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the West Coast. In fact the Baltimore MWIU, despite being besieged, participated
in these solidarity efforts. In the midst of struggles against forced work for relief
and the Ore offensive against the CBS, the MWIU managed to pull off a support
action against the McCormick Company's Felix Taussig that had imported scabs
through picket lines in San Pedro, California, then docked in Baltimore. The ship
was picketed and its crew was persuaded to walk out (they were then given safe
railroad passage out of town by the MWIU). An MWIU crew almost took over the
ship, but The Felix Taussig slipped out of port just in ti
The demise of the Baltimore Soviet did not mark the end of the seamen's
movement or the MWIU in Baltimore. For a brief moment in late October 1934, a
united front strike of all seamen seemed possible on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts,
until the ISU pulled out and made a separate peace with the shippers. The MWIU
went ahead with the strike anyway, and seamen in Baltimore went out.
Unfortunately, the strike picked up only limited momentum. The MWIU also
continued to involve itself with the longshoremen, but, while it managed to lead
several more actions of largely Black stevedores concentrated on the Pratt Street
docks, the promise of waterfront unity that it sensed in late 1933 never advanced
very far, and the domination of the ILA over these workers was never really
breached.^
The struggle around relief also continued through the rest of 1934, and the
seamen continued to resist successfully the forced work requirements of the relief
plans. A new state relief administration was brought in, with high hopes for solving
the seamen's relief problem. A new relief project, including new shelters and only
minimal work relief, was advanced by the new officials, only to see the seamen elect
their own committee to run it and attempt to take it over; the project collapsed and,
in the words of the Marine Workers Voice, the seamen went back to "the same
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