War on the waterfront - Peter Cole

This text is being put online for two reasons. Firstly, it's to draw attention to Peter Cole's splendid book about the IWW on the Philadelphia docks in the 1910s and 1920s.

Secondly, it's to make known a rather shocking historical fact about the IWW at that time, namely just how patriotic most of the members of this most active IWW branch were during World War I. In Local 8 of the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union, a full 100% of the membership registered for military service and many even volunteered! The union purchased war bonds and the membership voted not to strike for the duration of the war. This does not make comfortable reading, but maybe that makes it worthwhile.

War on the Waterfront

The year 1917 was one of profound changes. The United States officially entered the war in Europe in April. Three months later, on September 5, 1917, Local 8's headquarters at 121 Catherine Street and the MTW1 offices near City Hall were stormed by federal agents of the US Department of Justice. The six most important Wobblies were arrested, and all of the union's records confiscated. The raids in Philadelphia were part of a well-coordinated federal plan to destroy the entire IWW, perceived as a threat to the Allied war effort. Two months after the raids the Bolsheviks overthrew the new, already tottering, parliamentary government in Russia and declared the world's first Communist nation. The United States and entire world were forever changed by these events.

The war years presented dramatic challenges to the members of Local 8, who served the war effort loyally but also sought to protect themselves and expand their power. As other workers did, Philly longshoremen worked very hard to serve the nation, but also used the war as leverage to improve their wages. They also sought to expand their influence by working toward the One Big Union, specifically targeting the large riverside sugar refineries. Concurrently, the federal repression suffered by Local 8 and the IWW nationwide was the greatest threat the union had yet experienced. Although profoundly hurt by the loss of their dynamic leaders, Philadelphia's longshoremen emerged from this battle still holding on to job control. After the war they joined millions of other American workers in an unprecedented surge of militant strikes.

The year 1917 also saw tremendous growth for the city's many industries and its port, in both trade and shipbuilding. The Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce boldly declared, “When Uncle Sam calls the roll of those who are furnishing most to wage this mighty war, he finds that th[is] district ... leads all the rest.... Philadelphia counts in this war with the weight of a belligerent nation.” In his celebratory book Philadelphia: A Story of Progress, Herman LeRoy Collins declared, “In one war year 7000 vessels came to Philadelphia wharves and docks to sail away fully laden.” More than $600 million in exports and imports in 1917 shattered the record set the year prior. For example, grain exports doubled from 1914 to 1915 and remained at these record levels through 1918. Sugar refining also benefited from the economic upswing; production in this waterfront industry surged, making it the city's fourth largest manufacturing industry.2

Local 8 quickly capitalized on the economic upswing, in part thanks to a new leader, Walter T. Nef. Nef's presence signaled a renewed IWW commitment to organizing in the East, which, with the notable exception of Local 8, had lagged after the failed Paterson strike in 1913. Arriving from Switzerland in 1901 at the age of nineteen, “Big Nef”quickly found his way to northern California, working jobs as varied as logger and milk driver. He took out union cards in whatever field he worked, most notably in an industrial union that subsequently was split into craft unions upon affiliating with the AFL. In 1908 Nef heard IWW organizer George Speed, who later helped charter Local 8, speak on the San Francisco waterfront about the futility of craft unions. Speed's talk resonated with Nef, who shortly thereafter joined the IWW in Portland. During the winter of 1909-10 Nef helped lead the first major IWW free-speech fight in Spokane, Washington, and served time, along with hundreds of Wobblies, in that city's jail. Nef remained in the Pacific Northwest until the spring of 1915, when he was elected secretary-treasurer of the IWW's new Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO). Nef spent the next two years building up the AWO. In the process, he led the entire IWW (Local 8 included) out of the, doldrums it had experienced at the war's start. Differences with IWW General Secretary-Treasurer Haywood over the role of the AWO led to Nef's resignation in November 1916. Still, Nef remained a darling in the IWW.3

Nef had big plans for the MTW Too, intending to apply the same methods that had worked so successfully among “bindle stiffs.” As with the AWO, Nef hoped to establish a delegate system for the MTW. By increasing the number of delegates (organizers) on the job, rather than on the streets or by the docks, the union could agitate more effectively. In Philadelphia Nef was assisted by two port delegates, one Spanish and one English speaking, at the meager wage of $18 a week (still, most ports maintained only one delegate). Then, Nef promptly raised the initiation fee to $2 for taking out a “red card” in any industry, a high amount in the IWW, and $5 in any industry where the IWW maintained job control, namely Philadelphia's deep-sea piers. Nef argued that the increase was. needed to create a powerful and stable organization that could improve conditions and wages on the job and increase delegates. Nef concluded, “Now all together for the one Big, Powerful Union of all workers in all industries.”4

A second seasoned and equally well-traveled IWW organizer, Edwin Frederick Doree, arrived to help Nef. Born to Swedish immigrants in Philadelphia in 1889, Doree first experienced the migratory existence of the American working class while just a child, when his family moved to Skagway, Alaska. At the age of thirteen Doree started apprenticing in a railroad car factory until, eighteen months later, he lost several fingers in a workplace accident. He drifted down to Washington State, where he first joined the IWW in 1906, becoming an accomplished organizer but only after a stint as a professional baseball player. In 1912 Doree accompanied George Speed to Louisiana to assist the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. In those nine months he witnessed some of the most oppressive conditions in the nation, agitated to keep an interracial union alive despite massive resistance, and spent time in jail. Doree also received a nasty head wound that laid him up for several months. Afterward, Doree organized textile workers in Rochester, New York where he met his wife, Chika, a Jewish immigrant, at a strike meeting and migratory farm workers throughout the Midwest, following the workers north as they followed the harvests. Possibly, Doree met Nef when the latter took the reigns of the AWO, although they likely met in the Spokane free-speech fight. In 1916 Doree again organized textile workers, this time in Baltimore. When Nef moved to Philly, so did Doree. Nef then met Doree's sister-in-law, Feige, who soon married Walter. As its textile industry employed more than one hundred thousand workers, Philadelphia was a logical place to base a newly created Textile Workers Industrial Union (TWIU), #1000, with Doree's TWIU office next to Nef's reborn MTW. Doree also organized for Local 8 and, at times, found work as a longshoreman.5

With Nef and Doree's arrival, two of Local 8's most able organizers were dispatched to other ports. Ben Fletcher, a national organizer as of the previous fall, went to Providence, Rhode Island, to organize longshoremen, many of whom were Cape Verdean (i.e., of African ancestry). Jack Walsh spent the end of 1916 and start of 1917 in Baltimore helping Jack Lever, the main IWW organizer. Emil John (Jack) Lever, a Russian immigrant, joined the IWW in 1914 while in Salt Lake City and later that same year worked as a machinist in Toledo, where he witnessed organized labor's racism firsthand as a member of the AFL's International Association of Machinists. Lever later met Walsh and Fletcher in Philadelphia, where, according to Lever, “we found out we were in agreement” on issues like industrial unionism and racial equality. As in Philadelphia before Local 8, longshoremen in Baltimore were a mixture of African Americans, Irish Americans, and Poles, none of whom got along. The ILA had established an all-white local in 1912; as Lever put it years later, “The ILA came in and organized whites and left the Negroes out. And we said, a union is a union. And we proceeded to organize the Negroes.” Lever and Walsh signed up nearly fifteen hundred black longshoremen before Walsh requested Fletcher's presence. Walsh hoped to convince white longshoremen to switch to the IWW when the ILA's contract expired, but most whites, immigrant and native-born, stuck with the ILA.6

As Fletcher, Lever, and Walsh organized along the Atlantic seaboard, Local 8 again targeted Philadelphia's sugar workers after they spontaneously struck. Unlike longshoremen, the men and women who toiled in the sugar refineries remained weak and completely subject to their employers' will. Most received a wage of twenty-five cents per hour (some less) for twelve-hour days (or nights, the factories ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week), fourteen hours a shift during busy times, without higher overtime or night rates. The sugar-refining boom during the war forced employees to work even harder, until they walked out of the Spreckles Sugar Refinery on February 1, demanding a raise of five cents per hour, time and a half for any work over ten hours a day, and Sundays off. Most of the workers were immigrants, especially Lithuanians, Poles, and Russians, though some were recent Southern black migrants. At the walkout's start, the workers were overwhelmingly non-union, but hundreds quickly joined the IWW. Within two days the strike spread to the McCahan and Pennsylvania refineries, and picket lines emerged around all three plants.7

The Philadelphia sugar strike was part of a national wave of worker militancy. In fact, the number of strikes in 1917 surpassed that of any previous year in U.S. history. Sparked by the wartime labor shortage and inflation, unprecedented numbers of workers, often nonunion, struck for better wages and fewer hours. As in Philadelphia, strikes occurred in other sugar-refinery centers; in Brooklyn workers went out in late January, soon spreading to Long Island, Jersey City, and Yonkers.8

With no settlement in sight, the IWW, led by Doree, Nef, and Joseph Weitzen (the secretary of Local 8 and an African American), determined that the strike could be won only by expanding it. In an uncommon instance of skilled-unskilled worker solidarity, IWW engineers, coopers, machinists, oilers, foremen, and sack sewers joined the strike, which soon spread to the city's molasses refinery, the “Smear works.” The city's newspapers reported between two thousand and three thousand sugar workers out, the IWW claimed over four thousand. The IWW signed up more than one thousand strikers to the Sugar Workers' Industrial Union 497. A week into the strike a thousand Wobbly longshoremen who worked the refineries' piers also struck. IWW seamen refused to divert ships to alternate ports.9

From its start the strike proved quite effective, despite daily beatings and arrests from local police, assisted by private detectives hired by employers. With over three-quarters of their employees out, refinery officials admitted that production had slowed to a fraction of normal. Six large steamships and several lighters loaded with sugar were dead “in the stream.” A million pounds of unrefined sugar was diverted to other ports.10

As Philadelphia refined one-sixth of the nation's sugar, sugar prices quickly rose, which sparked female-led protests. Several thousand women, mostly immigrants, clashed with the police in what the Public Ledger called “food riots.” One wholesale grocer gave voice, no doubt, to others' fears: “The consumer ... is also tending to force the hands of the refiners to do something which the refiners may consider unwise or unjust in composing labor difficulties.” Women, some of them refinery workers, many with babies in their arms and others leading toddlers, repeatedly attacked strikebreakers despite police protection. Historian Temma Kaplan contextualizes such actions: “When women left their households to protest against certain indignities or demand changes in their own and their families' lives, they presented themselves not as political actors, but as the very conscience of the community.”11

Such protests incited thousands of strikers and sympathizers, who clashed with hundreds of police, leaving one dead, many injured, and scores arrested. After two hours of fighting one night, Martynas Petkus, a Lithuanian Wobbly and rank-and-file activist, lay dead. In an interview with the Public Ledger, Florence Sholde — the wife of a Polish striker, a mother of four, and of late a convicted criminal — spoke passionately of the strike. Revealing the close bonds in her working-class neighborhood, she claimed, “We would be starving down here now if the butcher and the grocer did not trust us until my husband goes to work. If they stop charging it on the book, we will all go hungry. All the women and their families are just the same.”12

The strikers held several large events for the fallen striker. Thousands viewed his body in an open casket at the Lithuanian Hall, despite police opposition in the name of “public safety.” The large room was full of flowers, many donated by the IWW and the Lithuanian Socialist Federation, to which Petkus also belonged. The following day many thousands, red carnations in their lapels, marched, again defying the police, which had refused a permit. After the funeral, Wobblies Joseph Schmidt, Joseph Graber, A. Mariella, and Doree spoke in Lithuanian, Polish, Italian, and English, respectively. Kaplan explains that “collective mourning at political funerals is a civic ritual that unites a community, enables it to reclaim sacred spaces, and permits it to cleanse itself of death.”13

The death hardened both sides. Clashes, injuries, and arrests continued unabated. Members of the state and federal governments' arbitration services shuttled between employers and strikers, yet neither side relented. Earl D. Babst, president of the American Sugar Refining Company, the parent of Spreckles, announced that his company “would not yield an inch.... [I] would not propose to hand over the control of this industry to any outside organization [IWW].” Just as firmly, the strikers claimed, “There is no vindication of the dead unless we have a victory for the living.”14

After dragging into an eighth week, the strike fizzled. The strikers had succeeded in significantly curtailing sugar refining in Philadelphia. The strike lasted for as long as it did because the union maintained the solidarity of the strikers across craft, ethnicity, gender, and race lines with tremendous support in the diverse, working-class waterfront neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the employers' strength outmatched strikers' solidarity. Still, as often happens in strikes, employers did raise wages almost to the level demanded by the strikers (from 25 to 29.7 cents an hour). For many strikers, though, the outcome has to be seen as a failure — thousands lost two months' wages, hundreds lost jobs and were arrested, and the refineries remained nonunion.15

