Old-Fashioned Strike

Last week an eastern waterfront character named Jacob ("Beacon Jack") Lichter appeared in & around Boston. At Everett, one of Boston's seaport suburbs Mr. Lichter shortly appeared in effigy (see cut). He was deemed worth hanging by C. I. 0. seamen who, having called a strike on Standard Oil Tankers, took it for granted that "Beacon Jack" was around to recruit strike breakers.

So many pickets ganged up on Everett docks that local police called help from Boston, charged the union line, dodged rocks, pitched tear gas bombs, jailed 36 strikers. The union put gas masks on its pickets, threatened to bring in enough seamen to trounce the police.*

Trouncing big Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony-Vacuum and three smaller companies with tanker fleets was the task taken on by National Maritime Union's tough, rock-fisted President Joe Curran. From Galveston to Portland his pickets patrolled the docks, laid up 75 slick, oil-toting tubs. Purpose: to persuade the lines to increase wages and prefer union men for jobs. Because 14 other companies were willing to dicker, their tankers continued to run without hindrance and the Atlantic Seaboard faced no oil shortage comparable to that threatening in coal (see p. 18). For most people, a surprising piece of strike news was that tankers comprise 24% of the U. S. Merchant Marine. Standard Oil of New Jersey with 72 ships (total cost about $70,000,000) operates 17% of U. S. tankers, with its foreign fleets controls 13% of the world's tanker tonnage.

*Just how old-fashioned this sort of Labor fighting has become, Chicago's City Council demonstrated last week. The Council agreed to build a grandstand for memorial services for ten Little Steel strikers who were shot & killed by Chicago police on Memorial Day, 1937.

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