Archbishop Edward I Hannah Role As Chairman of the National

Apostle of the Dock: Archbishop Edward J. Hannah’s Role as Chairman of the National Longshoremen’s Board During the 1934 San Francisco Waterfront Strike Jaime Garcia De Alba he Reverend Edward Joseph Hanna (1860-1944) served as Archbishop of San Francisco from 1915 through his retirement in 1935. On June 26 1934, at the height of the San TFrancisco Waterfront/Pacific Coast Longshoremen’s Strike, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt named Archbishop Hanna chairman of the National Longshoremen’s Board (NLB). The significance of Rev. Manna’s role as chairman served as a model of the American Catholic hierarchy’s cooperation with the President and the New Deal. Presidential appointments of Catholic leaders represented a new era for the Church, which viewed the federal government’s depression program as a response to Papal doctrine for social reform. Archbishop Hanna entered as arbiter in the 1934 Strike with a solid record for civil service and moderate support of organized labor. Although Rev. Hanna and the Presidential board contributed minimally after its initial introduction into the conflict between longshoremen and shipping employers, tangled in a seemingly unbreakable stand off by late June 1934, the NLB proved beneficial after both sides agreed to let the board arbitrate their grievances. Archbishop Manna then found an opportunity to demonstrate Catholic doctrine as a guide out of the city’s turmoil, and the board’s potential as an example of Church’s support with the governmental recovery program.1 In 1912, then Archbishop of San Francisco William Patrick Riordan made a considerable effort to appoint Rev. Edward I. Manna as auxiliary Bishop. Rev. Manna brought with him a tremendous reputation from his hometown of Rochester, New York, as not only a prominent theological scholar, but also an active participant in social causes. His early career in Rochester, from the 1$90s to his appointment in San Francisco, involved a committed effort to alleviate the plight of the immigrant community, which provided him his first experiences with labor. After the passing of Archbishop Riordan in 1915, Pope Benedict named Rev. Manna Archbishop of San Francisco.2 Archbishop Edward I. Hanna began as prelate amidst a power struggle to settle labor policy between San Francisco’s business community and workers’ unions. In 1916, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), culinary workers, and structural ironworkers unions led three major strikes; yet, the future of the closed shop in the city surpassed the issues. The business community tested its ability to regain control in a city where organized labor reigned, and supported organized labor strongly. San Francisco Chamber of Commerce President, Fredrick Koster began the Law and Order Committee to weaken labor’s power in the city, and advocate the open shop.3 Proponents of the open shop took advantage of The Preparedness Day bombing in July 1916 to discredit unions. Labor activists stood accused of the incident, and capital used sentiment to gather citizens against a pretense of labor radicalism. Koster then formed the Committee of 100, a group of prominent San Franciscans to justify the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce. Koster invited Archbishop Hanna to join. His prestige as archbishop and previous participation on civil service boards defiantly qualified him as a leading figure in San Francisco, but Rev. Hanna declined, and turned his efforts toward support of organized labor.4 As the three strikes progressed, Archbishop Hanna announced his praise for the achievements of labor from the last fifty years in a speech given at the Labor Day celebration in Golden Gate Park on September 4,19 16. Reverend Hanna affirmed that working men must not stand alone, but use, he said, the “inborn right of men to organize for mutual assistance and mutual protection,”5 the utmost goal of labor’s purpose. The archbishop continued to stress workers’ right to bargain collectively for an adequate living standard while they uphold peace, the law, prevent radicalism to achieve public acceptance, and reduce class struggle through the realization that labor and capital must collaborate equally as both are essential to each other’s well being6 Mayor James Roiph, also partial to labor’s cause, named Rev. Hanna chairmen of the General Arbitration Board, proposed for the 1916 strikes, on the basis of his stand with labor. Catholic labor scholar Richard Gribble quotes Mayor Rolph’s words about the archbishop, “There is no other member of the community who posses, in such a unique degree, the confidence of all classes.”7 However, the 1916 General Arbitration Board never formed. The Law and Order Committee refused to send members to the hearings because organized labor advocates represented the majority. Labor prevailed for the moment, and gained favorable awards for all three strikes in 1917. Nevertheless, the move toward the open shop proved more significant as capital initiated anti-labor sentiment. For Rev. Hanna, those years showed not only his position on labor, but