Perhaps more alarming, workers inside the sugar refineries found themselves more racially divided. This splintering of workers, orchestrated by employers, had profound ramifications. The Spreckles superintendent acknowledged that “Negroes had been employed to replace and 'equalize' the foreign laborers.” As a result, the governmental report Negro Migration in 1916-17 concluded that “there has been developing [since the strike] a strong undercurrent of [racial] prejudice among foreign workers, particularly the Slavs.” One “Negro dock foreman” complained that Poles “dislike to work beside the colored men, and are going to make trouble for us.” This strike, then, contributed to rising anti-black sentiment among recent immigrants — which contributed to the ultimate decline of Local 8. Notably, this same report concluded that “there had been no race trouble on the docks where whites and blacks [who were Local 8 members] had worked side by side.” Of course, unity never was a given and played a major role in Local 8's postwar unraveling.16

Local 8 and the IWW strove to keep its heterogeneous members, in particular the African Americans, committed to the union. Big Bill Haywood, the IWW's general secretary-treasurer, addressed this issue in his petition “To Colored Working Men and Women.” Haywood contended that black and white workers had the same goals — to improve their conditions in work and life. Haywood argued, however, that under the present system, black (and white) people had yet to achieve true freedom. Haywood noted that African Americans were virulently discriminated against, that “as [black] wage workers, the boss may work us to death, at the hardest and most hazardous labor, the longest hours, at the lowest pay.” Then Haywood argued that white workers did not fare much better, “regarded by the boss only as a means of making profits.” Thus, the crux of Haywood's argument (echoed by other socialists like Fletcher) was that all workers shared common interests. Haywood also noted how employers sought to divide white and black workers to keep them weak. To build a strong union, Haywood contended that “race prejudice has no place in a labor organization.” The challenge of organizing across racial lines soon was compounded by the war-induced Great Migration and — perhaps an even greater threat to the IWW's viability — the wrath of the federal government.”17

In April 1917, the United States entered World War I, and most Americans quickly rallied around the flag. The immediate cause was Germany's decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against all vessels sailing toward Britain. After the German announcement, American ships remained in their safe harbors, unwilling to challenge German U-boats, so wheat, cotton, and other goods piled up on piers all along the Atlantic seaboard. When President Wilson asked Congress to declare war, the citizens of Philadelphia immediately responded. To mobilize food, fuel, and workers, recruit troops, and sell war bonds, the Pennsylvania Council for National Defense was created. In Philadelphia so-called Four Minute Men marshaled an army of speakers to rally the city's populace. Philadelphians purchased a billion dollars in Liberty Bonds to help the war effort.”18

While the port of Philadelphia experienced major growth in 1915 and 1916, the true economic boom was in 1917. In the years 1910 to 1914, foreign trade hovered around $165 million. In 1917 foreign trade rose to more than $600 million. During February 1917, despite the sugar strike and though the winter traditionally was a slack time, exports from Philadelphia totaled $57 million, a stunning $48 million increase over February 1916. According to one source, fully 40% of all war-related commodities shipped to Europe left from Philadelphia. The city government worked actively to promote the port, making “liberal appropriations” to harbor development and public relations.19

In the short term, America's entry into the war materially benefited all Philadelphia waterfront workers. One MTW circular advised workers to organize to improve their wages and conditions during the war as, “on account [of] the European War, prosperity reigns on the seas. The Ship-owners are making millions of dollars.” In Philadelphia, as in other ports, the wages of waterfront workers rose during the war. Local 8 won its demand for a raise to sixty cents per hour for loading gunpowder and munitions. As for Philadelphia sailors, they also agitated for raises, knowing that ships could not get enough able-bodied seamen. Just prior to the U.S. declaration of war MTW Too struck for a $ T o raise in monthly wages across-the-board instead of striking individual ships. World War I, which simultaneously led to a tremendous increase in production and a shortage of labor, drove wages up for American workers. In other ways, the war was far more disadvantageous, especially for Wobblies.20

The IWW's stance on the war confirmed its ideology and revealed its view of American society. Like other socialist organizations, from 1914 onward the IWW labeled the European war a capitalist enterprise, caused by and solely benefiting the rich and powerful at the cost of the overwhelming majority of people, who fought and died on Europe's battlefields. In 1916 the IWW GEB declared, “We reaffirm with unfaltering determination the unalterable opposition to all wars.” Throughout 1916 and 1917 the IWW made its stance on the war clear, declaring once, “Capitalists of America, we will fight against you, not for you.” The IWW also contrasted its stand on war with the AFL, whose superpatriotism appalled many socialists. However, many in the IWW, including its leadership, took the fatalist stance that America inevitably would enter the fray.21

Yet, despite its doctrinal opposition to the war, the IWW did not tell its members to refuse registering for military service, nor did it participate as an organization in antiwar activities. IWW leaders were fully aware that, by 1917, most Americans supported the war, which was a perfect excuse for the government and employers to suppress leftist organizations, especially the IWW. Thus, the union (also demonstrating its anarchist tendencies) let individual members decide whether to register. IWW publications noted on more than one occasion that failure to register would bring only more hostility down upon the IWW. So, although no official position was taken, it was clear that the IWW leadership believed its members should, in fact, register for military conscription, which most Wobblies did.22

In Philadelphia fully 100 % of Local 8's members registered for the draft. MTW 100 Secretary-Treasurer Nef did not register because he was too old, but he advised Jack Lever and James Phillips, secretaries of the Baltimore and Boston MTW respectively, to inform their members of the Selective Service Act (Lever himself volunteered). Doree also encouraged many Socialists (some of whom were Wobblies, too), who opposed conscription, to register. Still, Doree was critical of the draft; in a letter to IWW Secretary-Treasurer Haywood, Doree wrote of “physical discrimination” practiced by the Philadelphia draft board, believing a higher percentage of working-class residents was called up than upper-class ones.23

Beyond advising members to register, both Local 8 and the national IWW left decisions about the war up to individual members. Doree and others did not believe in speaking publicly against the war; instead, during the war he resolved to “keep his mouth shut.” At his trial in 1918, Doree made it clear he opposed wars as “trouble” and that he had enough of that already. Doree registered because he saw the Allies as the lesser of two evils, citing German Socialists as useless after they failed, in 1914, 4, to call a general strike to prevent their nation's militarism. Nef, himself a German Swiss, had supported the Allies since 1914, opposing Prussian militarism from his youth.24

