Student: Don DuPay
Final Paper for Film studies class
Professor: William Bohnaker
“One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do,” says the lyrics to the popular song by the singing group Three Dog Night. Indeed one is a lonely number and the purpose of this paper is to show how early labor activists on the Portland waterfront developed their power.
They realized that one person alone could not stand up against the organized and politically astute entrepreneurs that brought in the trading ships to be unloaded, and the log rafts on their way to the saw mills. These entrepreneurs strictly controlled the wages and working hours of their employees. Economically speaking, labor and management are two forces diametrically opposed. The film Salt Of The Earth showed us how these opposing forces deal with each other. It showed us how the coming together of all the miners collectively forced change that bettered the living conditions of the miners. This paper will address the development of early labor unions in a very young Portland.
The one word that comes to my mind when the words labor unions are mentioned is violence. My family moved to Portland in 1947 when I was twelve-years-old, and I remember my folks talking about union leader Dave Beck, and strikes and violence. Newspaper reports of the day were implicit that the Teamsters under the leadership of Seattle's Dave Beck, had arguably become a criminal enterprise of it own and were looking to expand into the wide-open town of Portland. Portland in the 1940's under Mayor Earl Riley and Chief of Police Harry Niles allowed open gambling, prostitution, slot machines and after hour liquor sales. Murmurs that $100,000 a month was going to city hall as pay offs was rampant. Big Jim Elkins, Portland's self proclaimed Vice Czar, was the local crime boss and paid plenty for protection from the city fathers. (JD Chandler, 2014).
But Portland's union problems go back to the 1850s. The Brotherhood of Typographical Workers and Printers organized here in 1853 And the longshoremen, who loaded and unloaded ships in the Port of Portland, were the second group of workers to organize a union in 1868.
The Portland Police were used to intimidate union workers in the 1920s. Police were the tools of the entrepreneurs and the police were brutal. In 1920 there was a demonstration of the IWW, Independent Workers of the World. They paraded up and down SW Morrison street from 3rd avenue up to 6th and back. The police responded with four mounted officers on horseback carrying ax handles. They rode down the street and struck any demonstrators they could hit, then they turned around and rode back and hit any of them still standing. (Springer, 2008).
The IWW made huge strides in organizing the loggers and mill workers, at that time Oregon's largest employer. The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen (4L) was controlled by the US War Department and replaced the IWW. It was common for longshoremen to work 36 hour shifts for wages of 75 cents an hour. A Waterfront strike in 1922 closed the Port of Portland. The employers, represented by the Waterfront Employers' Association (WEA) and supported by the Portland Police allowed employers to bring strikebreakers across picket lines and reopen the port. Violence is how opposition was silenced and by the 1920s most IWW locals were shut down, their leaders in jail or killed.
The sympathy of the police toward striking union workers became a morale problem for the bureau. Throughout the 1930s officers themselves were working twelve hour shifts and any emergency was enough to stop their days off. Understanding the grievances of the longshoremen and mill workers, the police began seeing their own plight as much the same as the union workers and talk of forming a police union began.
The 1930s saw more union violence on the waterfront with the attempted dynamite bombing of the tug boat LyleH, moored to the dock below the St. Johns Bridge. The C.I.O. representing mill workers loading lumber got into a "rock fight" with rival union members of the A.F. of L. Then, later, three members of the C.I.O., Alfred Turpin, Tony Sunserie, and James Duffy, parked their car on the St. Johns Bridge and dropped two dynamite bombs over the edge. Both bombs missed the Lyle H and dropped harmlessly into the water without exploding, as the fuses sputtered out in the water. The St. Johns Bridge plotters each spent 8 month in jail. (Chandler, 2014).
During WW2 Portland police were forced to work 12 hour shifts with no days off. The rumblings heard years earlier about forming a police union were now getting too loud to ignore. Top pay for a police officer in Portland was $185.00 per month. Twelve hour shifts with no days off meant that the officers were making about two cents an hour, confronting striking mill workers that were making 75 cents an hour. Several officers lead by a young Officer Frank Springer who had been hired four years earlier in 1938, decided to form a union to fight for better wages and shorter hours for police officers.
