National Affairs: Northwest Front

Tilting back in a big leather chair in his comfortable Seattle offices one day last week, Boss Dave Beck of A. F. of L.’s West Coast teamsters, reminded the country that he was still very much at war with Longshoreman Harry Bridges. But the Beck-Bridges war is by no means confined to the waterfront. It is a battle between A. F. of L.’smost aggressive leader and C.I.O.’s West Coast Director, between the most powerful laborman west of the Mississippi and the most militant laborman in the U. S. And it is, as Mr. Beck declared last week, a tight to a bitter finish. The fronts shift, the issues vary, but for nearly all labor trouble in California and the Northwest, the Beck-Bridges war is the sombre backdrop.

Last week the most resounding front was the Northwest with Portland, Ore. as the appallingly confused pivot. The lumber industry, accounting for nearly one-half of the city’s payrolls, has been tied up for more than three months by the scrap between C.I.O.’s International Woodworkers of America and A. F. of L.’s United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners. On the basis of signed petitions, the National Labor Relations Board last month certified a C.I.O. majority in seven of the biggest sawmills, but A. F. of L. pickets continued to march. Dave Beck’s teamsters refuse to handle lumber from C.I.O. mills. Harry Bridges’ longshoremen will not load products of plants still A. F. of L. Indeed, fortnight ago Mr. Bridges had to hasten to Portland to avert the closing of the entire port. One lumber company was being picketed by both sides at once, by C.I.O. because of alleged violation of seniority rights, by A. F. of L. because the mill was C.I.O.

Lumber was by no means Portland’s only sore spot. There was trouble in garages and warehouses. The surrounding area was worried by a California butchers’ boycott on Oregon turkey.* A. F. of L. teamsters were still boycotting beer carrying the red union label of A. F. of L.Brewery Workers, Dave Beck having manned most Northwest breweries with beery teamsters whose product bears a white union label. Portland beer parlors serving ”red label” have had their windows smashed with monotonous regularity.

Two Portland furniture plants were actually being picketed for wage increases and several non-union barbershops were mussed up but these were conspicuous exceptions to local rule of labor against labor. By last week the daily din of brawling, shooting and window-smashing had reached such a pitch that the city revolted. Clamped down by Acting Mayor Robert Early Riley was a sort of mild martial law with a stiff midnight curfew and the entire police force on twelve hour shifts. Emergency authority was granted to hire more officers, buy additional arms and equipment and padlock the haunts of thugs and “goon squads.”

Having investigated the Portland uproar the local Council of Churches wired President Roosevelt: “The local situation has reached an intolerable stage, and national influence … is necessary to save the situation from serious consequences both to labor and the public.” Portland’s usually mild Mayor Joseph K. Carson, in Washington for the Mayors’ Conference, dashed off a letter to Chairman Madden of the Labor Board demanding immediate intervention or “that you admit your inability to handle the situation or power to alleviate the workers. . . .”

That sounded almost in the vein of Acting Mayor Riley, who jumped his police chief last week for offering the same alibis for the city’s disorder that had been used “ever since you were a harness bull.” Once when a cantankerous office-seeker called him a buckpasser, Mr. Riley, an Oregon State Agricultural Collegeman, whose post-graduate work included truck driving, replied that “no son of a bitch can call me a buck-passer,” and forthwith thrashed the fellow purple.

Topping Oregon’s labor problem is the current slump in the lumber industry. Only strong market is sawdust, used locally as fuel and now skyhigh at $12 a truckload. Another difficulty is the restless defiance which seems to pervade the whole Northwest. When a mob in Baker, Ore. recently ran a Beck organizer out of town with the help of local peace officers, Oregon’s Governor Martin expressed public satisfaction. Few weeks ago in a Beck-Bridges dispute over some Seattle warehousemen, “the Tsar of Seattle Labor” threatened to close five warehouses if the Labor Board even held hearings. This week as C.I.O. eased its loading boycott the Labor Board entered Portland once more but in this thick atmosphere the legal highroads are little traveled.

*One Oregon turkey not affected by the boycott was Norbest II, selected last week at Salt Lake City as national champion and destined for President Roosevelt’s table.