The rank and file of Local 8 actively supported the war effort. At its hall, the local maintained an honor roll of members serving in the military. Several local hiring bosses estimated that more than seven hundred members of Local 8 performed military service during the war. At one wartime meeting, the members agreed “that any Member of our Local Union who has been in the United States Army or Navy service and shows an Honorable discharge when he returns, his book be straightened up,” meaning a veteran could rejoin the union without paying another initiation fee or back dues. Nor was Local 8 the only IWW branch that acted so strongly on behalf of the Allies.25

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of Local 8's support of the war was a meeting organized by Ben Fletcher, Polly Baker, and Jack Lever in early 1917. At the behest of Colonel Freely, commander of the Schuylkill Arsenal, an Army supply depot in Philadelphia, the three Wobblies set up a meeting at Local 8's hall. The building was filled to capacity, six hundred strong, to hear Fletcher, Nef, and Walsh address the membership on the need to support the war effort by working efficiently. Lever later wrote that Fletcher's “high standing with his race [African Americans], who formed about 6o % of the port workers, was invaluable” at that meeting. The members of Local 8 later voted not to strike for the duration of the war.26

In addition to those already discussed, Local 8 supported the war for numerous reasons. Most obviously, the men needed work and the union needed to operate. As most work on the river was war-related, an antiwar stance was not only potentially dangerous, but it was not viable. Second, though a great many Germans and Italians resided in Philadelphia, few, if any, were longshoremen, and Nef was a vocal critic of Germany. Third, the large number of Local 8 members who served in the military, the Liberty Bonds purchased by the union, and the no-strike pledge suggest some patriotic tendencies. As for the African Americans, who made up roughly half the union, generally the black community supported this war. Most famously W. E. B. Du Bois, the influential editor of the NAACP's Crisis, encouraged blacks to rally around the flag and support the push for democracy (falsely assuming that black loyalty abroad would be rewarded at home after the war).27

The IWW, including Local 8, also saw World War I as an opportunity to organize, understanding that the war could create the sort of crisis in which revolutions happen. The IWW argued that workers should continue to prepare for the true fight, the class war. Indeed, the actions and attitudes of Local 8 members echo those of syndicalist (and later Communist) William Z. Foster. By this time Foster had broken from the IWW and focused on “boring from within” the mainstream AFL. Foster publicly supported the war and bought war bonds, but also took advantage of the war to organize a brilliant campaign in the Chicago stockyard and later the national steel strike in 1919. Whether Local 8's stance is considered patriotic, opportunistic, or syndicalist (i.e., ignoring the politics of war in favor of sticking with organizing on the job), it was not alone among Leftists.28

Philadelphia was one of the most important U.S. ports in the war effort. Out of Philadelphia went many of the men as well as much of the food, munitions, oil, and steel on its way to Europe. In 1917 more than 75 % of the cargo that left Philadelphia went to help fight the war. A report in 1919 by the recently created United States Shipping Board (USSB) stated that the longshoremen of Local 8 “loaded a large part of the munitions sent to Europe.”29

The only work stoppage that Local 8 conducted during the war was its anniversary strike. In May 1917 the union celebrated its birth just as it had in previous years, by shutting down the docks and celebrating. The membership notified employers that despite the recent American declaration of war, longshoremen would not work on May 15. As the Wobblies marched down Delaware Avenue led by three bands, IWW organizer C. L. Lambert commented, “You could see in the lines of men walking five abreast, American, Polish, Lithuanian, Belgian and colored in the same line” chanting, “No creed, no color can bar you from membership” and the official IWW motto, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Local 8's annual strike reaffirmed its commitment to solidarity and disproved the notion that the IWW could not organize a radical yet stable union. As Nef wrote, “I have always urged the men to do their work well and if they had any complaints to bring them up at the union meetings so that they could be acted upon in an orderly fashion.”30

That the members of Local 8 stopped work during the war to celebrate their anniversary reveals a great deal about their power and how they perceived themselves. Local 8 wielded job control all along the Philadelphia waterfront and beyond. In 1917 Local 8 claimed close to four thousand paid-up members in Philadelphia, Camden, New Jersey, and down river in Wilmington, Delaware. Francis Fisher Kane, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania during the war, later testified that every longshoreman in Philadelphia was a Wobbly. Local 8's power was so complete that its members handled all of the munitions as well as the oil for the Army and Navy. William Anderson, a Local 8 member (along with his father), worked as a foreman at Murphy-Cook, which held an Army contract. Anderson said that if a ship loaded, say iron, at an unorganized dock but was slated to carry a load of gunpowder as well, activity stopped until a gang of Wobblies arrived to work the ammunition. Among the Dupont Company powder workers at both Carney's Point, New Jersey, and Wilmington, which Local 8 dominated during the war, vessels simply were not allowed to load gunpowder at a non-IWW pier. Thus, Wobblies contributed mightily to the Allied war effort, and workers, employers, and government all knew it. Local 8's power paralleled that of other IWW strongholds in important war industries, including the copper mines of Montana and Arizona and the Pacific Northwest's woods.31

Every deep-sea stevedore and shipping firm dealt exclusively with Local 8, with the exception of two companies. The Hamburg-American Line and Furness-Withy, both of whom contracted for their longshoremen through the Atlantic Transportation Company, refused to recognize the union. All other jobs on the waterfront either went through the IWW hall or at the “hiring corner” less than two blocks from it. As Jack Walsh proclaimed: “Any time they [bosses] ran short they telephone[d] up to the IWW hall for men.” Even the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) acknowledged that Local 8 “is an extremely powerful organization locally.”32

As in other war-related industries, the federal government took an active role in labor relations in maritime transport. The government dramatically increased spending on shipbuilding to develop an American merchant marine fleet, through a new body called the Emergency Fleet Corporation. Another new agency, the USSB, was created to coordinate and regulate the industry, including labor relations aboard ships and in ports. Following the lead of the president, the National War Labor Board encouraged cooperation between employers and employees and their unions, for the sake of efficiency.33

