn't that important to
you." I said, "No, offhand it wasn't, but I figured
that was about the right price you ought to pay
for the anti-Semitic stuff in the papers." He
never mentioned it again.
(Interview 16: 4 July, 1978 )##
The Tough Hotelman
Ward: Continuing the Goldblatt interview after a lapse
of about a month. Lou, you were going to tell
us about Jerry Zukor.
LG: He owned the Niumalu Hotel, where a number of us
stayed. The rates were reasonable; they had been
frozen by the OPA and the place was on the American
plan which included meals. Jerry Zukor came out
of Hell's Kitchen in New York. How he landed in
Hawaii, I'm not sure. At first he was terribly
skeptical; as a matter of fact, I think he dis
trusted every person in this world, and in
the main with good reason. At one time, Jerry
Zukor made the crack that he couldn't leave Hawaii
because he couldn't think of anybody he hadn't
doublecrossed .
Obviously, born on the wrong side of the tracks;
had been a very rough character in his day;
managed fighters; had a great contempt for them,
like he did for most people. He was one of those
impossible products of the ghettos. Jerry had
made himself a hunk of money, first by having a
bar in downtown Honolulu that catered to seamen
394
LG: and some of the local people. Later on lie picked
up some additional bars. I think I told you this
yarn about him and the 20-minute rule?
Ward: No.
LG: Well, this bar was not too far from some of the
whore houses down on Hotel Street. When the navy
hit there, the men would line up a block and a
half, with these lovely missionary ladies walking
past once in a while. Later on, the red light
district was closed, primarily because of the
pressure from the mothers back home on the navy
and the army.
But Jerry boasted that he paid the greatest
OPA fine in Hawaii history for short drinks. He
imposed a 20-minute rule in his bars, his idea
being very simple: quick turn-over. So, a kid
of barely drinking age would walk in. I don't
know if Jerry even looked for an ID; if the kid
was in uniform, that was enough. He could have
all he could drink in 20 minutes. You can imagine
the result; this kid would try to gulp down eight
or ten drinks in 20 minutes and go out on the
sidewalk and throw them all up. So Jerry got
quick rotation of the bars.
He never believed anything I told him. When I
told him what I was making a week, he wouldn't
believe me. He said, after I told him it was in
the constitution, "Ah, you don't pay any attention
to that - nobody else does either." I said, "So,
that's it, Jerry, and if you want to know what my
expenses are a day and why I always beef about
what you're trying to charge me, it's the same
thing; right there in the constitution."
But eventually he decided, by golly, I am
telling the truth. So, Jerry made his hunk of
dough and bought the Riumalu, had this American
plan with which he was stuck; he couldn't change
it because of OPA regulations. Henry Schmidt
stayed there, too. Jerry had a couple of shacks,
fairly recent, but some of them were terribly old,
just held together by termites.
One time Jerry comes to me and says, "Anything
you can do to get rid of Henry Schmidt, I'll pay
his hotel somewhere else. Help him get a nice
395
LG-: room somewhere. They're a lot of places downtown
that are closer to the union hall; he'll like
that." I said, "Why?" "Well," he says, "Henry
is a nice guy, he doesn't make any trouble at all;
he doesn't even complain about the meals."
I think Jerry had to do some shopping to get
some of the cooks he had; they were hopeless;
just gas hounds. You were lucky to get a meal at
all and some didn't come out as intended, I'm sure.
Or maybe they were intended that way!
Jerry was trying to get rid of the American
Plan because if somebody moved out who was covered
by that plan, he could replace him with a tourist.
The same gimmick you have right now by Supervisor
Feinstein in San Francisco. She's got a place
that had some elderly residents. The rooms are
being converted very nicely. Of course the people
will eventually be pushed out, or they'll die, and
then she can rent those rooms out on a daily basis.
I said to Jerry, "What's Henry got to do with
this?" He said, "We've got around four gals here,
they're all sort of old maids. I watch Henry" -
and I think he watched everything in that place -
"he comes home in the evening; he's very prompt.
He always comes home before dinner - not like you."
Henry was determined to have that meal - it was
all covered in the expenses. And you know, Henry
is that way; he's a very meticulous Dutchman, old
wooden shoes. Jerry says, "As soon as Henry
starts walking down there" - it was a long hotel-
motel sort of thing - "these old maids will open
up and say, 'Oh, Henry, I just happened to find a
bottle of liquor - let's have a drink together! 1
Tliay'll never leave as long as Henry is around."
Henry had that faculty. I don't know what the
hell that character had, but the same thing would
happen at parties, as I recall. You see Henry
there just stuffing his pipe as stoically as they
come, and pretty soon there would be a whole
circle of girls just sitting around Henry's feet;
not a particularly good raconteur, but he loved
to regale them as best he could. So, Jerry wants
to get rid of Hank. Henry later decided on his
own to move because he wanted to be closer to town.
396
LG: Jerry was not an early riser, but I got down there
for breakfast early one morning and here was
Jerry, and I could see he was sitting on the news
paper. I couldn't figure out what the devil Jerry
was doing there; this was around 6:30 - 7:00
o'clock in the morning - Jerry starts sort of
wandering around, mostly about the strike - he'd
been convinced as soon as the strike began that
we couldn't win.
I asked him why and he said, "You can't trust
Filipinos." I said, "By the way, did you ever
have them as fighters?" He said, "Yeah. n "Did
you ever trust them?" "No." "Did they ever trust
you?" "No, of course not." He'd try to cheat
them blind - he'd make a deal with the referee
for a couple of bucks. "They'll doublecross you,"
he said. "No," I don't think so. I know that
there are 6,000 new Filipinos v/ho just arrived."
As a matter of fact, they had arrived just before
the strike began.
Ward: Those were the guys who were signed up on the boat
coming over?
LG: Yes, and these are the guys v/ho stuck all through
the strike. When we interviewed some of them,
they said, "Well, we fight the Japanese for five
years, we can fight the Big Five for another five."
They were a wonderful bunch, a lot of them are now
in union leadership.
We discovered later that a lot of them had not
been field workers. There are all kinds of stories
about their background. A number of them had been
educated or self-educated. When the Hawaii Sugar
Planters Association went over there to recruit
these men, they were careful not to get anybody
who was literate; they wanted kids out of the
farms, the more depressed, the better.
They'd bring them over as contract labor under
the arrangement they had with the Philippines,
the HSPA and the government. Some of these kids
told me they'd go out and chop wood for a month
until their hands were tough and blistered; made
sure they wore the oldest possible clothes they
could find before they went down to be interviewed.
397
LG: They always lied about their education because
they wanted to go over, partly out of curiousity
as youngsters do, partly out of the whole economic
scene in the Philippines; partially a general
feeling that they would see a new part of the
world. They might have picked up a little bit
about the union, so there were a number of pro
gressives among them - progressive kids and by
and large a very solid group.
As a matter of fact, during the strike, we'd
have trouble finding out if they were in need.
Some of them never said a word during the strike.
People Just had to go around and convince them to
come down to the soup kitchen; or leave food.
When the strike started, most of them had a pair
of jeans and a buck in their pockets. The
Japanese and others who had lived there a long
time were thoroughly prepared. I, for one, felt
very confident that the Filipinos would stick, and
they did.
Well, here's Jerry Zukor at breakfast with the
paper under his ass; finally, he pulls out the
paper and says, "Is this true?" There was some
thing about the employers having offered ten
million dollars to settle the strike. We had been
in the middle of negotiations going very late at
night; I was pretty sleepy and not anxious to talk
because we were going back again.
Obviously, the strike was on its way to being
settled. He says, "Is this -tiling true?" "I guess
so; I don't know; we haven't figured exactly what
it costs them, because that is not the way a strike
is run. We gave them certain demands; some of
them cost money and some of them don't." So, he
said, "Well, you're going to take it, aren't you?"
I said, "No, that's not the recommendation of the
committee." He said, "Why?" I said, "Well, for
one thing we've gotten word out of Washington . . "
The employers were convinced that I had some
personal contacts in the Department of Agriculture
because I would drop these bits of information
which if by doing a little careful reading of the
Congressional Record, or following some of the
hearings, anybody could have picked up.
398
LG-: But the information we'd picked -up was that the
Commodity Credit Corporation was in the process
of making an adjustment in certain farm commodi
ties after the war. They had "been frozen, and
the government thought that certain restitution
ought to "be made to some groups of farmers, and
among them was sugar. It looked as though they
would pick up a big hunk of dough, somewhere around
maybe about five or six million dollars; a wind
fall.
Jack and I had gone over the whole thing in
great detail and decided let's wait another day
or two; no great harm done. Everything was moving
along all right. If the employers did pick up
another hunk of dough, we knew there would be
some more money around for our demands.
It wasn't a matter of us having a contract and
sitting on it; we were still in the process of
negotiations and we were better off to keep some
of these issues alive. Jerry wasn't aware of
this. All I told him was that we had information
that the employers were going to get another big
hunk of money and we ought to get part of it;
they owed us for enough years.
Jerry looked at me for a long time, and said,
"Jesus, you're a damn fool, aren't you?" I said,
"V/hy?" He says, "Well, you get 10 percent, don't
you?" He had it fixed in his head that no trade
unionist would be settling for anything less than
10 percent for himself.
Ward: He's not the only one who feels that way, too.
LG: That's right. Later on when the strike was over
I ribbed him about the Filipinos. He decided
that he was wrong and that he did misunderstand
them.
The Niumalu Hotel was still there when I was
in Hawaii during the 1949 longshore strike. What
year it was, I'm not sure, but he came to me and
said, "Look, Lou, I've got to take a trip to the
mainland. I've had a big beef with my wife, we're
going to break up and she'll get plenty, don't
worry about that; but I've got some business
things I want to do on the mainland."
399
LG: So, I said, "Why don't you just go?" "No, I can't
leave here. I'll tell you what, Lou, I'll make a
deal with you." Remember, now, the war's over.
During the war Jerry Zukor was making something
called either Five or Six Island gin, bourbon,
you name it. It was just plain alcohol with some
coloration and dilution added. And everybody
down there called it Five Island Death; it was
horrible tasting stuff.
I had it by mistake one night and from then on
I kept in closer contact with some of our long
shore friends where you could get something decent
off the boats. Jerry had this thing, among other
things, this small distillery - or so he called
it - where you mix the stuff in the bathtub.
He says, "I'll tell you what, Lou. I want to
make a deal with you. I know what you're getting
paid and that's the reason I think you will find
it pretty attractive. I'll guarantee you 60,000
bucks a year if you come to work for me. I want
you to look after all my interests here in Hawaii.
I'm going to give you the distillery - it's yours.
If it doesn't bring you in $60,000 bucks a year
I'll pay you the difference; just so I'll know I
have someone here looking after my things when I
go to the mainland. I got enough."
And it's true he had enough. By that time
he'd also bought the Dan Topping-Son ja Henie
estate in Diamond Head, the one with the big
slide into the swimming pool. There was a party
there for Terry when she came down sometime during
the 1946 sugar strike. I had been down there so
damn long, I said, "Come on down." She spent a
very fine time down there; she likes the beaches
and the swimming pools.
Ward: Oh, this is after Jerry bought the place?
LG: Oh, yes. Jerry had the place when I first stayed
there, in 1945, I guess! That's where I stayed as
long as he had the joint, even though it wasn't
the best place in the world. But I liked it. So,
Jerry says, "Here's the deal I'm offering you."
I said, "Let me ask you a question first. That
distillery of yours can't be doing too well, can
it?" "Well, he says, "The war is over and there's
400
a lot of competition." No mention that Ms stuff
was lousy. I said, "Yeah, it's having trouble
and it's not going to pay what you are proposing."
"That's no problem, Lou," he says, "no problem at
all. You know, if you are in charge of that
distillery I'll see that everyone knows about it;
all those Filipinos will buy booze from you."
I finally told him, "You know, of all the
propositions you could make to me is one where
I have to go out and poison our own members." So,
we let it go at that. I don't know if he was
serious or not. I think he was. It was probably
partially true. He married an Oriental girl
later. I'm not sure whether they had a child or
not. Jerry didn't live too long after that. I
think he died of a heart attack.
But he was a character, giving demonstrations
on how he could cheat, tickets, every gimmick
there was. He came to me one time and said,
"Come on, we'll go down to the fights tonight;
I got some tickets." So, we go down to the
fights - he had four tickets, four together.
The way he handled these things - some sort
of system of palming them - he counted out the
four tickets and gave them to the guy who tore
off the stubs; the guy wound up with only two.
Jerry, with two tickets, walks around, looks
over the fence, and sees a couple of guys and
says, "Here, here are a couple of tickets for the
fights." So, Jerry would do these things; pure
mischief on his part.
Ward: I'd hate to play poker with him.
LG-: Never did. Never did. No, I don't know if he
played cards. He made another offer to me at
one time which I was sorely tempted to take up.
We were in a little beef with Art Rutledge; it
might have been before the sugar strike.
Ward: That's the Teamster man -
LG-: Yes, the Teamster guy; Rutledge had a running
feud with Jack Hall. He envied Jack enormously
and did not have any of Jack's talents, although
401
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward ;
LG:
Ward ;
he was a very shrewd man, had terrific cunning;
no two ways about that. He knew the gathering
and application of power. He had the highest
turnover of any man who ever ran a union. They
would last long enough to get a base, but eventual
ly these things caught up with him.
He had teamster charters, hotel charters, a
building trades charter - I think it was either
roofing or cement mixers - a charter which he put
into the Teamsters for the transit drivers. I
understand that in the hotel elections a month or
so ago he and his son lost out pretty badly,
although I think he is still in charge of the
Teamsters local. He still has a job as a trustee
for their Hotel International.
By that time I guess Jerry was beginning to
trust me, and he offered to give me a hand in this
beef we were having with Rutledge. He offered to
go on our radio program and tell a bit of scandal
about Rutledge. It may have been true, but I had
to turn it down.
##
All right, you just finished a story on Jerry
Zukor.
As a matter of fact, there were numerous efforts
on our part to get along with Rutledge. The guy
had some talent in terms of his ability to keep
a lot of balls in the air at the same time.
Ckay, now you were mentioning something else.
I want to go back and pick up a lot of loose ends
on that Fair Labor Standards Act suit; they tie in
directly to the Fair Labor Standards Act settle
ment; also a certain amount of money coming back
to the union because of the feeling on the part
of some of us that the fee was too great, and also
some of the things that occurred in the negotiations
themselves. Well, the monies we got there were
very helpful in the '46 strike.
Yes; v/asn't there something about brown rice?
402
That Awful .brown Rice
LG: Most of the workers on the Islands eat rice, so
I wrote Virginia Woods in San Francisco to ship
us 10,000 sacks of rice, soonest possible. She
did a quick dietary study and determined that
brown rice was more nutritious than polished rice.
So, we got 10,000 sacks of brown rice.
Ward: Virginia is like that - very scientific.
LG: But our members and their families thought very
poorly of the deal. Brown rice was for pigs,
not men and women and children. There was plenty
of growling about that, but under the circum
stances they finally ate the brown rice. I'm
sure no one was hurt by it and the metabolism
didn't change that much.
Ward: Nobody got beri-beri?
LG: No. If the dietary studies I got from Virginia
Woods were accurate our strikers were being
strengthened every day. Some of that money was
loaned out for buying supplies, staples in the
main. I mean, the guys never bought any fresh
stuff during the strike.
I'd say that many of the strikers were having
a more balanced diet during the strike. I think
this was particularly true among the Filipinos,
partially because they had to cook for themselves;
a lot of single men; partially because of old time
habits of working on farms, where the idea of
coming in for lunch didn't exist, so you'd take a
lunch with you.
The combination of circumstances resulted in a
very common diet, a lunch box that was just filled
with a pound and a half of rice and a couple of
strips of dried fish. Well, obviously, this kind
of a diet is not the best in the world, but during
the strike, by and large, they ate all right.
Of course, the strike was a very binding thing;
bringing people together and eating under the same
roof in the soup kitchen makes a big difference,
403
LG: particularly on morale. So, the units would
still have to borrow money for things like staples,
you see.
I remember going over to Olaa on the Big Island.
Strike headquarters had a warehouse attached, and
here were a whole crew of our guys taking one sack
of rice after another and putting it through a
screen because they had found some bugs in it.
Those were the things available, time and work;
an enormous amount of energy. But anyway, they
still needed staples, and that's what some of the
money went for. Cnce in a while someone would
need a couple of bucks for gasoline, if he had a
car.
That money v/as all paid back - no problem
there. The money was then used later on to pur
chase the land in Waikiki where the union head
quarters are located on 451 Atkinson Drive. That's
where we had those murals by Pablo O'Higgins
(famous Mexican artist). Incidentally, I got him
to do the murals. Pablo had been a friend of mine
for a number of years.
Jack sent over the original plans and I sat
down with a guy in San Francisco, Louis Cohen, a
contractor who had built either the War Memorial
or the Cpera House, I'm not sure which, and he
took a terrible bath because after he bid on the
thing he ran into all kinds of very peculiar sub
soil so that the foundation, instead of being
rock, was nothing but sand. There were stories
about him that he'd paid back every damn nickel.
He came along with a whole series of intelligent
revisions; a lot of money was saved. Jack got to
be very fond of him. After the building was built
I talked to Jack about a mural down there and
mentioned Pablo. I wrote to Pablo and convinced
him he ought to go there. He went, and spent
about six months doing that mural. It's a very
fine piece of work.
The man who worked with him and was very help
ful in getting the thing jelled was Dave Thompson,
our educational director down there.
404
Ward: Dave Thompson, yes, I know him -
LG: Yes, he's the man who served in the Marines, lost
a leg at Iwo Jima. Dave is still working for us.
He came over towards the end of the war, wanted
to work for the ILWU, liked Hawaii and was sort
of set on it; he was hospitalized there. He went
to the California Labor School in San Francisco
and then we had him go back there, working with
us.
Wonderful guy, did a fantastic job of getting
used to a prosthetic device for his leg. Walks
so that it is almost imperceptible - jogs,
believe it or not. When you go swimming with
him at Waikiki or Gray's Beach, absolutely no
hesitation about his leg. He hobbles down to the
beach with the leg on, takes it off and goes
swimming .
He was a very good swimmer, and he used to
like the business of going out so damn far that
people would get all excited and start running
for the Coast Guard; after a while, the Coast
Guard knew all about him. It was not uncommon for
him to go out and swim for an hour or more. I've
seen him do that in Hilo, off the rocks.
Dave was a pretty good artist himself. Dave,
by the way, v/as a friend - I don't know whether
you know Dick Liebes or George Gutekuntz -
Ward: Dick Liebes I know and George Gutekuntz, yes,
he was a cook.
LG: Member of the Marine Cooks and Stewards -
Ward: A professional cook, too, wasn't he?
LG: Yes, I -
Ward: Didn't he go into partnership with . . . ?
LG: At the Ondine (a Sausalito restaurant) - yes,
they all went to school together, or they knew
each other. Dave worked with Pablo and they put
together these murals. They are one of the
finest things they have in Hawaii. People drop
405
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
around to see, they ;just hear about the thing,
you know; not members of the union, just curious
to see them.
I wanted to ask you a question. Now, you had
these racial divisions in Hawaii which had been
fostered sedulously by the Big Five, and the job
was to erase these divisions as much as possible
and unify the men. There are a lot of Portuguese
in the East Bay and there was a theory among some
of our people that it was very difficult to make
union men out of them. Do you find anything like
that in Hawaii, in the Portuguese group there?
I know the theory. The theory is that fundament
ally they want to become small businessmen,
particularly farmers. I don't think it was because
of national background; I think it was because of
their economic situation. Portuguese had been
among the first group of migrants brought over
there, about the same time as the grape crop
failed in Madeira -
Which had been when?
ago?
A couple of hundred years
No, no. Hawaii didn't have any sugar industry
a couple of hundred years ago. I think the first
sugar industry was 1785 or thereabouts. But they
were brought over here in the 1800s, before you
had large migrations of Japanese. I think it
might have been a little later than the Chinese.
The Chinese got off the plantations in many cases
very rapidly; where they continued on the planta
tions they were a very tight knit community.
Cue of the worst plantations I ever saw was on
Waianae, terribly lousy land and very inaccess
ible. The Chinese were there and some of the
Chinese camps were unbelievably bad. Impossible
housing. We ran some photographs of that housing
during the 1946 sugar strike.
A lot of the Portuguese were skilled men. A
lot of them were truck drivers. They made good
union men, although no question about it, some
of them had become pretty rough lunas because -
bear in mind again this all goes back to the
v/hole haole business.
406
LG-: Some Portuguese were lunas long before the
Japanese, long before the union; finally there
was a Portuguese sugar manager. I think his
name was Gomez, somewhere on the Hamakua Coast.
Every time you ran across a Portuguese, he would
talk of this manager. On the other hand, you had
some awfully good, tough union men among them.
Remember, Chili Duarte was Portuguese -
Ward: I know; he was considered by some people in the
east bay to be an exception to the rule.
LG: No; we had a lot of Portuguese members. As a
matter of fact, we used to talk about the
Portuguese Mafia. There was a whole group of
Portuguese came out of the west side of Oakland.
That's where Chili grew up; a tough bunch of kids,
let me tell you. A number of them worked around
the waterfront; so did Chili, so did his relatives.
Anyway - back to this business of the building.
We bought this land at 451, we didn't know whose
name to put it in because we had no building
association at the time, so Jack suggested why not
put it in my name until the building association
is set up. And I said, "No problem there."
But the employers were determined to use every
little thing that came along; somebody sent a
clipping that this real estate sale had taken
place to Mr. Louis Goldblatt of 451 Atkinson Drive,
a valuable piece of Waikiki property. When they
posted the deeds, believe it or not, the damn thing
showed up on some of the docks in San Francisco.
Some of the characters we had around there posted
these things on the dock. So, we bought the land.
The building was financed by 25 cents a member
per month over a period of around four or five
years, easily financed. Luckily, by the time the
building was built we had a lot of power in the
Legislature. It was declared an eleemosynary
institution on damn good ground that it did at
least as much good for the people as the church.
As a matter of fact, it was highly debatable
as to how much good the church did, particularly
looking at its background in Hawaii. The only
407
LG: thing is that at one time ours was a substantially
sized building there along Atkinson Drive; now it
looks like a little tiny structure planted among
all the highrises.
Ward: Was that argument that the union did as much good
as the church actually raised in the discussion?
LG-: Ch, I think that rather than make the thing a
big, controversial issue, it was easily adopted.
'There were a lot of eleemosynary institutions
down there, tax exempt.
Ward: I see, so it wasn't all that - -
LG: No, no. I think the fraternal organizations were,
or at least some of them were. Let's get into
fraternal organizations. The redbaiting was
pretty intense down there, with the onset of the
Cold War. It got even worse during the Smith Act
indictments down there and reached a screaming
pitch during the 1949 Longshore strike.
Cne of the outfits that became a self-appointed
mentor of Americanism was the Elks Club. Cne of
the reasons was that the guy who headed up the
Honolulu Labor Council was also an Slk. On one
occasion when I wanted to talk to him about some
thing, he said, "Why don't you come out to the
Elks Club? We can have a drink out there." I
went out there; a lovely club near Diamond Head.
The drinks were cheap - a sort of a club bar
arrangement .
They launched full page ads on the "Spearhead
for Americanism" sometime during the Cold War
and about the time of our expulsion from the CIO.
There was a vitriolic redbaiting campaign; they
wrapped themselves in the American flag. They
just didn't wrap themselves in the American flag,
they cut themselves out a pair of pants, a coat,
a vest, the whole she-bang.
One ad after the other on this "Spearhead for
Americanism," attacking the union. I remember
one time we really fixed their wagon; I mean we
fixed it good.
408
LG: The Elks Club was pure white, except where you
had the Black Elks. You might recall, years ago
they set up orders of Black Slks. At the time
I was curious about it and then found out that
the reason for it was that the whites were pure
white organizations.
I confirmed that in the late 30s or early 40s
on trips to San Pedro. A couple of our members
belonged to the Elks Club, and I raised the ques
tion, "Isn't it true that the Elks are pure
white?" "Yes, but we're going to change." I
think it was in their constitution as "white,
American citizens."
Anyway here they were running these ads on
"Spearhead for Americanism," so I talked to Jack
and I said, "I'm pretty convinced that if we do
some digging around, we're going to find some
people who've been denied membership in the Elks.'
So, we start doing some digging around, and sure
enough, we come across a couple of Japanese war
vets who had been denied membership in the Elks.
Then, we come across a Portuguese guy who
obviously is white and had been denied membership
in the Elks. So, we ran a counter-ad to the
"Spearhead for Americanism". It is the only ad
we ever ran, talking about their brand of
Americanism and these Japanese; we had affidavits
from them and this Portuguese; he not only gave
us an affidavit, he wanted it in the paper; and
we put it in there. We said, "Now if this is
what they call Americanism, they can have it."
Never another word out of them.
409
X FINANCIAL LEGERDEMAIN
Staving Off A Million-Dollar Judgment
LG: Later on in 1947, there was one of the first
suits filed against this union under Taft-Eartley,
a damage suit by Juneau Spruce in Alaska. The
Longshoremen had struck this particular lumber
company's docks. It was a strike around maintain
ing our jurisdiction of longshore work.
The company was shut down for some time. The
Woodworkers respected the picket line. Later on,
the company managed to get to some of the
Woodworkers, or the strike had just run its
course; they got the Woodworkers to agree to do
the longshore work.
Juneau Spruce then filed a suit against our
union because the strike had not been called off -
as ordered by a court - on the grounds that it
was a jurisdictional beef, inasmuch as they had
a contract with the woodworkers to do the work.
They won a judgment against us in the federal
court. That judgment went all the way up to the
U. S. Supreme Court, which ruled against us and
upheld the judgment of one million dollars against
our union.
While the Ouneau Spruce thing was winding its
way through the courts, and particularly after
they had gotten the Supreme Court decision, we
had a running battle on the question of do we or
don't we pay. For a long time we were just oper
ating out of our hat. When they tried to attach
a bank account we had, all they picked up was an
overdraft.
410
LG: We sold the building at 150 Golden Gate which we
had bought because we had the votes in the build
ing association. After we were expelled from the
CIO, - and at that time we were down at 604
Montgomery Street - I figured the least we ought
to do was get our building back. We were housing
all kinds of unions and some of them very friend
ly, but sure enough sooner or later the CIO would
take over the building and that -was really the
only important asset the CIC had around here.
So, we simply talked to Dick Lynden (of Local
6) and others and they walked in there, cast
their votes and said, "We're selling the building
to the ILWU." And we bought it. A few people
were a little bit disturbed because they were
having cheap rent and they liked the building.
I don't blame them. Cn the other hand, we needed
the headquarters and I for one was determined
that the CIC was not going to get that from us.
So they tried to attach the building, but by
that time we had the building sold to Local 142
in Hawaii. We took all the money and spent it.
We paid people six months in advance on their
salaries. I'll admit I made damn few friends
that way because they'd go out with this big hunk
of money, buy a lot of things and a couple of
months later they were broke; but nothing else we
could do.
We paid the printer six months in advance -
worked out all kinds of things. If I needed cash,
I would make some arrangements where the cash
would come in, generally just by hand.
I recall for example, George Andersen took a
trip to Honolulu. I said, "We're running short
of dough, why don't you bring back around $60,000
bucks," which he did. But he came in over a
weekend and by that time we were living here,
(Mill Valley), so it must have been around 1955-56,
I guess, and he had $60,000 and said, "Here it is."
I said, "What the devil do I want it for? I
can't go down to the bank and put it in the safety
deposit box." He said, "Well, you asked me to
411
LG-: bring it and I'm not going to keep it." So, the
money hung around all weekend and I figured the
best thing to do was to put it in the most
prominent place of all, so I just left the thing
in a cigar box on the mantelpiece.
Then, I made an arrangement with a guy at the
bank; he was pretty friendly. I'd give him a
list of bills I wanted paid - salaries, or other
expenses; everything we could prepay, and give
him the exact amounts.
He would make out cashier's checks. He'd call
me just as the bank was closing and I'd go there
and knock; he'd open up because he was expecting
me and I'd give him the cash, pick up the cash
ier's checks and have them all mailed within a
half hour.
So, that was the only way we could operate to
make sure Juneau Spruce couldn't collect. It was
a cat-and-mouse game. This went on and on. They
finally went before Federal Judge (Paul) Goodman;
they wanted a receivership. So, he wouldn't do it,
He said, "Well, after all, creditors chasing
debtors is one of the oldest American customs we
have . "
So, he appointed a monitor from the court. We
wouldn't pay for the transcript. The monitor had
to pay for it, or the people who were chasing us.
Those hearings went on; we discovered that the
monitor was not all that unfriendly, he didn't
want to work too hard. A couple of hours in the
morning were enough for him. I guess he was paid
by the day. He was in no great hurry just sit
ting around the table trying to chase our assets.
I recall one long session that went on for
about two weeks, not just counsel from Portland
who was representing Juneau Spruce, but also
local counsel, including one of the guys who used
to be on the California V/onder Team, the guy they
called Fat something. I'm trying to remember his
name; he wasn't fat at all, as a matter of fact
he was quite thin.
412
I bumped into him in Hawaii after the thing was
settled. He was trying to tell me how the
Portland attorneys for Juneau Spruce were trying
to beat him out of his fee. But he finally
collected. He didn't give a good goddam about
the case. He just wanted his money.
So for about two weeks they were pursuing the
building. One thing George Andersen told me,
"You don't answer one thing they don't actually
insist upon - you do not volunteer one single
piece of information." So, I could tell very
quickly that they were on a completely wrong
track about the building, either they didn't
know about the sale or that we had spent all the
money.
There was nothing around to attach. They must
have gone on for two weeks on this damn thing,
going through the records, plowing through to
find out if anybody pays rent. Does the building
association have any money? No, it's broke too.
So, we'd go round and round on this damn thing,
and after two weeks they realized they were
pursuing a completely wrong line.
One of their attorneys, - the money for their
attorneys' fees must have been running up like
all hell - finally flips his lid and says, "You
could have given us this information two weeks
ago." And the referee, who by that time had
caught on as to what was happening said, "You
didn't ask for it." That was it.
It just went on because there was work to be
done. We had all kinds of headaches, troubles.
We were independent by then; negotiations, strikes,
you name it. But the referee was pretty good;
he would set the hearings for the morning. I
realized after a couple of hours that there would
be no problem. I'd say, "Look, I have a luncheon
meeting or an afternoon meeting." So, we'd go
on to the next day - that's all. So, it was a
half day on Juneau Spruce and half a day on other
stuff.
Ward: This was all going on in San Francisco?
413
LG: Yes. In the course of this whole suit I had
occasion to talk to one of the Dant brothers.
The Dant brothers owned one of the shipping
companies, States Steamship Company. And they
were also the big Dant and Russell Lumber in
terests, which also owned Juneau Spruce. I
chased this problem down and said, it's worth
while talking to him.
Tom Dant was very friendly about the \iiole
thing. He said, "I know what the heck's going
on; the only people who have gotten anything
out of Juneau Spruce are the lawyers. But it's
one of these things that's on the books. They
won a big judgment - I don't know if they'll ever
collect it."
I tried to be as friendly as I could. I said,
"You're better off to try to get along with the
union - you own the States Steamship Company -
than continue on this thing." "Well," he said,
"I'd like to see the thing settled. I'll tell
the attorneys to try to settle it with you. I
don't think it's worth a hell of a lot. But of
course you know that's the way it is - the
stockholders." The usual horseshit, because they
did have a million dollar judgment.
He must have talked to some of the attorneys
because I talked to one of them; (James P.)
Rogers was his name. He talked about Juneau
Spruce, and I'm not sure if it was Tom Dant or
his brother, a big, heavy-set guy. He said that
Dant had talked to him that we might be willing
to settle.
