The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 1994, Page 13, Image 13

PAGE 13
BLOODY THURSDAY
The mainstream mediacrities have lately saturated the
American public with the 50th anniversary on June 6 of D-Day,
the allied invasion from England of Adolf Hitler’s Festung
Europa (Fortress Europe). This might be the star, of a year long
media beating of wardrums that wan't stop until next year's
golden anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II. The
nationalist fires are relit; any vender a Florida school-board
ordered its district schools to teach a curriculum of America
First?
Perhaps we should glance inward a trifle and take
account of an anniversary that commemorates a bloody battle
which occurred during the lopsided and never ending labor wars
in this country. July 5 is the 60th anniversary of "Bloody
Thursday," the most violen, day of the Great Pacific Coas,
Maritime Strike of 1934.
Sixty years ago this summer San Francisco was para­
lyzed by the largest general strike staged by labor unions in this
country. I, started as a maritime strike in the spring of 1934
when thousands of longshoremen (stevedores, as they were
often called) walked off the job because they were sick of bad
pay and humiliating treatment. They were joined by seamen,
teamsters, and other maritime unions, and through unanimous
action closed the port of San Francisco for more than two
months. No ship was loaded or unloaded, no cargo was moved
off the docks. In sympathy with the strikers, longshoremen went
out on strike in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham, Aberdeen, Gray's
Harbor, Portland, Astoria, Stockton, Los Angeles, San Diego and
all other Pacific Coast ports.
The strike was a bloody one. Pickets and police fought
bitter pitched battles with guns, gas and clubs arrayed against
rocks, bricks and fists. The Industrial Association, a group of
shipowners, presidents of stevedoring companies and other
maritime executives, made itself San Francisco's legal authority
and continually attempted to open the port with scabs and
police, and through hysterical newspaper and radio accounts
that labeled the strikers as communists and aliens, vtfiich many
were. Bu, no matter where they came from or what they
believed in, the strikers sough, justice and resisted all attempts
to ou,maneuver them or force them back to work w th nothing
settled.
The battles grew in ferocity until at the beginning of July
they were as savage as a war. On July 3, the 70th anniversary
of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, thousands of strikers and
police fought all day. The July 4 holiday provided a truce and
the day passed peaceably. But in the early morning of Thursday,
July 5, the fighting resumed where i, had left off when police and
scabs attempted once more to open the port. Two strikers were
shot to death by police revolvers, and several hundred suffered
pistol wounds. Hundreds more were hospitalized or dragged into
hiding after they were injured by gas and clubs.
Mike Quin, who was a participan, of the 1934 maritime
strike and a close associate of the strike leader, an Australian
stevedore named Harry Bridges, wrote an account of "Bloody
Thursday" in his book The Big Strike. "At 8 a m. promptly the
police wen, into action,” Quin wrote. 'Teargas bombs were
hurled into the picket lines and the police charged vwth their
clubs. Gasping and choking, the strikers were driven back to the
alleys off the Embarcadero, or retreated up Rincon Hill. ...Shots
rang ou, as police opened fire with revolvers. Flying bricks and
bullets crashed windows. Teargas...sen, workers in nearby
factory and office buildings swarming into the streets. The whole
area was swep, by a surf of fighting men."
Quin quoted a newspaper: 'The hottest battle took place
in front of the ILA (International Longshoremen's Association,
now the ILWU, International Longshoremen's and Warehouse­
men's Union) on Steuart St., where scores were gassed, clubbed
and shot. Police cars literally filled the headquarters with gas
from longrange guns and persons entrenched there poured from
the doors " He wrote that workers on the San Francisco-Oakland
Bay Bridge, then under construction, "were forced to abandon
the job for the day because of stray bullets vhiistling around their
heads."
"Police charged into the Seaboard Hotel," Quin con­
tinued, "where many strikers were quartered, and drove all
occupants into the streets, swinging their long riot sticks and
cracking skulls right and left. The building was filled with gas and
riddled w th pistol fire.
"Stubbornly holding their ground and fighting every inch
of the way, the (strikers) were driven back into the city and off
the Embarcadero. The battle swep, over into the busy downtown
district, endangering crowds of pedestrians. One picket (striker)
entrenched himself in a parking lot, devised a crude slingshot
from an old inner tube, and began bombarding Chief of Police
William J. Quinn's (no relation to Quin) car with bricks. It took a
barrage of tear gas and pistol fire to dislodge him.
"Scores of men littered the sidewalks, either lying
silently or crawling aw«y painfully on their hands and knees
"A woman alighting from a streetcar at the Ferry Build­
ing screamed and collapsed vhen a bulle, struck her in the
temple. A man rushed to her assistance, wos struck by another
bullet, and crumpled to the street beside her.
"A Chronicle reporter described: Women who had been
shopping in downtown stores arrived at the loop to step into an
inferno With screaming children clinging to them, they
strict censorship was maintained and definite confirmations were
lacking.
"All day long, newspapers uptown had been pouring ou,
Xtra after Xtra, delivering veritable hourly reports from the line
of battle Wailing sirens careening up and down Market Street
aroused speculation and alarm among the public.
'The word blood - blood - blood recurred every three or
four lines in every news story So much blood had been seen
tha, it obsessed the minds of newswriters, and the word (was)
repeated, again and again, almost involuntarily, as they typed
their copy.
'The strikers named the day "Bloody Thursday."
Stop in your tracks, you passer-by;
Uncover your doubting head.
The workingmen are on their way
To bury their murdered dead.
The men who sowed their strength in work,
And reaped a crop of lies
Are marching by. Oppression's doom
is written in their eyes.