The federal government simultaneously supported the “bona fide” labor movement, embodied by the AFL, and worked to dismantle the renegade IWW. The AFL recognized that the government had the power to eliminate the IWW, thereby ridding the AFL of its main rival; in his autobio­graphy, Samuel Gompers labeled the IWW “a radical fungus on the labor movement.” Accordingly, in August 1917 the USSB created the National Adjustment Commission (NAC), along with a committee representing shipping interests (in particular the American Steamship Association, which represented dozens of shipping lines) and the ILA (which represented at least some longshoremen in every port excepting Philadelphia). The USSB, War Department, shipping interests, stevedores, and ILA all were represented on the NAC, which resolved disputes concerning wages, hours, and conditions. The shippers, ILA, and government formally excluded Local 8 and the MTW from these discussions, despite what the USSB labeled “the important work” performed by Local 8 members. Nor did the NAC establish a local presence in Philadelphia. Crucially, T. V. O'Connor, the ILA president, and Joseph Ryan, the ILA leader in New York, sat on the commission. O'Connor later headed the USSB; in his autobiography, Gompers praised O'Connor and the ILA for trying to drive the IWW off the docks. In 1917 the ILA journal The Longshoreman ran many anti-IWW stories, accusing it of “treasonable” acts and wanting “to destroy society — to overturn civilization — to stamp out individuality, and to erase the laws of private property of any sort.”34

Local 8 continued to battle the ILA during the war. In 1916-17 the ILA chartered two locals in Philadelphia. Correspondence in June 1917 between one local president and AFL headquarters confirms that the ILA had a difficult time. Charles Goodwin, the local's president, wrote, “We have a rival organization here about 4000 strong to fight,” so he requested more money to organize. During the war an ILA local signed an agreement with the NAC to handle lumber in Philadelphia. This contract also acknowledged the power of Local 8: “The organization of Local 916 was to some extent disorganized by competitive organizations.” A few months after signing the contract, ILA President O'Connor admitted in The Longshoreman that Philadelphia was “very much in need of attention and it will be necessary for considerable organizing work to be done before we can hope to have anything like the membership we should have when the population and amount of shipping to, and from,” is considered. The ONI confirmed that the ILA “has frequently endeavored to gain a foothold in Philadelphia, but has been uniformly unsuccessful.” Both ILA locals collapsed within a year.35

As the IWW never signed contracts with employers, Local 8 would not, on principle, have participated in the NAC. Jack Lever discussed the Wobblies' direct-action approach: “We didn't get formal bargaining, but we simply told people to stop work until they got what they wanted.” Still, Local 8's exclusion from the NAC was pushed by the ILA. For in' stance, Patrick Quinlan, an AFL organizer, recommended to Todd Daniel, the senior Philadelphia agent of the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, that he work with Polish Catholic priests, who opposed the atheistic IWW, to subvert Local 8; still, there is no evidence of any Catholic parishes opposing Local 8. ILA efforts in Philadelphia parallel its actions in Norfolk, Virginia, where Earl Lewis has documented how the ILA used the USSB to displace the all-black, independent Transportation Workers Association. The AFL colluded with the government, hoping to subvert the IWW nationwide.36

Nevertheless, Local 8 maintained job control and the Wobblies performed their work admirably. Not a single work stoppage occurred after May 15, 1917. This policy even extended to their annual birthday strike. At one April 1918 meeting, the members voted “that we postpone the Celebration of the 15th of May which is our legal holiday ever since our Organization is in existence so as not to hamper the war work of the Government.” Clearly, the membership supported the war effort, shocking given the IWW's politics and the government's wartime repression — or perhaps not. Local 8's action combined one part patriotism (white hot by 1918), one part fear (of further arrests and raids), and one part pragmatism (almost all work was war-related). Rationales aside, when literally millions of tons of explosives and munitions were loaded and unloaded in the port, not a single explosion, accident, or shifting of cargo occurred in Philadelphia. In contrast, there were numerous explosions, fires, and accidents at other Atlantic ports, where ILA men worked. Incredibly, given the federal government's anti-IWW stance, the Navy did not allow any explosives to be loaded aboard a vessel in Philadelphia unless done so by Wobblies. Moreover, when a fire or explosion occurred on a ship loaded in New York (as when the Henderson caught fire at sea), it was sent to Philadelphia to be reloaded. Gompers claimed, without evidence, that such “accidents” on New York's Chelsea piers were sabotage conducted by pro-German Wobblies. Local 8 members were proud of their unblemished record and quick to point out that less efficient longshoremen were not Wobblies.37

As the city's shipping industry prospered, so did the union. Local 8 initiated dozens of new members, many African American, each week. Also of interest, the ONI reported that membership was “increasing daily, owing to the influx of a large number of West Indian negroes.” As Local 8's power increased, the longshoremen yet again set their sights on the Spreckles sugar docks, despite the brutal two-month winter strike. The campaign was part of a larger effort to increase IWW power by putting more delegates on docks and ships. This program also targeted Spanish-speaking workers by printing many pamphlets, including the union's constitution, in Spanish. These efforts, however, quickly were overshadowed by national events.38

On September 5, 1917, the U.S. Department of Justice carried out raids at sixty-four IWW halls and offices across the nation, ostensibly to prevent an IWW general strike. Federal agents confiscated more than five tons of IWW organizational minutes, official and personal correspondence, financial records, pamphlets, newspapers, circulars, books, stickers, membership lists, buttons, cards, publications, and office equipment all as “evidence.” The IWW in Philadelphia did not escape. Local 8's hall was raided, as were the headquarters of the MTW and TWIU. Walter Nef testified that “I found these officers taking everything except the framework of the desks,” including membership letters, correspondence, account books, financial records, and literature. In addition, and more seriously, the Department of Justice issued arrest warrants on the charges of treason and sedition for 166 Wobblies, including six from Philadelphia Benjamin H. Fletcher, Walter T. Nef, John J. Walsh, Edwin F. Doree, Manuel Rey, and Joseph Graeber (a Polish organizer who did not belong to Local 8 but who helped with refinery workers).39 All of those arrested were accused of interfering with the Selective Service Act, violating the Espionage Act of 1917, conspiring to strike, violating the constitutional right of employers executing government contracts, and using the mail to conspire to defraud employers. Possibly the most well-known chapter in the history of the IWW, this federal repression forever affected the union. Local 8 suffered from these raids, though it persevered far more effectively than most other branches.40

Local 8's rank and file organized to exonerate its local and national leaders. Out on bond prior to their trial, Doree and Nef volunteered for the IWW General Defense Committee (GDC), formed shortly after the raids. In Doree's words, the GDC worked “to raise funds, secure legal counsel, locate witnesses, and generally assist in the defense of the various members of the I.W.W.” Local 8 sold “liberty bonds” in order to raise money for the defense fund. The GDC also helped defendants' families. The ONI reported that Local 8 “has contributed liberally to the Defense Fund.”41