I said, "Sure, we'd like to settle, but we don't
have any money - I'm just telling you that." He
said, "Well, then, how can you settle?" I said,
"Well, maybe we can dig up a couple of bucks. If
you want to come down and talk about it, fine."
So he came down to San Francisco, and we spent
a long day; it started around two in the after
noon and wound up at two in the morning. We
finished up in the Starlight Room up in the Sir
Francis Drake Hotel. It must have been around
midnight; we'd had dinner and everything else.
414
LS: I kept repeating that we didn't have any dough
around and this chasing of money could go on
forever. There wasn't any money around.
They'd made one move which we had counteracted
in 1955; we figured they would try to attach
monies coming in to the International as per
capita. In other words, to put their claim be
tween the locals and the International. So, we
amended the constitution in 1955 - and the
amendment still exists in the constitution; per
capita is a voluntary obligation in the ZLWU, it
is not compulsory. You cannot file a suit or at
tach the assets of a local "because they fail to
pay per capita.
That, we figured, was the last loophole they
might try to use and sure enough they did
proceed along that line, but decided they could
not get anywhere. I said, "Okay, you're not
going to be able to get the money from the locals
no way." He said, "Look, you're burying per
capita." I said, "It's a voluntary obligation.
Like the per capita in Hawaii, for example,
was buried, except for the cash we needed, as we
needed it; did it with other locals. Sut when
the longshoremen of San Francisco wanted to build
a building, we used the per capita in Hawaii to
buy the longshore property where the longshore
building is, down at Fishermen's Wharf. Another
time when rumors floated around that Lou G-oldblatt
got something out of that - the usual horseshit -
there's nothing you can do about that, can you?
Anyway, towards one or two o'clock in the morn
ing, I finally said, "Look, there is a piece of
money I can get my hands on - you can't - it's
owned by the Longshore Legal Defense Fund." That
was something that was set up during the time of
the Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt defense case. There
was some money left over there.
It either went back to the locals, or they
voted to turn it over to the International after
Juneau Spruce. I said, "It amounts to 868,000;
you make a deal and you got 68,000; I'll borrow
it from them." And he made the deal. I said,
415
LG-: "Well, better be down at the attorneys tomorrow
morning and we'll finalize it." So, we went down
to Richie Gladstein's office, and Rogers is down
there about 10 o'clock in the morning and I get
hold of Richie and tell him to get the papers all
ready; we want to get the release signed and we
will give him the $68,000 bucks. He thought it
was a hell of a good deal.
It was one of those agreements where you come
home at night and you know there is something
wrong with it; this is too good. And I was right
it was too good. Because just as Rogers gets
there - he was pretty badly hung over - he said:
"I'd better call my headquarters before I close
this thing." And he does.
Well, the guy at the other end, representing
a big firm, didn't need the telephone; you could
hear him. I don't know what he called this guy,
but if he left anything out it was by mistake.
And he killed it right then and there. This guy
turns and his face was red; terribly embarrassed.
"I know I made a deal, but it can't hold up,
that's all." He left, very apologetic. So, I
figured here v/e are back again, the old business
of cops and robbers, chasing debtors.
Now, I'm going back to the Pair Labor Standards
Act suit which might seem to be absolutely non
contiguous. After we settled the Pair Labor
Standards Act suit - I told you about the deal we
made - it ran about a million and eight hundred
thousand bucks, thereabouts.
The thing was all settled and disposed of as
far as we were concerned, but the employers had
insisted that the union could take up any case
the employers demanded be taken up until they
had an adjudication of final resort. There's a
reason for this. The employers did not want to
get bitten again under the Fair Labor Standards
Act.
There were still these borderline cases, later
on ruled to be non-agricultural and covered under
the Pair Labor Standards Act, including the
minimum wage provision and the 40-hour week
provision and so forth. There could be later
416
LG: litigation on the question of what they owed the
second time. In other words, settling that
particular suit did not stop the violation. I
guess it was perfectly reasonable from their
lights, and of course, we saw nothing wrong with
the thing "because we were finished. It was the
employers who decided each step of the way; the
Federal court, the Appelate court, the Supreme
court. The employers paid the lawyers. We were
absolutely finished with the thing; the record
as far as v/e were concerned was clean.
That was the background of the Fair Labor
Standards Act until the Juneau Spruce thing and
the Fair Labor Standards Act suit came to the
same point. And here is how it happened. After
the Juneau Spruce negotiations fell apart, one
day I got a call from Jack Hall. This whole
thing was thought out, just as the original Fair
Labor Standards Act suit was thought out, by Jack
Hall; entirely out of his own think tank.
Jack called and said, "Do you recall that Fair
Labor Standards Act suit that we still have in
litigation?" And I said, "No." He said, "You
must remember that we did agree that the employers
could keep insisting that the thing be appealed
until they get a final decision." I said, "Yes,
I recall that, but we are not mixed up in it."
"I didn't say v/e are mixed up in the thing; that's
not the point. The thing is now before the
Supreme Court, which is due to rule very shortly.
"The employers have come to us with an offer.
They said, 'We'd like to make a proposal to you
for $250,000 bucks in full settlement of the
Supreme Court ruling, whichever way it goes. If
the Supreme Court rules right down the line with
the union then it's in full settlement. If they
rule against you, it's in full settlement. V/e
know it's a gamble for you and it's a gamble for
us. If you're prepared to do it, we'd consider
making an offer ' " .
417
##
Ward: You were right in the middle of telling me about
this $250,000 offer.
LG: Right. So, I said, "Jack, we've already agreed
that as far as we were concerned we had no
further interest in the Fair Labor Standards Act."
And he said, "That's right and I agree with you
completely, Lou. Trying to undertake the dis
tribution of $250,000 to whatever number of guys
we had in sugar at the time, 18,000 or 20,000
members, would be a hopeless job. Some people
would get 10 bucks, some people would get nothing,
and it would be more divisive than it's worth.
"But that's not what I'm thinking of, Lou. We
could get around $250,000 bucks. If that will
settle Juneau Spruce, I know we'll have no prob
lem getting releases; if there is anybody covered,
we can get a release." I said, "First, double
check it," and he did. The attorneys got in the
act and finally the employers had a completely
rounded proposal which as I recall was $250,000
bucks plus the attorneys fees, which were a
separate item entirely.
Once we had that nailed down, I confirmed it
with Jack. I said, "Okay, I'll call Juneau
Spruce and give them 48 hours to either take it
or leave it." On that score I realized we had
one advantage going for us. Obviously this
blow-up on the $68,000 settlement must have had
some backwash with the attorneys and also with
Dant.
Now Dant might have thought the guy was a damn
fool for making a deal like that; on the other
hand you have to realize that you can push some
thing like that just so far and then you'll break
it. I figured a quarter of a million dollars
would look pretty good. So, I got in touch with
this guy again, who was really quite surprised.
Ward: The same man with whom you had negotiated the
$68,000?
418
LG: Rogers, yes. I called Dant direct; by that time
I was on fairly good talking terms too, with
Dant. I said, "This is one final offer; there
will be no further offers. It's $250,000 bucks,
no questions asked as to where the money comes
from - you're going to get it. That's a complete
settlement of the suit and get rid 'of Juneau
Spruce once and for all. No further litigation
and no bullshit - and it's only 48 hours. Just
say 'Yes' or 'No'; there will be no further
talks - no negotiations."
Sure enough, I get a call back in less than
48 hours - "You have a deal." We made sure
everything was executed this time - no problem.
We call the sugar employers - HSPA - and take
the $250,000 settlement. The HSPA money is used
to pay Juneau Spruce and it doesn't cost the
union a goddam nickel!
Well, the sequel to that is really hilarious;
somehow or other the newspapers got wind of this
thing in Hawaii and they carried the story includ
ing the fact that this money had been used to
pay off Juneau Spruce. Now, what they should
have done, obviously, was to leave the damn thing
alone - the employers I'm talking about.
Two things happened then: one, the Supreme
Court ruled about a week later against the union
on every single item in the Pair Labor Standards
Act; we didn't win a thing. In other words, the
potential gain for the union was absolute zero.
That doesn't make it sound like very good judg
ment on the part of their attorneys down there.
Secondly, instead of leaving the damn thing
alone, the employers issued a long statement to
the effect that even though the Supreme Court had
ruled in their favor and against the union, the
lawyers' judgment was that the potential liability
of the employers could have been in excess of
$10,000,000. Therefore it was very prudent on
their part to settle a potential liability of
$10,000,000 dollars for only a quarter of a
million dollars.
419
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
Well, obviously, you leave something like that
alone - you say nothing. It's like losing a
poker hand. There's no use going around and
weeping about it because somebody will finally
say, "Look, you were just a plain goddam fool
for drawing to that middle straight."
Everybody in the Islands had a big laugh that
the Big Five had been taken for a ride; settled
for $250,000 bucks when it wouldn't have cost
them a goddam dime. Anyway, that's the windup
chapter on the Fair Labor Standards Act suit and
Juneau Spruce and the whole she-bang put together.
It's a great story -
It's a great story - one of the most brilliant
things Jack Hall has ever done.
That was a lulu, it really was.
(Interview 17: 13 July, 1978)
Waving Farewell To The Party
Ward:
LG:
Lou, during the war years or thereafter, your
relations with the Communist party apparently
dwindled to nothing except a friendly* association
once in a while. Is that it?
That's pretty much true, even for a short period
before the war and definitely during the war. My
relations with many of the people there were very
cordial and we sat and chewed the fat once in a
while. They had some good ideas, and remember,
there were a lot of wonderful people in the trade
union movement who had been or were members of the
Communist party.
A very dedicated group; the same people who had
joined with many of us in the boycott of Japanese
goods and the scrap iron beef and doing all we
could about raising the devil on Mussolini's in
vasion of Africa and Ethopia. And, obviously,
420
LG-: they were very active with us in trying to push '
along the war effort, including a recognition of
the job the Soviet Union was doing; also part of
the whole movement of opening up a second front.
These were excellent people, although when it
came to specific trade union problems, there's
no question in my mind that while their intentions
might have been good, in many respects they did
not have as accurate or as careful an appraisal
of the membership as its leaders did.
It was really quite early during that period
that I came to the conclusion that having a good
program was terribly important; to know where
you were going, and that unions are more than
just looking forward to the next picket line for
an extra nickel an hour. Fundamentally the
union movement had to be an instrument for change.
ard: Would you say, then, that from your point of view
and the party point of view, by 1945 or '46 you
were no longer a member?
LG: Oh, I think so.
ard: Did the Duclos letter (a stinging critique of the
American Communist party, issued in late 1945 by
Jacques Duclos, leading theorist of the French
Communist party) have anything to do with your
position?
LG-: Not a great deal. I reached the conclusion that
some of the struggles within the union around
issues like Spain weren't that readily digestible
by some of our members, even though we had some
awfully good guys who went to Spain.
But there was another test I began to use,
which I thought was more important and required
a good deal more independent judgment. I saw
nothing wrong in taking a position on issues, in
cluding fighting for the right within the union
to take that position, if I believed in it.
But the measure that the membership was going
to use was not whether I took a certain position.
It was how I applied it in the case of where the
421
LG: union was going. If I or anybody who believes
in the Left takes a position which is tantamount
to saying "agreement with my thinking is a price
of my leadership," I don't care who that person
is, there's a point where that person is dead in
the union.
That is not the way the union member sees it.
He might decide, okay, you're doing a good job;
we trust you, you are not a fat cat, you're not
on the make, you're not dealing with employers
under the table. On all these things we think
you are a good person and doing a good job. But
it's another "thing to say to that same member,
if you want me to stick around here you better
agree with everything I say. That they will not
accept.
I think John L. Lewis made a terrible mistake
when he put on that price for continuation as
head of the CIO, the endorsement and campaign for
Willkie. Sure, the non-acceptance of the Willkie
vote was a vote of no confidence in him.
I remember a lot of us pleaded with Lewis;
there I think he was in error. He felt that FDR
was dragging us into the war. As I told you ear
lier, Lewis had a pretty much isolationist bent.
He sure as hell agreed with George Washington on
no foreign entanglements; he wouldn't trust the
British as far as he could get them out of his
sight. Typical Welshman in that respect.
Ward: The point is that a personal resignation or
expulsion or any action at all regarding the party
you just didn't go to meetings, quit paying dues
and that sort of thing?
LG: Pretty much, although some of the party guys
could be pretty abrasive. I don't have to tell
you the dialogue of politics, or the polemics,
or the acerbic vocabulary. The only people who
have it topped are the Chinese, because I under
stand they have two hundred cuss words for every
one of ours; with this endless vocabulary I guess
they can go on a lot longer.
422
LG-: But with some of the party people the position
they followed was so doctrinaire you couldn't
get anywhere; it didn't make any sense. I recall
one issue that arose right after the war. The
party was on a campaign of super- seniority for
blacks. Bear in mind, at that time even the
initial fight of getting job openings for "blacks
was barely getting under way.
A couple of unions had done a fairly decent
job - the II WU had in the main. A number of
blacks were taken into the union, in World War II
particularly. As longshoremen a lot of them had
come up from the South, escaping from the southern
ports.
So, we had a high percentage of new members,
among them many blacks. Warehouse had blacks
almost from the day one. This was part of the
credo of the Young Turks and rebels who were part
of the inland march; G-ene Paton, Chili Duarte,
Dick Lynden, Ralph Daws on, Frank Thompson; over
in the East Bay, Paul Heide, Ray Heide, his
brother, who died of a sudden heart attack. Every
one of these guys was under thirty; it was strict
ly a movement of young rebels.
Oh, there was an attempt to try to get a little
more balance and maybe a little more confidence,
like old C. T. Quirey who considered his job as
secretary as picking up the day's dues, banking
them the next morning, and going back to his desk.
Papers, shuffling papers. He would never get
mixed up in a fight - never get mixed up in nego
tiations.
Everybody talked about honest, C. T. Quirey
and Warren Dent on, president of the local for a
while. He wasn't a bad egg, actually a pretty
nice guy; liked his beer a little bit too much,
but he was all right.
I recall a conversation with him during one of
our strikes. He said, "Lou, you know, I got to
be frank with you. These strikes scare the hell
out of me. This whole business, for example, of
risking a guy's job." Even though he agreed
entirely with what we were trying to do. I recall
a crazy incident; you remember Ward Walkup, the
guy who ran the Ward Walkup Company?
423
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
I remember the name of the company; I knew there
was a Ward Walkup, "but that is all.
"Runup - walk down" - they used to call him; those
drivers had a workout. I'll never forget being
around the docks one day - I was still working on
the front, on and off, with the car gangs and a
truck came in where Walkup had to either hire a
lumper or have somebody help him. It was this
thing where normally two guys, the truck driver
and his helper would move coffee sacks to the
tailgate of the conveyor, one at a time. But
Walkup had a big Irish kid. He must have weighed
at least 240 pounds and no fat on him, and he was
at the end of the conveyor loading these coffee
sacks waist high, which does make it a little
easier; but those damn sacks weighed from 160 to
200 pounds, and he was handling them single
handed.
alkup was out to demonstrate it could be done.
The sweat was running off of the kid like water.
I don't know how long that damn thing lasted but
even the toughest of teamsters at some point would
have to say, "The hell with it, this is just too
damn much."
They come in these big jute bags and the bag
itself is as loose as a goose. You can grab two
ears of a sack and the other guy grabs the other
two ears. You can lift that thing waist high and
all the coffee is still sitting there on the floor
because it's the way the sack is made. It takes
a guy with an awful lot of Norwegian steam - elbow
grease - to pick it up.
And do that all day?
Yes, handling coffee was one of the most difficult
jobs around, but that was Walkup. Walkup was a
big, blustery kind of guy, hard-drinking and hard-
boiled. We're sitting around the office fairly
late, around Christmas or New Years. Even strikes
get quiet around then; but I don't think it's peace
on earth and goodwill to men; it's a sort of time
off.
424
LG-: And a call comes in and I happen to take it and
it's Ward Walkup and he says, "I'd like to talk
to somebody down there. Is anyone around?" And
I said, "Sure, I'm answering the phone and Warren
Lent on is here, the president." "Well, can you
come over to the office - gotta settle this
strike."
At that time they were in that huge Terminal
Building at China Basin, right across from the
old cold storage dock. These were all warehouses,
practically one solid warehouse, and we had the
thing organized. So, Warren Dent on and I went
over there. It was all dark, almost everybody has
called it a day; no pickets around, nobody.
We knew where his office was so we went down to
that end of the building and there was a light on,
probably his office, and we walked upstairs. We
went in and there was Ward Walkup. I had met him
before and I think Denton had, because he was sort
of an ebullient guy. He liked to bullshit with the
characters, but at the same time he would throw
his weight around. He didn't mind leaning on
people.
He was there sitting in the office all by him
self. And we sat down and realized he'd been
drinking heavily. And he started right off, no
formalities or "happy holidays" or anything like
that. He says, "This strike is going to be
settled tonight." "Fine," we say, "You know what
the demands are." "Well, I'm not interested in
all that crap; I said we're going to settle it."
"I don't know how we're going to settle this
thing unless we sit down and talk about these
demands." "We can settle it," he says, "because
you guys can settle it; I'm convinced you guys
can settle it." "Well, there's a committee and . .'
We didn't want to offend him; obviously he was
in no shape to do a lot of talking, but he still
goes on in this rambling fashion.
Pinally, he reaches in the desk and pulls out
a .45 and slaps it on the desk and says, "I said
it is going to be settled tonight." At which
point Warren Denton excuses himself and says,
425
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward;
LG:
"I've got to go to the bathroom." Warren Denton
leaves. Ward Walkup turns around and says to
him, "Must have been a bad piece of ice." And
that was all there was to it; nothing else
happened, (laughter)
Nothing happened? Nothing was settled?
No, how could it be? For one thing, he just
represented himself. He didn't represent the
employer group; he was not one of the spokesmen.
Walkup was not the dominant guy in the industry.
Now you're getting off ....
I think it was the following year that Denton
decided he wouldn't run for office and he got a
job in a brewery. Which is not the worst place
in the world because there you could drink all
the beer you wanted.
Most of the guys drank ale.
I don't know - maybe he drank ale. I think it
was Gene Pat on got elected at that time. Anyhow,
they were all young guys.
All right, so anyway without any formal action of
any kind, no resignation, you just ceased to be
a party member.
Yeah, practically. I don't think the party was
too concerned by any of these things. In the war
period the basic approach was just the broad,
united front. I knew that because I was state
secretary of the CIO from 1938 until 1942. I knew
the only possible way of holding the CIO together
in the state was to work with some pretty diver
gent people.
I also discovered that those of us on the left
have certain duties to perform. Among them is to
learn the technique of doing 99 percent of the
work and taking one percent of the credit. And
this applied to anyone who wanted to work. If
you weren't prepared to do that, then egos finally
reached the point where there would be a break.
426
LG: So, I was working with all kinds of guys like
Dalrymple and Richard Francis of the Mine Workers,
although he was in the northwest most of the time
where they had some coal mines; the Coulter broth
ers from Oil; they weren't the most militant labor
men you'd ever find.
Ward : Rubber?
LG: Yes - Sen-Sen Roberts! He was taking sen-sen
all the time, it was the popular thing for
improving your breath. He always smelled as
though he had just come out of a whorehouse or a
barber shop. I remember when (Jack) Knight moved
into the Cil Workers, the first thing he did when
he came to the coast v/as to get in touch with me.
We worked very closely with the Oil Workers around
that time .
As a matter of fact, the policy of working with
different people came into very good stead in the
North American strike. The guy who really helped
when he finally came to the coast was Wyndham
Mortimer - there was a great man - really good
guy. He had led the sitdown at Flint (Michigan).
So, the whole business of holding the thing
together meant that the policy did the job, and
something else, too. It meant that all the left-
wingers in the CIO were protected. They were
perfectly willing to work. The only time they
would get dumped was frankly when it was political
ly convenient for some of the guys on top to do
so.
Lewis took a very constructive attitude when
people raised the question of Reds in the CIO.
"I don't employ people; I just get them to work.
Employers hire people."
Ward: There's a famous story of Sidney Hillman (of the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers) on the subject of
hiring a known Communist, "Oh, it's all right,
Brother So-and-So, let me ask you this question:
who gets the bird, the hunter or the dog?"
LG: Yes, that was Sidney Hillman 's attitude, most of
the time. Though later on when he was head of
427
LG: PAC (the CIO's Political Action Committee) or
Labor's N on-Partisan League, he shifted a bit.
He came from that old Social Democratic school,
but not a bad egg. There was a Labor's Non-
Partisan League meeting; Sidney Hillman was out
here and I v/as the head of Labor's N on-Partisan
League of California during the same time I was
state secretary of the CIO; we had this big
gathering; Jerry Posner from the Amalgamated in
Los Angeles was there. That's about the time
of Lewis' crack, "Clear it with Sidney." I
remember the newspapers carried that.
Ward: FDR said that, I think: "Clear it with Sidney."
LG: That could be it, because I remember the Hearst
press had little tabs in the newspaper, "Clear
It With Sidney". This became a slogan during
one of the political campaigns for Roosevelt.
Jerry Posner got up in the midst of this
meeting to express his appreciation for everything
Sidney Hillman had done for the Amalgamated and he
wound up saying, "It's a privilege, a pleasure
and a pretty good living to v/ork for the Amalgam
ated Clothing Workers!" I'll never forget that
statement "A privilege, a pleasure and a pretty
good living ..." That was pretty much their
attitude -
Ward: There was Morris Zussman, too, remember him?
LG-: Yes, and I remember the one who was the biggest
pain in the ass of all of them was Jennie Matyas.
Ward: But she was with the ILG-WU, not the Amalgamated.
LG-: Right, that's right. There were a good number of
left-v/ing unions. The Furniture Workers were left-
wing in their thinking, a very aggressive outfit.
As a matter of fact, I think Gus Brown was with
them at the time, down in Los Angeles where their
main base was. Sonia Baltrun, up here with the
Textile Workers, a good, solid progressive gal.
She had primarily the bag companies, places like
Bemis (Bag Company). There was a broad coalition
and the State Council was by and large progress
ive.
428
Ward: Slim Connelly was the president of the State CIO
Council most of the time you were secretary?
LG: Right, right.
Ward: And later on became -
LG-: He "became secretary - no, no, Rathborne became
secretary -
Ward: But wasn't Jim Thimmes of Steel president for a
while, while you were secretary?
LG: Right, Jim Thimmes of Steel. Jim Thimmes wasn't
the worst guy to work with, but he had a much
more restricted vision. He just wanted the job
done, period. I think most of these guys knew
where I stood on things because I was pretty out
spoken. The job was being done and that's all
that counted.
Of course, you did a tremendous amount of road
work. I got to know every inch of the state
because you didn't do it by plane. lou were driv
ing that damn car, eight or ten hours all night
long. I'm trying to remember the time when John
L. Lewis set up District 50.
Ward: That was the catch-all; anybody could belong to
District 50, practically.
LG: Yep. In some areas it was just a straight raiding
outfit, particularly against groups like the
construction workers. I know what Lewis was after.
He felt the whole construction industry was so
fragmented in these craft unions, doing such a
bad job cutting each other's throat and creating
all kinds of jurisdictional beefs, like who would
install a metal window sash - whether it was a
sheet metal worker or a carpenter; who installed
a painted panel, or did the painter have to paint
it again afterwards. These endless bickerings,
you know. Lewis decided something ought to be
done, and that's when Denny Lewis*was put in charge.
Oh, I was in L.A. one day and I got a call from
Harry that John L. Lewis would be in town the next
day and he wanted to have dinner with Harry and
*A brother of John L. Lewis
429
LG: myself. I got up somewhere around five in the
morning and it was a long trip in those days;
the road wasn't that good between Los Angeles
and San Francisco; two-lane most of the way.
The jalopy I had wasn't the best in the world. It
was an old Dodge and I'd throw sand bags in the
back so the rear end of the car wouldn't go off
the road at high speeds.
I got home in time to clean up, shave, change
clothes for this dinner. And frankly, I was not
terribly alert. Lewis was a very genial and
cordial host, a very friendly kind of guy. He
could be a charming character when he wanted to,
with a marvelous collection of stories. Lewis
had very few hobbies; I have never seen him
have more than one or two glasses of wine.
But as soon as dinner is finished and the
waiter clears away the stuff, Lewis gets right
to business. He says, "What I'd like to talk
about is what's going to happen in the drive to
organize the building trades workers, the con
struction workers?" Well, Harry and I had talk
ed about that before and pretty well decided
that we shouldn't touch the field.
One of the reasons we decided that under no
circumstances would we take on any part of this
thing, was that even though we had been expelled
from the A ? of L, we v/ere not isolated. The same
thing applied again later on, after our differences
with the CIO; but we'll get into that later. Guys
like Joe Murphy of the Laborers Union, Dan Del
Carlo, men like Ed Rainbow of the old Boilermakers,
and guys like Hook and Dillon - we got along with
them. We were not going to move into the building
trades.
So, Harry turns to me and says, "Why don't you
go into this thing?" I start giving various
reasons, and frankly some of them v/ere pretty
lame, as to why we weren't moving into this
District 50 organizing campaign. After all, we
v/ere going after bigger game, we were working
closely with the guys from the building trades
and v/e had a good coalition around them, they were
very pro-CIO; they believed in industrial unionism,
430
LG: some of them had an old time Wobbly background.
I don't think I was persuasive because Lewis
turned to me and said, "Well, that's fine Mr.
Goldblatt - Lewis always addressed people as Mr. ,
rarely used first names. "You've given about all
the reasons why we can't do it. Will you kindly
start now on the reasons why we can do it?" And
frankly, if there was some way of leaving through
a hole in the floor, I would have. It was a most
classic put-down, another way of Lewis saying,
"Look, cut out the bullshit, I know exactly what
you're doing." He was very sharp, you know.
I remember the girls at the office - at that
time we were at the Balboa Building on Market
Street - when Lewis came by there; I don't think
anyone was around other than the girls who were
doing their work. I was in L. A., Harry was tied
up in something else. Lewis could see that the
girls were very edgy. He just sat there and
talked to them and looked around the office, the
CIO office; Harry was v/est coast director and I
was the so-called northern California director -
no salary.
Finally Lewis tried to put the girls at ease
and said, "Look, I know why you're uncomfortable,
trying to reach Mr. Bridges and Mr. Goldblatt.
I'm very happy to see that they're not in the
office because I can't see any work that they can
get done here - they have to be out in the field
where they belong." So, he had that kind of
graciousness.
It might have been shortly after the CIO had
its convention in San Francisco in 1939. That
was a rip roaring convention; Lewis making some
classic speeches, some of them only about two or
three minutes in length. He was at his best then
because the CIO v/as going great guns. The major
industries had been organized.
He was really at the top of the heap at that
moment and he talked about coming back in ten
years to San Francisco with double the membership.
All the young rebels, including myself, were just
fascinated with the whole thing; all the visions
you have. Things, of course, did not continue
431
LG: that way "because "by next year you had a presi
dential election, 1940.
Ward: Yes, 1940 - that was when he came out for Willkie
LG: Eight. I supported him on Willkie. That was one
time v/hen I didn't get a single vote in Local 6.
If anybody did agree they sat on their hands.
They listened, and I told them point "blank I was
in favor of Willkie, and it was not just a matter
of John L.
##
432
##
XI END OF WARTIME CONTROLS
"Free Enterprise" Again
ard: We've pretty well worked over that subject.
LG-: Okay. When the war ended, a lot of things broke
loose; one was the all-out employer campaign to
dump OPA, which they did.
Ward: That was the Office of Price Administration; that
was vage and price control.
LG: Wage and price control, right. Price control was
pretty effectively maintained, the same way that
rationing was. You had a whole country united and
moving in the same direction and determined to
police each other, the employers, and everything
else.
The corner grocer was taking an awful risk to
violate any of these price control measures.
Remember, the merchants had to post their prices.
There were all kinds of people helping to enforce
the law. You had everything from neighborhood
committees to community organizations, so that
when talk goes on these days about controls and
legislation without the kind of spirit you had in
those days, you know you are being taken for a
ride, like the Nixon program on wage and price
control.
But the employers' campaign to dump the OPA was
successful. In the case of Warehouse, by that time
Gene Pa,ton was back from the army, and Pat felt
that a certain number of things had been lost
433
LG: during the war and with the repeal of QPA some
thing ought to be done. We actually did get an
interim wage increase; I forgot the exact amount
it started off with 16J cents at some places, 14
cents at other places.
Well, a lot of things were also piling up with
other parts of the ILWU, particularly in the case
of Longshore, and with many maritime unions as
well. The Longshore contract, as I recall,
expired some time in 1946. Longshore had kept up
with the wage situation, the way the regulations
read. They didn't have the inequity issue, the
principal thing the War Labor Board was playing
around with.
During that period I got stabilization of
wages in northern California including Sacramento
and Stockton. I remember a long War Labor Board
hearing in which we picked up vacations with pay
for longshoremen. One reason that sticks in my
mind is that when I moved up and down California
and sometimes to the northwest as well, I'd
always drop by and see the ILWU locals in places
like Wilmington or Hueneme, where I worked with
them very closely during the war.
Bill Gettes was down there; a wonderful guy.
When we got into a discussion on something like
that vacations with pay, the men used to laugh
at me. He said, "Not in longshore. How do you
get vacations in casual industry?" I said, "It's
not that difficult; our argument is that if you
get a certain number of hours in you are entitled
to a vacation, that is all." "Ah, we'll never
see it."
I could have picked up all kinds of money mak
ing bets because these guys are betting men to
start with. They were skeptical. Well, sure
enough we picked up vacations with pay. We made
a number of improvements in the longshore con
tract, but not a great deal.
Ward: Did Harry play any part in this?
LG: Oh, sure.
434
Ward: I would think so. But you had your finger in it
too?
LG: Yes.
Ward: In other words, you and Harry were in Longshore;
considerable teamwork between the two of you?
LG-: Oh, yes, sure. I used to sit in in negotiations
all the time, and then there was also the business
of preparing these cases. Lloyd Fisher was our
research man. His background included some work
with the War Labor Board. Actually, he was a
pretty thorough little guy. He's the man who
broke the news to me that Franklin D. Roosevelt
had died. He was good; he helped set up the
research department. That was before we had Line
Fairley.
We picked up some things, but there was lagging
in general. The guys thought that some substantial
increases were overdue. Although, I wouldn't say
that the unions did that badly during the war
period. A lot of them grew by accretion.
Ward: Just more guys working?
LG-: More guys working and some unions which had
jurisdiction and contracts, like your Boilermakers
in the shipyards. All of a sudden there's a
tremendous mass organization, calling all these
people boilermakers, including the girls who left
their secretaries' desks and were welding one
small plate. You know, the same one every day,
for Kaiser (shipyards).
As a matter of fact it was during that period
that George Andersen took a position which many
of us found hard to accept because we did not like
the idea of having the courts decide an intra-
union problem. George was a very stubborn guy;
once he made up his mind, he would do it.
We were talking about his role in Hawaii, and
sure they tried to move in against us, they moved
in the federal courts, they tried to attach all the
money; he did yoeman service in the Juneau
Spruce thing there, and the fact that we were
435
LG: under injunction to leave the dough there. That
didn't bother George. We needed cash. He just
brought it back, that's all.
So George Andersen took up a suit because the
Boilermakers had set up black locals and the
black locals filed suit, or they wanted to file
suit, on the grounds that they had been discrimi
nated against and that they were entitled to equal
rights within the union: they could not vote for
International officers. I'm not sure that they
could even attend conventions. George went ahead
with the suit and I think he won it eventually.
He was that kind of a persistent cuss.
There was a backlog of all kinds of things
that had been dormant during the war. We decided
it would be a good idea to see whether we could
pull together something on the waterfront again.