-MIKE QUIN
disembarked from the cars to find themselves in clouds of
smarting tear gas Guns cracked. Men fell screaming as they
went down Police clubs cracked against skulls Smothered and
blinded by gas, the women and children staggered about help­
lessly Policemen grabbed them as fast as possible and sent
them to (a) hospital where they were horrified by the sight of
men dripping with blood, moaning from bullet wounds and
injuries
"People in surrounding buildings were driven out by gas
and many were winged by stray shots as they fled.
"At the heigh, of the battle a delegation from the strike
committee, headed by Harry Bridges, called on Mayor Angelo J.
Rossi to protest. The mayor simply repeated wha, (acting) Calif­
ornia Governor Frank Merriam had said earlier: 'You refused to
arbitrate; now take the consequences.'
"Hospitals were pu, on a wartime basis to accommodate
the wounded. A, the morgue, covered over by white sheets,
were two cold, quiet bodies (Howard Sperry and Nicholas Bord­
oise)...
'The striking unions had men detailed to the hospitals to
see that wounded pickets received adequate attention when
brought in from the battlefield. These men reported later that
injured strikers were threatened and intimidated by police when
they stated tha, their club and gunshot wounds were caused by
officers
"A, the close of the day (acting) Governor Merriam
ordered the National Guard onto the waterfront Two thousand
troops marched into the area equipped wth rapid-fire guns,
machineguns, gas equipment and bayoneted rifles
"By the time they arrived the fighting had ceased and
the pickets had been driven from the Embarcadero The guards­
men posted themselves a, intervals down the whole length of
the waterfront and mounted machineguns on the roofs of piers
'Troops marched in wearing steel helmets and full
service equipment They se, up camp inside the long, covered
docks, established field kitchens, and remained there under
wartime conditions Divisions were brought in from Santa Rosa,
Napa, Petaluma. Gilroy and other outlying towns. Rumors were
abundant to the effect tha, certain units had refused service, bu,
On Monday, July 9, 1934, a funeral march was held for
Howard Sperry and Nicholas Bordoise. Forty thousand men,
women and children marched in silence eight and ten abreast
the length of Market Street behind trucks that carried the two
coffins and flowers. A union band played a funeral march by
Beethoven. A newspaper described the procession as a "river of
men flowing up Market Street like cooling lava, solemn strains
of dirges and hymns...uncountable thousands of spectators
lining the streets with uncovered heads , overhead a brilliant sun
in a cloudless sky." Another newspaper said that the two dead
strikers "in life...wouldn't have commanded a second glance on
the streets of San Francisco, but in death they were borne the
length of Market Street in a stupendous and reverent procession
that astounded the city."
A week later a general strike was declared in San
Francisco and the city was effectively shut down for three days.
"For all practical purposes," Mike Quin wrote, "not a wheel
moved or a lever budged " The official reaction was hysteria.
The general strike was confused with revolution. Rumors and
newspapers claimed that a communis, army was marching on
the city from the north. (Northwestemers were though, to be
communists and radicals because of strong IW W activity the
preceding decade.) Five hundred extra policemen were hired
and thousands more national guardsmen were sen, to San
Francisco from all over California Police 'Red Squads' raided
strikers' homes and union offices. Vigilantes attacked and beat
striking workers tha, they accused of being communists.
The maritime strike ended in late July 1934 and the port
of San Francisco was reopened. The maritime unions were
awarded recognition, contracts were signed and demands were
met or promised to be met through arbitration, among them the
crucial issue of hiring halls to be controlled by the unions, and a
ban on blacklisting strikers from employment. Longshore pay
was raised and dockside hours shortened "But all this did no,
bring peace to the waterfront," Mike Quin wrote several years
later. "Instead there ensued a period of industrial guerrilla
warfare which persisted for more than two years, ultimately
resulting in the whole Pacific Coast's maritime strike breaking
ou, again in greater force than ever."
The Great Maritime Strike of 1934 was the harbinger of
future labor battles in steel, auto, rubber and other smokestack
industries in the United States. I, heralded the vast organizing
drives tha, gave birth to the CIO. And it se, an example of
militant solidarity tha, proved beneficial to other unions in the
great labor struggles of the 1930s
'The 1934 strike is memorable because above all i,
demonstrated the power latent in the rank and file," Harry
Bridges said a few years later. 'The rank and file not only
manned the picket lines and did the sacrificing - as it must in
every strike - bu, it also made the big decisions and determined
the strategy The rank and file wouldn't be bulldozed or
buffaloed, browbeaten or divided, and therefore it couldn't be
licked. Once it knew the score the rank and file could no, be
misled by any phony labor leader or panicked by any barrage of
newspaper propaganda."
Bridges said tha, "Ultimately the power of any union that
serves as an instrumentality of the workers rests on the courage
and conviction in its ranks. That is one fundamental truth tha,
has no, altered since 1934, nor w ll it alter in times to come."
"We've had strikes on the waterfront since 1934,"
Bridges said, "but never again have the bosses dared to shoo,
our men dovwi in cold blood "
For many years after Bloody Thursday, each July 5 was
commemorated by maritime workers who took unauthorized
days off to march once again by the thousands up Market Street
in honor of the two dead strikers. One shipowner bitterly com­
plained tha, "On every July 5 there is a complete cessation of
work up and down the whole Pacific Coast because of a holiday
declared by the unions for the purpose of comemmorating a day
of violence and bloodshed "
"No one authorizes the (July 5) holiday excepting a
100% accord of the entire maritime profession," Mike Quin wrote
in The Big Strike, which was firs, published in 1949, 13 years
after he wrote i, and two years after his death a, 41. 'Therefore,
it is regarded as a completely unauthorized stoppage of work
and an illegal ac, The maritime unions have nothing by which ,o
defend this annual disregard for 'authority' other than an old
almost forgotten phrase in the yellowed documents of the
Revolution of 1776, which reads " by the consent o f the
governed"
-M ICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER