1
Sailing the Red Seas
IN 1875 the marine engineers formalized their Cleveland-based fraternal lodge into a labor union, the Marine Engineersâ Beneficial Association. This was quickly followed by the formation of the Lake Seamenâs Association, thereby launching trade unionism among sailors. Early on sailors displayed the militancy that NMU and Ferdinand Smith were to exemplify. The Coast Seamenâs Union, for example, affiliated with the International Workingmenâs Association, a branch of Karl Marxâs First International, and was run by an Advisory Committee made up of IWA members, in accordance with CSUâs constitution. In July 1891, the seafarer Andrew Furuseth persuaded the various sailorsâ unions to combine into the Sailorsâ Union of the Pacific, which was a precursor to the International Seamenâs Union (which joined the American Federation of Labor in 1894). Thus began a new stage of trade unionism at sea.1
Eight years later the marine firemen, oilers, watertenders, and wipersâ union was formed to represent the interests of the unlicensed workers in a shipâs engine rooms.2 As labor was combining, so was capitalâthe two trends were related. In 1902, the year he founded U.S. Steel, J. P. Morgan also âset out to gain control of liner shipping in the North Atlantic. He created a new shipping company, the International Mercantile Marine (IMM),â which at its zenith âowned 136 ships, or about one-third of all vessels engaged in foreign trade.â These âpurchases gave Morgan the largest privately owned commercial fleet in the world, one which was equal in tonnage to the entire French merchant marine.... At that stage only Cunard, the dominant Atlantic carrier, lay outside Morganâs control.â This was the formidable foe faced by sailors seeking to unionize.3
As the SUP saw it, there was yet another cloud hovering over the horizon, namely, immigrant Chinese men whom it saw as low-wage competitors for jobs that belonged properly to men of European descent. Andrew Furuseth, the first major leader of sailors in the United States, âworked to renew the Chinese Exclusion Act and to extend it to all Orientals.â Reflecting the prevailing doctrines of white supremacy, âone of his chief arguments... was always that, unless white men were brought back to the sea, the yellow race would win mastery of the sea, and, with it, mastery of the world.â Fortunately, not all sailors responded to such odious appeals. In 1913 Spanish-speaking firemen left Furusethâs union to join the IWW; the strength of the IWW was underscored when it âgained complete control of the port of New Orleans, where it conducted an unsuccessful strike in 1913.â4
But Furusethâs men had far more clout in Washington than either the Chinese or the IWW seamen. In 1915 the âSeamenâs (LaFollette) Act halted shipping of Chinese crews by requiring that 75 percent of the members of any shipâs department be able to understand English.â5 Such discriminatory language requirements did, however, create opportunities for English-speaking seafarers like Smith, especially since Furuseth ânever publicly attacked the Negro race,â although Negroes were not welcomed into his union either.6 Indeed, âcheckerboardingâ or the integration of black workers into white crews, was not permitted, and for decades blacks were excluded from the West Coast unions.7
Furusethâs unionâs capitulation to âracial chauvinism,â showed that it was not equipped to cope with the changing dynamics of the maritime industry, which created an enormous opening for the more âraciallyâ sensitive Communists. When Smith entered the maritime industry,8 âno Black man was assigned as a sailor, an engineer, a mechanic, carpenter, an electrician, radio operator or an officerâno matter what the Black workerâs qualifications might be. A Black worker could only work as a cook, messman, waiter or elsewhere in the stewardâs department.â9 But big changes were afoot in the industry. By the time World War I came to a close, âunion membership had grown to 117,000, seamenâs wages had risen to $85 per month and seamen serving on the deck for the first time achieved an eight hour workday.â10 As the United States traded with both sides during the conflict, then confronted Germany for its alleged aggression against nonmilitary ships, the maritime industry endured a roller-coaster ride of advance and retreat that morphed into a lingering recession throughout the 1920s. Given what the capitalist economy could absorb at the time, there were simply too many ships and too many sailorsâthe global economy was slowing down and the need for ships and sailors shrank accordingly. The resultant shakeout in the industry left numerous seafarers in difficult financial straits.11 After several failed strikes during this tumultuous decade, the membership of the International Seamenâs Union plummeted from more than 100,000 to âfewer than 3000 by 1929.â12
Yet by 1934, 293,000 people were involved in foreign or interstate shipping. Of this total, 145,000 were in foreign, coastal, or intercoastal commerce, 25,000 on the Great Lakes, and 15,000 on inland waterways. This was a major opportunity for radical trade union organizers.13 And when a âsuddenly awakened Congress . . . passed the âMerchant Marine Act of 1936ââ which, inter alia, âclosed our coastal, intercoastal routes and those to Hawaii, Porto Rico and Alaska to all but American ships,â domestic shipbuilding and the maritime industry generally both received a boost.14
Moved by this upturn in the industry and less concerned that militancy would sink the industry further into debt, in 1936 the ISU went on strike against the Pacific Coast employers. It restricted the strike to the West Coast as a matter of tactics, avoiding overextension and perhaps an unwelcome counterreaction by the employers. A group of East Coast sailorsâwith Ferdinand Smith in the leadershipânonetheless joined in a sympathy strike both to back their comrades out west and to obtain a better contract for themselves, as their wages often lagged behind those of their Pacific counterparts. They wanted to establish a union-controlled hiring hall and to get rid of the âcontinuous discharge book,â which they saw as a means of compelling a seafarer to carry on his person evidence that would allow him to be âblacklisted.â They also wanted more safety at sea and improved working conditions.15 But âthe strike . . . formally ended on January 24, 1937. It gained nothing, in increased wages or improved working conditions,â wrote Philip Taft, âbut the leaders of the walkout boasted that it had discredited the old union officials. The insurgent leaders sought to take over the name of the International Seamenâs Union for the new union they were forming but when they were prevented by the courts, they called themselves the National Maritime Union of America.â16
Meanwhile the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was creating a new chapter in labor history. The newly formed NMU demanded and won representational elections and by 1938 was the exclusive bargaining agent for many of the fifty-two Atlantic steamship companies. The ISU remnant became the Seafarers International Union (SIU) representing workers on the Gulf Coast while in the west, the ISU âdissolved into three separate unions that represented unlicensed personnel.â While unions in the steel and auto industries were growing in strength, in the maritime industry âcompeting unions continued to fight each other.â17
Communist patriarch William Z. Foster, a former sailor himself, was blunt: âSeamen probably know more about imperialism than any other group of workers.... They sail the ships that carry the fruits of imperialist exploitation. They sail the ships that carry the guns and men that are needed to subjugate other peoples for imperialist exploitation.â18 Another radical put it this way: âSeamen built the capitalist world; it is natural they should also destroy it.â19 Communists played a dominant role in the NMU.20 The confined setting, the poor working conditions, the attenuated effect of the church and other mediating institutions, the exposure to foreign lands and ideasâall this and more contributed to the growing impact of the Communist Party among sailors.
The Reds were not alone in seeking to cater to sailors. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized a Marine Transport Workers Union. A. Philip Randolphâs journal, The Messenger, described its Philadelphia branch as exemplifying the âability of white and black people to work, live and conduct their common affairs side by side.â During this era of virulent Jim Crow, at MTWU social affairs, âthe workers also mingle, fraternize, dance, eat and play together.â21
Despite the longstanding reputation of maritime workers for militancy and radical consciousnessâespecially under the leadership of the IWWâthe Communist Party22 âpaid little attention to the waterfrontâ in the 1920s as Smith was moving to join their ranks. However, in 1926 the party formed âInternational Seamenâs Clubsâ in several port cities in the United States and around the world. These clubs played a social and educational role, âproviding facilities for reading, recreation and dining.â23
The Trade Unity Educational League (TUEL), which had close ties to the Communist Party, was cooperating with the IWW in âvarious fieldsâ in 1926. The IWW was suffering âdisintegration . . . losing their headquartersââand many members at this time.24 This presented an opportunity for the youthful Communist PartyâUSA, though not without a problem. For one thing the Communists had been slow to organize among the militant sailors because the leaders at the highest levels of the party felt that it was almost impossible to have rank and file democracy in a union when the membership was scattered at sea. Sailors had a justifiable reputation for rowdiness and dissolute livingâhaving a sweetheart in every port was no exaggeration. There was something about those who sailed the seven seas that inclined them toward the rambunctious. Despite the notable successes of Reds in organizing sailors, this factor seems to have been stronger than they anticipated. Moreover, according to one Red analysis, there was the âbeach comber element, the type which is known as the âlumpen proletariatâ and hall loafersâ who âconduct affairs and usually conform to the wishes of whatever officialdom dominates. Organizing a left wing and keeping it functioning under such circumstances is a puzzle which we have been unable to solve.â
Then there were the anarchists among the seafarers, who had begun âorganized violence slugging our left wingers in the Manhattan Branchâs meeting.â Not all of them were domestic. There were some âFrench anarchists of recent arrival in America,â whoâhorror of all horrorsââfought . . . against the Soviet powerâ in the USSR.25 Before the advent of the NMU, hiring was âdone by âshapeup,ââ for example, the boss just âpoints his finger at men he wanted or via âcrimpsââproprietors of boarding houses who supplied crews to the shipping companies and one way or another did the seamen out of practically all their wages.â26 The setup was unlikely to attract choirboys and boy scouts.
However, the Communists were able to overcome these barriers. The anarchists were in a slow and steady decline in the United States that the boost of the Spanish Civil War could not arrest. The Depression convinced a critical mass of sailors that their lives could only improve with organization. Strong and centralized leadership dealt with the problem presented by the sailorsâ transience.
The Communistsâ antiracismâwhich was so contrary to the general sentiment in the United Statesâmade them especially appealing to Negroes. This did not escape the attention of the New York Times, which noted in 1926, âDr. Du Bois . . . thinks it is up to white people of America to treat the Negroes better in order to keep them out of the Communist ranks.â27 Yet better treatment would have implied supporting âracial equalityâ and thus violating a reigning taboo in the United States.
Although the Communists had their own problems, these may not have repelled Negroes. Reds were ostracized by a broad spectrum of peopleâbut so were Negroes, so this was hardly an obstacle to their recruiting Negroes in a place like Harlem. Even Red critiques of would-be allies (for example, the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]), before the âpopular frontâ was proclaimed in the mid-1930s, did not deter Negroes. Though the Communist Party was criticized for sectarianism when it organized unions independent of the mainstream American Federation of Labor, this facilitated the inclusion of Negro workers, which the federation generally ignored.28
Not concentrating on the AFL did encourage the Communist Party to focus more intently on other constituencies, such as Negroes. Unavoidably, this brought the Reds into contact with the Universal Negro Improvement AssociationâMarcus Garveyâs organizationâwhich included many West Indians within its ranks. By the mid-1920s, Garvey was on the fast track to being deported and his organization was splintering. The Communist Party sought to work with an âanti-Garvey factionâ in the UNIA, which contained âthe best and the proletarian elements. New York is the stronghold of this mass movement.â29 Shipping was the stronghold of the Garvey movement, as its âBlack Star Lineâ was a symbol of repatriation and a vehicle for commerce. But because Garveyâs ships, such as the Yarmouth, were dependent on a âwhite chief engineerâ and a...