The Maritime Federation had done a very effective
job in '35 - '36. Eventually, the thing fell
apart, primarily because the Sailors' union of
the Pacific, particularly Lundeberg, was determined
to see the thing go by the boards.
Lundeberg was an odd character that way. As a
matter of fact, I'd say that after 1936, all of
Lundeberg 's strikes were against other unions;
nothing against the employers. He had the Red
horrors until hell wouldn't have it. As a matter
of fact, at one point he even made a deal with
Dave Beck. I think that's one of the reasons
they took us on in the 1948 Longshore strike. Of
course, laft-Hartley combined.
Lundeberg and Beck assured the employers that
the waterfront could be opened during the Long
shore strike. Lundeberg would man the ships and
Beck would supply the longshoremen. Beck, of
course, had a running battle with our guys. He
came from Seattle and he tried to enforce teamster
jurisdiction to include everything on wheels; that
was his first slogan.
Well, the jitneys on the waterfront which they
used to pull these trailers, and the fork lifts
were on wheels and he tried to extend this whole
crazy craft concept to the point where that work,
436
LG: too, should be covered by the Teamsters Union.
Well, you see what the consequences of that would
be on the waterfront - it would be no dice. Beck
took a lead in taking on the ILWU. As a matter
of fact, he wrecked a good part of our organiza
tion in Seattle where Bert Nelson was in charge,
and Bruce Hannon. Bruce Harmon later turned up
as a witness against Harry. What happened to him
I don't know, because initially he was an awfully
good guy.
Of course, Nelson remained a solid citizen all
his life and still is, even though he had a
terrible time getting back in that local after he
went underground for a while during that (anti-
Communist) Smith Act period. Of course, he was
a known left-winger and known Communist. I don't
know how many years it took battling to get him
back on the waterfront. After we got him back,
he still wasn't in the union. He was a good man
and I used to see a good deal of him when I went
up to Seattle, after I became secretary of the
ILWU.
There were fist fights almost every day with
the Teamsters because it was an open raid against
the ILWU; anything and everything we had. The
Warehouse local in Seattle was under a guy named
Hugh Bradshaw; he was a cocky little guy. Our
man had a rough, rough time and lost a good deal
of what they had organized. , In Portland, we had
a flourishing Warehouse local and that was pretty
well taken apart by the Teamsters. Some very
violent battles around there. A lot of them wound
up in fist fights.
Lundeberg was really tied in there, particularly
when it came to opposing the ILWU; he was com
pletely locked in with Beck. On the same redbait
ing kick, of course. The Sailors Union paper was
just one piece of vitriol from beginning to end
with attacks on the leftwing; Commie, everything
was Commie, you see.
Of course the Maritime Federation couldn't
last very long under those circumstances. It
pretty well ran out of business shortly after
1936. One of the reasons was when Lundeberg had
437
LG: a chance to settle, he moved in without consulting
the other unions and actually started a back to
work movement; a terrible fight there around who
would control the Voice Of The Federation. You
might remember Barney Hayes.
Ward: Oh, yes, Barney Hayes. I remember Lundeberg
talking to the Newspaper Guild, trying to get
support for Barney. We sat on our hands, listened
to him, and- didn't do anything.
LG: The Guild was a good friend of the ILWU. So,
that's some of the background; this rubbed off on
some of the other unions. Not the Marine Cooks
and Stewards - they were a good progressive union
and stayed with us all through this fight. You
had guys like Hugh Bryson in there, and oh, Nate
Jacobs on was in there at the time; Joe Johnson
was in there; Eddie Tangen; and they had a pretty
good progressive crew on board the ships, the
Marine Cooks.
The Marine Firemen vacillated all over the
place; for a while they were fairly good and some
of them remained quite good. After all, guys
like Walter Stack came out of there and at one
time, even an official of the Marine Firemen.
When Vince Mai one became secretary of the Marine
Firemen, they moved pretty well to the right.
Very cautious and sometimes wound up with Lunde
berg, but not all the time.
Well, the reason I mention these things is to
try to give you a bit of a picture as to what
things were like at the end of the war. The
Marine Engineers were not too bad. Randolph
Merriwether and his side kick, Jerome (I forget
his first name) were very close to the ILWU on a
personal basis. I liked Randy Merriwether. We
got along very well together.
On the other hand, the Master, Mates and Pilots
were impossible. Captain (Charles F.) May, Christ
Almighty; sometimes he'd run competition with
Lundeberg to see who could be the worst redbaiter;
one of the first guys to use blacklisting against
progressives. There were some great guys who
served in Spain - George Dwain Worrell, I think
was one of them - he's still around, by the way.
438
if .
LG: He had a hell of a time; during the war he final
ly got somewhere because they just needed
skippers - a very competent skipper. I think
after the war he lost out again. The radio
operators on the other hand, also worked out on
deck. Zig Zag Brown - remember him?
Ward: Oh, yes, Z.R. Brown, sure.
LG: He was active in the CIO Council in San Francisco
he was with the Radio Operators. Somebody tagged
him Zigzag Brown for Z.R. Brown. All around the
waterfront people picked up titles very fast -
nicknames - a glossary of those names would be
good!
I recall people would listen in on the radio
when we had radio dispatch of the longshoremen
because that saved gasoline; a guy didn't have to
come all the way down to the hall to get his job.
He could listen in: "Gang So and So at such and
such a pier." They ordered mainly by gang.
A lot of people would listen in because of the
color of the radio broadcast. Mike Quin was
doing the broadcast. I knew Mike from way back
in the 30s, in Los Angeles; we used to kick
around together. People would listen in to the
radio broadcasts just for the colorful names, you
know, like Banana Nose Sullivan and Stinky Foot
Gus' gang. Mike knew the value of this, because
he built up a terrific audience. He also did our
general broadcast.
Mike once wrote a piece on "The Death of a
Ship", one of the finest pieces of writing I think
I ever read; very touching, very close; people
called up and asked for a copy of that broadcast,
and one of them was Roger Lapham. Roger was a
guy in his own right, one of the last of the old
pirates.
That's the background generally; that span of
time just between 1937 and '41 was characterized
by some very abrasive battles v/ithin the maritime
unions; very sad thing, because the employers
played it right to the hilt.
439
LG-: Remember, during that time you had the old
Waterfront Employers Association which was the
mainstay of the San Francisco Employers Council,
with Frank P. Foisie and Gregory Harrison really
ruling the roost. Foisie was, I guess, the
originator of the Blue Book hiring hall, a company
hiring hall they had set up. It used to be called
the Fink Hall and he was called Fink Hall Foisie.
Gregory Harrison was a bitter, hard guy. He
was with Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison, very pow
erful law firm in San Francisco. It is still one
of the most prestigious and also very close to
the State Department. Herman Phleger, particularly,
had been part of the unofficial cabinet for a number
of presidents. I think he was one of the archi
tects of the Cold War too.
Harrison was stamped in that same image. I'll
tell you a bit more about him when we get to the
1948 longshore strike; they were in charge, you
know. It was Foisie and Harrison who ran all
these ads and publicity statements about the
number of work stoppages on the waterfront. They
are the ones who contrived the "ghost town"
business; San Francisco had been turned into a
ghost town by Bridges and the ILWU.
The Waterfront Employers was a powerful group,
and they had the employers by the short hair.
They had a tremendous amount of discipline in the
organization. And, of course, a guy like Foisie
wouldn't see anything wrong with using somebody
like Lundeberg, so the disruption continued
unabated.
It was during that period that it became evi
dent that the only people Lundeberg would fight
were other unions. For example, he undertook
a running raid against one of the locals of
the ILWU, the Sealers, of all things. The Sealers
did some of the hardest and dirtiest work there
is around the goddam waterfront, cleaning out
bilge tanks.
I remember taking one of those jobs for about
two days and saying, "Never again - I don't know
how I'll get by, but -" That was too much for me.
440
LS: It was made up of a crew about as mixed as you
could find; blacks, Mexicans, Spanish, some
Italians. It was hard, dirty work, chipping,
cleaning out the bilge tanks, general clean-up
of the holds, and so forth.
Lundeberg conducted a regular raid against
them because they had a little bit of work that
wasn't quite as mean; once in a while they would
load a few stores, but loading stores was also
supposed to be longshoremen's work. It was one
of those areas of controversy and Lundeberg put
up this big campaign, obviously with the agree
ment of the employers, to get that work.
The real purpose behind it was not a lack of
jobs on the part of the sailors; that was not
the problem. Lundeberg decided he wanted a shore
crew. These were shoreside sailors, sailors who
would not go to sea. But bear in mind with a
sea-going union most of your members are not
around when you are holding meetings. The only
time you see them is when there is a strike. And
Lundeberg 's device was very simple: he v/as going
to have a shoreside crew under his Sailors'
contract, and he would also have himself a palace
guard. These were the guys who were used for all
kinds of heavy duty and this became part of his
machine.
Ward: He needed a machine, yeah.
LG: Yeah. So, all these things were going on; it
was an endless sort of - not just a polemic kind
of fight, but also an economic one in the con
tinuous raid. Relations were not just brittle,
they were broken off.
Nevertheless, we decided toward the tail end
of the war when everybody knew that it was just a
matter of months, because the Nazis had fallen in
Europe and Japan was folding up, that the
situation was ripe to make another push to try
to get some maritime unity. We ought to try to
move on a unified basis because all the contracts
were running out in June, 1946. That was one
aspect of our discussions.
441
LG: There were endless discussions because some of
the theoreticians, particularly left-wing
theoreticians, had come along with their economic
analysis of the post war era, namely, that with the
ending of the war a depression was imminent "because
of the whole diversion of the productive capacity
into the war effort.
In the course of the discussion a number of
us, myself included, decided that this estimate
was wrong. I recall some pretty hot discussions.
And discussions with party people; they had gotten
their economic theories, I guess, from Victor
Perlo.
Ward: Yes, he was the great left-wing economist.
1G: The importance of the economic discussion was that
if the outlook was towards an imminent depression
and the falling off of both work and the ability
to fight - which go hand in hand during a
depression - there would be one type of trade
union approach.
If, on the other hand, we were convinced that
there was so much pent up purchasing power, -
even though it was damn small compared to what
the employers made during the war period, together
with the fact that a lot of consumer goods had
not been made available - when this thing was let
loose in the market it would not be a period of
immediate economic decline.
That was before the Korean War, which wasn't
until 1950. The immediate post war era would see
a pretty halcyon economic scene. That was our
conclusion. That, of course, made a big difference
in terms of what the devil you go for. Do you put
up a big push for wages, improvements and so forth
like Gene Paton began to move in warehouse, or do
you get yourself ready for a defensive fight, a
holding action.
Unions don't live outside the economic scene.
Anyway, as I said, we reached the conclusion that
there was a good deal of purchasing power around
and that there would be a period of economic
442
LG-: stability, if not prosperity, in the postwar
period. The employers also reached the same
conclusion; one of the most effective arguments
they had in getting rid of OPA, which was as
specious as a $3 bill, was that the demand was
there, people wanted things. The reason the
employers couldn't produce was because of all
these artificial restrictions on prices.
Yes, some prices might go up a little bit
but then they would come down very quickly with
the competition in the market place. All the
laissez-faire economics beautifully spelled out,
leaving aside just a few little things, as you
know, in the system of price-fixing, monopoly
capitalism and every ting else.
This is the simplistic kind of approach that
they used, and a number of people fell for it.
They literally believed that the consumer demand
would be quickly taken care of in a pretty equit
able fashion if you got rid of OPA because that
was bothering the employers and interfering with
the free operation of all these wonderful econ
omic forces we have going for us in this country.
Well, this is part of the economic background;
our conclusion was that while OPA might be
repealed, we thought the time had come for a
good, first class push in the economic field.
I'll admit we were also getting a lot of flak,
particularly on some of Harry's ideas about oh,
indefinite extension of five year contracts,
five year no-strike pledge to continue -
Ward: Oh, he wanted to do that, uh?
LG-: Oh, sure; during the war Harry had issued some
statements that perhaps we ought to continue the
no-strike pledge for another five years when the
war was over. Obviously, this did not last too
long. So, we went into these meetings on post
war negotiations - it must have been the end of
1945 or early part of 1946.
443
The Committee For Maritime Unity
LG-: After talking to outfits like the Marine Cooks
and Stewards, the ACA radio operators and some
people in the Marine Firemen, it was clear that
we could pull together; at least some joint
coordinated bargaining, if not joint negotiations.
As a result we had the first meeting of the
Committee for Maritime Unity; that convention was
held at the old Eagles Hall, the one on Golden
Gate (Avenue, San Francisco).
Ward: Joe Curran came out for that, didn't he?
LG: Joe Curran was at the meeting for the NMU; Hugh
Bryson of the Marine Cooks was there; Vince Malone
was there; Joe Selly was there of the ACA, the
radio operators. I think the convention was held
the early part of 1946. It was one hell of a good
convention - lot of rank and file representation
.right off the ships. NMU had a "big delegation
here because the NMU had a lot of jobs out here
during the war with very active officers and
some good people around.
Ward: They had a hiring hall down on the front?
LG: They had a hiring hall on the front and the
Marine Cooks and Stewards, of course, were there
in force. The Marine Firemen had a good sized
delegation; ACA did. I think those were the
only unions present besides the ILWU. Whether
the (Marine) Engineers took part in that meeting
I 'm not sure.
But the spirit was there, no question about it,
and the CMU really took off. It just flew. It
caught on at once on the entire west coast; we
were all shooting towards a common expiration
date and a national shut-down if we didn't get
what we wanted.
Well, at the convention Curran and Bridges
were elected co-chairmen. It was not a formal,
constitutionally constructed organization as such.
444
LG-: What it amounted to was establishment of work
rules with the object to get a job done in
negotiations, and to see where we go from there.
I was elected secretary. Curran had a candidate,
but frankly I don't think he was that serious
about it himself.
The candidate was Hoyt Haddock; he was in
charge of the NMU office in Washington, D. C.;
not a bad egg, but Hoyt was never looking for
extra work, and definitely not looking for any
trouble. I guess Curran told him, "You better
run for the job too," but I had no trouble at all
being elected.
So I became secretary of the CMU, which in many
ways became somewhat pivotal. Where you don't
have a constitutional organization with specific
authority and two strong people as co-chairmen,
Curran and Harry, with not exactly identical
thinking - which later became more and more evi
dent - then what automatically happens is that
one person on whom a lot of this devolves is the
secretary. At least he has to continue to be in
a position to talk to everybody and try to keep
whatever structure there is together.
During that same time I think Curran was
already having a lot of internal fights, many of
them brought on by himself against the left in
the NMU. This later of course jelled in the form
of an all-out campaign by Curran to dump guys
like Blackie Meyers and Howard HcKenzie and others.
It included even an attempt to dump Ferdinand
Smith, which I don't think worked out. Ferdinand
Smith died, you know.
Ward: Ferdinand Smith was a black man, wasn't he?
LG-: Yes - a black man, hell of a good man, too.
Anyway, notwithstanding some of the internecine
troubles in the NMU, the program itself caught
on. The unions began their negotiations, not all
of them negotiating in the same place. The Marine
Firemen, Marine Cooks and Stewards, radio opera
tors for the west coast ships were negotiating
here, of course. The principal NMU negotiations
were back east with the employers primarily based
in New York.
445
LG: Well, negotiations in the case of the ILWU did
not go too badly; I'd say we were not too far
away from an agreement, with a good many of the
issues resolved. On the money question, I think
that was completely resolved. We had set a June
15th strike deadline.
Following the convention we decided we might
as well push the thing in the form of genuine
national collective bargaining. And our hunch
was correct that the government was not just
going to sit around and watch this thing. So we
began our discussions and reached the conclusion
that once the government began to move, we would
use that at once to move the negotiations from
their respective areas like San Francisco and
New York City to Washington, D. C.
Well, a number of things came to a head at
the same time. You might recall that just prior
to June, the railroads were about to walk out;
I think led primarily by (Alexander F.) Whitney.
Truman (President Harry S.) went before Congress
in a performance that Wayne Morse (U. S'. Senator
from Oregon) called the biggest "ham act" he'd
ever seen. And I'll tell you why in a minute.
Truman tried to get special government author
ity that in the event the railroad workers walked
out they would be conscripted in the army and
ordered back on the trains; this was a national
disaster that was looming. The reason Wayne
Morse characterized it the way he did was that
Morse had gotten word, as did other people in
Washington, that Whitney had called off the
railroad strike an hour before Truman went to
Congress.
But Truman was determined to ride this tide
and be a great president. Mind you, Truman had
not been in office all that long; he'd been
around after Roosevelt died in 1944, so I guess
he'd been in office perhaps a year -
Ward: Wait a minute, Roosevelt died April 12, 1945.
LG: He died just before the war ended, that's right.
So Truman had only been around about a year, and
he was flexing his muscles and exercising leader
ship. He was successful, and under very bitter
446
LG-: circumstances the railroad guys became extremely
uiihappy. They finally did settle, but their
plans went down the drain - an ineffective nation
al railroad strike. That might have been the
foundation of the United Railroad Workers; a new
organization came about.
Anyway, this was the atmosphere when we hit
Washington. We went through a round robin of
negotiations that went about two weeks, and these
negotiations were really weird. All kinds of
people got in the act; you didn't start until
about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and it was very
common for the negotiations to go on to 2 or 3
in the morning.
A Question Of Sleet>
LG: Well, because of the time difference between the
east coast and the west coast, I would have to
be on the teletype, because *we had a teletype
hookup with all the main ports on both the east
coast and the west coast. At the appointed time
all those teletypes were hooked in. We'd give
these conference messages, including answering
questions. So, I had to be on the teletype
somewhere around oh, between 8:30 and 9:00 in
the morning.
Ward: Back east?
LG: Back east. I had to be ready about 9 o'clock in
the morning for the transmission because they
would get it first thing in the morning about
six o'clock. They had all kinds of strike meet
ings being set up; a lot of steam.
The demands in the main were the usual demands,
They were nothing earth-shaking in terms of
issues about the hiring hall; those were pretty
well established. We were on the move. The
employers were on the defensive, particularly on
the west coast where they had been conducting all
the propaganda about the ghost town and the ghost
ports.
447
LG: Cur demands in the IiiWU were not all that
elaborate. In the case of the seamen, what
complicated them was their demand for the 40-
hour week at sea and that any work beyond 40
hours was overtime, not compensatory time off
in port. Whether that was the best program in
the world, I don't know, but in terms of immediate
cash on hand, it sure was a big one. And they
had a whole series of other demands, part of the
business of trying to catch up with some of the
things that the longshoremen had picked up.
Ward: Now, when you said the seamen, you meant the
Marine Firemen and Marine Cooks?
LG-: Marine Firemen and Marine Cooks. So by the time
the negotiations were finished and I'd get a
couple of hours sleep, I had to start preparing
the reports and then come at the appointed time,
8:30 or 9:00 o'clock, for the reports to go out
on the teletype.
It was a hectic period because you had both
your daytime discussions among the guys, your
evening meetings, which were not just with
government people. Pretty soon the v/hole CIO
entourage showed up; you know, they had to keep
an eye on things; not terribly friendly to us,
let me tell you.
The CIO felt we were running off with one of
these wild leftwing affairs, even though we had
the thing under good control. We also thought
we could win. During that period I'd never get
breakfast until around 10 in the morning and I'd
had damn, little sleep -
M.M.
Ww
Ward: Yes, now about that breakfast business.
LG-: Oh, it was rough going. By the time I got to
breakfast I was pretty punchy and I had already
put in a day's work, with meetings winding up
at two or three in the morning or later. And
I ordered the same thing - a half dozen oysters
or cherrystone clams, a double shot of whiskey,
and ham and eggs - scrambled eggs.
448
LG-: And after about three days of this, they knew
me down at this restaurant. I think it was
MacDonald's, one of the nicer restaurants. I'd
walk in there and the waiter would start bringing
these things without asking a question. I survived
on this because sometimes you got lunch and some
times you didn't.
We would go into our own huddles at 12 o'clock -
one o'clock. Our huddles would last until around
late afternoon and then the sessions would start
with the employers, the government and the CIO
all sitting around. They would start around
anywhere from nine or ten o'clock at night and
then go on into the night.
Well, it was a fascinating set of negotiations.
Harry did a masterful job. He kept shoving them
up against this June 15th deadline - no budging
of any kind. On June 15th, the guys walk. True,
we didn't have the ILA with us and true we didn't
have the SUP (Sailors' Union of the Pacific) with
us, but there's enough power going there to shut
down both coasts between the NMU on the east
coast, the radio operators on the east coast.
One group that came along with us was led by
Randolph Meriwether. I dragged him back there -
Ward: Marine Engineers?
LG: Right. Meriwether said after the negotiations
were over, "Christ Almighty, Lou, you drag me
back there and I figured this whole thing was
just a pile of horseshit and what happens? I
come up with the golden horseshoe." 'They picked
up all kinds of gains. He came back a complete
hero. The Marine Engineers had a tentative
agreement which they amended to bring in the
gains picked up in the CMU negotiations.
Well, we worked toward this deadline. The
crisis in negotiations came when Truman announced -
still full of confidence and bad judgment as a
result of his "victory" over the railroad workers -
four days, maybe five, before the June 15th
deadline that in the event this strike took place
by the CMU, the army would be ordered to load
the ships and the Coast Guard to man them and to
sail them.
449
LG: That started a terrifically hectic period in the
Washington office, where we had this improvised
office with the teletype machine, a couple of
secretaries constantly talcing letters and making
reports out. Keeping every single port abreast
of things was a job by itself; unless you did that
job well things would begin to unravel down below.
International Solidarity
LG: Luckily, we had the list of most of the unions we
could reach in other countries, such as the
Waterside Workers in Australia, Waterside Workers
in New Zealand; the French who all belonged to
the CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail), the
longshoremen and the seamen both; the Italians
who were just starting the CGIL (Confederazione
Generale Italiana Del Lavoro) again. I met
Giuseppe DiVittorio I think the year before. He
had been in prison under Mussolini. He was the
first head of CGIL after- the war.
Ward: DiVittorio came out here in April of ! 45 -
LG: He was the head of CGIL after he got out of jail.
Ward: He was one of the big names.
LG: He became president of the CGIL. As a matter of
fact, he came out to San Francisco with his new
bride, Anita, a very lovely woman.
Ward: Yes, Angela (Ward) was her interpreter.
LG: Yes. They spent practically all their time at
our house, you know. Oh, DiVittorio was a
marvelous guy. How the hell he managed to sur
vive those 11 or 12 years he was in prison and
come out as a whole person - it's amazing.
Tremendous courage and inquisitive about the
union - he didn't bother about contract details
or any crap like that. But he would ask endless
questions about the way the union machinery
operated, the input by the membership, the
450
LG: operation of committees, conventions. It was
only after days of questioning that he said,
"You have a union that will make it."
Ward: All right, so what about the British?
LG: The British trade unions, yes. We started send
ing all these wires out telling what Truman had
done and within 24 to 48 hours wires started
coming back from all parts of the world that if
any attempt was made by the U. S. government to
load the ships with troops and man them with
Coast Guard strikebreakers, those ships would
just sit v/hen they got to the foreign harbors.
Truman had all kinds of power in this country,
but there wasn't a hell of a lot he could do
about that. And to watch the thing develop in
those negotiations was just a delight, of course.
The shipowners were sitting back waiting for the
government to step into the picture, as they did
in the case of the railroads.
Cnce the government had done that the employ
ers would dictate the terms of the settlement.
But they had no answer to this thing, and we told
the entire membership and made the whole thing
as public as we could, the support we had and
that those ships would just sit there and not
be handled once they hit the foreign ports. I'm
convinced the workers there would have carried
it through, too.
So, in the last days of the negotiations, you
could see the employers start to collapse. I'll
never forget a classic statement there one night.
Harry wouldn't even modify the demands one inch,
just sat there with the demands, waiting for the
employers to crack.
I forget who the employer spokesman was at
the time, Foisie or Harrison, who finally got
around to telling Harry, "Well, we don't even
have the slightest idea what you will settle for;
I just think you guys are looking for a strike
and that's all there is to it." And Harry turned
to this guy and said, "Well, there's an easy way
to find out." "How?" "Just dangle a couple of
pork chops out there and see what happens."
(laughter)
451
LG: So, the shipowners began to crack. The longshore
men already had a fairly good agreement, a couple
of small things to pick up; not much in it for
us. There was a great deal in it for the seamen.
They picked up the 40-hour week at sea, a number
of other demands and it was the biggest wage
increase in the history of the maritime industry.
It was in the main a money agreement, but also
caught up with many years of sitting tight and
also caught up after some of the developments
after CPA. It was not an easy set of negotiations.
The CIO decided that we were just a bit too
much; not that things had been all that friendly
with Phil 1'urray but at least it had been a
stand-off, cordial. There was no Cold War as yet.
I'm trying to recall, oh yes, Fulton, Missouri
might have taken place by then. (The famous
"Iron Curtain" speech by Winston Churchill, former
prime minister of England).
Either that or it was Phil Murray's general
conservative bent. After all, he wasn't all
that much of a left-winger. He had none of the
daring, none of the flair of John L. Lewis.
Ward: Well, that pretty well tells the story of the
CMU.
LG: Only one incident that should not be forgotten.
We were getting to the point where our own guys
got jumpy too; approaching a strike deadline.
It's not going to be an easy strike.
The government sure as hell made its position
plain, as far as they were concerned, if they
could break our ass, they would do it. We were
determined to go ahead. We had the steam; we
had not only the power to pull it but to hold it;
there was the kind of unity drive down among the
men, just a mix of seamen and longshoremen and
warehousemen pitching in.
But these tensions built up; I remember leav
ing one of the union caucuses to go out to get
a sandwich or something; I v/asn't gone more than
twenty minutes. It was just the union guys
452
1G: sitting around, a small committee; Joe Selly was
there, Vince Mai one was there, Hugh Bryson I be
lieve was there for the Marine Cooks and Stewards;
Curran I think was there, yes, and Harry.
I come back and here's Joe Selly standing
there and blood is running down from his forehead.
Apparently, Vince Mai one did not like that kind
of pressure. While he was a tough egg in many
ways, I don't think he was too happy with what he
saw shaping up. This thing was running out from
under him and Vince had done pretty well, you
know, walking this tight rope, staying pretty
close to Lundeberg and not being completely un
friendly to us, you see.
So, Vince apparently took offense at some
remark that Selly had made. I gather it didn't
mean a damn thing; it was not a personal remark,
but Vince jumped up and whacked Selly. The ring
on Malone's hand had cut this gash. Talk about
a guy who kept his cool, Joe Selly just stood
there, took out a handkerchief because the blood
was running very badly. I think he still carries
the scar.
He just continued as though nothing had happened.
He was not going to let this thing fly apart, you
see. He was that disciplined a guy. As a matter
of fact, I helped convince Jimmy Hoffa years
later to give him a charter in the Teamsters
Union for what was around of the AC A. So, it
was a big victory, although the CMU did not last
too long after that.
Ward: But it lasted long enough to pull that one out?
Oh, yes, it was the '46 victory. The strike did
not take place. The contracts were settled right
on the deadline, about an hour before the strike.
I remember we negotiated all that night and fin
ally finished it up.
Ward: And then you went to sleep for a while?
Yeah, finally got some sleep. I got back to the
coast and that in itself was a pleasure. I could
take so much of Washington; that particular snake
453
LG: dance with the Labor Department, which wasn't a
goddam bit of use; the CIO chewing away at us;
the administration out to break the strike; not
a pleasant scene.
I came back to the coast and it was not too
long after that when I took the Matsonia down to
Hawaii. Jim Blaisdell was on board and we had
some crazy scenes there with him and the Marine
Cooks and Stewards. It was a great trip although
I took the trip so as to sleep. It didn't work
out that way at all. On the other hand, it was
such a wonderful change and relaxation; it was a
lot of fun.
Ward: How long were you in Washington on that deal?
Two or three weeks? A month?
LG: About three weeks. There was no break in those
sessions. There were no Saturdays and Sundays
off, or evenings off.
Ward: I'm not surprised that you developed a little
heart trouble afterwards.
LG: Oh, no - that was a long time afterwards.
Ward: I know, but those things add up.
LG: Oh, yes.
(Interview 18: 18 July, 1978)
Ward: You had some tag ends you wanted to talk about
on the CMU business.
LG: Not awfully important, but in looking back at the
thing, it was really the beginning of a new era.
What I'm talking about is the beginning of the
Cold War and its impact on the CMU.
Ward: Let's get the year again - was that '46?
LG: That would be late 1946 or early 1947.
454
Ward: That's right - you weren't sure whether it was
"before or after the Fulton, Missouri speech?
LG: I'm not sure myself. There's no question what
the atmosphere was. Joe Curran was embarked in
a program of cleaning out anybody who might be
opposed to him and to get rid of the CMU. He
felt that this would become too nettlesome for
him to handle: one to which the membership of
the NMU really looked in terms of cohesive action
around maritime agreements.
Of course, the thing made a lot of sense and
accomplished a very big job in 1946. Harry
finally made a flat proposition to Joe Curran:
he said, "Look, if the question is one of my
being a co-chairman with you, I'll resign and
you take over the chairmanship on your own and
Lou can continue there as secretary, but at least
try to keep the machinery going."
Curran wasn't having any part of it, though;
he was determined to see the thing went down
the drain. Things wound up in a very dramatic
meeting in the NMU headquarters. I went there to
talk to Joe and I don't know how the word got
around the hall, but pretty soon that room we
were meeting in was just jammed with guys,
shoulder to shoulder and back to back.
You couldn't squeeze another guy in there and
they were overflowing into the corridor. I went
through all these things about trying to maintain
the CMU, though keeping cool in that situation
was sort of difficult.
Ward: These guys were Joe's machine?
LG: No, no! all supporters of the CMU!
Ward: Oh, oh!
LG: Yep -
Ward: Joe had a little trouble keeping his cool, then,
didn't he?
455
LG: And howl Well, Joe can. be very abrasive when
he is determined to break off with somebody;
plus he was already beginning to apply a pretty
heavy-handed way of running things around the
NMU. But if somebody had lit a match around that
place, it would have exploded, and that might
have been the terminationa of Joe's presidency.
But none of it availed and the CMU went down the
drain.
Ward: Did you have anything to do with getting the guys
in the room?
LG: No, as a matter of fact, as far as I knew it was
going to be a small meeting, Curran and myself
and perhaps a couple of officers.
Effects Of The Cold War
LG: The only reason I'm picking this up is that, no
question in my mind, things were beginning to
change very rapidly.
By that time, I think Truman had learned how
to take Murray in tow. Murray had access to the
White House - through the kitchen door or where,
I'm not sure, or the servants' entrance.
Ward: Well, John L. Lewis talked about it one time at
a dinner at the Mark Hopkins. Weren't you and
Harry and George Wilson also present? He talked
about a tunnel leading from somewhere in Lafayette
Park into the White House which Roosevelt offered
him the free use. He bragged about it and said
he didn't need to use it, but he could use it any
time he wanted. Maybe that's what Truman offered
Phil Murray?
LG: Well, Phil Murray accepted; put it that way.
Things became more and more abrasive with the
Marshall Plan. A lot of those things came to a
head I guess in 1948, during the Wallace campaign.
Anyway, these were the first indications; there
were other signs of the thing that manifested
itself later. Oh, bear in mind that 1947 saw the
advent of the Taft-Hartley law -
456
Ward: But Truman did veto that, didn't he?
LG: Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley bill. Now, the
question of whether or not Truman did all he
could do to have his veto upheld remains in
doubt. The veto was overridden by only two
votes, I believe, and there were two senators
in Europe - one of whom claimed he was under
the weather - both of which were supposed to be
sure votes.
Whether Truman exerted all the influence and
pressure he could to get those votes back in
time has always been a subject of debate. So,
whether there was a veto and a wink, I don't know;
or a veto by figuring "I'll do that and that's
enough, and then let nature take its course."
