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Opening the Closed Shop View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Texas A&M Repository OPENING THE CLOSED SHOP: THE GALVESTON LONGSHOREMEN'S STRIKE, 1920-1921 A Thesis by JOSEPH ANTHONY ABEL Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS December 2004 Major Subject: History OPENING THE CLOSED SHOP: THE GALVESTON LONGSHOREMEN'S STRIKE, 1920-1921 A Thesis by JOSEPH ANTHONY ABEL Submitted to Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Approved as to style and content by: _________________________ _________________________ David Vaught Robert Resch (Chair of Committee) (Member) _________________________ _________________________ Gregory Pappas Walter Buenger (Member) (Head of Department) December 2004 Major Subject: History iii ABSTRACT Opening the Closed Shop: The Galveston Longshoremen’s Strike, 1920-1921. (December 2004) Joseph Anthony Abel, B.A., University of Houston Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. David Vaught Beginning in March of 1920, the Galveston coastwise longshoremen’s strike against the Morgan-Southern Pacific and Mallory steamship lines was a pivotal moment in the history of organized labor in Texas. Local and statewide business interests proved their willingness to use the state apparatus by calling on Governor William P. Hobby and the Texas National Guard to open the Port of Galveston. Despite this, the striking dockworkers maintained the moral support of many local citizens from a variety of social classes, including small merchants and officials of the Galveston municipal government. By February of 1921, however, the segregated locals representing the striking longshoremen had fallen victim to the divisive racial tactics of the shipping companies, who implemented the open-shop policy of non-discrimination in hiring on their docks. Further demonstrating the capital-state alliance, the Texas legislature passed Governor Hobby’s notorious Open Port Law in October 1920, making it virtually illegal for dockworkers and others to engage in strikes deemed harmful to commerce. This legislation and the nearly yearlong strike not only destroyed the coastwise longshore unions in Galveston, but ushered in a decade of repression from which Texas’s organized labor movement did not recover for many years. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people deserve special thanks for their assistance in the preparation and completion of this project. First and foremost, my thanks goes out to the members of my graduate committee, David Vaught, Robert Resch, and Gregory Pappas. Their insights on the American labor movement and experience in the fields of historical and philosophical enquiry proved invaluable to the development of my own words and ideas. I am also grateful to James Maroney and Steven Reich for assisting me in the procurement of sources they used in their own studies of the Texas working class. In addition to this intellectual support, many others deserve thanks for their moral support. The patience, advice, and encouragement provided by my good friends Jennifer Foulke, Brian Neumann, Jayme Smith, and Ryan Pearce were a constant source of strength throughout this journey and I thank them. My fellow graduate students here at Texas A&M also helped in their own individual ways, and I owe them my appreciation. Finally, words cannot express my gratitude for all that my parents have done over the years. Without their love and guidance, none of this would be possible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................... v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION............................................................................. 1 II DISCOVERING ALLIES AND ENEMIES .................................... 25 III UNFULFILLED PROMISES............................................................ 48 IV LABOR UNDER SIEGE................................................................... 72 V RACE, UNION, AND DEFEAT....................................................... 116 VI CONCLUSION.................................................................................. 149 REFERENCES.......................................................................................................... 159 VITA.......................................................................................................................... 168 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On March 19, 1920, the normally bustling docks of the Morgan Steamship Line lay vacant. That morning, nine hundred white coastwise longshoremen failed to appear for work at the eight o’clock starting time. Several blocks away, seven hundred black longshoremen prepared the holds of the Mallory Line’s steamships, but following the noon lunch hour, they too walked off their jobs. The next day a small article hidden within the Galveston Daily News announced matter-of-factly “Dockworkers Strike for Increased Wages.”1 Little did the paper or the men know that they would soon participate in Texas’s most important labor dispute of the 1920s. Like most of their counterparts throughout the country, the Galveston longshoremen advocated “pure-and-simple” unionism. Their demands included higher wages and a louder voice in the forces that governed their lives. When these workers left the docks, they did so not as class warriors, or Socialist activists, or civil libertarians, but as loyal Americans. None of them intended to foment a revolution or unnecessarily disturb the social system that surrounded them in the early twentieth century. In return for this loyalty, the men wanted a greater share of the wealth they produced. Recent history contained many indications that their demands would receive a fair hearing. Across the nation, unionists expressed optimism that the wartime courtship between themselves and federal officials would produce even greater benefits in the postwar era. State-sponsored mediation organizations such as the National Adjustment Commission The journal model for this thesis is The American Historical Review. 2 (NAC) seemed to promise a less conflict-ridden future for both capital and labor. To many it appeared that the United States might soon realize its long held dream of prosperity for all. The 1920s, however, promised something very different from the halcyon days of World War I labor relations. After making the world safe for democracy, the United States government forgot about its allies in the labor movement. Workers and unions throughout the country began to feel the familiar sting of repression almost as soon as the battles on the western front ended. The Red Scare, Attorney General Palmer’s raids, and the massive steel and coal strikes that federal forces helped crush in 1919 all exemplified the sea change in attitude toward organized labor. These events accompanied the revitalization of the once strong open-shop movement. Playing off the ultra-patriotism of the war, the movement’s new supporters euphemistically named their anti-union doctrine the “American Plan.” Increasingly, even the most conservative unions became associated with radicalism and “un-American” values. Despite their good intentions and reluctance to strike, Galveston’s dockworkers became the first group of Texas unionists following the war to face this growing counterrevolution. The coastwise longshoremen’s strike transformed not only Galveston and its waterfront, but the entire state as well. When the smoke cleared in February 1921, business interests had thrown open the doors on the waterfront’s closed-shop. They had also initiated a struggle between themselves and organized labor in Texas that continued for the remainder of the decade. Conflict on Galveston Island helped reveal the lie of the “Prosperity Decade” to all Lone Star labor unionists. 3 * * * * Like most human beings, historians expend a great deal of energy commemorating the successes of the past. A desire to discount and marginalize failures and setbacks often accompanies this. The winners, as the saying goes, write history; Clio’s dustbin stands reserved for all the rest. Southern labor history is especially prone to such oversights. Far too often, scholars have neglected workers in both southern history and labor history. For years, they assumed that the Mason-Dixon Line separated a class-conscious group of northern industrial wage earners from their ignorant and subservient southern counterparts, who toiled hopelessly in the company towns of a vast open-shop landscape. Although various explanations attempted to account for this apparent divergence between northern and southern workers, the conclusions remained the same: the chronic failures of southern unions consigned them to a footnote in studies of the South and American labor. For years, this so-called old southern labor history dominated studies of workers and unions in the South. The work of historian George Tindall is a case in point. “In the Southern workers’ agrarian heritage lurked a fateful paradox,” he argued, “a fierce and petulant individualism combined with attitudes of dependency and obeisance. The worker often ‘appreciated’ his job and deferred to the leadership of the gentry…[This] agrarian heritage had erected mental
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