also his appeal that attracted the attention of both capital and labor.8 Toward the end of the Progressive Era in San Francisco, closed shop prominence declined. The Red Scare of 1919 and 1920 advanced suspicion of communist leadership within organized labor. The city also tired of what Richard Gribble called union’s “unrealistic expectations and proposals in the post-war economy,” backed away from its grip. In this context, the archbishop also redefined his view on issues between labor and capital. Rev. Hanna and the Catholic Church stood against communism, and believed that private property provided workers with incentive, filling society with productive and patriotic members. Rev Hanna also often chastised both sides for their uncooperative nature. The Monitor quoted the archbishop as saying, “in seeking adjustment neither the employers or their workmen have been sufficiently mindful of the rights of the people as a whole.”9 Gribble also noted, “like many Americans, Hanna shifted from ardent support of labor to a more neutral position.”0 An instance of that change in Hanna emerged when acting Mayor Philip McLaren appointed the archbishop chairman of the impartial Wage Arbitration Boards, which he served on from 1921 to 1924. Tn 1921, the capital backed Builders’ Exchange proposed an industry wide wage cut, which affected all construction trades represented by the labor-backed Building Trades Council (BTC). Both sides then agreed to resolve differences in arbitration. The BTC representatives argued that the proposed wage reduction insufficiently met the rising standard of living costs, and asked that it remain at $7.85. The Exchange believed that construction workers received an adequate wage at $7 per day for a comfortable living, and the cut seemed justified as the outlook for the city’s economy appeared prosperous.” Rev. Hanna and the board decided to favor the Builder’s Exchange, and against BTC protest, authorized the wage cut. The matter reappeared before the board in 1922, and again it denied labor claiming, “a general raise for all trades was not practicable nor necessary based on current economic conditions in San Francisco.”12 Both decisions surprised the BTC, particularly in light of Rev. Hanna’s previous record with the workers. Evidently, the council expected a 39 reversal in 1922 especially when prior to the award announcement the archbishop said, “that kindliness of thought will prevail, and that our aim will be to maintain a standard that will award a decent living.”3 Certainly, the archbishop had not reversed his support of labor, but evidently maintained impartiality, which established his new reputation for considering the position of both labor and capital under existing circumstances. Gribble argued, “By example, Edward Hanna showed colleagues and the general populace how to change with the needs and times of society.”4 Nevertheless, the Builders’ Exchange victory in 1922 opened the way for employers to reassert the open shop in San Francisco as labor’s former power staggered during the 1920s economic boom. Rev. Hanna dropped out of the following board session in 1924 due to union critjcjsm.’5 Even though Archbishop Hanna set a precedent for impartiality for wage arbitration during the prosperous 1920s, Catholics’ opinion viewed that decade as a time of exuberance, an outlook the Church chastised at the start of the Great Depression. Monsignor John A. Ryan, nationally recognized Catholic labor activist, denounced the consumption economics of the era, which he argued fit hand in glove with laissez-faire individualism. The excesses of the capitalist economy pushed the American public to consume abundantly, which in turn pushed industry to over produce, and weighed pressures on the worker. Monsignor Ryan feared that an economy driven by materialism deteriorated ethics, morality and the humanistic preservation of society.’6 Benjamin Hunnicutt quoted Monsignor Ryan who wrote that overproduction “was a squirrel cage concept of progress unenlightened by. considerations of the other ethical and human claims of the individual or the church. It has produced a culture sunk in materialism without a transcendent vision.”17 Even prior to the depression, congregations had turned to their local Archdiocese for assistance. Lizabeth Cohen wrote, “Catholics.. .in the 1920s increasingly recognized that religious affiliation offered material, not just spiritual, salvation.”8 The depression added to the Catholic Church’s responsibilities to its congregation, as stricken parishes clamored for support. San Francisco’s Catholic Community Chest fund for relief efforts expended all available resources by 1932.’ Other urban parishes such, as the one led by Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago, concentrated efforts in raising funds and maintaining benevolent work and relief for the largely working-class immigrant congregations.2° Tn 1931, Pope Pius XI published his latest encyclical on the social question, the Quadragesimo Anno, which detailed a Christian basis for social reform through the promotion of a moral economy.

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