So, Taft-Hartley came along and we went into
an extremely difficult and arduous period in the
life of the ILWU. Things piled up on us very,
very quickly. There was the pineapple strike in
1947; there was a so-called Ignacio revolt in
1947 > and there was a longshore strike in 1948 on
the Pacific Coast.
There was a longshore strike in Hawaii in 1949;
there was a big warehouse strike in the bay area
in 1949; there was the indictment of Bridges,
Robertson and Schmidt in 1949 in the midst of the
Hawaii longshore strike; there was the expulsion
from the CIO.
It encompasses about five or six very intensive
years and they sort of blend together with the
Cold War, the war in Korea, Taft-Hartley. For a
period you couldn't help but feel every morning
that the circle was getting tighter around you;
an attack on every flank. The Taft-Hartley
affidavits led to an enormous debate.
The only man taking an excellent position on
that was John L. Lewis who said, "What if nobody
signs?" That would have been the end of that,
but the AFofL and CIO folded. The net result
was that unions were pushed into very difficult
positions.
457
LG-: The CIO was determined to try to put us out of
business. The AFofL was attacking at the same
time. There was a counter-attack by the employers
in Hawaii.
The Pacific Coast maritime employers decided
to take on the longshoremen and finish that .lob
once and for all, but as a matter of fact it
finished the Waterfront Employers Association
instead. Even the Catholic church was extremely
active in the unions at that point in attempts
to set up the ACTU - the Association of Catholic
Trade Unionists, including setting up a chapter
in San Francisco. We were literally fighting
for survival.
One of the things that held us together was
the tradition of militancy, a deep loyalty on
the part of the membership and a willingness to
struggle instead of backing away from these beefs.
But other things had to take place, pulling in
our organizational lines, like some of the places
we had organized, small places in Chicago, New
Orleans, Minneapolis; there was no way of hanging
on to them during this era.
So, there was something of shortening our lines,
but we did survive. What happened in these
individual situations I guess sort of opens up a
new background of the history of the ILWU and
that's the reason for some of this preliminary
stuff.
"Hawaii For The Hawaiians"
Ward: Well, now, which phase would you like to tackle
first; Hawaii maybe?
LG: That might be just as easy as anything else. I
think it's awfully important to understand Jack
Hall's role. Jack, in addition to everything else,
was not only a skilled organizer, but a very
competent guy when it came to understanding
the industry he was dealing with - knowing
458
LG: something about it, excellent in the whole field
of research, statistics, and getting the factual
background nailed down.
His records of some of the negotiations are so
detailed and comprehensive, and he had one of
those memories that everything was well put away,
to be brought back another date. So, his role
in the thing is not to be underestimated.
Ward: Yes, you've made that abundantly clear; he was
a sharp and valuable person.
LG: And the role of the Hawaiians there is interest
ing. There are a number of Hawaiian guys who
were extremely active in the organizational push.
e had a group over from Hawaii going to the
Labor School. * I recall Freddie Kamahoahoa was
one, Dave Thompson was another, Saburo Fujisaki,
and a number of others. I think Tom Yagi was
there and we put them all through the Labor
School.
They got a lot of basic education and also
spent some time with the International guys; sat
in on our meetings and what have you. In addi
tion to guys like Freddie, you had Benny Big Nose
. Kahaawinui, guys like Julian Napuunua, Joe Keala-
leo, Joe Keawe, who was a very good guitarist and
singer who I think has given away all kinds of
hit records.
They take them for a ride - the old Hav/aii
system called manawahi , free, the way the Big
Five used to get their entertainment. They'd
invite some of the boys up to play their guitars
and get a free meal and a few drinks; that was
it. They did not see cash; there was no need
for it. They were living in beautiful Hawaii,
so what would you need cash for, other than the
fact that living there is about 25 percent higher.
Samoba was another - a very tough egg and a
very good guy. Benny Awana and Lionel - I forget
^California Labor School, San Francisco
w
a
ii -ji^esiP
:! !"*
Pl*! Ijll
If i
our
459
LG: his last name now. Interesting thing, in almost
all cases, they drifted away from the union; not
drifting away in the sense of changing their
feelings particularly.
Freddie, for example, couldn't work on the
waterfront after a certain length of time, partly
because he had some problems; spent time with
his family on the Big Island. Benny Kahamanui
all of a sudden up and left and went to work in
Los Angeles and spent his last few years there.
Joe Kealaleo was unhappy, unfortunately, even
though I was very fond of him and still am; and
he was very close to Jack Hall; but had some
real falling out with some of the other leader
ship. Joe Keawe wound up in L. A. So did Sam
Manu; Joseph Alapai sort of went the route, a
local politician from Maui; I don't think he
was around this world too long after that.
One of the things that sort of puzzled me
over the years was that these guys were so ardent
in their push for unionism. In terms of yeoman
service they were unbelievable, like during the
days of martial law when they had to get on an
island like Lanai to get out the pledge cards and
meet with some of the pineapple workers and get
going over there. They couldn't get any official
transportation; there was one little airport and
that was owned by the company.
Ward: How did they get there?
LG: They went over there in fishing sampans. It's
not all that far from Maui and they knew the
fishermen and talked to a couple of guys and got
a lift over there, did their work and came back.
They'd hide out at night and they thought nothing
of all the difficulties connected with it.
Some of these guys, for example, swam out to
these ships that they used to load offshore on
the Hamakua coast - I forget the name of the
little port there - to talk to some of the work
ers. These are shark infested waters. So with
all this dedication, there was this drift from
the union.
460
Ward: Maybe they liked the excitement and success "bored
them, is that it?
LG-: I don't know if that was it or if it was something
deeper going; maybe Freddie said it all; he was
getting ready for the king and queen to come back
again. Hawaii ans felt very keenly that Queen Emma
had been a real heroine and stood up courageously
against the Big Five, the haoles. the American
government.
During the so-called American revolution against
the monarchy two guys got shot in the ass and that
was it. And the whole thing was motivated primar
ily because of the determination of the Big Five
to avoid paying the sugar tariff. The British
were fooling around there at the time, too. It
could very well be that the Hawaiians were looking
for something else, literally seeing the union as
a weapon to remedy all the injustices which have
been going on for years, particularly the land
seizure.
ard: You mentioned a while ago the pineapple strike of
'47. Is there anything worth talking about there?
LG-: Yes, uh, huh.
Ward: Suppose we go into that.
LG: The pineapple strike in '47, in retrospect, is a
combination of a couple of things: I don't think
our judgment was too sound, and secondly, the
employers were determined to launch a counter
attack.
The pineapple workers were not as well organ
ized as the sugar workers. The pineapple industry,
crop planting and harvest season, was coordinated
with the holiday season of the schools; summer
vacation thousands of youngsters, boys and girls,
would go down to the pineapple canneries, work
as seasonals three months or thereabouts, and pick
up the pocket change they needed. The family was
poor and they helped get by the following year.
I guess that has become a diminishing thing
with the present economy, but in those days that
was about the only place they could go to work,
461
LG: in the canneries. We did not have the same kind
of roots among those seasonal workers to compare
even with the basic machinery and tight organiza
tion we had among the sugar workers. It wasn't
because the kids were bad; I think a lot of them
didn't understand what the score was. All they
could see was that their summer jobs were going
out the window.
The employers made a very bold move; super
visors, even the owners - Henry White of Hawaiian
Pine - picture of him in the newspaper - out there
harvesting pineapple. I guess if he managed one
crate for the day, that would be a lot. Families
of the Big Five, their cohorts, staffs from the
offices, you name it, building a community crusade
to save the pineapple industry.
Whether the strike could have kept on I don't
know. Jack Hall insisted for years afterwards
that in another couple of weeks the employers
would have had to meet the demands. One thing
was also a mistake, in my opinion. Later on, we
began to discuss these things in greater depth.
There's no question about it, where a union is
faced with an agricultural situation, harvest
time becomes a real mote in their eye.
The general feeling is that the employers
simply will take a beating. You have a good
chance to win if you take them on in that most
important season. It's only a half-truth though,
because if you could win strikes seasonally, that
would be great; all workers would do it wherever
they could; but it isn't entirely true, one -
##
Ward: There now, you were in the middle of a sentence
there.
LG: We were talking about the fascination of season-
ality in the case of agriculture. Well, where
it turns out to be fallacious is, number one, if
the employer decides to pass up a crop then the
strike begins to unravel, because it was all pre
dicated on catching him at the peak of the
season.
462
LG-: Secondly, where you have that high seasonality,
in many cases you are also dependent upon season
al workers, and you do not have that kind of a
grip organizationally with these people that you
will with others.
The third aspect of the thing, which always
becomes an element in the strike, is whether you
are able to pick up support from a broader area
than just from the industry itself; sometimes
called public support.
In some ways the merits of the beef get lost
in the seasonality issue; later on in great
discussions around pineapple and sugar, we
decided this was a mistake. You could strike
just as effectively in the off season in sugar
because unless cultivation was done, unless the
fields were planted, unless the rotation was
maintained, then the damage is even more perma
nent; the whole crop cycle goes to hell.
ard: About how many people were employed at the time
of the strike in the pineapple industry?
LG: I would say pretty close to 8,000.
Ward: How many people did you have in the union?
LG: I think we had all the year-around workers which
is about 5,000, but there were 3,000 seasonal
workers.
Ward: And yet you lost the strike?
LG-: I'd say we lost it. The guys down there began
to call it a lockout, which isn't entirely true
because we're the ones who launched the strike.
True, the employers had been very arrogant in
negotiations and if we'd been a little sharper,
perhaps, we would have realized they had decided
to take us on.
Anyway, this is all retrospect now. Suffice
it to say the strike did not last very long,
maybe a couple of weeks at the most; we went
back to work pretty much on the employers' terms.
463
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Were there any gains at all?
Yes, there were some gains made in wages that the
employers had offered and a few other things -
But they had already offered them?
Yes. Are you asking were additional gains made
beyond what the employers had offered? No, I
don't believe so.
Was there any union security?
The union security issue had been settled in the
case of sugar with the use of maintenance of
membership.
Did you
apple?
* .fa M V
have the same thing, or get it in pine-
Yes, I'm pretty sure we got the same thing in
pineapple, but the key as far as the employers
were concerned was that they would take a strike
and fight back. It could be that they had gone
into a reappraisal of the sugar thing and figured
okay, we've got to tighten ranks and take these
guys on before they get any bigger and stronger.
But in the period following the '47 strike,
things became more and more difficult in the
Islands. There is a sort of a double-take in
Hawaii; the whole question of the Cold War,
patriotism, and what have you. On the one hand,
the treatment of a lot of those workers, parti
cularly during World War II and martial law, I'm
sure was a big contributory factor towards the
organizational push and the success; people had
had it and were bound to move.
On the other hand, the double-take you have
is that the same people who'd been kicked around,
once they have fought their way back partially,
determine to demonstrate an even higher degree
of patriotism than anybody else. Then, settling
for the 100 percent is not enough - it's 110
proof or better.
464
LG: So, you had that sort of a picture there. There
was no mistaking the atmosphere. There was quite
a bit of newspaper attack against the union,
almost endless. To the best of our knowledge,
one of the agencies I mentioned, G. Brewer, helped
finance the so-called revolt. The revolt was led
by the man who at that time, was either Island
Director or a member of the staff on the Big Is
land, a man by the name of Amos Ignacio. He got
a few people to support him, too.
Yard: "What was he saying? Leave the union? Or was he
setting up an opposition union?
LG: Oh, no - no. He would have a union of Hawaiians
for Hawaiians, the usual business: you didn't
need these mainlanders - kolea birds, they would
call us. Kolea bird is a plover and I gather that
one of the distinctions of plovers is that they
use another bird's nest. They didn't need any of
these kolea birds. And that combined with a great
deal of redbaiting; the usual thing.
As best as Jack and others could figure out,
this sure was having some impact, particularly
all the redbaiting. In an atmosphere like that
the teachers, for example, or your local merchants
all have their impact. These had been pretty much
friends of ours in '46, but this patriotic pull,
this newspaper pull, got greater and greater.
Showdown!
LG-: The net result was that towards the tail end of
'47, we decided the only thing to do was to call
the thing to a showdown right then and there and
decide where the devil we were going. So, we
called an emergency convention of the ILU in
Hilo.
Ward: That was of the Hawaii locals?
LG-: Yes, all the units or locals that we had in Hawaii,
the biggest group being the sugar workers. True,
we had taken a bumping in the '47 strike and this
465
LG: followed very closely on its heels. We had this
convention in 1948 and it was really a very
dramatic convention -
Ward: This was in Hilo?
LG: In Hilo at the armory. I'll admit we did a bit
of staging for the convention, too. I'd been
over there a few days before. We decided to try
to find Ignacio and invite him and whatever
dissidents there were to the convention; we had
hunting parties out all over the place looking
for him. I guess he decided he didn't want this
kind of a showdown or would just rely on the sup
port of the employers and the newspapers. So,
this helped build up the drama for the convention.
There's an amusing sidelight to this. Just
before the convention took place, for the first
time Life magazine decided to do a story on the
Big Five. I think it was the first time that
pictures of the Big Five were printed in an
American national magazine and the two men they
had down there were Eliot Elisofon, a very
distinguished photographer, and Martin O'Neill,
a writer.
I found out later that O'Neill followed the
story all the way back to New York City to talk
to Henry Luce to make sure it wasn't changed.
They had gotten in touch with me. I must have
been down there around the holiday season; I did
a lot of commuting at that time; they wanted to
know whether some of our guys would talk to them
about the union down there.
Oh, by that time, we had wind of the fact that
they were being pretty well taken care of by the
Big Five. So, when they came by I said, "Well,
I'm not sure you want to talk to our people.
You've been riding around in the car supplied by
the Big Five; you've been wined and dined by them;
you have a special rate at whatever hotel you're
staying at - the Royal Hawaiian or the Moana."
They still insisted and I said, "I'm not sure
it will do a hell of a lot of good." I criticized
their "objective" reporting - I left it on that
466
LG:
Ward;
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
level - and I said, "I don't think you're report
ers at all." The more I did that, the more
determined they became. I said, "Look, I'll do
one thing for you - nothing more. I'll give you
a letter which will give you access to every union
meeting we have; walk in there and sit and listen.
If the guys want to talk to you afterwards, fine;
if they don't, well, too bad.
"But go out in the fields for a change instead
of spending all your time here in Honolulu. We'll
give you a list of where the various units are
meeting, the plantations are meeting, and so
forth. Right now we have a bit of a problem -
we'll be meeting over in Hilo. If you feel like
coming by there, you're welcome."
We threw the whole thing open to the newspapers
and everything else. Apparently they realized
there was a lot more to it than the story they
were getting about lovely Hawaii and the beautiful
situation in which the people lived. I think I
showed you that picture in Life magazine - or did I?
Don't remember.
Well, as I told you Martin O'Neill chased that
story all the way back to New York and that's the
first time I think we had any decent coverage
during that whole period in something like Life.
There's an odd sequel to this I'd like to mention
to you. (Goldblatt shows picture from Life
magazine of him speaking to a group of workers
under a banyan tree, and other relevant pictures.)
Elisofon is an excellent photographer.
Oh, here's a picture of Harry. Is this the first
time he entered the picture down there?
Not particularly during the sugar strike. I
recall being on the phone with him.
You didn't mention him at all during your account
of the sugar strike.
467
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
I don't think he spent any time down there at all.
If he did, he only made one brief trip. I recall
at the end of the sugar strike telling him where
things stood and he said, "Well, it looks like
we've got it won, and you might as well squeeze
the hell out of it." He was down there during
the pineapple strike - no question about that.
(Another interlude, looking at more Life pictures.)
Good coverage and interesting photographs.
You know, I lost my copy of the magazine and about
a year and a half ago, I get a call from this guy,
Martin O'Neill. He says, "You remember me?" And
I say, "Sure." "Well, my son has been trying to
get into the school for marine engineers and they
just keep putting him off. I don't know how the
selections are made. Is there anything you can
do for him?"
I said, "Sure, I'll make a phone call. Does
he really want to be a seaman? Does he really
want to go to sea? The difficulty is these days
that guys just want to make a trip and call it a
day." "No," he said, "he'd just as soon make
this his life's work; he likes engines, and I
think he'd make a good engineer. It would take
him a while to find himself, but I don't think
he'd let you down at all."
I said, "Pine, that's all I'm interested in,
really, because some of these kids go in there
through nepotism, take a trip and they're all
done." So, I made a couple of phone calls and
sure enough he got admitted and O'Neill called
me back and said, "I'd like to do something for
you." "Sure, you find me a copy of that issue
of Life magazine." Because it was out of print,
you see. And sure enough, it turned up here.
Anyway, he's down in L. A. somewhere now, doing
some writing.- He's no longer with Life. Anyway,
one of the by-products was this story, although -
Oh, yes - now the convention -
468
LG-: Later on we couldn't get rid of Elisofon. He fell
in love with one of the girls in the office, so he
was around there all the time and chasing her
evenings. Of course, she knew the whole score,
particularly the background of what they had done
in taking all these little perquisites, so she
wasn't giving him too much time.
At the convention itself, we took a very direct
position, namely, that we go into all the issues
anybody would raise, including all the ones raised
by the newspapers, including all the redbaiting
and everything else and all the accusations about
us being left-wingers.
The International would not be satisfied with
anything but a referendum vote of the entire
membership. Now whether the whole membership
voted, or just sugar, I'm not sure. It might have
been just sugar. There were some guys there who
were somev/hat difficult at the convention - a guy
by the name of Hideo Hisaoka - but in a fairly
constructive way. At least he wasn't anti-union -
Ward: They were bitten by the union for Hawaiians?
LG: That together with all the redbaiting, the Cold
War and the whole she-bang. Our policy was the
unity of the workers in Hawaii. I said, "That is
the only chance you have with the Big Five; other
wise, you are dead ducks and you might as well go
back to where you were before the strike and the
union ever began."
The unity of the workers in Hawaii was the nub
of it all. A fragmented organization would mean
absolutely nothing to us. Our position was if for
example the vote was something like 40 percent or
49 percent to stay in the ILWU and 51 percent to
leave it, we would instruct the 49 percent to
join the 51 percent. Maintain their unity; and
that we wanted every issue hammered out right in
the open. It was quite a lively convention, let
me tell you, for about two or three days.
Ward: You said you did some little staging?
LG: The staging was mostly to try to get Ignacio
there; he never turned up.
469
Ward: So, you had the empty chair for him?
LG: Practically, yes. Of course, his stock really
plummeted during the convention together with a
couple of his cohorts, one of whom later became
a sort of half-assed supervisor or luna. Beyond
that he hadn't been able to pick up any support.
At that point it was a turning point and Ignacio
began to go downhill very quickly.
I've made a lot of speeches in my life, obvious
ly, because you do that in this sort of work. But
I guess the best one I ever made on the subject of
redbaiting was at that convention with an attempt
at a real analysis of what it is all about and how
it's done and why it is done, and where you wind up
if you start off in that direction.
The wolf pack is not satisfied with your just
turning n on- communist, they want you to be anti-
communist; and being anti-communist isn't enough,
you have to prove it, you see. Pretty soon they
give you the list of the victims whose heads you
have to bring in. You never quite satisfy them.
Veil, I really covered that one and luckily
there is a transcript of that convention somewhere
around in the ILMJ library in Hawaii. I think
Jeff Kibre looked it over once when he was down
there and used it a good deal afterwards. And a
thing I had done some years before turned out to
be a windfall.
Ward: Which was what?
LG: I had testified against the evacuation of the
Japanese in 1942 and when the war was over,
Dillon S. Myer, who had been the War Relocation
Administrator, had sent me a letter, completely
unsolicited, to the effect that my testimony stood
out like a beacon light, or something like that.
As a matter of fact, this was the same testimony
that Allan Bosworth later wrote up in his book,
American Concentration Camps. So I recalled the
letter and took it along with me, and at the right
moment at the convention, I read off this letter.
I had only one question which I'll admit I hammered
home pretty hard.
470
LG-: I said, "Okay now, you guys have been here in
Hawaii, most of you right through the war period
in the 442nd, the army. Just wait for a minute;
if you don't want to raise it now, any time you
can think of it, take the floor. Who are these
people in the Big Five, who are these people in the
newspapers like the (Honolulu) Advertiser and the
Star Bulletin who are carrying on this vicious
campaign against us?
"Any of these editors, any of these feature
writers, anybody you can think of among the Big
Five, did any of them take a position as friends
of the local people when you were having the hell
kicked out of you, when you were put in concen
tration camps, families broken up and so forth,
people barred from certain employment in Hawaii,
maids frozen in their jobs for $25 a month or
less, or in a laundry so the colonel could get a
shirt sometime? You just name one person.
"All you gotta do is think back and make a deci
sion for yourself: are these new-found friends
better than the old ones?"
I'm sure it had its impact. A good part of the
membership in attendance were Japanese. The
Japanese were very active in the organization,
and because they had a few advantages in terms of
schooling, keeping records, they automatically
took over important functions in all the planta
tion levels.
So this testimony I had given years before
finally came back in rather pleasant form; it is
not very often that those things happen. The net
result was that some of the guys at the tail end
of the convention were saying, "Oh, the hell with
the vote - we don't need it, we've heard from all
the plantations, nobody is going to go along with
this crap. We're staying in the I1WU, there's no
need for a vote."
"We said, "No, that's it, a vote will be taken."
So, it was put to a referendum. The vote to stay
in the ILWU was somewhere around 98 percent;
that's the reason for the comment there that the
so-called revolt came to nothing. As a matter of
fact, we emerged from the whole thing -
471
Ward: Much stronger?
LG: Oh, yes stronger, a bit stronger because the
counter-attack had been blunted. It had not been
ended, I can assure you; from there on we had a
rough time in sugar negotiations because of -
Ward: This will be in '48?
LG: In '48, right, because of the falling off of
prices on sugar. Again the same outfit -
C. Brewer - took a lead for a special differential
in some of the so-called distressed plantations
which we had to work out - a sort of a separate
wage line. Eventually all of it was washed out
and we were back on the industry line.
We had to do a lot of backing and filling. It
was not easy. In the case of Olaa - that's a
plantation on the Big Island, an American Factors
plantation - there was a very difficult manager.
They also had a problem mechanizing. Bear in
mind that the mechanization of agriculture in
Hawaii was uneven.
In some places such as Oahu, on the island of
Maui, Kauai, the mechanization equipment, parti
cularly for the harvesting of cane, the machine
was a blessing, I thought. There is nothing
socially uplifting in hand-cutting cane; it's
dirty, miserable and an impossible job; guys had
to be tough for that. A big majority were Fili
pinos.
There was a combination of hourly wage and piece
work system, but when it came to the Big Island,
that is where the mechanization came last, in part
because these were different kinds of fields;
they were not quite as flat; a lot of them were
on pali land, you know, up the hill.
Secondly, the soil was quite rocky. You had a
great deal of rain on the Hamakua coast and the
question of getting these harvesting machines,
together with other equipment that you need to go
into those fields and work in wet ground, was not
easily solved.
472
LG: Once the cane is cut they use cranes to pick it
up and load it into very large trucks, and the
roads were not equipped to take it.
The mechanization was just not the business of
getting the machine. It was also the question of
what kind was adapted to the work and whether there
was adequate road construction through the
plantations so that you could make the change
over. On that score, the Big Island, Hawaii,
lagged somewhat "behind the others.
This, I'm sure, was one of the reasons why they
invited a strike in '48, at least on those
plantations. This, we felt, would not be wise.
We wanted to keep industry-wide bargaining, and
after very detailed and elaborate negotiations,
including a lot of sessions over in Hilo, we did
finally work out an agreement which as I said
resulted in, oh, a sort of a certain amount of
backing up on the Hamakua coast plantations, but
kept the industry together.
The one plantation that broke and went on its
own was the management at Olaa; an American Factors
plantation with a very difficult manager, a man by
the name of Williams. The company simply posted
a major cut in wages, with the announcement that
if you wanted to work, these were the conditions.
Now, that was a lockout - a flat, out-and-out
lockout, and a very rough beef ensued. The guys
walked out and they had a problem in addition to
the others on the Hamakua coast. Olaa is not on
the Hamakua coast. It's a little drier area, up
towards the mountains. Mountain View, it is
called. And that is where the town of Olaa is -
now it is called the Puna plantation.
There they had a big problem, of mechanizing
the rocky soil, all boulders and volcanic rock;
they were having trouble. You practically plant
ed cane between the rocks. They finally made it
all right, but this was just a flat lockout. I
believe the guys were -
Ward: Was this the only place where there was a work
stoppage, lockout or strike?
473
LG: Right. And naturally we supported the strike.
Luckily, it was one of the good, solid units of
sugar; one of the first to organize, by the way.
And they had taken over the one small plantation
where Art Rutledge was screwing around, Waiakea.
After at least two or three months, we finally
had to resolve that. e couldn't get rid of the
entire wage cut; we got rid of about half of it,
and then we got rid of the rest of it later on.
I recall that the Olaa agreement was made prior
to our expulsion from the CIO because at one
executive board meeting when Harry was back in
Washington, Phil Murray had picked up the word of
what had happened in Hawaii.
If understanding unions doesn't also mean
understanding when to take on a beef and when to
back up a bit, then you haven't learned a hell of
a lot.
Anybody can go down with the flags flying; doesn't
take a lot to do that. All you'll have there is
demonstrations of courage - whether actually
courage, I don't know, because sometimes it's
much harder to retreat. But Phil Murray decided
to take on Harry, I guess, just because things
were getting ugly; he went into a long discussion
of "How do you negotiate a wage cut?"
And when Murray got cranked up on something
like that, his sarcasm just floored you. How do
you negotiate a wage cut? Do you demand more of
a wage cut and settle for less of a wage cut? As
though the Steelworkers had been organized for
a hundred years; never had a goddam problem in
their life, you see. And Phil Murray gave Harry
a lecture on lockouts and wage cuts.
Ward: Did Harry reply? You weren't there?
LG: No, I wasn't there. I think Harry simply told
him, "Look, we have our own union and we run our
own affairs; if we think it's right, that's all
there is to it." I know it didn't phase us one
goddam hair in Hawaii or back in San Francisco
headquarters.
474
LG: But all this, of course, was sort of shaping up
towards the '48 longshore strike. Taft-Hartley
had been passed. There was a "big clash in the
CIC on compliance or non-compliance. The left-
wing unions decided not to comply, although
gradually one at a time, they folded and finally
the last two that were left were the HE and the
ILWU. Around 1949, we decided there was really
no choice "but to comply because Taft-Hartley was
being used to raid us constantly. Without com
pliance, we would be in serious trouble.
Well, that was the atmosphere in Hawaii. The
employers were not letting up. They had taken a
real kick in the ass on the Ignacio thing, but
still they were united on taking on the union,
which came to a head in the 1949 longshore strike
in Hawaii. They were probably divided on how it's
done; it resulted in a very peculiar situation in
the Hawaiian Employers Council, even though I only
got these things indirectly.
The Big j?ive, number one, couldn't make a
mistake; so, if a mistake was made it had to be
someone from the Employers Council, somebody they
hired. They were going in different directions and
did not have a unified policy, and the net result
was that some of the conflicts and contradictions
among the employers did not hurt us entirely. The
question was when would they finally pull their
ranks together, which they did in 1949 in the big
longshore strjke.
That was a showdown; were we prepared to take
them on? Guys like llaisdell, and later Steele
who came down there to work with him, I don't
think ever got the kind of authority or the power
to give direction and keep it, because of this
constant second guessing and the fact that the
Big Five could not make a mistake. I think that
made a big difference; I can understand why it
drove both of them to drink; I don't know what
else you would do.
As a matter of fact, during that whole period
when they were demanding a separate wage line, it
wasn't confined to the Hamakua coast. There were
other plantations, like Pioneer Mill, although
475
LG-: there again obviously their approach to the thing
must have been pretty disparate and not organized.
We set up a fact-finding committee, made up of
Teddy Kreps, who was working in our research
department at the time, and a couple of other
people. They would go around to the plantations.
We had an hilarious experience over at Pioneer.
I told you about this interesting character, Jack
Koier, and his cleaning out the rocks. Well, we
met him and went over his books; I gave him the
example of the guy with a million dollar inventory,
He says he's broke - he owes a million dollars,
absolutely true until he opens up the store.
He had to agree with that, at which point the
whole thing turned into a tirade by him against
the factor - the agency - because they did not
have confidence in him. These are the sort of
things which were happening. He later turned out
to be quite a friend of the union. As a matter
of fact, I remember the going-away dinner they
had for Harry and myself in Honolulu. He turned
up.
476
XII THE "HEW LOOK"
Employers Turn The Other Cheek
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Now, you seem to be moving toward the '48 long
shore strike on the coast, but you were pretty
well engrossed in Hawaii. Did you play any role
in the longshore strike? On the coast?
Oh, yes. I was "back here for that.
Do you want to talk about that now?
Yes. I'm trying to remember the exact date when
the longshore strike began - it actually began
September 3rd.
June 15th was the date you mentioned -
June 15th, right - that was the expiration date.
But before it began there was an interesting
interlude. The employers decided to make a first
test of the Taft-Hartley Act by imposing an 80-day
cooling- off period, a postponement of the strike.
At the end of the 80 days, there was a fact-
finding hearing, following which the employers
made a "final offer" on which the longshoremen
were supposed to vote. If they voted against the
final offer, then and then only could they go on
strike. Taft-Hartley said so.
Well, the way the longshoremen handled the 80-
day injunction and the vote on the final offer is
one for the book. I'll tell you about it in de
tail later. One thing became certain: never again
has there been any vote on any "final offer", no
matter v/hat Taft-Hartley says.
477
LG: So, the longshore strike was a major drive by
the Waterfront Employers Association led by Prank
?. Poisie, "Pink Hall Poisie," and Gregory Harri
son, their attorney.
Harrison was the attorney who represented the
American President Lines in their suit against the
government on the question of whether or not the
government had adequately compensated the owners.
He finally got an enormous judgment of somewhere
around $17 or $18,000,000 in which he picked up
one of the biggest fees ever paid in this country.
And, god, he was an arrogant man. I'll never
forget some of the remarks he'd make. We were in
negotiations and I was a member of the committee
and the biggest demand on the part of the employ
ers v/as that in keeping with Taft-Hartley there
be compliance; that the employers had the right
to select dispatchers, or equal right to select
the dispatchers.
Dispatchers in longshore are still elected by
the union, even though they are joint employees.
So, it was really a push to control the hiring
hall. Lot of it, of course, was the usual publi
city of which they had an endless amount, which
they had elaborated on for years. Stoppages of
work and violations of the contract, and so on.
It was pretty evident that the employers were
determined to see this thing through. It was sort
of Poisie 's last hurrah. Harrison did a lot of
talking in negotiations, as well as Poisie.
I recall just a couple of issues that came
along. For example, we were discussing salvage
work, salvage pay. True, that most salvage work
goes out to a salvage contractor. In other words,
he buys all the cargo on the vessel. If a vessel
gets hung up on the rocks, or something like that,
and they can't re-float it, in many cases the
longshore local has to negotiate with this man
for the rate the men will be paid to unload the
cargo, because it is risky work.
There was an attempt to get it in the contract
and the attitude by Harrison was very quick on the
thing. He says, "Look, we don't fiddle around with
478
LG: salvage; it's done "by certain people of a certain
nationality who always pick these things up."
Just a flat, anti-Semitic crack, you know.
Another time we were discussing vacations which
we picked up in the contract during the war for
the first time; vacations with pay for longshore
men. We were talking about a longshoreman who
was entitled to a vacation and he dies; does the
estate get the money or doesn't it?
To us, it was the simplest issue under the sun;
the guy has earned it, has it coming, and you give
it to his widow. We had no pensions, widows'
"benefits; I don't think we even had life insurance.
Harrison or Poisie made the crack, "He doesn't
need any vacation pay - he's on permanent vacation."
These things cropped up during negotiations.
I was convinced that unless the union was prepared
to roll over and play dead, there just wasn't
much choice on a battle.
Ward: The Employers Association was forcing a strike?
LG: It was the Waterfront Employers Association; it
is really the key element in the San Francisco
Employers Council, the California Employers Coun
cil. That was when George Bahrs was with the San
Francisco Employers Council and Almon Roth
Ward: I was going to ask where Roth came in.
LG: That's right. I'll tell you about it in a little
while. Anyway, I got in touch with Randolph
Sevier; I'd met him in Hawaii. I had been in the
Islands just before the longshore negotiations
and I think I was invited over to Steele's house.
Randolph Sevier was a tough egg. I also felt,
however, he was a man you could talk to and I
said, "Look, I thought the negotiations, from all
I could figure out, were practically on the rocks
and that -
##
Ward: Now, your talk with Mr. Sevier?
479
LG-: Right, he was about to become the new head of
Matson. Sevier's background was that he had
started off as a purser for the Matson ships and
just by dint of hard work and being a pretty
tough egg had moved up in the chain of command.
Later on in 1949, of course, he got bitter
about things; the longshore strike in Hawaii,
because that's where Matson really got it in a
terrific beef. But my feeling was that he was
not looking for a beef in 1948.
He might have already smelled out the fact
that people like Foisie and Harrison were on an
anti-union crusade, and partially venting their
own personal feelings that had accumulated since
1934. It turned out to be that way. But all he
said when I was about to leave was "Well, I'd like
to be kept posted on this, anyway."
Anyway, the strike broke. The men were prepared;
the one thing they didn't want to see was the
employers taking over the union and nullifying the
hiring hall. That was the crux of the whole
strike. I'm sure that Sevier must have been
responsible for the presence of Gushing -
Ward: O.K. Gushing?
LG-: Whether it was O.K. Gushing or his son, I'm not
sure. O.K. was one of those who was a signatory
to the 1934 arbitration award.
Ward: Well, he was a member of the three man commission -
it was Gushing, Archbishop Hanna and MCG-rady. You
think it was the same man, 0. K. Gushing?
LG-: It could be the same man. Not a young guy.
Anyway, he suddenly appeared in the negotiations
sitting right behind Foisie; just sitting there
and looking down their necks. After all, these
are the guys who had their money in the industry;
Foisie didn't. Harrison was a lawyer. The real
bosses decided they ought to get into the thing
themselves.
480
LG: Later on I told Sevier, "Sometimes strikes happen
in funny ways. I was at those negotiations when
we "broke off. The day before that Gushing made
the statement that he had an annual date to go
dove hunting with his son, and he wasn't going to
"break the date. Well, he probably went out to
take a piss and by the time he got back, the
strike was on." Harrison and Foisie were just
determined to bring the damn thing to a head,
somehow. And they did.
Ugly set of negotiations. But I was in touch
with Sevier, almost at once. I tried to reach
him in Hawaii the day before the strike began.
He had just taken the lurline; he was on board
ship, he and his wife and a lot of his personal
goods; they were on their way to San Francisco.
So, here there was a hiatus for four or five
days until he arrived in San Francisco.
I was in touch with him as soon as he arrived
and set up a meeting to discuss things, because
we weren't looking for a beef, really. I kept
Harry informed of all these conversations. There
was no way of ducking it that the employers were
determined to have a complete showdown.
The first engagement we had didn't materialize
because I thought we were due to meet at the Sir
Francis Drake - and he turned up at the St. Francis.
I guess he had never heard of the Sir Francis
Drake. I got hold of him later that afternoon
and asked him what happened and he said he went
to the St. Francis Hotel.
Okay, then we met the next day. I went over
some of the stuff, just pounding the same simple
line that there was nothing outrageous in our
demands; nothing difficult; the nub of the ques
tion was that the employers were embarked on a
campaign, using Taft-Hartley and the anti-labor
atmosphere in the country to do a job on the
ILWU.
I had a feeling he didn't have too much stomach
for it. I told him about Gushing and that he was
there because of Sevier and Sevier didn't say "yes"
or "no", but I'm sure he was. He didn't say why
Gushing was there.
481
LG-: I guess that's an internal problem. But I had
the feeling that they too had "become a bit
suspicious about the way the thing was going.
What developed pretty quickly in the course of
that strike was" that this was a union-breaking
program of really monstrous proportions, tied
in with the CIO.
One of the first things we did was to announce
that if one of the reasons negotiations had
foundered was because the employers didn't want
to meet with officials who had not signed the
Taft-Hartley affidavits, the committee would
resign and get a committee of rank and filers
prepared to meet at once.
Of course the employers wouldn't take us up
on that because any committee of rank and filers
who would go in there were bound to be twice as
tough. Where their program finally manifested
itself was in various hints that because of the
endless violations of the contract, according to
the employers, they needed a third party to act
as guarantor of the contract. The third party
would be the CIO.
In other words, the contract would be entered
into between the Waterfront Employers and the CIO,
with the ILWU as just agents. Agents, of course,
could be removed. We weren't having any part of
that, so there started a whole series of roundy-
go-roundy. Alan Heywood was in on the thing; I
was sort of assigned to the job of spending time
with Alan Heywood and trying to be as friendly as
we could without doing anything.
Ward: Did you say Alan Heywood was representing the CIO?
LG: The CIO, he was the organizational director in
charge of CIO - a short, stocky coal miner, and a
rather humorous guy, in some ways a lot of fun;
while I got along with him, it was pretty obvious
he was a machine man. Well, later on I made Alan
Heywood pay some of his dues. When we finally got
into negotiations toward the tail end, we had Alan
Heywood sitting in.
Harry was there, maybe somebody from the coast
committee. I suggested that we should give Alan
Heywood something to handle in these negotiations
482
LG: it would "be a good idea. We went through the
demands and found one that was absolutely hope
less and that we intended to drop. So, I talked
to Alan Heywood and said, "Why don't you give
this a whirl?" I will say that in negotiations
he gave it a real charge, and the employers were
just looking out the window. End of the line.
Anyway, that was the manoeuvering going on at
the top and that's where Almon Roth got in the
picture. The strike must have been around 45
days old, and I got a call from George Bahrs. He
was in charge of the San Francisco Employers
Council, their full time staff person, ex-football
player or rower from the University of California;
a big man. I didn't feel he v/as looking for any
fight; a job's a job and he was an office holder.
He wanted to talk to me so I dropped by. He
said, "Almon Roth would like to see you." Bear
in mind, you keep everybody informed of these
things, so there can't be any doublecross. Well,
Roth didn't want to meet in an office; maybe he
was suspicious of v/ire tapping.
I was prepared to meet down at their office
or have a drink some place. It didn't work out
that way. No, he'd pick me up in his car. Maybe
he had a recording machine there, I don't know;
it really doesn't make enough difference. People
think there's something in these things and there
almost never is.
We went out and parked near USP (University of
San Francisco), sat and talked for an hour and a
half. He was going round and round on trying to
work out a settlement. Most of it sounded fairly
good; at least it was a negotiating posture until
he came to the real nub of the situation - this
business of having the CIO as the guarantor of
the contract.
Ward: Ch, it really was at that point?
\
LG: Oh, yes; as a matter of fact he gave me a docu
ment - it might be in our files somewhere. I
told him the last part wouldn't sit with our guys;
483
LG: the employers were really trying to wreck our
union, they might get a full meal and all we'll
get is a ham sandwich, but it's one of these
fights we can't avoid.
He didn't try to apologize for the handling
of the thing "by the waterfront employers; obviously
they were going the whole string on this attempt.
As a matter of fact there were a couple of other
manoeuvres going on too, some of which we found
out about later; the meeting between Lundeberg
and Dave Beck, Lundeberg saying he could man the
ships, put crews on board, which I doubted; and
I'm not sure that Beck could have delivered.
He tried in '37 and it didn't pan out. The
employers were prepared to go in there for a
major crusade to save America and break the ILWU.
They were doing their patriotic duty, and The few
little personal things they had in there, of
course, had nothing to do with it.
So, there was a lot of crap going on. There
were meetings constantly at the Apostleship of
the Sea, where they were trying to put together
this Association of Catholic Trade Unions. Father
Rice was very active in that thing at the time -
Ward: Father Rice?
LG: Father Rice, from the South - Louisiana - putting
out pamphlets on how you stack a union meeting,
all built around this redbaiting campaign. Any
way, towards the tail end of the strike, it was
clear that the union ranks would hold; we were
beginning to pick up some support. I think even
Paul Smith realized that.
Ward: How many days out was it when you talk about the
tail end of the strike? How long had the thing
been going on?
LG: The strike lasted a little over 90 days or 87
days - this must have been -
Ward: Around the 30th day or something like that?
484
LG: Somewhere in the back of my mind there's a re
collection that the strike started on Labor Day
and the negotiations got under way on Armistice
Day and finished on Thanksgiving Day. That would
be about 67 days or thereabouts.
Well, who turns up in San Francisco - and it
was obvious that somebody like Sevier had gotten
his oar in the thing, because Mat son was still
the biggest shipper off the vest coast - but Jim
Blaisdell and Dwight Steele from Hawaii. Then
we were really going roundy-go-roundy because
Jim didn't believe in talking negotiations except
in a bar.
The Happy Valley in the Palace Hotel sort of
became my semi-official headquarters for some
days. But, gradually, the thing began to fall
in place. Steele was the one who began to do
most of the talking for the employers.
Ward: Foisie?
LG-: Poisie and Harrison were shunted aside. So, we
moved toward settlement and the strike wound up
in good shape. Kept everything we had and picked
up a few gains j the most important was that the
whole union was maintained. Their whole Taft-
Hartley push went down the drain. When the
strike was over, shortly thereafter, that ended
the Waterfront Employers; they set up the Pacific
Maritime Association.
Ward: I'm a little bit curious here. Harry wasn't in
the negotiations - in these informal negotiations
in the Happy Valley?
LG: No -
Ward: So, how did you - ?
LG: Oh, easy, just go back and tell him exactly -
Ward: Yes, I know. But did you come to some conclusions
and then recommend them to Harry?
LG: We didn't go into too many details; a lot of them
were hammered out over the table. It was perfect
ly clear they wanted a settlement. In negotiations
485
LG: you are prepared to make the employer look like
the second coming of Christ if you get what you
want. Sure, as we put it in Hawaii one time,
if they want to save face and lose their ass
that's great.
So, on some of these things it was just a matter
of Steele knowing where we were going, what the
latitude was. After checking with Harry and others
you got an idea what range so that they could move
in a certain direction. And on a couple of things
he was anxious that they not look too "bad, that's
all. We sat down and it might have "been the is
sue that we gave to Alan Haywood. It "blew, that's
all. So, part of it was just shibai as they call
it - a charade.
Anyway, the thing fell in place and shortly
thereafter the Pacific Maritime Association was
set up. A new man, determined to try to get
along with the unions, and a good man, Vic Pearson,
became the head of the PMA and we got to do a lot
of dealing with him.
When we launched the first pension plan sev
eral years later in longshore, I thought he took
by far the most constructive role I'd seen any
employer take for years. He was not a union
buster, no.
As a matter of fact, the whole crew that moved
in there were a different group of guys. They
were operators and were not embarked on any
individual crusades; managerial people in the
main, who knew the name of the game is to make a
buck and not to break the unions. Guys like Vic
Pearson who became the key man there; unfortunate
ly he died several years later, 1954 - '55.
Ward: You mentioned in passing?
LS: Ken Finessy was there, Mait Pennington was there,
Hubert Brown; there were a number of guys who
were pretty good.
Ward: You mentioned as doing something - Paul Smith of
the Chronicle.
486
LG: Yes, Paul Smith, I think -
Ward: Paul Smith had been helpful with Warehouse years
lief ore.
LG: Right. And I think he finally got the drift of
what was going on with Poisie and Harrison and
realized that this was just an out-and-out
attempt to destroy the union. Paul Smith was
no great supporter of unions, "but there's a
big difference between that and being an all-out
union buster. He was no Colonel (Henry R.)
Sanborn or one of these people like Harper
Knowles - what was the name of that famous red-
baiter?
Ward: Colonel Sanborn was in Portland and Harper
Knowles was with the Associated Parmers -
LG: Colonel Sanborn was the one who used to print
those nutty papers in the thirties. I told you
that story about Colonel Sanborn printing big
editorials about the leftwing marching on
Salinas.
Well, Paul Smith wasn't anything like that;
much more coolheaded. We met with both him and
(George T.) Cameron, the publisher (of the
San Francisco Chronicle). These were cordial
sessions and they were not unfriendly to what
we were trying to do. I think they themselves
had decided that the thing had run its course.
(Interview 19: 25 July, 1978)
Kindness To Union Men
Ward: We were winding up the 1948 longshore strike, we
had gotten rid of Poisie, Harrison and all that.
That's where we left off, I believe.
LGc Right.
487
Ward: Okay. Now, what's next?
LG-: I think I mentioned that there was what they
called a "new look on the waterfront" and the
man who became the head of the PMA was Vic
Pearson.
Ward: Yes, you mentioned him before.
LG: Pearson was determined to try to get along with
the unions, a good man - he wouldn't just embark
on a holy crusade for our extermination. Then
there were a number of people who worked with
him and whose general attitude was in the same
direction, guys like Hubert Brown of the Pacific
Par East Line; Ken Pinessy, I believe he was with
the States Line, Mait Pennington - he was with
the line that Paul Pagan had for a while.
I later got to know Paul Pagan quite well. He
was the man who owned the San Francisco Seals
(a baseball club) and was married to an Irvine,
this woman who owned half of the island of Molo-
kai; they also owned Hana Maui. We'll get into
that later.
Ward: Ch, that's right, Pagan did come from the Islands,
didn't he?
LG-: I'm not sure he came from the Islands, but he
married into an Island family. And I don't
recall if I got to know him during the '48 strike
or a little later on in 1949. The important
point is that the employers themselves called it
the "new look" and obviously they made a policy
decision that they were going to make an effort
to try to get along and that the running battle
that had gone on from 1933 - '34 all the way
through the 1948 strike was a closed chapter.
Ward: Am I correct in my impression that since then
there has not been a longshore strike of any
consequence on the west coast?
LG: That's not true; there was a major strike at the
end of the 1971 contract, a strike that lasted
about four months.
488
Ward: Oh, oh - I wasn't in the country then.
LG: That could explain it. It is true that we went
for a long period of time without any strike, by
and large negotiating most of our contracts across
the table during this period when things were
initiated such as the health and welfare program,
the pension program later on, and a number of
other major benefits to the contract.
It was during this latter period of time when
the whole mechanization program was launched.
But that was after Vie Pearson had died and Paul
St. Sure took over - an entirely different era.
Ward: Oh, yes. When did Paul St. Sure come into the
picture?
LG: I'd say, somewhere around the middle or late
fifties -
Ward: I might make this comment. Paul St. Sure was
one of the lecturers at the California Labor
School during the later days of the war, so he
was evidently trying to make friends with the
labor movement at that time.
LG: It could be. He was also something of a maverick.
I'll admit that my early encounters with him were
not all that pleasant.
Ward: Neither were mine.
LG: Paul St. Sure had been the attorney for the Santa
Cruz Packing Company where we had a strike in the
thirties. The employers there resorted to every
known device to break the union; oh, they had a
whole series of unfair labor practices.
The strike was lost and I recall during that
strike having some extremely harsh words with
him. I was mixed up in it in one way or another.
As a matter of fact, at one time apparently he
decided that some of my statements were threats.
I guess they were; I decided I'd get even some
way.
489
LG: Oddly enough, that case finally went to the
Supreme Court and they upheld the National Labor
Relations Board in all their charges against the
company. A number of the strikers who had been
heaved out of their jobs were entitled to sub
stantial back pay, and so forth. This was many
years later. You know, these cases drag on
anywhere from four to six years.
Ward: Well, let me put the question another way. How
long did Yic Pearson last? As head of the PMA?
LG: Until the time that Paul St. Sure took over -
and that must have been from about 1948 until
1953, somewhere in there.
Family Interlude
Ward: Ckay. Now, this would be a good time to switch
the subject entirely. After all, by this time
you had three little girls running around the
house, didn't you?
LG: Yes. Sure.
Ward: And you weren't home a hell of a lot either,
were you?
LG: Well, luckily by that time - we had moved back
to San Francisco, you know, in 1943 or '44 or
thereabouts.
Ward: Moved back from where?
LG: Prom the east. You remember Terry and I had been
in Chicago for a while, then in the east working
on a war shipping report -
Ward: And the first child was born before you went
east, I believe.
LG: Yes, born in San Francisco in 1941 and Lee, then,
was born a couple of years later when we returned
to San Francisco. Then, Liza was born two years
later. So, we had a growing family, a lot of fun,
490
LG: We'd purchased this house in San Francisco, the
one on Ashbury Terrace. As a matter of fact,
George Andersen helped find the place for me,
negotiate the purchase. It was right around the
corner from where he lived - he and Prances and
their family.
Ward: I remember the place - the locality.
LG: It was a peculiar neighborhood in some ways.
Ashbury Terrace itself was almost like an enclave.
I think they had some sort of a deal with the
city because they paved that street once a year,
whether it needed it or not.
Almost all of my neighbors were Catholics, and
of course our kids went to public school. They
didn't go to kindergarten; they went to Twin Peaks
school when they were old enough; that was a tiny
little school. I think it was during the period
when there weren't so many kids around. A lot of
guys in the army, and so forth.
Anyway, it was sort of like a country school
house. It had one teacher teaching three or four
classes; a very comfortable place, although the
kids would come along once in a while with in
teresting stories. Many of the kids in the
neighborhood went to parochial school which was
not too far away, Ashbury and Clayton (Streets).
One day they were telling me that they were
talking to some of the other kids in the street.
They got along all right, the kids were telling
them they were all Catholics and what was she?
And Lee's reply was, "We're not Catholics - we're
publics."
At one time Bill Plunkert and Prances lived
right on the corner of Ashbury Terrace and Pied-
. mont. They had a very lovely house there. It
was bought later by Dan Flanagan -
Ward: Ch! your old enemy?
LG: That's right, the man who was very close to the
Teamsters at the time of our organizational push
in warehouse and later was part of the police
491
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
force. We went through some rather difficult
days; he was later expelled from office; went to
work as a representative of the AFL; he moved
into the area.
Before long our kids, who were pretty gregar
ious, were playing with his kids. I think that
was the determining factor as to why he moved
out! Although I saw him on the street once in a
while, there was never more than a nod; no
conversation.
Would you identify Bill Plunkert for the record?
Oh* Bill Plunkert was an old, old friend and
really quite an amazing guy. He had been connect
ed with the State Relief Administration in
California at one time, during the Olson days.
He was nominated by the ILWU (to be director of
the SRA); we asked Olson to appoint him and he
refused. Plunkert was an assistant to Dewey
Anderson.
Right. Bill had at one time worked with Harry
Hopkins (right-hand man to FDR) and he was a
bright guy. Bill had a few problems. I remember
when he had a running battle with John Barleycorn,
.but at least he held his own most of the time.
We were close friends. As a matter of fact,
there was a circle of friends, including Leigh
Athearn, Bill and Prances Plunkert, Ralph and
Ernestine Wertheimer; they were a part of this
whole group. Then there were the Farrs. Do you
remember the Mel Parrs?
No.
He later became either a State Assemblyman or
State Senator from Monterey - they moved down
there. Very pleasant people. We knew him at
first when he lived on Jones Street around the
corner from Anita Whitney. At that time, Terry
and I were living somewhere on Telegraph Hill or
later on out on Green Street and we used to see
them there a good deal, most every week. Later
492
LG: on the Plunkerts moved out to Ashbury Terrace and
still later on to a small street not too far from
the Fairmont Hotel.
Ward: The Plunkerts had a very interesting house on that
street you're mentioning. I remember the living
room was two stories high; very unusual house for
San Francisco.
LG: A very lovely house, too. Bill's background had
been primarily social work, although he went to
work in warehouse for a while. He worked at
Western Sugar and was a member of the union.
Frances was a very good statistician. When they
moved east, I think she went to work as chief
statistician for the New York State Industrial
Relations Department. I was with Bill and Prances
up in the mountains when I got word to come down
for that meeting with Olson -
Ward: On Tom Mooney.
LG: On Tom Mooney' s pardon. We had cabins up there,
some little place near Tahoe which was very love
ly. I still remember that crazy trip down the
mountain for that session.
Ward: Back to the kids. Now you were away a great deal
of the time. Did they know who you were when you
got home?
LG: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. It must have had
a pretty rough impact on them because you still
had the harassment of Harry going on during that
time; the various trials. So, this was constantly
in the press and in that neighborhood with some
of the Catholic families, things were not always
exactly the most cordial. Later on the kids
remarked that they were always concerned as to
whether I'd be around the next day. They simply
assumed that these things go hand in hand.
Ward: They thought you might be in the pokey?
LG: That's right, in the pokey. Those were very hec
tic days and I'm sure it had an influence on the
youngsters.
493
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
It didn't make them timid?
No, quite to the contrary, because later on they
were very active in everything from the civil
rights movement to the sit-ins in San Francisco,
the free speech fight over in Berkeley, anti-war
demonstrations and so forth.
We stayed in San Francisco until around 1953
and '54. By that time, Ann was going to Roosevelt
Junior High; she had graduated from Twin Peaks
School. Lee was a good deal of a rebel at Twin
Peaks, at one time being sent home by the principal
because she had sassed her in some way.
And there were also a lot of pleasant incidents
around the place. The kids loved story telling
and I'd come home with all kinds of funny animal
stories; some of them the kids would repeat in
class. I remember telling Lee a story: this
minister read about a parrot that could say the
Lord's prayer.
He went down and checked it out. If you gave
a small tug on the parrot's right foot, it would
say the Lord's prayer. The man wanted a lot of
money for it, several thousand dollars. The
minister was so fascinated with this that he
raised the money through the congregation and
went down and bought the parrot.
And he was jubilant; he asked the owner of the
parrot, "Now, let's go through this again; if you
tug at his right foot he'll say the Lord's prayer."
He tried it and the parrot said the Lord's pray
er. "What happens if I tug his left foot?" "Why
don't you try that?"
So, he tugged at his left foot and the parrot
said, "Hail Mary." So, the minister said, "Won
derful, wonderful. Now, what would happen if I
tugged at both his legs?" And, the parrot
answered, "I'd fall on my ass, you damn fool!"
The kids thought that was a great story; the next
thing I know, Lee is repeating that story at
school.
You didn't tell her any stories about the big,
bad employers?
494
LG: No, we had an invented character, a man around
whom I would tell stories around dinner time.
The stories were about Johnny Sscapo, a typical
American rebel. He'd go down and help the work
ers in the bayous in Louisiana - all with the
colorful background and everything else, you know.
Invariably he ran into the crooked sheriff and the
company man. Invariably he would be jailed and
then the question was how he escaped.
You'd get the kids to inventing different de
vices, get them started by saying, "Well, what
he did he asked for a piece of chalk - nothing
more and then he would draw a door on the cell
wall and walk out, you see." Or, he would blow
a smoke ring and go through it. They had all
these Johnny Escape stories.
Later on, when I was ill my daughter, Lee,
did a rather lovely piece on Johnny Escape and
brought it over to cheer me up. I showed it
later to oh! what's his name? Gossage?
Ward: Who? Oh, Howard Gossage?
LG-: Yes, I showed it to him one day and he said, "Well,
they might run the thing just as is in Ramparts.*
He was fascinated with it. These stories were all
about the same thing, the continuous struggle that
was going on against evil and so forth and so on.
And there was a good deal of singing in the
house. The kids loved these children's songs
about it could be a beautiful world. So, there
was a good deal of that around. V/e had a piano.
Ward: Did you play for them - when they were small?
LG: Yes, I did. I remember Teddy Kreps storing a
small piano at our place. Later it had to be
returned to the owner, so we bought an upright
Steinway; really a very lovely piano. It was only
$100 - this was after the war. V/e encouraged all
the kids to take piano lessons. They studied with
a teacher not too far away, a Mr. Herbert Jaffee,
who was quite a good pianist and quite a good
teacher. Ann studied with him, and Lee might have
for a little while. Liza was too small. Lee later
picked up the guitar.
495
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
##
Now, about the children -
Well, it was a lively household. Something was
always jumping - lot of story- tell ing.
Did you do anything with the children other than
tell stories? Any other things that you would
take them around to?
Ch, yeah - we spent a fair amount of time in
Golden Gate Park, which was not too far off.
Did you get to know all the squirrels?
Yes, we met a good many of them, and they had the
small children's playground, which was a delight
to them. They knew the neighborhood and moved
around pretty much on their own as they got older
and made friends.
The Andersens were close by for quite a while,
but then they got this larger house out at Sea-
cliff. As a matter of fact, Frances Foster (an
obstetrician), his wife, delivered all three of
our children and then made a flat offer that the
fourth one was on the house.
But you didn't take it up?
Terry tried and lost it, and then she decided
that was about it.
Well, it was a harmonious family, as much as you
saw of it?
Ch, yes. My father and mother would get up here
once in a while. They came up right after I
bought the house because -
This house?
Ch, they came up here too. But I'm talking about
the house on Ashbury Terrace because the house
had no bookcases, or very few. I wanted some
bookcases. And they came up - and my dad assembled
those bookcases! All he would do was to measure
and then he would start cutting.
496
LG-: We got a small table saw for him; he worked in
the basement or out in back. He just cut pieces
and assembled them, slapped them into place, put
on some facing and it all fit. And those book
cases were alongside the fireplace and went right
up to the ceiling. The kitchen was quite old;
particularly the cabinets were old and cramped.
He remodeled the whole kitchen, all the cabinets
and so forth.
So it became a pleasant place to live, plenty
of room. A good place for the youngsters. The
main drawback was there was only one bath. It
meant that at times I would suffer long delays
until they finished up. I was definitely a minor
ity of one in that household. I even gave a
thought to putting another bath on the roof if
that could be done through a closet.
Ward: Or arranging a clump of bushes in the back yard!
LG: We didn't have many bushes in the back yard. It
was a small back yard and it was all paved. They
have tiny lots over there - 20 or 25 feet wide
and not more than 65 feet deep, so that the house
took up practically everything.
The only battle I had going was one that I
never won against the gophers in the front yard.
There was a steep incline where you walked up
some stairs and the gophers had made a home there
for many, many years and they would not give up.
I tried everything from gopher bombs, broken glass,
you name it. I guess everything was digestible;
a few months later they would be back again and
you would see the plants disappearing down these
holes; just couldn't win.
Ward: Well, anything more that you want to talk about
regarding the family?
LG: No.
V/ard: You v/ere glad to be home when you could be home?
LG: Yes, and where we lived had certain distinct
advantages; it was very close to downtown. When
the union moved up to 150 Golden Gate, every once
497
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward :
LG:
Ward :
LG:
in a while I would walk down to work, so as to
give Terry the car as well as to get some exercise.
You used to do that when you were working in the
warehouse and lived on Telegraph Hill?
Right; or sometimes when Terry needed the car,
I'd get a ride down with George Andersen and he
used to go right "by there on the way to his office.
Not with Dan Flanagan, though?
No, the only other person I ever got a ride with
was a man named Preston Devine - he had the large
house right on the corner of Piedmont and Ashbury.
It would have been right across from where Bill
Plunkert had lived.
Preston Devine? That rings a bell.
Sure, he became a Superior Court judge. Some
years later, in the early 1950s, we were in a
roaring battle with the Teamsters and their at
tempt to raid us. This will all tie in later
with developments beginning in 1949; it became
fast, hot and heavy.
The employers or somebody had gone into court
for an injunction during this big jurisdietional
beef. The Teamsters were trying to raid Ware
house, they were putting up picket lines, trying
to keep people out to force the ILWU to capitulate.
Some of these battles wound up into swinging clubs
and everything else.
I recall getting a ride with Judge Devine one
morning; I knew the case was before him and I
didn't plan to mention it. But he did. He said,
"I know there's been an awful lot of trouble in
the warehouses and there's demand for an injunction,
I'm afraid I have to enjoin both of you." I didn't
say a word; that was exactly v/hat we wanted,
because we didn't give a damn whether we were
enjoined; it was the raiding we wanted enjoined.
He was a rather nice guy, I liked him. Then,
around the corner was an attorney, a close friend
of the (Vincent) Hallinans; James Purcell -
498
Ward: Purcell? Oh, yes, I remember that name.
LG: A very large Catholic family, either nine or ten
kids, with a big house up there. I liked him and
his wife very much. There were some people up the
street that we got to know quite well. They had
no children and they sort of adopted ours. So,
we knew the neighbors around there. The man
across the street was named Hogan. I used to
throw a football around Ashbury Terrace with his
kids .
Ward: When you were in San Francisco there were many,
many nights when you were out at meetings?
LG: Oh, sure. Almost continuous -
Ward: So what would you say were the number of nights
you spent home a year, on the average? A hundred?
LG: Oh, it would vary an awful lot from month to month
or year to year. It would depend if you had
strikes going on or big organizing drives. Oh, I
would say that meetings took up at least three
nights a week, sometimes more.
Ward: Even when things were running along?
LG: You had council meetings and other meetings at
night, meetings of our executive board and meet
ings of the locals. The period from 1943, when
I returned to San Francisco was not all that
hectic, because the war was on until 1945. But
at the end of 1945, 1946, we had the whole Hawaii
thing going, so that -
Ward: That took up a lot of your time?
LG: Yes. Beginning in 1945, it took up a great deal
of my time. Then in 1946 -
Ward: There wasn't any question of coming home at night,
because you were in Hawaii?
LG: No, that's right; some of those stretches would
be one or two months or more. The sugar strike
took a lot of time, and it was practically com
muting after that; in addition to the fact that
we had all kinds of other things going. Things
sort of stepped up; I got much busier.
499
A Horrendous Period
Ward: Let's move on now, to '49, a lot of things
happened there.
LG-: In 1949 we entered a completely new chapter.
Some of our difficulties with the CIO began to
surface in 1948, and pretty badly. Also there
was the business of our difficulties with the
CIO around the Marshall Plan (for assistance to
war-torn Europe). It wasn't that we were so much
opposed to the Marshall idea, but its method of
application.
I never thought that was decisive in our
relations v/ith the CIO, for by 1943 it was pretty
clear the CIO was moving to the right. I believe
I mentioned to you our experience with them in
the case of the longshore strike, and particular
ly the effort on the part of the employers; well,
the CIO was lending itself to that, namely, this
business of having the CIO as the guarantor of
the contract.
So that our feelings weren't too cordial by
then, even though we managed to side-step them.
Nothing much came of it. And I mentioned Alan
Heywood's role. Well, this was only the begin
ning. Come 1949, we entered into one of the
most difficult, if not the most complicated,
periods in the history of the union. That year
saw some majjor struggles, one of which was the
'49 longshore strike in Hawaii. A warehouse
strike took place during that same period, in
the bay area. We had the confrontation with the
CIO at our convention in April, and later on our
expulsion. Luring that time the raids began by
the CIC and the Blue Card group; attempts to
swing the local around.
The Teamsters decided this was a good time
to launch a raid against the warehousemen. The
Association of Catholic Trade Unionists was as
active as could be. Bridges, Robertson and
Schmidt were indicted during the 1949 longshore
strike in Hawaii, so that you had a period there
500
LG: where you felt they were really closing in on all
sides. You'd look around pretty desperately for
a friend; things got very ugly and very tough.
By 1953 we even made the rather critical move
inside the International of electing a group of
standby officers in the event Bridges, Robertson
and Schmidt went to jail. Jimmy Font 2 was to
sit in as president, I would continue as secre
tary; Joe Bluur from Hawaii - Joe Kealaleo -
would take over if Robertson had to go.
