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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (April 3, 2015)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | April 3 , 2015 | PAGE 3 ...Astoria: A look back From Page 2 were fewer and smaller than be- fore, and canneries began to talk about starting hatcheries. Shrinking salmon runs put pressure on the fishermen. In 1896, the Columbia River Fish- erman’s Protective Union led a strike against the packers. The strike was ended when cannery owners agreed to pay four-and- a-half cents per pound. But once the gill-netters were back to work, the cannery owners re- neged on the deal, and offered just two cents per pound. In re- sponse, a group of about 200 fishermen pooled resources to form their own cannery: the Union Fishermen’s Cooperative Packing Co. Formed in 1897, the co-op was highly successful, and led competing canneries to join together in the Columbia River Packers Association. Of the immigrant communi- ties of turn-of-the-century Asto- ria, Finns were the most numer- ous, and the most radical, says Liisa Penner, archivist at the Clatsop County Historical Soci- ety. Most lived in a neighbor- hood known as Uniontown, named after the short-lived Union Cannery, which had been founded by Finnish fishermen in 1882. In 1904, members of As- toria’s Finnish community founded the Astoria Finnish So- cialist Club, which soon became an important economic and so- cial institution locally. They also began a Finnish-language social- ist newspaper, Toveri, in 1907, which peaked in 1916 at a daily circulation of 4,000, larger than any other Astoria newspaper. The jewel of the Astorian Finnish socialists was a magnif- icent four-story hall built in 1910. It included a clothing and tobacco store, a library, a labor office where people could go to find work, a space for meetings and performances, and a pool hall. The socialist club also set up sports groups, a choir and or- chestra, and theater groups. Astoria’s socialist community was a part of a growing national socialist movement led by for- mer railroad union leader Eu- gene V. Debs. The party called for publicly-sponsored unem- ployment insurance, old-age pensions, and compensation for injured workers; and a gradu- ated income tax, public owner- ship of utilities, and women’s right to vote. Most of those things are law today, but the So- cialist Party that first proposed them was hounded and harassed into obscurity during and after World War I. The party opposed the war, and once the United States entered the war in April If you were hurt on the job by someone from another company, you have rights to sue that company in addition to having your workers’ compensation claim. Canneries once ran virtually the length of Astoria’s waterfront. But salmon runs declined. Astoria’s last cannery closed in 1980. 1917, socialists all across the country faced government re- pression and vigilante violence. In Astoria, four employees of Toveri were arrested under the Espionage Act, accused of incit- ing rebellion among soldiers and sailors. Two were convicted in U.S. District Court in Port- land, and served a year in Wash- ington’s McNeil Island Peniten- tiary until a pardon by President Woodrow Wilson. And the American Legion — formed by returning soldiers to target polit- ical radicals who had protested the war — established a post in Astoria in 1919. Its first act was to wage a boycott of advertising in Toveri. In the decades after the war, Chinese cannery workers, radi- cal Finns, and people in general disappeared from Astoria — along with the salmon that brought them. Astoria’s popula- tion peaked in 1920 at about 14,000. Since then, while Ore- gon’s population has more than quadrupled, Astoria’s has fallen steadily, and today it has fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. The Astoria Finnish Socialist Club building was destroyed in 1923 by a fire, the cause of At a March 14 conference in Asto- ria, author and third-generation gill-netter Irene Martin (right) summarizes the rich history of Co- lumbia River fisheries for mem- bers of the Pacific Northwest La- bor History Association. which was never determined. Where it once stood today sits the Dunes Motel on Marine Drive. A Labor Temple constructed in 1924 still provides office space to AFSCME Local 2746 and Teamsters Local 58, and meeting space for local mem- bers United Food and Commer- cial Workers Local 555 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. But it’s best known locally as a dive bar fea- turing video poker and karaoke. Turn to Page 12 Broadway Floral for the BEST flowers call 503-288-5537 140 1638 NE Broadway, Portland