The purpose of the raids and arrests was abundantly clear: to destroy the IWW. In his deposition, Doree detailed the myriad ways in which the government obstructed the work of the GDC, by denying it mailing privileges, confiscating mails, intimidating lawyers and witnesses, and preventing the IWW Publishing Bureau from printing defense literature. Historian William Preston notes that the American entry into World War I allowed the Wilson administration to equate the threat of IWW strikes with “seditious interference in war production.” The Department of Justice's strategy was in keeping with the actions of Military Intelligence. According to historian Mark Ellis, Major General Ralph “Van Deman became convinced that the security of the United States and the war effort faced internal threats, not only from enemy agents, but also from the antiwar activities of American left-wing radicalism, in the form of unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World.” One hundred percent Americanism and the “atmosphere of war hysteria [that] colored all decisions from the local to the national level” also help explain why federal officials saw the IWW as “a vicious, treasonable, and criminal conspiracy.” At the Chicago trial the prosecution equated the IWW's anti-capitalist beliefs with pro-German sentiment and, by extension, treason.42

The repression of Local 8 lends further credence to the idea that the government's actions were geared more toward wrecking the IWW than protecting the nation since the members of Local 8 worked so diligently during the war. Philadelphia longshoremen loyally loaded thousands of vessels for the war effort, with but one short strike and no major mishaps. Hundreds of members joined the military, and others purchased Liberty Bonds. Nevertheless, Local 8 was undeniably an IWW outfit, the men proudly wearing their buttons to work — even at the Navy Yard. Although Wobblies loaded ships for the war, it was not because the government endorsed the IWW but rather because of the union's power. Even though no problems occurred, the federal government still equated Philadel­phia Wobblies with anti-Americanism, capable of subverting the war effort. Addressing this issue in a letter written to his wife while jailed at Leavenworth, Doree claimed, “I did not know then [1917], and have not since learned, of any `general strike scheme' on the part of the Industrial Workers of the World for the purpose of crippling the war program of the United States. Nothing of this was proven at our trial.” The plans for the federal raids emanated from the nation's capital, where the Departments of Justice, Labor, and War worked closely to suppress the so-called IWW threat. Since the IWW was powerful on the vital Philadelphia waterfront, it should come as no surprise that Local 8 was a main target.43

Further proof confirming the true purpose of the arrests — to crush the IWW — comes from whom the Department of Justice did not consult, namely federal officials in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia representatives of the Department of Justice were not asked in advance about the raids. Had they been, they would have told their superiors that there was no reason to suspect that the longshoremen were disloyal. Further, the Navy did not see Local 8 as a threat, despite the nature of the Depart­ment of Justice's charges. Only five months after the raids did Assistant Attorney General William C. Fitts contact the Secretary of Navy requesting evidence “to show that the needs of the Navy of the United States, with respect to preparation for participation in the war, were materially interfered with and retarded by the unrest fomented and low-down methods injected into the situation during the spring and summer of 1917 by the I.W.W.” In short, there was no concrete evidence that the American war effort was being subverted by the IWW or that a general strike was in the works. In particular, the Navy never supplied one shred of evidence that Philadelphians ever sabotaged the war effort or planned to. In fact, the U.S. pardon attorney who later investigated the cases of Local 8's leaders wrote that he had “considerable difficulty” in “ascertaining just what” these longshore­men had ,done “that constitute[d] the offense of which they were convicted.” Furthermore, the federal agent who conducted the raids on Local 8 in 1917 later admitted, “I personally do not know of any crime that he [Nef] has committed against the country.” Rather, in 1922 this agent volunt­eered to the pardon attorney that “I wish to state that Walter Neff [sic] is a clean cut high class intelligent man and a perfect gentleman” ! Finally, the U.S. Attorney for eastern Pennsylvania during the war wrote on behalf of the Local 8 leaders jailed, encouraging the president to pardon them.44

Nevertheless, given the anti-radical sentiments of the time, 101 Wobblies quickly were indicted by a grand jury in Chicago, where IWW headquarters were located, on five counts of conspiring to hinder eleven acts of Congress and presidential decrees concerning the war. The 1918 trial of the Wobblies was the longest in U.S. history up until that time. Nef testified to the strength of Local 8 in Philadelphia. Doree concentrated his discussion on the “brutal oppression” of timber workers in Louisiana whom he organized before moving to Philadelphia. Walsh “kept the courtroom in an undignified state of continual laughter with his references to 'Fellow Worker Nebeker' [the prosecuting attorney] and other Irish pleasantries.” Fletcher, curiously, did not testify. In a letter to the editor published in The Crisis in 1919, F. H. M. Murray wrote of running into Fletcher during the trial and asking him what he thought; according to Murray, Fletcher “smiled broadly” and replied that Judge Landis was “a fakir. Wait until he gets a chance; then he'll plaster it on thick.” After four months of testimony — in which the entire government case was based upon letters, newspaper articles, and other materials written prior to America's declaration of war — the jury delivered a verdict in less than an hour that every defendant on trial was guilty on all counts. The men from Local 8 were sentenced as severely as the other defendants. On August 30, 1918, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis sentenced Nef to twenty years in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth and fined him $30,000 plus court costs. Doree, Fletcher, Walsh, and Graber were sentenced to ten years and $30,000 plus costs. Rey was sentenced to twenty years and $20,000. A decade later Big Bill Haywood wrote that, upon hearing the verdicts, “Ben Fletcher sidled over to me and said: 'The Judge has been using very ungrammatical language.' I looked at his smiling black face and asked: 'How's that, Ben?' He said: 'His sentences are much too long.' At one time previous to this during the great trial in a spirit of humor, Ben remarked: 'If it wasn't for me, there'd be no color in this trial at all.' I might explain that he was the only Negro in the group.”45

To the membership of Local 8, the loss of their leaders, Fletcher in particular, was devastating. Black longshoreman James Fair recalled, “Some of us were very hurt over it, because we knew what he was doing was something for us to earn a livelihood to support ourselves and families and it was just like well, I would say it was to ones who was interested in organized labor and improving our standards of life it was something near like Martin Luther King [being sent to jail].” While waiting in the infamous Cook County jail — the same prison where the Haymarket martyrs were hung thirty years before — to be loaded on a train for Leavenworth, Fletcher made light of the situation while simultaneously calling into question the authority of the entire proceedings. Haywood recalled Fletcher holding a mock court. Imitating Judge Landis, “looking solemn and spitting tobacco juice,” Fletcher “swore in the prisoners as a jury; calling the guards and detectives up to him he sentenced them without further ado to be hanged and shot and imprisoned for life.”46