Ward: Which one do you want to take up first?
Chronologically?
LG: We might as well. Cur convention in 1949 was
crucial because issues being posed by the CIO
had to do with the basic autonomy of the ILWU.
Part of the backwash was the endorsement of
Henry Wallace; we were one of the few unions that
campaigned for him.
I remember a Chicago labor guy, Sidney Lenz,
asking me years later whether we thought that
was a mistake, in retrospect. And I told him
frankly I didn't think so; no matter what they
said about Truman, the one thing he had done
which was just horrendous was the initiation of
the Cold War. There was every possibility of
some sort of rapprochement within the world and
he just shunted it aside.
Ward: All right - go on.
LG: The issue that mightily bothered the CIO was that
once a political endorsement had been made, all
unions were automatically bound. Not too different,
I suppose, than the discipline they try to impose
on the (British) Labor Party, except that we
didn't have a Labor Party.
Our membership treasured its autonomy. The
position taken by the International Union and by
Harry at the executive council meetings was that
once an issue had been debated in the CIO and
the decision made, although he might differ with
it, he was obligated to support that position
within the ILWU. But he did not have the
authority to deprive the membership of making
501
LG-: their own decision, "because this was literally
the nature of the ILWU. It goes back to some
of the same questions about the autonomous
structure "because even with convention resolutions,
locals still reserve the right to go along with
them, or not. Those delegates who were at the
convention were generally obligated to support
them.
The only place they were bound was when you
took a referendum vote, let us say, on some
special financial contribution, or a referendum
vote particularly on a strike. That was
different - then everybody was bound.
For example, if the Pacific Coast longshore
district took a referendum vote on strike action,
whether some particular port voted against it .
made no difference. If the majority carried,
that was it. And it's an entirely different
story from imposition of authority from the top.
Murray was in effect saying that you had all
the autonomy in the world and that you had the
right to do anything you wanted provided you
voted "yes." Of course, this was not something
our membership would buy. Well, come the
convention, R. J. Thomas, who I think at one
time had been president of the Automobile Work
ers, and Tim Plynn and Adolph Germer ^appeared
very briefly at the convention.
Well, it became a pretty hectic convention.
Our position was that we had been loyal members
of the CIO. We were guaranteed certain rights
of autonomy at the time of affiliation and any
move to try to curtail those rights or any move
towards expulsion was in effect a betrayal.
There are parts of the convention transcript
which I think are worthwhile reading, particular
ly the discussions that went on around autonomy.
Finally the resolution on autonomy was adopted
by an overwhelming vote.
But you could see the handwriting on the wall.
It wasn't just the ILWU; they were moving against
all the so-called leftwing or progressive unions
in the CIO; that included the United Electrical
*CIO officials.
502
LG-: Workers, the Fur Workers, the International Union
of Mine-Mill and Smelter Workers, the State,
County and Municipal Workers, the Agricultural
Implement Workers, the American Communications
Association, some nine or ten unions.
The question then became one of rather lengthy
and hectic exchanges "between ourselves and some
of the other unions because we had formed a
progressive group in the CIO, pressing all kinds
of issues over the years. We felt very keenly
that we could not just walk out, notwithstanding
all the harassment. We thought we ought to fight
to stay and that was reflected at the T 49 conven
tion.
Ours was a determined drive to try to stay
because we felt very keenly that we had as much
to do with the building of the CIO on the west
coast as anybody had. We had put all kinds of
manpower into this thing, a tremendous amount of
energy; our guys had done all kinds of volunteer
work on strikes, organization, anything going on.
Our people were mixed up to their ears in
everything you could think of from helping to
organize in the south, the assistance we tried
to give on things like the aircraft plants, steel,
rubber; I recall spending a lot of time with them
around here; with the oil workers when they had
some of their strikes. We thought there was quite
a record of us putting up a battle for the CIO.
There was a story that John L. Lewis told:
Harry had gone back to a CIO Executive Board
meeting, the first he attended after we became
part of the CIO, so this must have been the end
of IS 37 or early 1938. I guess everybody was
telling Harry some of the things that ought to
be included in his report. The net result was
that Harry's report went on an awful long time.
John L. Lewis had a sort of camp follower by
the name of Smith. Smith had a long, long beard
and at one time it must have been a bright red -
it was getting on the grey side; and somebody
made the crack that when Harry started speaking,
Smith was clean shaven!
503
LG: And Lewis looked at this chap and said that as
far as he was concerned, any man who could take
on the Teamsters the way we did in the Teamster
Blockade could have the floor as long as he wanted,
That ended that. We were the first major union
on the west coast to go into the CIC and as soon
as we did this enormous offensive was launched by
Beck in collusion with the A ? of L to put us out
of "business right then and there.
So, the upshot of it was that our whole "battle
at the convention was to stay and maintain our
autonomy. Other unions went different ways, de
cided there was no purpose in sticking around and
suffering the harassment; they ;just pulled out.
Well, on that one we didn't see eye to eye,
although we remained friends. Gradually they
were decimated: only two really remained, the
UE (United Electrical Workers) and the ILWU.
The UE suffered substantial casualties to the
IUE (international Union of Electrical Workers)
in the "breakaway that was led "by James Carey, who
at one time had "been secretary of the CIO.
504
XIII A STORY ALL BY ITSELF
The Great Longshore Strike In Hawaii
LG: Shortly after that convention a number of things
happened: one was the 1949 longshore strike in
Hawaii, which was sort of the turning point
following the sugar strike. The 1946 sugar strike
was whether or not we could get a toe hold; we
won that. In 1947 we had taken the set-back in
pineapple. In 1949 there was a combination of
two things, survival and whether or not we would
make a breakthrough against the semi-colonial
structure down there.
Ward: And wage parity with the west coast?
LG: That was the issue; the longshore strike is a
story all by itself.
Ward: You want to go into that now?
LG: Let's go into the longshore strike and then v/e'll
get back to this question of the CIO. I recall
it was during the longshore strike in Hawaii; I
don't think we were in a position to send a dele
gation to the CIO convention. I think it took
place in Portland, that year. Bob Robertson went
up there, on the same principle of trying to stay
in the CIO and at the same time fight for certain
rights. Not that we got very far.
Back to the longshore strike in Hawaii. The
union was reconstituted in longshore toward the
end of the war; martial law had been imposed.
505
LG-: We had gotten certification from the NLRB, in
1941. And the certification had been in effect
for a short while when the war came along, so that
there was a long hiatus of some four years.
Some of the longshoremen had "been driven from
the v/aterfront, particularly those they thought
might have Japanese ideological ties; but they
had to keep them around there since they're the
people who do the work.
The same thing is true in the rest of Hawaii.
That's the reason you never had the relocation
centers in Hawaii that you had over here on the
mainland .
In 1945 we went into negotiations in longshore
and got some improvements, at least in wages,
f ormalization of the contract and a few other
things. Though, I remember making a pretty bad
blunder during the situation. I didn't think
it was at the time, but it turned out to be, not
so much in terms of the gains that were made,
but in the reactions of the membership.
The membership, over the years, instead of
picking up things like basic wages and beginning
to move in the right direction, picked up little
penalty cargo things, like cement, even though
later on it never came in sacks, just in bulk.
It would have say a 5 or 10 cent an hour penalty.
They had little penalties on a number of items.
Well, one of the things that turned out to be
possible during the negotiations was to pick up
some extra money on wages, in exchange for simpli
fying this list of penalties. Some penalty cargoes
you'd keep, of course. Some penalty cargoes would
mean nothing because they were gone, but they
might appear once in a while and would become
more of a headache than it was worth.
Obviously, you would keep any penalties on
things like explosives or ammunition, but on some
of the other items, I didn't think it was all
that worthwhile and I figured the trade-off was
worth it. But when you went to the membership:
506
LG: "You gave something up." I don't think anybody
talks about it anymore; it disappeared very, very
quickly, but there is such a thing as out-
negotiating yourself once in a while.
As to how it weighs in the whole balance of
things, that wasn't it at all. They had gotten
a few little things and by god along came this
character from the International and gave them
away, even though he got something in exchange.
Anyway, longshore contracts began to improve
over the years, but in the main as good as we
could do was to come close to picking up the same
amount of wage increases that the men had received
under the Pacific Coast agreement.
Bear in mind, Hawaii is a separate group of
employers; as far as they were concerned, some
of them did not exist on the mainland, like
McCabe-Hamilton, Renny; Theo Davies; C. Brewer;
American Factors had some operations on Kauai.
Alexander Baldwin had operations in Kahului.
Those employers had no relation to the west
coast employers and were very provincial in their
thinking, orientated completely to Hawaii. The
agencies all had little longshore spin-offs with
the islands divided; like the Big Island was C.
Brewer, Kauai was Amfac and Maui was Alexander
Baldwin port operations.
Theo Davies had some clerks and a small long
shore operation in Honolulu. Castle and Cooke
was the largest stevedore employer, part of their
agency again; and then there was an independent
outfit called McCabe, Hamilton and Renny which
for many years did a lot of the army and navy
work; an interesting type of employer.
The guy who headed the outfit, Jack Guard,
was a very shrewd, paternalistic character. He
knew the advantage of being around; he'd be there,
very first thing on Monday morning. A lot of the
guys were broke and they needed twenty until next
pay day, or ten, or what-have-you, and he just
handed it out. Apparently, he had an excellent
memory and would make his notes later, but there
v/as no question; he just had a big roll of bills -
507
Ward: Damn smart!
LG: Damn smart and particularly in the case of the
single men, the money would go over the weekend.
And that included a number of our Filipinos who
had blown it at the dance hall. Carl Demaso has
a whole show on that.
Anyway, this group was not part of the west
coast employers, and not part of any "new look"
on the west coast. Not at all, quite the contrary.
Mat son, of course, was tied into the west coast
and was a dominant employer, yet in the whole
scheme of things it might have been influenced
primarily by Castle and Cooke. Castle and Cooke
was their stevedoring company.
The Mat son Steamship Company in its early
years had stockholders who were all members of
the Big Five. Alexander Baldwin had a piece of
Mat son. Castle and Cooke had a piece of Mat son.
Later on, they decided to divest themselves
because of certain anti-trust things that were
kicking around.
They would send all their sugar via the Mat son
ships because there was no other way to send it;
also pineapple; consequently it would become a
form of restraint of trade because there was no
other way for a shipping company to get in there
and get any return cargoes from Hawaii to the
mainland .
They could get plenty of cargoes going down;
shippers who were either unhappy with Matson or
figured they were overcharging or bad service.
But coming back, they would come empty. Pretty
damn tough for a company to operate that way and
make a buck. The outfit that later on bought
Matson was Alexander Baldwin, primarily because
they had a tremendous amount of cash.
Well, I'm just giving you a little bit of the
background; the contract, when it was opened in
1949, was open on wages only. This was quite a
common thing in Hawaii, where the employers would
want a long term contract. V/e were fearful of
508
LG: them and thought there were a lot more things to
be gained before we were ready to sign a long
term contract, so we signed kind of peculiar
agreements.
Frankly, in some ways it was a little bit
fictitious; if a contract is open on wages and
two other items and that was the way it was
spelled out - or sometimes it was spelled out by
three items; or sometimes you would spell out two
and you're open on two; it was true in sugar; it
was true in longshore - under those circumstances,
you might as well open the whole damn agreement.
The employers had the idea that if a contract
was open on a limited number of things, this in
some ways would be a restriction or a handicap or
a drawback on the union's willingness to fight.
Of course, it doesn't work out that way. Later
on the employers realized it. They were wedded
to the idea, though.
But if you open on wages only and you want to
change something else in the contract, that's not
the most difficult thing in the world. You just
make the wage demands so high, that" before you
settle, the employer finally has to say, "All
right, what the devil's around this?" We'd say,
"Well, we really need this big hunk of money, but
we might have some flexibility if we could only
get that other thing straightened out."
Having the contract open on one issue and the
right to strike is enough, if you are determined
to use that opening and get the maximum for it.
The net result was that come 1949 the only issue
was wages - no other item open in the contract.
The demand we made was that the time had come to
close the gap.
On the west coast we had just picked up an
increase of 15 cents an hour for the longshore
men, across the board. Bear in mind, the Hawaii
longshore contract did not have a lot of the
things - as it still doesn't, for that matter -
that they had on the west coast. Hawaii did not
have the hiring hall, nor the regulations on
sling load limits that prevailed on the west
coast. They weren't in effect in Hawaii.
509
LG-: You did not have the same kind of grievance
machinery where the union had the right to police
the contract and discipline the men before the
employer had a crack at them. Very big fundament
al differences in terms of the right of the
individual and security on the job. The employer
literally had just about complete managerial
authority over the men with damn few restrictions.
Sure we had some things in the contract that
were different or even a bit better, such as sick
leave. We had some holidays with pay which went
back to that v/hole structure of paternalism. So
here we were open on wages only. Those of us who
were working on the contract - Jack, the committee
felt very keenly that the time had come to close
the gap.
Ward: Did Karry play any role in this? Was he there at
the time?
LG: No, he wasn't there at the time negotiations broke
off. He was there later on as the strike grew in
intensity. There were some rough periods where
they tried to enjoin us and so forth. Our demand
was something over the 15 cents, anything to close
the gap.
The contract expired on May 1st, and there's
the possibility that the employers thought it
was more than a coincidence. We negotiated until
midnight of that day and beyond that. The
employers had offered 12 cents and that was it.
George Hillenbrand was down there from the
Federal Conciliation Service. George is rather
a good egg. He had been a former baseball
catcher. He was a large and very pleasant, easy
guy to get along with and had a great deal of
confidence in the ILV/U.
I used to make it my business to protect
George because I can recall times where we had
to tell George, "Look, it might be just as well
if you weren't present at the sessions; we'll
make sure that you are taken care of." That
meant that he would be called in before any
settlement would be announced.
510
LG: I recall one occasion when we had to chase him
all over town to find him because we couldn't
announce the settlement. The employers didn't
give a damn, but we did. He was a good egg, we
liked him and under no circumstances would we
get a double cross from him. I recall one time,
I would walk along the beach to the Moana Hotel.
##
Ward: You ran into this man at the Moana Hotel -
LG: I walked through a large lanai at the Moana Hotel
and I recognized a voice. Here was George
Hillenbrand with a whole group of ladies, some of
them a little advanced in years. He was telling
them about his job and the way he had to deal
with these rough, tough characters. They were
just sitting there open-mouthed.
I stood there and listened a little while and
decided that this was no time to say, "Hello,"
and sneaked out the other way. (laughter) But,
George, he liked his job and liked Hawaii and
liked the people, and there's a story about him
later that is just hilarious. It was during the
sugar negotiations. I'll try to remember later
on so as you won't have to leave it out.
Anyway, he was down there as federal mediator.
We were meeting in a group, in one of the cottages
right across the street from the Moana Hotel.
The employers were in one cottage and Hillenbrand
and we in another one, and he was doing the usual
jogging back and forth. It was getting close to
midnight, the strike deadline. Cur membership,
in many cases with the wives and kids, were
waiting for us at one of the public schools in
downtown Honolulu. They had been sitting around
since about 10:00 o'clock -
Ward: This was on the night of May 1st?
LG: Yes. The employers just stuck on this 12 cents
and finally George came and said, "Look, I think
we can get them to 14 cents, but I don't think
we can move them beyond that." We said, "No,
511
LG: that won't do." "Well, he said, "What if it's 15
cents, v/ill you close the deal?" I said, "No, we
couldn't. Make it 16 cents and we'll close the
gap by one penny. And at that rate it would, take
us 32 years to get equal pay for equal work; I'll
recommend it, even though it's nothing like what
the guys consider they are entitled to. It's
the same union working the same cargoes on the
same ships and the same owners like Matson, both
ends of the line.
"There's absolutely no reason for it; they
don't have a lot of the things the mainland has;
they work the eight hour day, and not the six and
two; they don't have the hiring hall; they don't
have the sling loads." He came back and said,
"Ho, they won't budge; what you're talking about
is not in sight."
Mind you, whether 15 cents was around or not,
I don't know. I had a feeling at that moment
that he was prepared to go all out to press for
it, if we had said okay. Fourteen was there, no
question about that. So the strike at that
moment broke over the issue of maybe two cents;
maybe one cent - that narrow.
Finally, as we walked out in the street, the
newspaper men around, I asked him one thing,
"Look," - and this later became an important
issue in the strike propaganda - "as I understand
it, George, your oath of office requires that
before you permit an industrial dispute to reach
the stage of a strike, you propose arbitration."
So he said, "Well, how about arbitrating?"
I said, "No." He said, "Well, that's that." But
we used it later on. V/e felt that in arbitration
we could not do too badly. We'd pick up some
thing, more than the 15 cents; the record was
big enough and strong enough to hold up. Well,
the next morning the strike was on. But, it was
a weekend.
Ward: Oh, that was why the members could afford to sit
up half the night?
512
LG-: Right - and plus the fact that there was not too
much work scheduled for that weekend, so the
strike wouldn't really be effective until Monday.
An odd incident occurred over that weekend. 1
guess it was either Saturday night or Sunday
morning. I got a call from Dwight Steele who was
with the Employers Council that he and Blaisdell
and Alec Budge (of the Big Five) would like to
see us.
Ward: Who?
LG: Alec Budge - "bear in mind that over the years,
in all these negotiations, in sugar, longshore,
and other industries, the heads of the Big Five
had never appeared at a set of negotiations.
Only their minions would appear. For some reason
or other this was a no-no with them. Budge had
decided he had to talk to us.
I called Jack and he said, "Sure, let's go
out and talk to him." Jack knew who he was, of
course, but I'm not sure he had ever met him.
Pinky Budge, they called him. Pinky Budge. He
was, well, he wasn't a young man, very well kept,
rosy cheeks; I guess that's why he was named
"Pinky". I think Steele picked us up; either
that or I drove out because the union had an old
second hand jeep that I used to run around.
Anyway, we go by there for breakfast. Budge
is a very affable host, very pleasant; shows us
through his orchid collection, which is sort of
standard in Hawaii. He lived out in the area of
Kohala, near Diamond Head - just on the bend
there. He was cordial, but I wouldn't say
enthusiastic or friendly; as soon as breakfast
is over he gets right down to business saying,
"Well, we think you ought to recommend the 12
cents."
"It's been turned down and I'm practically
positive the members would not take it - they
feel very strongly about closing the gap and
looking for parity with the mainland." Pie goes
into an interesting talk about why things were
different in Hawaii and he started talking about
all the blessings the men had living there.
513
LG-: After all, they had this wonderful climate;
didn't require the same sort of clothes you
needed on the mainland; you had the lovely beaches
and all this recreation that was available to
the workers and their families, something you
didn't have on the mainland. This guy was con
vinced of it; there was very little purpose in
pressing the issue.
Of course, you got such a revealing picture
of their attitude - the real missionary attitude,
carried along through the years; they were help
ing these poor, benighted natives and sharing
the blessings that were there because the Big
Five were the ones who had developed the Islands.
Never mind that a lot of Hawaiians felt they
were better off before the Big Five came along.
You could tell very readily after a few attempts
of trying to steer the conversation that you
would get nowhere. He was just absolutely
convinced that this was the way that unions
operated and that if we recommended the 12 cents
the members would have taken it.
Well, there was no use sitting there any long
er; finally I turned to him and said, "Well, Mr.
Budge, I've been in many negotiations in my life,
but this is the first time I've come across
someone who decided to take God's gifts and put
them on the pay check." That was the end of the
breakfast.
As we walked out of there, I turned to Jack
and said, "If this thing lasts a day less than
four months, I'll be the most surprised man in
the world." Well, I was wrong again - it lasted
six months. That's how the strike got started.
It's one of the longest strikes in the history
of the United States that was won.
Ward: How many men were involved in the strike?
LG-: When the longshore strike started, I'd say in
all the ports combined somewhere around between
1600 or 2000 men. I'm not sure, because in some
of the ports the major conversion from bag sugar
to bulk sugar was already under way.
514
LG: Bear in mind that when they converted from bag
sugar to bulk, a port like Hilo which had five
to six hundred men went down to somewhere around
a hundred very quickly. The same thing would be
true of other ports which rely primarily on sugar;
I'm talking about ports like the one in Port
Allen. It would also be true of Kahului and to
some extent even in Honolulu, because they handle
the bag sugar from plantations around Cahu.
Ward: Well, at any rate, between 1600 and 2000?
LG: Yes; containers had not come along yet. There
were something over a thousand men in Honolulu,
maybe more.
Ward: How did the cargo move after the strike got going?
LG: It didn't, it was a tight strike.
Ward: What about the incoming cargo?
LG: Oh, we made the promise and announcement from
from day one that the union would handle all the
passenger cargo, mail, baggage and perishables.
Employers were determined not even to use us for
those things.
There was a man whom I got to know in San
Francisco named Antone Marguleas. He was a fruit
and vegetable shipper, Paramount Export, one of
the biggest in Hawaii. I'd known Antone because
his office was right on the corner where the old
Warehouse hall was; we struck up an acquaintance
then.
Ward: Down on Clay Street?
LG: Down on Clay Street, right next to the police
station, Clay and Drum; and we used to chat
whenever I would bump into him. Once in a while,
he would get me by the ear and sort of haul me
down to show me what was happening to some of his
vegetables. Sometimes he was right, the way the
men would bounce these crates of fresh cherries,
grapes; didn't realize how they were shaking
these things around. They weren't all that
heavy, they were only 15 or 20 pound crates.
515
LG-: But I get a call; the strike has been on only a
few days and we'd been working late because there
was an immediate, tremendous flare-up of unbe
lievably endless hostility against the union by
the newspapers in Hawaii; just the most hysterical
campaign you ever came across. Particularly by
the Honolulu Advertiser.
Obviously the whole thing had been geared up;
this was going to be the showdown with the union -
put us in our place once and for all. Hawaii was
for the Hawaiians - they had their own kind of
wage structure and their own life style.
I'm awakened around 4:30 in the morning. It
was a long distance call from Antone Marguleas.
He said, "Ive got a whole bunch of stuff on one
of the Mats on ships - it's about to leave for
Hawaii and I understood that your policy is to
unload all perishables." I said, "Yes, we'll
unload all perishables."
"Well, Mats on just told me that they will not
take responsibility for discharge of those
perishables; they advised me to take the stuff
off the ship at once." I said, "Frankly, I don't
think you have to. What do you think will happen?"
"Hell," he says, "if I take the shipment off
at once, I'll go broke overnight. That's a
distress sale. The produce merchants are dif
ferent people and they will be down there - oh,
yes, they'll buy it. (laughter) For a dime a
dollar!" There's other supplies available and
they have the guy over a barrel.
Ward: Mat son was trying to lock out the shipper!
LG: Sure, so I said, "Look, you go ahead and tell
Matson that you're not taking the stuff off the
ship. I'll get hold of Jerry Bulcke " - I think
he was president of Local (Longshore) 10 at the
time.
So I get hold of Jerry and said, "Tell Matson
that unless that stuff stays on board ship,
nothing is going to sail, including other ships -
military cargo and some of these things that we
516
LG: should unload." Finally, we forced Matson to
take it and I guess that Ant one saved an awful
bundle, if not bankruptcy. V/e used this later
in a newspaper against the employers' claim that
we were trying to starve out Hawaii.
Ward: I think this is a good point to stop for today.
LG: Okay. We can go into some of the aspects of
the '49 strike later on, including the fact
finding hearing, the attempt to go over the head
of the union, the indictment of Harry, Robertson
and Schmidt.
Ward: Very good. Okay.
(Interview 20: 1 August, 1978)
A Long, Difficult Strike
Ward: Now, we pick up the longshore strike again - '49.
You said it was one of the longest strikes ever,
six months long.
LG: That's right and it began on May First.
Ward: Yes, you mentioned the significance.
LG: Let's see - May, June, July, August, September
and settled somewhere around October or November.
It was a long strike. It's a rare thing, by the
way, to win a strike that goes that long.
Ward: I know that.
LG: As a matter of fact, when a strike goes that
long, any union will figure they are pretty well
off just to go back intact. It was an odd
strike. It's very difficult to strike on only
one issue. The contract was still in effect;
the only issue that was open was wages and here
was a strike which went this length of time and
where the membership held intact.
517
LG: All of us are familiar with the barrage of
criticism that the unions have had, where the
employers try to get workers to figure "Okay,
how much are you losing each week and how long
will it take you to make it up?" In other words,
if you are on strike let us say for 10 cents an
hour and the employers offer a nickel an hour,
and you strike for a month, okay, how long does
it take to make up that extra nickel?
This is very typical employer propaganda. Of
course, if it had its total effect inside the
unions, I doubt if they would ever have struck.
It's not what you get in that particular strike;
it's what you build from that point on.
This strike didn't include a fundamental issue
such as a cut in a work day, and other long-term
sociological benefits that go beyond the question
of just wages alone. In the case of Hawaii, the
wage question took on a different significance,
whether a so-called island or semi-colonial wage
structure would continue or whether we would
finally break through.
If there was any area in which we would break
through, it would not be in sugar, because we had
already moved substantially ahead of other
agriculture. And there were other factors in
volved; everything from mechanization, large
scale agriculture, and so forth and so on.
Longshore really got to the nub of the issue,
namely, different pay for identically the same
work; if anything, harder work, because I think
I mentioned to you they did not have things such '
as sling load limits; very hard work. If you
watch th'e" men in the hold there muling cargo,
they really put out. All kinds of employer gim
micks which fundamentally were just speed-ups.
It was not uncommon, if a shipowner was in a
hurry to get a ship out and wanted to finish up
loading, he would pass the word along and the
walking boss or the gang boss would tell the
members of the gang, "If you can finish this
thing up in say seven hours, we'll give you ten -'
(a system in Hawaii called ukupau ; pau means
finished. ) Incidentally, a not unusual thing in
Hawaii industry.
518
LG: There were certain very dirty jobs around the
mills during repair seasons, for example, where
they had to tear down the old furnaces for the
boiler; this was a difficult and dirty job. None
of the workers would take it on an hourly basis,
or if they did, they would sure take their time.
The employers solved that one by making
ukupau deals. "Okay, men, get the job done and
here' s how much you get paid for it." Sort of
a business of sub-contracting a particular job.
But these in the case of longshore became speed
up methods. Sure, the guys might have made a
couple of extra bucks on that shift, but they
also set a new work pace and that, of course, is
in the back of the supervisor's mind and the
walking boss ....
Ward: If they can do it?
LG: If they can do it, v/hy not do it again?
Ward: Without the extra pay?
LG: Correct, so that it was a hardworking situation
for all the longshoremen; even though the issue
was confined to wages, it carried all the
sociological overtones.
Ward: And the differential was 15 cents, wasn't it?
LG: No, it was far more than 15 cents. The differen
tial must have been 15 plus 32, something like
47 cents an hour because the longshoremen on the
West Coast had just gotten a 15 cent boost.
Somewhere in the negotiations I mentioned the
fact that if the employers even offered us as
little as 16 cents -
Ward: Oh, yes!
LG: There would be no strike even though it would
take 32 years to come up to parity. The
employers saw it as upsetting the whole Hawaii
wage structure; their traditional relationship
to people who worked, what they paid them. This
ran all the way from a housemaid to a guy working
longshore.
519
LG: This is what really jelled everything in the
Islands, in the sense of a "barrage "by the employ
ers and the newspapers, which they were closely
allied with, of course. The moment the strike
"began, the publicity "barrage was just endless,
continued throughout the length of the strike,
including front page editorials that were
addressed to "Dear Joe".
The "Dear Joe" Stories
LG: The "Dear Joe" editorials were a report,
- apocryphal, of course - to Joseph Stalin of
how the union was carrying out its appointed
job of destroying the economy of Hawaii and
taking over the Islands. The workers ought to
appreciate the geographical and climatic
surroundings in which they were working; it was
a different kind of life than these people who
had to suffer in San Francisco or in Los Angeles;
so these things as I said, jelled very quickly.
I recall saving one copy of an issue of the
newspaper which sort of carried the ball on the
whole thing - the Honolulu Advertiser -
Ward: The most conservative of the whole bunch, wasn't
it?
LG: By far. The Star Bulletin at the time was owned
by Joe Parrington. Parrington was the Hawaii
delegate to Congress - this was before statehood.
Parrington wasn't quite as intemperate about the
strike, and later on he did carry some stories on
developments in Washington, including quite a
beef that developed around the question of
arbitration, with Senator Wayne Morse carrying
the ball back there.
The word around was that Farrington was in ill
grace because he carried some fairly accurate
reports without a violent condemnation of the
idea of arbitration, because v/e had proposed
arbitration very early in the strike. Even on
that one the newspapers carried editorials and
cartoons.
520
LG: They had one, for example, of a couple in the
dark and he's turning to her and saying, "Well,
let's arbitrate," with all the salacious over
tones. In other words, everything they could
pull out. As I said, I saved one copy of the
Advertiser and if you are interested I'll look
around and see if I can find it.
Ward: Yes, I would be.
LG: This one page had a headline, six of the eight
columns on the front page devoted to blasts on
the strike in one way or another, and another
"Dear Joe" editorial. This was the employers'
strike bulletin - that's all.
Ward: What effect did it have on the members?
LG: I'd say that in some areas of the union the guys
sort of pulled back into a shell a little bit,
not a great deal; none of them ran, and that in
cluded the other groups where they might be more
isolated, say, on the sugar plantations.
I know a lot of it was picked up by people
like school teachers, who would sort of scold
some of our members; here were these longshoremen
asking for more money than schoolteachers made.
Just to give you an idea of the ^atmosphere: I'd
gone out to a restaurant where I ate quite often.
I planned on having some dinner without this
continual barrage of work and the bullshit that
was really flying around town. It had reached
a stage of pretty bad hysteria.
All of a sudden the bartender comes over to
me and says, "Look, there's a group of ladies
there; they'd like very much to buy you a drink."
I figured it would be the usual stuff, you know;
nobody wanted to buy you a drink; they wanted to
talk to you. They don't want to talk with you,
they want to talk at you.
I sat down and there were I guess four or five
women there - school teachers. They had an even
ing out together after a meeting or something,
and I hardly got to the drink when ....
521
Ward: Well, how did they know who you were?
LG: Oh, there were a lot of pictures in the papers;
they knew who I was, all right.
Ward: You were a public figure already?
LG: Ch, by that time, yes. They started right in.
What right did the union have? These Filipinos -
a lot of the longshoremen were Filipinos and some
of them had not been in Hawaii terribly long -
what business did they have demanding wages far
in excess of what the teachers had? We'd heard
it before, not uncommon.
I let them go on for a while, trying to parry
the stuff as best I could; this was a business of
trying to tell them "Okay, we're not asking too
much. You're not getting enough." That did not
satisfy them. If it had been the other way around
that they had gotten theirs first, they wouldn't
say it, you see. Then, if the longshoremen wanted
to come along, that's different.
There was the usual jive that they'd had four
years of college, teachers' training and so forth
and so on. I didn't want to get into a quarrel,
so I decided to break it up. I said, "Well, the
main reason these longshoremen are asking for
more, the reason they're entitled to more, and
that includes the Filipinos you're talking about,
is that they're a lot more intelligent than you
are . "
That, of course, led to a tremendous explosion
and finally someone said, "What to you mean by
that?" I said, "Very simple - they had the brains
to organize. And when you have it, you might do
better too." That broke it off and I walked out
and ate somewhere else. So, it was that sort of
atmosphere.
522
The "Broom Brigade"
LG: Very shortly after the strike "began, a so-called
""broom brigade" appeared. The broom brigade
initially was made up of haole women, wives of
superintendents, owners; they must have been
alter egos of the Chamber of Commerce people;
the wives of some of the big cheeses, obviously
organized by the haole community.
They appeared in front of the union office,
down at Pier 11 where the Mats on came in. I told
you about Paul Robeson coming in there on the
Lurline?
