|
156
a far more formidable, if conservative, opponent: the International Longshoreman's
•7*7
Association. '
The MWIU was active in Baltimore through 1930 and 1931, but its
organizing in the port only really began to pick up momentum in 1932. As MWIU
Baltimore Branch Secretary, Anton Becker reported in May 1934, "First test of
Marine Workers Industrial Union came two years ago. First strike action was a
minor one: more and better food." Minor or not, the MWIU agitation and strike
activity in the summer of that year was dramatic enough to be reported in the
establishment press and to meet with swift repression, resulting in multiple injuries
and arrests. The Baltimore Communist Party as a whole began to take more
notice. The local Young Communist League decided for the first time to devote
much of its energies to the seamen's struggle, causing a minor split The arrest of
ubiquitous Baltimore Communist leader Carl Bradley during a MWIU strike
indicates that, by July, the waterfront had become a local party priority. The
terrain was evidently fertile; then-YCL organizer Al Richmond remembers that it
was "heady stuff to recruit 17 seamen to the YCL in a single day (and quite a
contrast to his experience a few months earlier at Sparrow Point)/58
Activity among Baltimore maritime workers continued to expand from late
1932 through 1933. In February 1933 an MWIU-led strike on the Munson Line's
S.S. Munmystic won all the crew's demands; Anton Becker later called this a
"turning point in winning the confidence of the seamen in the program of the
MWIU." An even more important turning point was the successful strike against
the S.S. Diamond Cement in August of the same year. This strike is a good
example of the increasingly sophisticated strategy and tactics, and of the growing
local base of the Baltimore MWIU. Because the MWIU reported on this strike
extensively, and because the local MWIU did a thorough evaluation of its practice,
it provides insights into the local functioning of this unionr"
Shortly after the Diamond Cement docked in Baltimore, the MWIU sent
|