After the raids, the MTW continued its mission of organizing seamen. MTW headquarters moved to South Philadelphia; the headquarters also housed other radical organizations, including the Russian Socialist Society. Most Wobbly seamen, especially in Philadelphia, were Spaniards and Italians. Nef estimated that between four thousand and five thousand seamen belonged to the MTW on the Atlantic coast. On virtually every coastwise vessel, much of the crew below decks — firemen, engin­eers, oilers, and water tenders — were Wobblies. Although not in the Navy, the merchant marine, including Philadelphia-based Wobblies, risked their lives on a daily basis for the Allied cause. Leonard Guillel and Francisco Alonso, both Spanish-born Wobs, were aboard the Standard Oil steamship Helton that was torpedoed on its way to Rotterdam; twenty-two crewmen, twelve of them Wobblies, died. To curtail the MTW's power, Rey had been sent to Leavenworth for twenty years. Another Spanish anarchist, Genaro Pazos, took Rey's place as secretary-treasurer of MTW 100. Pazos had been very active in spreading IWW-MTW propaganda throughout the Atlantic and in raising money for the IWW Defense Committee. Even though the MTW had only a fraction of the ISU's members, the ONI recommended that Pazos and the union “be kept under close surveillance.”47

Despite Local 8's record of reliable, efficient labor and having its leaders imprisoned, the federal government still did not trust Local 8. In a comprehensive report entitled Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers and the Alleged Threatened Combination between Them and the Bolsheviki and Sinn Feiners, the ONI, in close collaboration with the Department of Justice, Plant Protection Sections of the Military Intelligence Division, and Emergency Fleet Corporation, concluded: “It is the opinion of this Office that subject [Local 8] is extremely dangerous potenti­ally .... This Office recommends that ... it [Local 8] should be kept under strict surveillance by the aid for Information of the Fourth Naval District. It is further recommended that the leaders likewise be carefully watched, and punished for each and every infraction of the law, however slight.” The ONI soon placed one of its operatives inside Local 8.48

Yet, in spite of these enormous losses and threats, Local 8 achieved significant wage increases during the war. By the end of 1918 the wage rate for deep-sea longshoremen had jumped to sixty-five cents per hour, which can be attributed to a combination of labor scarcity and union power. Philadelphia's wages for deep-sea longshoremen paralleled those of other Atlantic ports, from thirty cents in the summer of 1917, to forty cents in July 1918, and sixty-five cents by the end of that year. Further, the coastwise longshoremen who had joined Local 8 received equal wages, unheard of in the era and due to the IWW's egalitarian streak — in contrast to the craft-based wage hierarchy of the ILA.49

Most of the IWW was thrown into utter turmoil as a result of wartime repression, but Local 8 maintained its power. In fact, although many contemporaries and historians consider the federal raids the beginning of the end of the IWW as a force, the ONI reported that, a year after the raids, “the shipping interests of the city generally recognize the power [of] the Local and are obliged to employ members of it exclusively. In many instances when stevedores are required a request is made direct to the [union's] headquarters.”50

With the arrests of Nef, Doree, Fletcher, Walsh, and Rey, other members, albeit with less experience, stepped to the fore. Joseph Weitzen replaced Charles J. Cole as secretary of Local 8, while his fellow union member Archie Robinson ably chaired meetings in 1917. In 1918 Weitzen took over as chair, and William “Dan” Jones was elected secretary. Polly Baker served as port delegate, and William Green was assistant secretary. With the exception of Baker, all of these leaders were African American. In 1918 longtime activist George McKenna, an Irish American, took over the position of secretary of the local from Weitzen. The orderly switch in officials was an example of the democratic impulses of the IWW. No member was allowed, according to local bylaws and MTW constitution, to hold a post for more than a year. Due to the union's commitment to its founding principles of industrial unionism, democracy, and racial and ethnic solidarity, Local 8 persevered, though weakened, and even sought to extend its gains after the war. Indeed, the 1917 sugar strike revealed how deeply committed Local 8 was to industrial unionism as an ideology and the strike as a tactic; however, it also showed that the power of the union was limited severely by the even greater power of employers, especially when assisted by the government. And, having its first cadre of leaders removed from Philadelphia reverberated loudly in the years following the war. Just as the union had been a part of the wave of wartime militancy, taking advantage of the tight labor market, so too after the war Local 8 acted to impose its will upon hostile employers, as part of a national surge in strike activity.51

• 1Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union, the IWW union to which Local 8 belonged.
• 2Philadelphia Maritime Exchange, Forty-Fourth Annual Report (1919), 25; Collins, Philadelphia, 375; Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 165-68; Harris, Bloodless Victories, 202-5, including Chamber quote (202).
• 3Solidarity, January 13, 1917, 1; Nef testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., 1918, 5968-75, Folder 4, Box 110; Hall, Harvest Wobblies, 107-9; Dubofsky, We Shall Be All (1988 ed. ), 178, 315-18, 344.
• 4Minutes of Meeting of the Organization Committee of MTWIU of the IWW Industrial Union # 100, New York City, February 25, 1917; and “Summary of MTWIU 100,” n.d.— both in Record Group 65, Old German File 16005 3; Solidarity, January 13, 1917, I.
• 5Doree testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 2, 1918, 5902-67, Folder 4, Box 1 To; Rosen interview, January 7, 1997; Doree interrogation in McDevitt report, September 25, 1917, in Record Group 65, Old German File 67-40; personal correspondence with John Reed Tarver.
• 6Ben H. Fletcher's Defendant's Card and “Summary of MTWIU Too,” n.d.— both in Record Group 65, Old German File 160053; Lever interview, BLMOHP; Walsh testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 30, 1918, 934849, Folder 5, Box 114; Solidarity, February 10, 1917, I; Spero and Harris, Black Worker, 192-94.
• 7Solidarity, February 17, 1917, 1; U.S. Department of Labor, Negro Migration in 1916-17, 136.
• 8International Socialist Review, April 1917, 615-17.
• 9Public Ledger, February 10, 1917, 4; Solidarity, February 17, 1917, 1; International Socialist Review, April 1917, 616.
• 10Public Ledger, February 9, 1917, 3; Solidarity, February 27, 1917, 3.
• 11Public Ledger, February 22, 1917, I, 9 (first quote); U.S. Department of Labor, Negro Migration in 1916-17, 136-37, I57; Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period, 106-7, 125.
• 12Public Ledger, February 22, 1917, I, 9; and February 23, 1917, I, 15; Solidarity, March 3, 1917, 1, 4.
• 13Public Ledger, February 26, 1917, 3; and February 27, 1917, 3; Solidarity, March 3, 1917, I, 4; Kaplan, Red City, Blue Period, 83.
• 14Public Ledger, February 15, 1917, 4; February 23, 1917, I (quotes), 15; and March 5, 1917, 3.
• 15Philadelphia Record, March 26, 1917, and North American, March 15, 1917, in DWDF Clipping Book 7.
• 16U.S. Department of Labor, Negro Migration in 1916-17, 136-37.
• 17Solidarity, March 10, 1917, 2.
• 18Collins, Philadelphia, 372-74.
• 19Philadelphia Department of Wharves, Docks, and Ferries, Port of Philadelphia (1926 ed. ), 15, 31 (quote); Collins, Philadelphia, 371; North American, March 7, 1917, in DWDF Clipping Book 7.
• 20ONI, Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers, 14-17 (quote); Philadelphia Inquirer, April 12, 1917, in DWDF Clipping Book 7.
• 21Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, 88-90; Foner, Industrial Workers of the World, 554-56; Solidarity, March 24, 1917, I.
• 22Shor, “IWW and Oppositional Politics,” 78; Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, 90.
• 23Doree and Nef testimonies in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 2, 1918, 5902-10, 5941-54, 5981-83, Folder 4, Box 110.
• 24Doree and Nef testimonies in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 2, 1918, 5948-63, 5982, Folder 4, Box 110; Lever deposition, January 21, 1922, in Record Group 204, File no. 37-361.
• 25Doree testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 2, 1918, 5942, Folder 4, Box 110; Anderson and Puller testimonies in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., 1918, 11997, 11907, Folder 7, Box 117; The Messenger, March 1922, 377.
• 26McDevitt report, November 9, 1917, in Record Group 65, Old German File 67-40; Lever, Petition for Clemency of Fletcher, April 29, 1922; and Olmsted, “In the Matter of the Applications of John J. Walsh and Ben H. Fletcher: Brief in Support of the Applications,” 7 - both in Record Group 204, File no. 37-479.
• 27Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 525-32.
• 28Barrett, William Z. Foster, 71-73.
• 29Doree and Nef testimonies in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 2, 1918, 5934-35, 5 978, Folder 4, Box 110; USSB, Marine and Dock Labor, 87.
• 30Solidarity, June 2, 1917, 4 (first quote); Nef deposition, January 23, 1922, in Record Group 204, File no. 37-361.
• 31Anderson testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., 1918, 11996, Folder 7, Box 117; Kane deposition, May 5, 1922, in Record Group 204, File no. 37-479.
• 32Walsh testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 30, 1918, 9320, 9324, Folder 5, Box 114; ONI, Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers, 31.
• 33USSB, Marine and Dock Labor, 27-29, 40, 75, 87; Heinrich, Ships for the Seven Seas, 168-69.
• 34National Adjustment Commission, Chairman's Report, 156; Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 1.425, 2.336-38; The Longshoreman, September 1917, I; October 1917, 8 (quote); and November 1917, 4; Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, 222-28.
• 35Goodwin to Gompers, June 21, 1917, in AFL Records, Reel 39; and Gompers to Goodwin, June 25, 1917, in AFL Records, Reel 39; National Adjustment Commission, Chairman's Report, '56-58 (second quote); The Longshoreman, August 1917, 2; ONI to Bielaski, September 28(?), 1918, in Record Group 65, Old German File 366145, Reel 12, Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (last quote).
• 36Lever interview, 17, BLMOHP; Daniel to Bielaski, January 25, 1918, in Record Group 65, Old German File 67-4o; Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 58-59.
• 37The Messenger, March 1922, 377; McKenna and Puller testimonies in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., 1918, 12014-15, 11910, Folder 7, Box 117; Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 336-38.
• 38ONI, Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers, 31-32; James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, 183-84.
• 39Doree to Haywood, September 21, 1917, in IWW Collection, Folder 12, Box 99; Nef deposition, January 23, 1922, 2,, in Record Group 204, File no. 37-361; Renshaw, “IWW and the Red Scare,” 66; Seraile, “Ben Fletcher,” 218-19.
• 40McDevitt report, October 4, 1917, in Record Group 65, Old German File 67-40, Entry 31; Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, 119-20.
• 41ONI, Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers, 32; Doree deposition, January 23, 1922, in Record Group 204, File no. 37-393.
• 42“JAF-CZC, 371-361-3773, Nef et al.,” in Record Group 204, File no. 37- 479; Doree deposition, January 23, 1922, in Record Group 204, File no. 37-393; Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, 97-99, 118-22 (last quotes); Ellis, Race, War, and Surveillance, xvii-xix.
• 43E. F. Doree to Chika Doree, June 18, 1922 (author's possession); Rosen, Wobbly Life; Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, 93-99.
• 44Kane deposition, May 5, 1922; Daniel deposition, May 5, 1922 (third quote); and U.S. Pardon Attorney, “Memorandum for Mr. Burns, Chief, Bureau of Investigation,” April 8, 1922, JAF-CZC (third quote) - all in Record Group 204, File no. 37-479, Box 985, 1853-1946; Fitts to Secretary of the Navy, January 3, 1918 (first quote); and Gibson to Fitts, February 18, 1918 - both in Record Group 60, Box 2219, correspondence in U.S. v. Haywood et al., File 188032, Straight Numerical Files.
• 45“JAF-CZC, 371-361-3773, Nef et al.,” in Record Group 204, File no. 37-479; Haywood, Bill Haywood's Book, 324-25, 367-68 (first and last quotes); George, I.W.W. Trial, 81-82, 15 7, in IWW Pamphlets; The Crisis, June 1919, 60; Renshaw, “IWW and the Red Scare,” 66-67.
• 46Fair interview, December 21, 1978, 8, in Shaffer Papers, Box 3; Haywood, Bill Haywood's Book, 328.
• 47ONI, Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers, 27-30; Nef testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., July 2, 1918, 5976, Folder 4, Box 110; Guillel testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., August 8, 1918, 10790-91, Folder 3, Box 116.
• 48ONI, Investigation of the Marine Transport Workers, 32; ONI to Bielaski, September 28(?), 1918, in Record Group 65, Old German File 366145, Reel 12, Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans.
• 49USSB, Marine and Dock Labor, 136-37; Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, 223-24.
• 50ONI to Bielaski, September 28(?), 1918, in Record Group 65, Old German File 366145, Reel 12, Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans.
• 51McKenna testimony in IWW Collection, U.S. v. Haywood et al., 1918, 1201415, Folder 7, Box 117; By-Laws and Rules of Order: Used in Business Meetings of the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union no. 510 of the I.W.W., in IWW Collection, Folder 4, Box 70.