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