Ward: I don't think you did.
LG: Sure, when Paul Robeson came down for a series
of concerts.
Ward: You mentioned Paul a couple of times, but not in
that context, as I remember.
LG: Sure, he came down on the Lurline. In fact, Jack
and I induced him to come down there.
Ward: What relationship did it have to any union events
in Hawaii?
LG: We were the first ones to sponsor a concert
artist in some of these sugar places like Wailua
or out on Honokaa.
Ward: I see, that would have been after the first sugar
strike.
LG: Yes, it was after the sugar strike. It could have
been after the pineapple strike. I remember going
to pick up Paul because he was staying at the
Niumalu where I stayed and we drove down to pick
up Larry Brown off the ship, because his pianist
wouldn't fly. Earl Robinson (composer of the
song, "Joe Hill") came down at the same time.
"We the Women" or "The Broom Brigade" picketing
ILWU offices at Pier 11, Honolulu, May 31, 1949
On California Street in San Francisco, 1949,
local longshoremen and warehousemen in support
of Hawaii longshore strike, picketed Governor
Ingrain Stainback of Hawaii while he was making
523
LG: And we sponsored the concert tour; he sang twice
at McKinley. You know, Paul had this amazing
quick ear; within a couple of days he had picked
up Filipino songs, a Hawaiian song and, of course,
he already had Chinese songs; so it was a fascin
ating response he got from people as he moved
around Hawaii.
Ward: You mean, the songs he could render in their own
language?
LG: Right - right, and it was a very effective tour.
I think he was the only concert artist who would
appear for many, many years outside of Honolulu.
They'd come to Honolulu, put on a performance with
the Honolulu symphony, maybe, but they didn't go
anywhere else. Marian Anderson had appeared once
in Wailuku - that's over on Maul. Whether anybody
else had ever appeared there I don't know, but to
have somebody like Paul Robeson going out to a
sugar town or up to Honokaa - that was really
something quite different.
Ward: Well, this is where . . . . ?
LG: That ;just happened to be the location where the
Lurline used to tie up, the passenger pier. Our
office was there; a wide street, sort of, not
exactly a park, a few palm trees; it wasn't well
kept up. It was in front of the office with a
small division there where a car could pull up.
These women formed a circle around this tiny
park and would parade around there with their
brooms, the brooms signifying that we are supposed
to be swept out of Hawaii. The so-called broom
brigade went on for a long, long time.
There were a few ugly things, but luckily the
guys in the main kept their heads, and after a
while began to have a lot of fun with it. This
was also another reflection of the same period,
with photographs of the broom brigade, stories
quoting the women about what had to be done, all
these evil forces that were trying to dominate
Hawaii; the usual stuff.
Ward: And this broom brigade, did it function like a
picket line, practically? Did they circle around?
524
LG: Yes, circling around and ....
Ward: Was it erratic or on a regular basis?
LG: They tried to continue it on a regular basis.
That's when they made some mistakes - bad ones.
Some of the women, after a while, decided that it
was a little too much of a chore for them, so
why not have their maids do it? All of a sudden
you would see one or two Japanese, maybe a Fili-
pina, in the line of march doing their ladyship's
stint for her.
That's when our guys began to get very, very
abrasive; they would stand around and spot some
of these gals; they knew who they were; you'd hear
the mumbling under the breath and what they were
saying was not complimentary.
Much of the talk, practically all of it was in
pidgin, and they were using some of their slang,
you know. These are Hawaiian expressions they
use for a company fink; and pretty soon these poor
local gals, if they could have found a hole, they
would have gone right in; they were so unhappy. I
think on that score the haole women did themselves
more harm than good.
Pour hours walking around in that hot sun is
not the most pleasant thing in the world and I
doubt if they had done it ever before in their
lives; maybe around the swimming pool. Some of
the women came down there in their high-heeled
shoes, and that was wonderful to watch.
Then, one of our guys, Ernie Arena, a very good
craftsman, got the bright idea, why don't we
entertain these women? I guess he talked to Jack
about it and Jack figured okay. Ernie brought
down one of these portable phonographs with a loud
speaker and hooked the whole thing up. Then he
started entertaining them. He got some marches
and started them off very slowly; then he kept
picking up the tempo.
Well, you know what happens when somebody is
moving around and you start a march in a certain
rhythm which is fairly comfortable. Pretty soon
525
LG: the tempo goes up; it took a while before they
realized what was going on! Ernie was just wear
ing them down right through their shoe leather;
he was having nothing "but fun for a few days.
Then, he decided that wasn't getting all the
results he wanted, plus the fact that by that time
people in the area would come around to listen to
the records because they knew something was going
on. So, he digs up a whole group of Chinese
funeral chants. They were in this extremely high
intonation of weird keening; this would drive
practically anybody out of their minds.
As a matter of fact, the main complaint was
inside the union office! The workload was enor
mous and the gals, while they understood what we
were trying to do, felt this was sort of rough to
work under. That didn't faze Ernie - he was
having himself a ball.
The next group of records he got were by Spike
Jones, some of which were a take-off on Hawaii
tunes and some of which were just plain coarse,
about the old grey mare, she ain't what she used
to be. (laughter) There was a lot of burping and
farting, so he kept playing these. And they were
close enough without being called vulgar; nobody
could attack Spike Jones. After all, he was an
American performer. This sort of thing was going
on and it gave the broom brigade a little more
levity. .
Then, Henry Schmidt was down there ....
##
Ward: So, Henry Schmidt was very busy.
LG: Oh, he was down there, even before the strike
broke, or came down there immediately. And he
camped with it for the entire strike. We had set
up a soup kitchen across the street from the
office and down about a block. They'd gotten the
second floor of an old building where they were
able to get a stove and a lot of cooking stuff;
that's where they fed the longshoremen and the
families.
526
LG:
Ward
LG:
Ward
LG:
They were getting good help from the plantations,
small farmers, from fishing parties; I recall
one time they brought in about 18 turtles, and not
small turtles. Everyone of them must have weighed
over 100 pounds. There was a week or so of the
finest eating you ever had. Turtle steak, turtle
soup, turtle stew, hash; good food.
Henry decided that the thing to do was not to
take these women all that seriously. If they were
willing to stay out there in the hot sun, fine,
and he finally got somebody to bring out a little
water, although everybody said, "The hell with it.
Let them have their maids go for that too." Henry
picked up pidgin very quickly, so he produced a
whole menu in pidgin and distributed it to the
women and invited them to lunch. None of them
showed.
In the soup kitchen?
In the soup kitchen, naturally. It was the only
place we could invite them for lunch; we didn't
have any money. That was just like Henry.
It was during the strike that I had to make a
quick trip back to the mainland - not for very
long. On trip back, Eddie Tangen was with me.
Ihat was because the Lurline had come in about a
week after the strike and the crew piled off. The
Marine Cooks and Stewards took the lead and walked
off the ship.
Eddie was the secretary of the Marine Cooks and
Stewards.
I think he was secretary, right. Anyway, Eddie
came along. He knew the Islands fairly well and,
of course, he knew the men. By that time the
company decided that they were not going to keep
putting these men up in Hawaii in hopes that the
Lurline would sail.
They knew it was a long drawn out beef, so
there was the question of making arrangements for
the seamens' transportation back, and that they
were paid off and so on. There v/ere other groups
of seamen who had piled off. Do you remember Mike
Snyder in San Francisco?
527
Ward: No -
LG: He's now with OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health
Administration). After he left the ships he became
a member of the Electrical Workers Union; he was
an electrician; I recall him leading a walkout on
one of the NMU ships. The Sailors Union looked
the other way; at least they didn't actively break
the strike on us; that was important.
Fun On An Airplane
LG: Anyway, on this trip down, Eddie Tangen was with
me; Jim Blaisdell was on board the plane and so
was a guy named Duncan Me Bride; this was an old,
old Hawaii family.
V/ard: I think you mentioned McBride once before.
LG: I'm not sure - I mentioned McCabe, Hamilton and
Renny - not McBride. There's a sugar plantation
called McBride on the island of Kauai. Anyway,
I think he was with Castle and Cooke. Jim and
McBride were sitting up in first class and Eddie
and I were back there in the tourist section.
Jim comes back there and says, "Why don't you
and your friend - I had introduced him to Eddie -
come up and have a drink?" I said, "Well, you're
up in the first class section." He says, "Well,
that's all right; we'll make arrangements to have
a drink in the men's room there." I think it was
a Boeing Stratocruiser and it had a very large
place where there were several lounge seats where
you could wait and take your turn for a shave, a
real first class lounge.
So, we sat around there; Jim had a bottle,
we had a drink. Somehow he found a pair of dice
in his pocket and we started a crap game that
went on for most of the trip. Eddie hit a terri
fic streak of luck and he just couldn't miss.
Pretty soon I had been cleaned out and Jim Blais
dell had been cleaned out.
528
LG: McBride managed to get in his last few pennies
to cover one bet. It's funny how you recall some
of these little things - Eddie rolls out and his
point was eight. He rolls again and sure enough
it was eight, except one of the dice was resting
against the little combing at the bottom - cocked
dice! Blaisdell, I think, wanted to leave with
out a parachute at that point.
Eddie doesn't say a word, picks up the dice,
rolls them again and it's another eight. Lucky
they were Blaisdell 's dice; so Eddie cleans out
the game. I'll never forget Eddie turning around
to MacBride as we were leaving the plane and
saying, "If you fellows need money for cab fare "
But their wives were waiting for them.
That story was so good, I told it to the guys
when I got down there. I don't know how much
Eddie made on the trip, maybe a couple of hundred
bucks. The guys said, "Well, you better get some
beer." So, he winds up bringing about 20 cases
of beer to the soup kitchen. Some of the guys
said, "Hell, with that kind of money you can bring
us some whiskey too." Anyway, by the time we got
through with Eddie it became an expensive trip
for him.
The strike hadn't been all that long when
Blaisdell wanted to have a session; he was riding
around in an open car. I mentioned it to Jack
and he said, "Go ahead and meet with him and see
what happens." I went out to his house and
Steele was along; I was sitting in the middle
and Blaisdell was driving.
As we drove up underneath a portico of his
house, a centipede dropped in my lap. Blaisdell
and Steele left that car so quickly, it was un
believable. I didn't know what to do, but the
centipede ran, luckily. Well, I happened to
mention the incident to somebody; funny how all
kinds of superstitions and everything else come
out in situations of that sort.
Somebody concluded that we're in luck now;
that's a good sign, if a centipede drops on you
without biting you. So, they have these Hawaiian
529
LG: things, like you'll hear expressions "by one worker,
"Somebody tried to give me cahuna. " That means
tried to give him almost like an evil eye, or bad
spirits. Then people will have certain animals
who they figure are their friends, like this guy
I've known for many, many years down there, this
great fisherman; a shark was his friend, amakua.
Anyway, some of these things just pop out during
a strike.
Ward: That little incident kind of heartened the guys,
I guess.
o
LG: Oh, you reach for anything. Incidentally, Henry
loved little things like ditties and doggerel. I
don't know if you ever heard Henry play the
harmonica, but that's the sort of thing he enjoys.
He also wrote a version of "My Lurline lies over
the ocean"; he composed that one and wrote the
words for it.
Ward: Oh, yes, I've heard that one.
LG: So, the spirit of the guys was good. They hung
tough. Weil, I mentioned the broom brigade; of
course, things of that sort also set off a lot of
nuts. Of course, how many are nuts and how many
are paid to do it? You don't know. There was an
attempt to burn down the office; they started a
fire which luckily was caught before it did too
much damage.
Threatening telephone calls became sort of
customary and after a while we worked something
out with the switchboard operator to hang on to
her calls when I wanted to get some sleep. And
then there were a whole series of efforts to break
the strike. The big crusade in Hawaii was that
we v/ere trying to starve out the Islands.
They had some writers going out to the ranches,
because cattle feed in many cases was brought in
for milk production. Cattle were also imported.
Hawaii didn't have milk cattle - it had some
range cattle over on the Big Island, not on Oahu,
and the range cattle didn't make bad beef, but
Hawaii didn't have milk cattle. That was all
brought from the mainland, and a lot of food had
530
LG: to "be brought down too. For example, you had no
"barley, hay, oats or other feed like "beet tops
for the cattle.
So there was a big campaign there that the
cattle were all being starved. Of course, the
ranchers would give the newsmen the usual thing
they wanted, "Yes, I only have about two days
supply." Partly because they were also being
ripped off by the ones who were importing the
stuff, you see. They were being held up; all
kinds of black market and racketeering including
selling rice under the counter, as though there
was a great shortage.
Then, that all the chickens were dying. I
don't know, they found a couple of sick chickens
to show to the newspapermen. Here v/e had announced
time and time again that we were prepared to un
load all perishables and essential food supplies;
nobody would ever sit down and discuss it with
us, you see.
Strike-Breaking Attempts
LG-: Then they tried to bring in some strikebreakers
to operate the ships. First, they started
strictly on this business of unloading essential
food supplies and they also got the thing covered
with a legal fiction by going to court and get
ting an injunction against picketing; interfering
with the people who were going down there to
discharge these ships. In other words, they came
in under a certain type of court protection.
I remember that the first group was led in
there by a guy who had absolutely no interest
in any of this; he was from a wealthy family, and
his name was Kenji Kimble. His family owned the
Halekulani Hotel, an old hotel that was near the
Royal Hawaiian; it used to be a favorite stopping
place for a number of people from the mainland.
Kenji Kimble led this group through.
531
LG: I remember being down on the picket line with
the guys when he was going through. I said,
"Kenji, you'll never live it down." "You guys
are trying to destroy the Islands," he said. I
said, "You know that's bullshit." He says, "Well,
we're going in." He was all cranked up, that's
all. He wasn't that bad an egg, but just all
wrapped up in this business; he was another self-
appointed saviour of Hawaii, and they did unload
the stuff, although -
Ward: Lid Kimble himself work?
LG: I doubt it. He just led the group through there,
you see.
Ward: But did he go down the hold and wrestle the . . .?
LG: (laughing) Probably no - he wouldn't go down
there.
Ward: Because it's not easy work for a guy who is not
used to it.
LG: No, it's not easy work. How they got on the ship,
I'm not sure myself. I think the sailors had
gotten off the ship. These were the beginnings
of an attempt to run strikebreakers on.
Ward: What kind of men did they get? Racial? What?
Mixed?
LG: They were local guys, mixed, but no Japanese
among them. There were a number of hapahaoles,
sort of Portuguese, English, Hawaii-English.
No Japanese and I don't recall any Filipinos.
Our guys were there to look at them very sharply
to see who in the hell they were. They weren't
workers that our people recognized, and they knew
almost everybody in Hawaii.
Ward: There weren't very many of them?
LG: No - no, there was only a handful. That was their
first effort, six or seven carloads of them,
couldn't be more than about thirty men all togeth
er that went down there. It wasn't a big opera
tion; only a few tons of the stuff, didn't amount
to anything.
532
LG: We made all kinds of proposals but they were
ignored. We said, "Okay, we'll work some of
this stuff after it goes through a clearance
committee, provided that whatever we pick up
in the strike we'll get retroactively." Initial
ly, our position had been that we'd work it if
they paid us our demands, but the public relations
issue was more important. We'd just get the job
done. There were no takers.
Later on, the Territory got into the business.
Governor Ingram Stainback was a real arch enemy
of ours, an appointed governor, and he was vicious
in all respects. He got into it up to his ears,
including ramming Acts 2 and 3 through the Hawaii
terrirorial legislature.
Under Acts 2 and 3> the Territory could go
into the stevedoring business. The general idea
was that they would pay the prevailing rate of
pay and seize the stevedoring and shipping indus
try because of the essential needs of Hawaii.
Then when the strike was over they would return
the properties to the employers. As to where
the workers came out when it was all over would
be another story.
The hangovers of that legislation are still
around; Senator (Daniel) Inouye is still pushing
for this Hawaii Labor Protection Act which is in
effect a federal provision to provide for seizure
of the industry in the case of an offshore
maritime strike that affects a place like Hawaii
or Alaska.
Ward: I thought the legislature turned pretty good
because of the political effect you'd had in the
sugar strike before?
LG: It had been, up to that point.
Ward: It changed?
LG: It collapsed is more like it. One of the guys I
remember, for example, was a very influential
legislator. He was Speaker of the House, or
something; he's not there anymore; we dumped him
when he ran for Speaker - Yince Esposito.
533
LG-: I recall him ducking us completely; he was against
us. I'm trying to get across to you that there
was a complete cleavage in the community, all the
way from the legislature through the social
structure; school teachers, businessmen, obviously
the haole s and the Big Five, were all against us.
Finding haole support was almost impossible.
Even some of the guys who had been very friend
ly to us, a guy like Canlis; he was all cranked
up on the goddam thing; I recall a very bad
argument with him where he kept telling me how
we were wrecking Hawaii. So, I said, "Look, you're
doing all right, aren't you?" "Sure, I'm doing
very well." He had Canlis 1 Broiler, a fancy
eating house, where none of us could afford to
eat.
I said to him, "By the way, what did you do
during the depression?" I'd heard somewhere that
he had been on relief. He said, "Oh, I was broke,
I was on relief like a lot of other people."
"That's not unusual," I said, "So was I. Now,
you're doing fairly well right now, aren't you?"
He said, "Yeah."
I said, "Then, what the hell are you squawking
about, just because somebody else is trying to
do something for himself?" But you can't get
anywhere with these people; this guy had become
so identified with the employers down there;
this is the way they felt, and he felt the same
way.
V/ard: So, you had no haole support at all?
LG-: The nearest thing we came to some support was
Paul Fagan, oddly enough. As I told you, I had
met Paul Fagan earlier. I guess it was primarily
during the wind-up of the '48 mainland strike in
longshore, but the strike had been on only a week
or so when the Lurline came in, as I told you,
and Paul Fagan was on the Lurline.
I decided what was wrong with just going out
and having a talk with him. I knew- that Fagan
was one of the big stockholders in Mats on - he
and Walter Buck. Later the two of them became
534
LG-: extremely influential in resolving the strike.
I guess they v/ere the two largest minority stock
holders; not agency stockholders as such. There
were no majority stockholders in the true sense
of the word because the ownership was divided .by
the Big Five in the main and Alexander Baldwin
had a piece, Castle & Cooke had a piece, I know,
and C. Brewer.
Well, anyway, I went out and gave Fagan the
whole story of what had happened. I told him
what we were asking for, including what I had
told the employers and Hillenbrand off the record,
that we would settle for 16 cents, even though
it would still put us a long way from parity.
After he listened for a while, he said - he
had some sort of funny way of computing what
workers were entitled to, "What you're saying is,
the way I figure things out, you're entitled to
18 cents." This was his own crazy mathematics,
you see: "And what you're prepared to settle
for is not too bad." I said", "Well, I thought
you should have the facts, that's all." He said,
"I want to make some phone calls, and I wish you
would wait here." I think v/e were having
something to eat in the kitchen. He went into
another room and was gone a long, long time.
I found out later he had been talking to Sandy
Walker of American Factors, one of the king-pins
of the employers. He was the tough, tough guy
in that whole structure. Fagan came back, com
pletely crestfallen and he said, "Oh, there's no
such thing as a settlement around." I said, "I
didn't think so, I was just giving you the facts."
Later, Fagan and his wife became personae non
grata in Hawaii. They spent a great deal of time
down there and of course all their social life
was with these same people. They were sort of
isolated; that's how tight the community v/as, how
strong the feelings were.
In the midst of the strike, I guess it was
about three months old, there were a number of
other things going on; one was an attempt to load
the Mats on ships with regular Hawaii supplies and
everything else and bring the ships down ....
535
Ward: On the west coast?
LG: In San Francisco and of course our position was
"no dice" unless there were certain foods and
essentials and nothing else. We weren't going to
see Mats on start making a killing during the
strike. And they went into court on an injunc
tion and I think it was in front of (Federal
Judge George) Harris again, though Harris was
not at that time the judge on the Bridges,
Robertson and Schmidt case.
I recall being subpoenaed. I was sitting in
some ante-room where they keep witnesses and
Sevier was there, you know, Randolph Sevier.
Then I saw how deep the commitment was on the
part of the employers; we were talking, a perfect
ly friendly conversation. I said, "Look, an
injunction isn't going to do you much good."
Because what happened would be the longshore
men would be dispatched from the longshore hall;
they would take the dispatch; they would go down
to the ship, and for one reason or another, they
would decide they wouldn't work. They would just
say, "Forget it, I don't want the job." And
nobody's going to work there. The feeling was
strong on the coast; good solidarity.
I told Sevier, "You can't get members to work.
We'll live up to an injunction, but there's
nothing in the contract that says you can force
a man to take a job. And you're not going to get
anybody from the outside; I'll tell you that."
I'll be damned, Sevier goes before the judge
and repeats the whole conversation, obviously
figuring that the judge v/ould take great umbrage
at the whole thing. After all, this was an
announcement by myself in advance that we're go
ing to defy the injunction. But Harris kept his
cool and said, "Well, I don't know what there is
in the law that you can force somebody to work -
as an individual."
They issued the injunction, but nothing came
of it. We lowered the anchor on the strike on
the west coast, so that in itself became an
536
LG-: enormous handicap to any operations in Hawaii;
but it did not stop them from every kind of an
effort to bring cargo down there.
As I said, the Territory got in the act and
passed Acts 2 and 3 and around that they formed
a new stevedoring company. I forget what it was
called - something like American Stevedoring
Company - always "American" - and they made an
effort to open up the waterfront and recruit men.
There was quite a set-to in Honolulu. A beef
broke out and some of the strikebreakers got
hurt.
I remember some great oldtimers like Simeon
Bagasol and others, loyal union members over the
years. We defended them on attempts to deport
them later, and he's still down there, I guess,
unless he's retired. These guys made the clink;
we had all these legal battles going on. There
weren't that many attempts to break strike in
the other ports.
Ward': This was in Honolulu?
LG: Honolulu, primarily.
Ward: This was the test, right there?
LG: Oh, sure - this was the real source of strength;
it was a large group of stevedores, too.
Ward: How many strike-breaking attempts would you say
there were?
LG: The principal strikebreaking attempts were the
ones I mentioned to you by Zenji Kimble and on
a more formal basis by the Territory. It gives
you an idea of the power in a situation like that,
This was not a good economic period in Hawaii;
there was a fair amount of unemployment. People
were told that unless they took these jobs they
would be cut off relief or any Territorial help;
really forced conscription in every sense of the
word.
You think it would have ended there but it
did not. There were still attempts to bring in
strikebreakers and to man the ships. Somebody
537
LG: had reached a guy who turned traitor. He was
a San Francisco longshoreman. His name was
(Joseph) Maldonado.
Ward: Sounds like a Filipino?.
LG: No, he wasn't - some sort of a combination
origin of Spanish or Latin; he came down there
all of a sudden, self-appointed; somebody paid
his transportation and everything else. You
could only reach one conclusion there. Suddenly
he's getting all kinds of newspaper publicity.
He is going to lead these longshoremen into the
right kind of a union, and so forth and so on.
Ward: Where had he been on the west coast?
LG: San Francisco.
Ward: A member of Local 10?
LG: I think so, right. Handling him was no great
headache. Here he was making all these state
ments: "I'm going to do this and the other
thing." Finally, somebody got hold of him:
"You don't have to be running around to the
papers. The longshoremen are meeting on such
and such a date and you're welcome to come to
the meeting."
And he was just shot to ribbons by the
membership. Most of them didn't do much talking.
Just said, "Let him go, for Christ's sake, he's
just an out and out fink." He was lucky to leave
there, that's all. He came and left in a hurry.
He just couldn't turn a goddam thing and that
gives you an idea of the solidarity of the guys.
By that time I think the newspapers had over
reached themselves, too. It had reached the
stage where the guys would pick up the paper in
the morning and start having fun with all those
headlines. In a peculiar way, guys who've been
kicked around for many, many years consider this
stuff very flattering.
The most horrible thing about the place was
that workers, particularly unionized workers,
felt they were simply ignored. Bear in mind
538
LG: that the only time they get any kind of mention
is when they go on strike. There's no mention
of all their hard work at all; no mention of the
times when they're in trouble.
And of course we pounded away at the usual
thing; "Tell us the last time any one of these
damn newspapers had any single kind word to say
about any group of workers in any of their
demands." They all knew about the 1946 strike,
the 1947 beef and the '48 longshore strike, so
that the educational process that goes on in a
situation like that is unbelievable - very fast.
You get yourself a college education in a
couple of months. So Maldonado died lousy; no
big headache. What became much more of a head
ache was when the Territory decided to use the
whole official machinery to literally bring to
bear all the pressure of government on the
longshoremen down there.
This took several forms - one was the indict
ment of Bridges, Robertson and Schmidt. Harry
had finally gotten his citizenship after the
war. You remember the Supreme Court decision
that Justice (Prank) Murphy - I forget, was he
ever Chief Justice?
Ward: No, Justice Murphy.
LG: But this is the one where Murphy wrote this
famous decision that "this case will stand
forever as a monument to man's inhumanity to
man." After that Harry had gotten his citizen
ship. I was not in town when he went up for his
swearing-in. The two people who were supposed
to be there for the swearing-in ceremony were
(Henry) Schmidt and (Paul) Schnur.
'.Yard: Some technicality on Schnur.
LG: Schnur was a naturalized citizen and didn't have
his citizenship papers with him, so he stepped
aside and Bob Robertson, who was born in this
country, took his place. That was the extent of
Bob Robertson's participation in this so-called
conspiracy. The indictment against Bridges,
539
LG: Robertson and Schmidt was that they had conspired
together to defraud the government. Defrauding
the government took the form of Harry getting his
citizenship, so they were participating in a
fraud together with him - all of them equally
guilty - whereby they deprived the government by
helping obtain citizenship papers for Harry. Of
course it was just a rejuvenation of all the old
charges against Bridges on Communist party member
ship, and so forth and so on.
This indictment takes place right in the midst
of the strike. Henry Schmidt is down in Hawaii
at the time of the indictment and so he is served
the papers there. Tom Clark was the attorney
general of the United States at the time. He
issued the gratuitous statement that this
indictment ought to help clear up the situation
in Hawaii - that blatant.
Then along comes Governor Stainback and 'he
appoints a fact-finding board. The strike, by
that time, was two or three months old. This
fact finding board met at the old lolani Palace.
There were five as I recall on the panel. I
think the chairman of the fact finding board was
a man named James L. Coke, a retired justice of
the Territorial Supreme Court. Another was a
man named Harold S. Roberts from the university.
He was a so-called expert on labor ' relations
and as phony as a nine dollar bill.
The question was, do we take part in the hear
ing or not? I wouldn't say that there was
agreement on the thing. Harry had some reserva
tions on even taking any part in the hearing.
I was down there and I felt that the hearing
supplied a peculiar opportunity to really take
on the employers on the whole background of the
strike, so we decided to be present: Jack and
myself and a delegation of longshoremen.
The lineup in that lolani Palace - I guess it
was their assembly chamber or their senate
chamber - was all you had to see to understand
what was going on. Sitting on our side were
longshoremen and some other guys from the union,
period. The other side had the most unbelievable
540
LG: array of anybody the employers could get. Here
was the whole haole community lined up in
phalanxes on the other side and with the employers
supposedly there to present their side of the
story. Well, we started off; the thing to do was
to get rid of the fact finding board, and to do
it publicly. In retrospect, I think it was correct.
It finally worked out as we wanted it.
I started off by giving an opening presenta
tion that went on for several hours, and if I've
ever done a thorough job of summarizing a parti
cular set of facts behind a strike on a socio
logical basis, it was in that hearing. I was
getting to just one point, namely, that the
employers had torpedoed the hearing before it
started.
I went into the whole business about proposing
arbitration; that as far as the employers were
concerned they had announced in advance they
would not arbitrate, so they were not bound by
the fact-finding results at all. The only
circumstances under which they would listen to
the fact finding board, and they had already said
so publicly, was "If the board comes along and
says that the employers are right." There's one
thing the employers will not do, and that is
leave open this question of whether or not we
close the gap and get equal pay for equal work.
Of course, I had to go back into the nature of
industry, the nature of the work, the conditions
of work. So, this became the nub of it. In
advance, we said, "Look, this fact finding board
will come along and it will support the employers
fundamentally. They might give us a little more
than two cents, but they are not going to close
the gap. We are prepared to arbitrate how much
the gap is closed; yes, even take our chances in
arbitration on 'Should the gap be closed? 1 The
employers have taken a flat position; they will
not arbitrate."
It became a very tense hearing, extremely
tense. At one point, we decided to take a
recess and I just said, "We're taking a recess,"
and walked out with our guys; primarily to cool
off a bit. I remember coming back and the judge
541
LG-: saying, "Look, this is the same as a legal
proceeding: if you want a recess, you can have
it, but you have to ask permission of the court."
I didn't think this was a court; it was a fact
finding hearing, and if we wanted to caucus for
a while, that was our business. But it was about
as tight as any hearing could get to be.
Sure enough the fact finding board came along
with a recommendation that the strike be settled
based on 14 cents an hour. Our figuring was
correct; they would never accede to the 15 or 16
cents, the one thing the board would never touch
because the employers had announced in advance
that if they did, the board was just dead.
I'm sure that this was understood by the
government before the fact finding board was ever
appointed; they all knew what the hell they were
going to do. The board's decision was unanimous
including this so-called friend of labor, Roberts.
That ended his pretense of being like a friend.
But that was not the end - not the end. Along
came a telegram from Washington, as I recall,
Secretary of the Interior, whoever he was; Presi
dent Truman sent a wire urging our acceptance;
Joe Farrington, G-overnor Stainback, of course.
So, here was all this pressure from Washington,
from the administrative end - not the legislative
end - that we accept the fact finding report.
And we decided, okay, we might as well go all the
way on the thing. So, we had a special meeting
of Longshore and the place was jammed. We met in
some school; it was a compulsory membership
meeting.
We even pulled the pickets off because we
wanted everybody there. Ch, the place was just
jammed and I called the governor's office and
said, "Well, we read about the fact finding
report. Is this going to be officially delivered
to the union?" He said, "What do you mean by
that?" I said, "Well, we're having a special
meeting and we suggest your representatives be
there." He said, "Pine." So, just as the meet
ing was started, in walk two people from the
542
LG-: governor's office. And they give us the fact-
finding report and were about to leave. I said,
"No, I want to ask a favor." "What is that?"
"I want vou to stay for a little while because
we plan to take a vote and would like you to
stay here as official observers. That's how
simple it is."
Well, they had not much choice. They couldn't
very well give us the fact-finding report as the
agents of the Territory and then walk away. I
said, "No, stick around." Well, once again the
broom brigade was outside, distributing leaflets
urging the workers to get rid of these outsiders,
this mainland leadership and the usual crap; do
the right thing because after all this was their
own territory; they lived in Hawaii and so forth
and so on; and they ought to accept the fact-
finding committee report.
By that time the longshoremen knew what the
hearing was all about and there was no problem
of defining the issues. So, here were these two
territorial officers. I deliberately made my
presentation extremely brief, not more than eight
or ten minutes on the background and the fact-
finding hearing.
Some of the guys said, "No need to vote."
I said, "No, no, we're going to vote - it's
better that we do. You've got these reporters
outside, the women again - that's what they
called themselves, 'We, the women' - the observ
ers from the territorial office - we'll take a
vote. And we're taking a secret ballot vote,
too." We had the ballots all prepared - "yes"
or "no".
We took the vote right there in front of the
observers and made them stay while the count went
on and the final vote was something like -
##
543
The Ranks Hold Solid
Ward: Yes, the vote was 98 percent to reject.
LG: Right. So, I'd say in summary of that particular
phase of the strike, we came out of it stronger.
Ward: What reaction did you get, if any, from the
governor's men or his office?
LG: Oh, I don't think there was anything much left
for them to say. Though we did ask them if they
wanted to speak at the meeting or go into this
fact finding report. They didn't take it on,
saying that the report speaks for itself; they
weren't in any position to elaborate on it.
So, that ended that and the strike settled down
again for another period.
Ward: How far out was it then - three or four months?
LG: About three or four months out. I'm trying to
recall whether Acts 2 and 3 were passed by the
territorial legislature before or after. It
might have been after, partly an attempt by the
government to take other steps to open up the
waterfront. All these efforts were going on by
some employers, although in the case of the
west coast agreement an interesting thing happened,
One of the things that came out of the whole
1949 beef was an amendment to the Longshore
agreement - because the '48 strike had fixed
things on the west coast in fairly good shape -
a provision in the contract that the west coast
longshoremen did not have to handle cargo to or
from another ILWU port, it would be like Hawaii
or Alaska, where our members were on strike; a
feature of the contract that was added primarily
as a result of that Hawaii beef.
The strike settled down a bit after that and
somewhere in there I went to this meeting in
France of the W?TU (World Federation of Trade
Unions) in 1949 in Marseille.
544
LG: But the longshore strike continued; by that time
a lot of the focus was on Washington, inasmuch as
the government had gotten in the act, as well as
the Territory. Bear in mind, the employers* attitude
even in fact-finding was that they wouldn't "be
bound, because it was only fact-finding, but neither
would they arbitrate; so that the secondary theme
going all through the strike was the demand for
arbitration. It finally jelled in some sessions
in Washington, D. C.
Harry went back for those. Harry had been down
in Hawaii during the strike.
Ward: I was going to ask what role he played.
LG: He played a very significant role at one stage
of the game; they had gotten some anti-pi eke ting
injunctions by the court or something, or it
might have been under Acts 2 and 3, I'm not sure.
Harry came down there and he got hold of Art
Rutledge of the Teamsters and convinced him that
what was going on was just straight union busting
and if we didn't win the '49 strike, the whole
labor movement down there would take a very bad
setback.
Anyway, Rutledge, whether it was partially to
needle Jack Hall - because he and Jack didn't get
along, or because Harry actually got to a tender
spot in him - either way, he and Harry turned up
on the picket line together.
Ward: Rutledge and Harry?
LG: Tes, defying the anti-picketing ordinance down
there. The morale factor was important. He play
ed a very important role in making sure that we
dropped the anchor on the west coast, so they
couldn't move cargo from this end. These were
very important factors, and later on towards the
windup of the strike, he again played a very
important role.
Ward: There was, however, a slight disagreement on what
to do about the fact-finding committee, wasn't there?
545
LG: les. Harry's idea was that we should have walked
away from it. I don't recall his objecting
particularly to the decision we had made because
the primary responsibility there was Jack's and
my own.
Ward: You were the front troops and . . . . ?
LG: Yes, Jack and I made the main decisions, right.
I knew the guys down there and the committee. The
'49 strike was very crucial in- terms of the whole
turn of Hawaii. If we lost it, I'm not saying we
would have lost what we had in pineapple or in
sugar, but we would have taken a very serious set
back in terms of our whole relationship of forces
in the Islands. If we won it, we would have made
up the ground we lost in the '47 pineapple beef
and we would be pretty thoroughly entrenched.
Ward: You were saying that things in Washington were
becoming the focal point -
LG: Because of the developments; Harry went back there.
Blaisdell was called back there for the Employers
Council and I think Cyrus Ching was there,
Secretary of Labor at the time. Harry, in a
hearing of that sort, would have everything right
at his fingertips, so that a lot of the same in
formation was just pounded home again, particularly
the arbitration issue.
The man who came out very strongly for arbitra
tion was Wayne Morse. The Administration had
already gone on record for us to accept the fact-
finding report. What Harry was hammering away at,
though, was that there was no solution in sight
unless there was arbitration. And Morse began to
pick up more and more weight, enough so that even
the Honolulu Star- Bulletin had to carry these
stories and give them some credence.
Well, by that time the strike must have been
a good five months old and pretty soon it became
evident that there would have to be some sort of
break in the employer ranks. We were hearing
about, oh, guys like Walter Buck who was a very
big stockholder, perhaps the largest one, and
Paul Pagan and Mat son.
546
LG-: Fagan was getting fed up with the whole scene -
he wanted to bring it to a head, and I recall
Walter Buck coming down to Hawaii. Harry was
there and meeting with us. Steele was about to
take over as president of the Employers' Council.
Steele came by the office and it was a very
abrasive session. He was particularly angry with
me, I guess because the employers were getting no
place.
'
I said, "Tough luck, you know what the demands
are, it's not ail that complicated." See, one of
the difficulties is that when there's a wages-only
strike, it's all you have to talk about too.
You're not talking about anything else and you
can't trade off one item for another, take a little
bit less on this and defer that and so forth.
I think it was at that session where I checked
out the idea; "I know how badly you guys are hung
up on this 14 cents; it might have to be a two-
step affair. But it has to be within the contract
year tp coincide with the west coast agreement.
There may have to be two steps to close the gap."
I'm sure he picked that up, for later on there
were indications that there would be some more
money around; I think it went to 19, then 20, then
21 in total, I recall a session with Walter Buck;
he wanted to make sure the settlement went through.
There was a sort of eeneral agreement that it
would be 21 cents (14 and 7) and obviously the
employer ranks were badly split.
Buck announced the thing is settled, period.
Harry did the same thing. There was a split in
the employers' ranks and within a day or so, the
thing settled; 21 cents is what it amounted to;
instead of getting parity over 32 years, within
a couple of years we had parity in wages. Which
they still have, they automatically get parity.
Negotiations are going on in Hawaii right now,
but not over the question of wages - they will
pick up what the west coast longshoremen get; they
have the same basic hourly rate. The place where
there is a difference is on the number of hours.
In other words, they work an eight hour day and
547
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
here we get overtime after six, which results in
a higher wage scale for the day, because on the
west coast they get 9 hours pay for 8 hours work.
Over there they get 8 hours pay for 8 hours work.
The important thing is that we did break through
and get parity and the strike was won.
That was quite a struggle.
Yep. One little item. You recall that one of the
major campaigns on the part of the employers was
the food shortage. I say the only real shortage
that might have occurred during the course of the
strike - there was enough food - there might have
been a shortage of cocktail napkins and of martini
olives. That might have occurred.
No shortage of gin?
No - everybody apparently had stocked up on that.
Bear in mind, that any time there was a rumble
down there of a possible longshore strike, the
salesmen had themselves a picnic; they sold every
thing they had on hand or anything that could be
delivered. They were yelling about the rice short
age, when they were peddling rice under the counter,
and charging exorbitant prices.
There was a warehouse fire in the Kakaako dis
trict - the Kakaako district is a pretty run down
section, close to Honolulu - it's on Ala Moana.
It used to be a very rough section of town and
there were a number of broken down warehouses. I
got a call from someone from a newspaper who said,
"You know, you better get somebody over to that
damn fire." "What fire?", I said. He mentioned
where it was and said, "Look, you'll find out
something." So, we got somebody over there; this
warehouse was on fire and it was packed with rice.
So, naturally, we did quite a bit with that; the
papers did too, on the so-called shortage of food.
On a number of occasions, we printed full page
ads ourselves. That was the time we took this ad
against the Elks Club.
Were you ever refused to run an ad?
548
LG:
Ward:
LG:
No, they took the ads all right. The Honolulu
Star- Bulletin would take them; while they weren't
pro-strike at all, they were sort of riding it
out a bit better. I think Farrington wanted to
stay friends with us; he figured there was going
to be statehood one of these days.
There's one thing at least about that strike;
the newspaper records are very complete. The
fact-finding hearing is ....
It's all in the ILWU library?
It's all in transcript and our presentation I know
we have in the library, and maybe the whole fact-
finding hearing. Probably is. The hearings in
Washington - they'll be around. The only things
that are missing, really, are some of the details
of the negotiations where you don't keep perhaps
as complete a record.
(Interview 21: 10 August, 1978)
A Rift In The Leadership?
Ward:
LG:
Lou, there's some indication that questions arose
about Harry Bridges coming over to Hawaii during
the 1949 strike, particularly with Jack Hall.
Jack is quoted in one source as asking Harry not
to come. Would you care to comment on that?
It could very well have happened, although I guess
I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I knew
that Jack had some feelings which might not have
been directly related to the '49 strike. Now,
the conversation he might have had with Harry -
I know he spoke with him on the phone. It might
have been after the BRS (Bridges-Robertson-Schmidt)
indictment. I guess you noted in the record on
the '49 strike, there's reference there to a phone
call from Jack saying that it would just stir up a
lot of hysteria and sort of take things off the
Longshore issue.
549
LG-: This might have been at the back of his mind. I
know I had no great concern about that. Henry
Schmidt, who was down there at the time, was one
of those indicted. I never noted anything which
indicated any feeling on the part of the long
shoremen or of Jack about Henry Schmidt's presence.
Quite the contrary.
Ward: There was enough redbaiting as it was.
LG: They couldn't turn any more stops, for god's
sake. There were only so many adjectives in the
English language that had been used; the papers
down there, with their missionary backgrounds,
were not going to include the four-letter words,
and now the Supreme Court has barred seven of
them. So, as to whether they could have intensi
fied their redbaiting any more, I don't know.
The only thing that might be of any relevance
is in the field of speculation, because obviously
Harry's presence and participation in the strike
was. important. It was important from the point of
view of a very basic economic element of the strike.
We had lowered the anchor on that strike by tying
up any ships or handling of ships to the west
coast. That was the key.
For example, during the longshore strike in
Hawaii over 400,000 tons of sugar backed up within
a short while, because the longshore strike
coincided with the peak of the grinding season in
sugar. The primary and almost sole outlet for
Hawaiian sugar is C&H (California and Hawaiian).
The longshoremen who worked the bulk sugar stat
ions in Hawaii were on strike, so that was shut
down.
I think the employers also realized that any
major attempt to move the sugar would have backed
right up to the sugar plantations. Those guys
were strong enough and tough enough that if there
had been any attempt to move sugar and it looked
as though the longshoremen were endangered, the
sugar plantations would have walked. And if they
had walked of course the strike would have spread.
550
LG: Oh, I know there would have been all kinds of
injunctions; you're not going to drive people back
to work with a piece of paper, and any chance of
breaking the sugar union internally, particularly
after the '48 experience, was pretty minimal. As
a matter of fact, that 400,000 tons of sugar that
piled up became a peculiar element in longshore
negotiations a couple of years later when we
negotiated the first pension plan in Hawaii.
After we negotiated the complete plan, the
employers insisted on making it an insured plan
instead of a trusteed plan. I didn't see any
particular advantage to the thing, although each
of the agencies was also a general agent for some
insurance company like Prudential, Hancock and so
forth. So, maybe they made a buck in that direc
tion.
But the overall benefits of a self-administered
plan were .lust too obvious, particularly by the
time this thing came on deck in Hawaii; we had
.lust negotiated our first pension plan on the
mainland for the longshoremen.
Where the 400,000 tons of sugar comes along,,
we found out shortly after the strike was over
that the Hawaii people, inasmuch as they couldn't
get the ready cash, got an 'advance for the sugar
from the insurance company. That's where they
made their loan.
I think when it came to the pension plan, the
quid pro quo for the consideration given Hawaii
by the big insurance companies was to go for
insured plans. That became a story by itself,
because we even had to get the insurance companies
to change their basic rules about the thing they
were tryjng to peddle us because they thought
they had an inside track ....
Ward: That was a couple of years later?
LG: That was a couple of years later, so there is no
doubt what impact was had. Now, the other element
that could have been involved in Jack's considera
tion is that somewhere along the line after the
'47 pineapple beef, Jack had picked up word from
551
LG-: some of the contacts he had in the industry that
the strike could have been won. Jack had very
strong friends as well as strong enemies. Gover
nor Stainback, at the mention of Jack, would jump
right out of his skin, out from under his wig! On
the other hand, Jack became and remained a close
friend all of his life with Jack Burns. Jack
Burns had been a police chief in Honolulu. Later
on he became the delegate to Congress. He was
the one who really bit the bullet and made the
hard decision to allow Alaska statehood to have
priority over Hawaii, even though Alaska was much
smaller and had never had a campaign equal to the
one in Hawaii for statehood.
His reasoning was that the main arguments
really against Hawaii statehood - these later
promoted by people like Senator Eastland when he
conducted the un-American Activities hearings
down in Hawaii; when we had the reluctant 39 -'
were predicated around, not just the Red scare,
but that you had all of these people of Japanese
ancestry and so forth; so that this wasn't, really
a typical American state.
Burns' was a very risky decision; gambled his
political future on the thing. In his first
gubernatorial campaign the election was stolen
from him, not by the people locally but by (then
Senator) John Kennedy, one of Burns' oldest
friends.
Ward: That's one you commented upon - we'll cover that
a little later.
LG: Burns was a damn good man, so I'm .just talking a
bit here about Burns because of his personal ties
to Jack (Hall). I doubt if there ever was a formal
agreement or a sinele thing put in writing or even
a shake hands understanding between him and Jack
Burns. They were close on a personal basis even
though Burns lived a very different life than
Jack.
He was a complete teetotaler. I think he had
been a heavy drinker at one time, very ardent
Catholic, made Mass every morning. Another friend
552
LG-: Jack Hall had - and this gets back to the same
phone call from Bridges "because one thing trigger
ed so many others - was a man named C.G. Cadagan.
Cadigan had been the head of Hawaiian Pineapple
Company and he was still the head of Hawaiian
Pineapple Company when we had a ma.lor strike there,
that's a little bit later on - 1951 - on the island
of Lanai. It could be that Jack picked this up
from Cadigan or from somebody else in the industry.
Another guy that Jack was quite close to in the
industry, a man with whom I got to be close friends
later on was Jack Driver. He wasn't an employer
really. He was the head of Cal Pack (California
Packing Corporation) operations down there. He
knew agriculture; he knew the cannery down there.
I really had quite a fondness for him. He was
quite a decent guy and so was his wife.
As a matter of fact, I'd go by to meet them both,
have dinner with them. Jack knew Driver well. I
can't put my finger on it because I really don't
know, but I do know that Jack made comments sever
al times, oh, a year after the 1947 pineapple
beef, that if the pineapple workers had not gone
back and had held out for about another two weeks
the strike could have been won.
Ward: And do you think that Harry was in any way to
blame for not holding out?
LG: I don't know. I really wouldn't blame it on Harry
because ....
Ward: Do you think Hall blamed Harry?
LG-: He might have. On the other hand, you don't make
an estimate like the one made in 1947 upon what
you think might happen in the employer ranks. You
make the decision based on where your own strength
lies; whether you think you can hang on to a
particular situation. Did the union make mistakes
and are you better off to retreat and keep your
army intact than to go down with flags flying.
It could very well be that these remarks made
by the employers gave Jack a certain amount of
second thoughts. I think mistakes were made in
553
LG: terms of a premature strike. I don't think an
adequate job had "been done with the seasonal
workers or an attempt to reach them. Sure the
balance of the workers in pineapple were strong,
the field workers. An attempt to load pineapple,
for example, on some "barges to ship from Lanai to
the canneries in Honolulu brought on a big riot
there; guys were arrested. On the other hand,
it ' s equally true that any attempt on the part of
the company to operate, the' fundamental part of
that whole pineapple operation, namely, to harvest,
couldn't have worked out. They didn't have the
work force and I don't know where the hell they
would have gotten them.
But these things are of course all in retro
spect. The point does remain that when it came
to the canneries, there was a large scale attempt
by the employers to operate in the field. On that
score a strike in the off season would have been
better than the peak season because there your
army is intact; you are not speculating; about
others.
The decisions were made at that time. As to
some of the things that Jack picked up later -
about a year after the strike - he was pretty well
convinced that it could have been won. It
straightened out later on but it took about four
years; until the Lanai beef. That could very well
have been one of the reasons why Jack told Harry,
"Look, perhaps you're better off not coming down
here."
Ward: Well, at any rate, he came and the strike was won,
finally.
LG-: Yes, the strike was won many months later.
Ward: I gather also that in the final days of the '49
strike Harry played quite a role.
LG: Yeah, when it came to the last part of the thing,
particularly dealing with people like Walter Buck,
who had decided in effect to move on his own.
Buck was that kind of a guy, a very tough guy. A
very hard-headed business man, the head of I don't
know how many corporations. I mean, his time must
554
LG-: have been peculiarly divided between being director
of so many corporations; he owned this American
Distilling plant that used to be over in Sausalito.
Ward: Oh, sure -
LG-: I thought it was a conspiracy to poison a lot of
people, but it wasn't. Just to make money. Harry
spent some time with him. We were meeting at the
Niumalu Hotel late in '49 and the World Series was
on because I walked away from the table for a while
to listen -to the World Series. Buck was very
offended - heck, you don't go listen to the World
Series when you're having a business conversation.
So, Harry played a role there. When he went
back to Washington, particularly on the arbitra
tion issue, his relations with Senator Morse were
very good. He played an important role when
Blaisdell was back there. Blaisdell came back
sort of cut and bleeding, because by that time a
lot of people in Washington were pretty outspoken
about what they thought of the Hawaii employers.
Our publicity about the wage differential, the
issue of arbitration, had gotten to Washington.
Ward: A writer I've been reading quotes Dwight Steele as
telling about some social contacts that Harry
made that didn't hurt at all. He describes a
scene at Mrs. Walter Dillingham's suite in some
fancy penthouse in San Francisco, where she had
gotten a lot of the Big Five people and their
cohorts to meet Harry and he held forth on the sea
voyages the Polynesians made to colonize Hawaii
LG-: Yeah, Harry knew a fair amount of these sea legends,
One of the things that impressed me was that these
Hawaiians had navigated enormous stretches of open
water, and I was always wondering how the devil
they could do it. Hawaii must have been somewhat
fortuitous on their part because there is no
indication that there were inhabitants there before
Polynesians got there.
Ward: I don't think there was an awful lot of animal life
either.
555
LG:
Ward:
LG:
Ward:
No-no, as a matter of fact, things like pigs
and chickens were brought in "by the Polynesians.
They were good sailors and they sailed these very
large outrigger canoes that could hold 60, 70
people; later on, they did their navigation "by
fixed star.
Anyway, Harry knew quite a bit about it; he
had gone to sea and had sailed before the mast
around Tasmania and that country. I'd hold a
lot of credence in Steele's story, and Harry
could be very charming. When he decided to spin
some of these old yarns, he could do a very good
job. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the
session took place, because following the '48
longshore beef there were all sorts of frag
mentations among the employers.
I mentioned seeing Paul Pagan very often; lat
er, through him, meeting Walter Buck; Paul
Pagan's rather hilarious attempt to make me
respectable by taking me down to the San Francisco
Stock Exchange Club for lunch, you see. And I
thought it was funnier than anything else;
obviously not my dish to tea.
Well, I think that about winds up all the
questions I have on the '49 longshore strike.
There's a great deal more to it of course, the
attempts to man some of these ships by the SUP,
and what they called the "clothes line fleet"
that came in there with barges which helped,
relieve some of the pressure on supplies -
things that went on - but these are all - - -
Sidelines. We'll never get through if we take
all the sidelines. Some time ago you made a
list of things that happened in '49 and we
decided to take the Hawaii longshore strike
first. We fairly well disposed of that - what's
next on the list?
556
XIV ZERO SPELLS SUCCESS
"No Stoop. No Squat, No Squint"
LG: I might have to go back here for a second. I'll
tell you why. I don't think there's any way of
understanding this whole period, '47 - '48 - '49
'50 - '51, and later on to really extend it for
a couple more years because the BRS case was
hanging in the Supreme Court and there was also
the Smith Act indictment of Jack Hall. I don't
think there's any way of getting a full grasp
of this without hitting some of the highlights
to try to make a recap of some of the things
that went on.
Ward: All right, go ahead.
LG: It was a period of at least five years and
became something like seven years; never a day
without a crisis.
Ward: Now, in those very years, after '48, the west
coast longshore situation was pretty well jelled,
wasn't it? Straightened out?
LG: Well, just because it was 'straightened out did
not end the fight. In other words, it was a
fight where you might win on one salient and it
promptly broke out somewhere else. It started
with the Cold War, of course. The Cold War, the
hardening of the situation in the CIO, the
passage of Taft-Hartley in 1947, the battles
that started over the Taft-Hartley affidavits.
557
LG: Many of us, of course, held out against the
whole Taft-Hartley Act; in other words, our
refusal to go along with its rules. We went
into some very rough periods as a result, but
something else happened. The bulk of the labor
movement turned tail; they signed. Not only
signed but began to use the Taft-Hartley and
National Labor Relations Acts to strengthen and
fortify their raids against the ILWU, and to
move against the other unions that had been
expelled.
A Heave-Ho To The "Final Offer"
LG-: As a matter of fact, the first Taft-Hartley
test took place in the longshore strike in '48,
that we didn't cover when we talked about that
strike. One provision of the Taft-Hartley Act
was for a so-called last offer by the employers.
A vote was to be taken by the workers on this
last offer, and this included the 80-day cooling
off period. The 80-day period was a basic de
vice of Taft-Hartley to force the postponement
of a strike. At the tail end of the postpone
ment there would be some sort of a fact-finding
hearing and the employers would then make a last
offer; the workers supposedly were to vote on
this.
Well, they invoked the 80-day injunction. The
'48 strike did not take place on the expiration
date of the agreement. It took place later
because the injunction was invoked. Well, two
things happened during the period of that in
junction. One, was what the longshoremen
themselves did under the leadership of the union
and the other what happened to the last offer.
There were no more last offers; those things
have died, even though they invoke Taft-Hartley.
The first thing that happened after the in
junction was invoked was "working by rules" as
some unions call it in Europe. Call it anything
558
LG: you want. I was glancing over a book on the
Wobblies in the United States while Terry and
I were in the mountains this last weekend, and
many of these things were Wobbly tactics.
For instance, when the Wobblies spoke of
sabotage - which is badly interpreted in American
history - they did not talk necessarily of wreck
ing machines and so forth. I found out something
interesting. During all this period when the
Wobblies talked of sabotaging - the black cat
symbolized that, and the wooden shoe, the sabot -
there had never been a single indictment or
conviction of the Wobblies on sabotage.
Ward: I didn't know that.
LG: But they included, for example, staying on the
job and doing a couple of things. One was that
they suddenly became very inexperienced workers,
they did not quite know how to do the' job;
always did it wrong and made mistakes. Another
thing was just plain working slowly or as little
as possible. Of course, there has been a long
background of experience on the west coast.
But of course the working class invents its own
tactics, and many of them have been -repeated.
Ward: Some of these tactics that were used during the
80 days cooling off period imposed by Taft-
Hartley - you were discussing these?
LG: Yes. One of the TV companies that had just come
on the market was using the sales pitch of "No
stoop, no squat, no squint." Pretty soon
stickers with that pitch were turning up on the
waterfront and the guys took it literally, "No
stoop, no squat, no squint." Work didn't move
very fast. In many respects I'd say the guys
were cutting output bj5 oh, somewhere between
60 and 75 percent, and drawing full pay.
I'd say that some of these stevedoring
companies, by the time the cooling off period
was over, damn near welcomed the strike and said,
559
LG-: "Okay, if that's what they're going to do, let
them walk out; that's cheaper than meeting the
payroll . "
All the way up and down the coast, there was
this long, deliberate slowdown; the guys simply
were not happy working with the injunction; in
part they were out to prove that even if a bunch
of characters in Washington go ahead and issue
injunctions and figure you're going to work, it
won't really hold water.
Not too different from some of the statements
made by John L. Lewis. Remember, when an in
junction was threatened in the coal mines he made
that famous statement, "Look, you can't mine
coal with bayonets." The longshoremen were the
same: you can't work cargo with injunctions.
So, that was the first thing that happened.
Secondly, when the employers came along with
their so-called "final offer" - that was the
pay-off as far as the men were concerned. I
don't think it would have mattered one damn bit
what the employers offered. Obviously they were
not going to offer a contract that was anywhere
close to acceptable.
Ward: That was the one where not a single vote was
cast?
LG: Right. I forget the total number of workers
eligible at the time. I think it was somewhere
between 22,000 and 23,000. The document issued
finally by the National Labor Relations Board is
a classic'. They had to put out a final tabula
tion; they listed first the total number of
eligible voters. These polling places were
opened up in every port - up and down the coast -
and I think in most places we had an observer
there, just standing there, that's all.
They issued this report: for the employers'
last offer: zero; against the last offer: zero;
total number of votes cast: zero. Not a single
vote. Now, that was a tremendously bold strike,
by the way. It was Harry's idea, and a good one.
560
LG: I'm sure it shook up some of the members of the
old Waterfront Employers Association. Somebody
must have gotten the message that things were
being handled all wrong if you thought you were
going to ram these things down a group of
aggressive and militant workers' necks. In some
ways we had certain advantages - the war was
over by that time and that made a difference.
Ward: The Cold War was on?
LG: The Cold War was on, but it did not have the
same impact as the war period where John L. Lewis
ran into this whole injunction business. This
was no business of saying, "Okay, fellows, we
gotta do this," and then winking:. These things
were just done straight out - "We don't like the
injunction."
Oh, the union never went around saying, "Look,
we're responsible for the slowdown." We just
made the statement, time and time again, "The
men just are not happy with this damn thing and
they're not working under any goddam slave labor
act." This phraseology was used constantly.
Neither were we signing the Taft-Hartley affida
vits.
So, these things have to be mentioned in terms
of Longshore because again it shows the way
another plot of this whole cabal against us had
moved into place; the demand for the control of
the hiring hall, the refusal to deal with this
leftwing, rebel leadership. The offer we once
made to the employers, "Okay, fine, we'll give
you a rank and file committee," which they were
not too happy about.
This thing began to come into focus: the role
of the CIO where Almon Roth and those guys tried
to move in. It must have been during those
negotiations that Alan Heywood had come out - and,
of course, the ACTU was in action.
The CIO had not yet come out with an all-out
onslaught against the ILWU. They were playing
this other tactic at the time, but come 1949,
561
LG: they were directly in the act too. They were in
the act directly and indirectly in 1948 with
this proposition by Roth that the CIO . . .
Ward: Yes, we went into that. I'm interested in what
the CIO did about the Hawaii longshore strike
in 1949, if anything?
LG-: Damn little.
Ward: What did they do in '50 that bothered you?
LG: They had the Blue Card raid, as they called it -
an attempt to break Local 6 and take it over.
It was in '50 when they expelled usv Coast
Guard screening took place in 1950 - this was
imposed during the Korean War.
The famous Coos Bay caucus took place at
that time; Harry was put in jail for about three
weeks when the judge - I think it was Judge
Harris - said, "There's no room for minority
opinion," because of the Korean War. Later on
came this classic decision by which Harry was
released, and I'm trying to recall which of the
judges issued the statement that in a time like
the Korean War justice had to "set its face like
flint against a storm."
These battles were going on at the same time.
There was a stormy Local 6 convention and the walk-
out by some of the business agents who went over
the hill and .ioined the Teamsters. This was
going on in 1950, you see. The Coast Guard
screening was particularly important because the
life of our progressive union rotated around the
fight on this issue and the manner in which it
was handled.
Then the '49 warehouse strike took place, or
started, toward the tail end of the Hawaii strike
and wound up, I think, a bit after. Again the
employers figured that we couldn't win a two-
front war.
Then we were in a defensive position in '51.
The Hawaii ILWU convention was crucial, parti cul-
arily because of the Korean issue. A decision
had to be made about pulling in our lines organi
zationally because of all the harassment going on.
562
ard: Particularly in the mid-west?
LG: And the south, right. The strike we had in
Hawaii on Lanai, the strike that went on for
almost seven months. Again, the government
played some peculiar roles, and particularly
some individuals who had been tied up with the
un-American Activities Committee in Hawaii; a
guy by the name of Ronald Jamieson, some sort
of a two-bit judge. I think he later flipped
his lid.
This went on through all of 1951, you see;
by that time we had been eased out of the CIO
and a number of the unions were going under, as
you recall; attacks not just against us, but also
outfits like UE (United Electrical Workers) and
what have you* In '52 we still had the same
headaches around; the BRS case was on appeal;
there was a move on the Marine Cooks and Stewards
by Lundeberg with the help of the employers.
It wasn't until '53 when we got the Supreme
Court decision on the Bridges case, at which
point the government promptly announced he was
being tried in a civil case to deprive him of
his citizenship. There was the trial before
Judge Goodman; that victory cleaned up the cases
against Harry.
Then there was the Hawaiian Smith Act case
that took place just in the midst of sugar
negotiations down there, when Jack and six
others were indicted by the government. It went
on, not for five years but more like seven.
I'm just sort of trying to hit those highlights.
Dangers Abroad
Ward: There's one highlight you missed - your adven
tures in England.
LG: Yes.
563
Ward: That occurred in 1949, didn't it? Let's talk
about that for a minute and then we'll go back
to some of the other things later.
LG-: Okay. The exact date in 1949, I'm not sure, but
it must have been around July or August. We'd
been invited to take part in the maritime con
ference of the World Federation of Trade Unions
and even though we had been taking a lot of
buffeting, we still thought that perhaps we
could affiliate with the WFTU; so two of us
went on behalf of the International to attend
the WFTU meeting in Marseilles. Harry would
have gone had it not been for the indictment
that was kicking around.
Ward: Who went with you?
LG-: Johnny Meletta; he had been a union official up
in Seattle; a very good man, a business agent.
Johnny is dead now. Had cancer and died. Anyway
he was a tough, little Italian guy and honest as
the day is long. Well, I had always been curious
about international contact, though in the main
my contact had been with trade unions and workers
in Mexico.
Ward: You and Toledano got to be . . . ?
LG: Quite close friends, yes, and as a matter of
fact, I got to see him almost every time I went
down there. I think the first time I met him
was when I was state secretary of the CIO.
Ward: Yes, on the fishing problem.
LG: Yes, tuna fishing. And in 1948, I had been down
to a meeting of the CTAL (Confederacion de
Trabaj adores Americas-Latinas), the Latin Ameri
can trade union federation of which Lombardo was
the head. The Cold War was already beginning
to have its impact there; well, not enough to
completely disrupt the CTAL operation, but it
had its headache. During that meeting of the
CTAL in Mexico City, Terry and I met Louis
Saillant, the general secretary of the World
Federation of Trade Unions.
564
Ward: SAILLANT-
LG-: Right. Louis Saillant was quite an interesting
character. He had fought with the underground
in France, all during the war. Really, a fine
guy. Later on, I think, the organization "began
to get so politically dominated that it lost
some of its trade union feel.
Oh, just one interesting story about that
CTAL convention. One of the unions very active
in the CTAL was the Oil Workers Union, which at
the time was living under the traditions of
Lazaro Cardenas. He was still alive and a good
friend of Lombardo's and of Alejandro Carillo,
who later became the governor of Mexico City,
D.F.
We had gotten to know them when they were up
here for the CIO Convention in 1939; Alejandro
Carillo and his wife stayed at our house. We
were living on Telegraph Hill at the time and
he spoke impeccable English and he was here as
a friend of Lombardo's and to translate for him.
So, after the meeting in Mexico City, the Oil
Workers invited Terry and myself to take a trip
with them by bus to inspect the new pipeline
tliat was being built to brine: oil from Tampico
and Tuspan on the Gulf into Mexico City. It was
a fascinating journey on several scores. The
guys brought along some brandy, which was really
the only thing that helped. The heat was un
believable in the valley of Mexico.
We stopped at a place where the guys were
installing a pipeline, including a lot of weld
ers. We're walking along and one guy lifts his
mask up and says, "Hiya, Lou, I haven't seen you
for a while." Here's a guy I had known in Oakland
in the '36 warehouse strike; we got to be good
friends. He was a hell of a good pic