Immediately Mayor Earl Riley and Chief of Police Harry Niles (management) said “anybody that joins the union will be fired. There is no place in the police department for a union.” (Chandler, 2014). Here labor and management collided and the union organizers went underground. Now the genius of young Officer Springer came to the forefront. He had no trouble convincing other officers that two cents an hour wasn't a real job and the threat of being fired from it held no weight. Springer realized that if he could organize on the down-low he could provide a formidable threat to management. Using 3x5 cards as membership cards, officers met in secret at different locations and in different houses. Springers house became an unofficial union headquarters. Of the 375 police officers employed in 1942, 275 pledged themselves to the union and presented themselves to city hall. Faced with having to fire them all or capitulate, the mayor and chief of police decided to allow the union and in May of 1942 the first police officers union in the nation was formed.
Police were proud of themselves as they were all now police academy graduates and felt that with a union they could better negotiate with the city for wages and better working conditions. Earlier in 1941 the police academy was set up in Portland, modeled on the first academy set up in Los Angeles. Officer Springer was involved in both the union organizing and helped put together the police academy. He later rose through the ranks to Police Inspector, and retired in 1973, after 35 years on the force. Springer proved that the organization with the mostleverage and resources would win. Could management out-wait labor and starve them out as we saw in bothThe Salt Of The Earth and Matawa films? Could labor shut down plant/mine production and successfully keep strike breakers from taking their jobs? Labor management struggles have always been about who has the most leverage and who can inflict the most damage and who can out last the other. Wages and the ability to put a roof over their heads and food on the table gives rise to sometimes violent emotions and over the top actions. Like throwing dynamite bombs off the St. Johns Bridge at a tug boat moored below.
Against a backdrop of union struggles and wage initiatives was the background of corruption that essentially provided an under-the-table living wage for police in the well oiled underworld of the time. As many as 100,000 people lived and worked in the area where three shipyards, one at Terminal 4 in St. Johns, one at Swan Island and one at Vancouver Washington where they were building Liberty ships at the astonishing rate of one per week. The mini-city of Vanport sprung up to provide housing as well as housing in Columbia Villa and more at the nearby University Housing district all in north Portland. Bus and water transport taxi boats on the Willamette and Columbia rivers provided 24 hour transportation to the shipyards back, and forth. Hardworking men and women wanted to drink and gamble and relax and Portland provided it all. (Springer, 2008).
So much so that the the military took control of Portland in this era and they shut down 62 houses of prostitutionand put all places that sold alcohol off limits to military personnel. The underground economic effect of military rule was enormous. A healthy black market existed in gasoline, (two gallons a week), whiskey, (one quart a month) sugar, and rubber tires and other scarce commodities. Police officers on the take made sure that the Canadian whiskey that made its way to Portland was sold for a good profit after sharing their take with city hall. (Chandler, 2014).
An insightful look into the amount of money police skimmed from prostitution, liquor sales and gambling is provided in the personnel file of Chief of Police Jim Purcell Jr. When he was a young patrolman. Jim Purcell Jr. joined the Portland police in 1936 with a beginning wage of $165.00 per month. In 1941, on an application for a mortgage Purcell listed his true income at $2,300 per month. (Portland City Archives). With police officers wages as low as $40.00 per week, was it inevitable that most of them would take money to look the other way? Officer Springer referred to it as "smile money." (Springer, 2008).
In The Salt Of The Earth film, we saw how the Anglo miners were played off against the Indian miners. “Look how much better off you are then the Indian miners,” the Anglo's were told, “you have running water.” Race relations were again an issue in the film Matawa. Black miners came to the town of Matawa looking for work. First seen as unwanted outsiders, the black miners were eventually accepted and became part of the united front, even going as far as taking up arms against the “company men.” James Earl Jones character in the film expounds, “niggers shootin' white folks could never come to no good end!”
How union members stuck together in spite of race is well documented during WW2. In 1942 when west coast Japanese residents were round up in compliance with President Roosevelt's internment order number, (9066). The Sailors' Union of the Pacific complained that “35-40 ethnic-Japanese members” had been interned in thestables at the Santa Anita Racetrack, although they had proved their loyalty as union members. After a fight the government finally gave in, releasing the Japanese-American sailors for work in the Atlantic Merchant Marine.
Along with the normal dangers facing sailors, racism persisted in the maritime unions. Both the AF of L and the CIO officially banned discrimination “on the basis of race, creed or color,” in their affiliated unions but the reality was different. The unions that admitted blacks, most had minuscule black memberships, blaming the lack of African Americans on a lack of skills or on hostility from white workers and employees. Both the Electrical Workers' Union and the Carpenters' Union admitted black members, but noted that employers often wouldn't keep them on the job and sometimes white union members refused to work with them.
Both the Laundry Workers Union and the ILWU experienced “wildcat strikes,” or work stoppages by white members when they attempted to put African American members to work. George and Horace Duke, brothers, both black and both former air force men joined the Portland police bureau in 1946. Sadly, most white officers refused to work with them so they were partnered together. Both the Duke brothers were still working graveyard shift at East precinct when I joined the police bureau in 1961. It is interesting to note that when I joined the police bureau I didn't know there were any black officers. I came to find out they all worked graveyard and were rarely seen by the public. Even in 1961 race relations in the Portland police bureau were strained. It was thought at the time that blacks didn't join the police because they weren't smart enough to pass the test, or because they didn't want to join and become “the man.” It was an idea so ingrained in police culture that even when height and gender restrictions were relaxed in late 1960's and officers of all races were recruited, older officers remained adamant in their beliefs. “When they lower the standards, all they'll be hirin' is cunts, runts, and niggers!” (O'Leary, 1970).
The Oregonian newspaper strike beginning in 1959 was another example of trying to change an opinion using dynamite and shotguns. When the strike occurred the Newhouse family, owners of the newspaper, were able to continue but at a terrible cost. Violent attacks continued on homes and delivery trucks for months. Delivery trucks were dynamited and someone fired a shotgun blast through Don Newhouse's basement window injuring him in some way. (Springer, 2008). The strike dragged on into 1961, the year I joined the Portland police bureau, and I can remember receiving information at roll calls to be on look out for suspicious activities near newspaper facilities for these reasons.
Being a policeman in 1961 also put me in a position to know about the activities of Big Jim Elkins, Portland's self proclaimed "vice czar." Elkins told Robert Kennedy, during the vice and corruption investigations that began in 1957, that two Seattle gangsters approached him about taking over Portland vice operations. His colorful testimony gave insight into plans of a mob sponsored takeover in which the Oregon teamsters unions would seize control of the state legislature, the state police, and attorney generals office through bribery, extortion and blackmail. (Stanford, 2004). This worked to expose Dave Becks teamsters as a criminal enterprise. These were ambitious objectives by Dave Beck to corrupt Oregon and bring it under the control of the Teamsters Union. The Kennedy hearings however brought these ambitions to light and they fortunately never materialized.
The Portland police union, now called the Portland Police Association, (PPA) was quite active when I joined the bureau in 1961. Officers were not officially required to join, but it was encouraged. Those that chose not to join, like myself, were still taxed via payroll deduction and it was called the “fair share." In 1963 the union was having difficulty with the city negotiating a raise. Top pay for patrolman at that time was $420.00 per month for a forty hour work week. There was talk of a strike, but we all knew we couldn't strike, so it was settled that there would be an outbreak of “ The Blue Flu,” and everyone would call in sick. Even this tactic proved to be weak as few officers participated. Wages weren't quite low enough to initiate revolt. Most officers worked a second part time job and many police wives worked outside the home as well as waitresses, mostly. The conditions were never severe enough to provoke strike talk again with the Portland police. Wages for Portland officers has risen from about $5500.00 per year in 1961 to $46,633 in 2012. The Portland police now have over 1000 sworn officers and the (PPA) presents a strong and formidable front when it negotiates with the city for better wages and working conditions.
Where did the labor union movement, go wrong? Beginning with one man, then two men, then a surge of solidarity, unions provided a united front with sufficient leverage to command a winning position. This solidarity brought better wages, safer working conditions, and economic stability to the blue collar working man. The blue collar union working man became the backbone of the nation edging slowly upward toward the middle class. What went wrong? The big labor unions headed by Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa became criminal enterprises, with ambitions of taking over entire states as was Dave Beck's plan to take over Oregon with the help of vice czar Jim Elkins. (Chandler, 2014). These two union criminals, Beck and Hoffa, set poor examples for many smaller unions, and unionism began its slow inevitable decline. Corporations rubbed their hands together in glee, for weaker unions had lost their leverage power and corporations wanted to destroy all unions. Labor and management exist in a perennial struggle; like two arm wrestlers, first one gaining advantage then the other, with the weakest, or the tiredest losing.
By Don DuPay
ABSOLUTELY NO PORTION OF THIS PAPER MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISSEMINATED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR, DONALD LEE DUPAY, UNDER PENALTY OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!!