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of attacking the weaker shipping companies before proceeding to the stronger,
called on its locals to focus on Munson Lines ships. On-board conditions on
Munson ships were among the worst and most demeaning in the shipping industry-
so bad that, as Bill Bailey later remembered, "Occasionally the engineer would
leave his work clothes outside your room, and it was intended that you were
supposed to wash them on your time off." And in many cases, Munson crews had
not been paid for months.
Baltimore took up this concentration strategy with a vengeance. While
Munson steamers had been struck in this port before, from October 1933 on, crews
on Munson ship after Munson ship went out: the Munorleans, the Munloyal, the
Munindies, the Munlisto. By December, five Munson ships had, while tied up in
Baltimore, been forced to bow to demands to pay their crews the back wages due,
to sign articles guaranteeing improved conditions, and to promise not to fire
strikers. According to the Marine Workers Voice, "Baltimore is becoming known
as the pay-off port for Munson ships." The only weakness the Baltimore MWIU
saw in its Munson campaign was that it was frequently unable to persuade Munson
crews to stay with the ship and fight for further gains. As with the earlier Diamond
Cement struggle, crewmen often wanted to get the money owed them and get off.
As strike activity picked up in the final months of the 1933, the Baltimore
MWIU found that it was able to build on its Diamond Cement self-criticism and
work more with longshoremen. In October, unorganized Black longshoremen on
the segregated docks of Moore McCormack Co. in the Canton district came to the
MWIU for help in raising wages; in a previous job action, these longshoremen had
already won the reinstatement of two laid off workers. The MWIU enthusiastically
involved itself in advising them on organization and in winning the support of the
white crew on the dock. While some progress was made, a hoped-for strike did not
come off. Efforts against the same company at its Locust Point docks, across the
harbor, were more successful. When 1LA longshoremen there struck the
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