Who Gives A Damn?

The productive and gracious economy of Hawaii was paralyzed last week; its territorial government was powerless to act. Most of Hawaii's 540,000 residents were seething inside like old Kilauea, the volcano with the pit of eternal fire. It was the eighth week of a strike by 2,000 members of Harry Bridges' Redlined International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, C.I.O.

As the blockade tightened, raw sugar crammed the warehouses and overflowed into covered tennis courts, gymnasiums--anywhere it could be stored until there were ships to transport it. The pineapples were ripe and soon would be rotting in the fields. Unemployment was sharply up; several small businesses had folded. Tourist trade, almost as important to Hawaii as pineapple and sugar, was off 50%.

A Pack of Picket-Picketers. Nobody faced starvation or even malnutrition, but some foods were almost impossible to get (although the striking stevedores were unloading relief ships from the mainland at the usual rates of pay). A few bags of potatoes and onions shipped by parcel post were gobbled up at the fancy price of 25-c- a pound. Rice, a staple of Hawaii's diet, was scarce. There was barely enough canned milk to feed the babies and scarcely enough feed to keep livestock and chickens alive. Mrs. Dorothy Lai had to close her little chop suey joint for lack of food, and with it went her life savings. Edmund Locke, whose small farm-equipment agency nearly went on the rocks during last year's I.L.W.U. West Coast strike, gave up this time. "I'm busted," said Locke sadly. Union pickets marched under the palm trees on Ala Moana near the Honolulu docks. Housewives armed with brooms and big placards picketed the pickets; and union wives picketed the picket-picketers.

Technically, what Harry Bridges' I.L.W.U. and the seven stevedoring companies were fighting over was a simple matter of dollars & cents. The stevedores wanted a pay boost of 32-c- an hour to $1.72, which they said would bring their wages closer to those paid on the mainland (West Coast longshoremen now earn $1.82 an hour). Management had offered, and then withdrawn, a raise of 12-c- an hour, refused to arbitrate. Harry Bridges' noisy West Coast mouthpieces,* sent to Hawaii for the negotiations, argued that a refusal to arbitrate proved that Hawaii's business interests were out to push organized labor off the islands. Big business at least seemed determined to clamp down on the kind of troublemaking unionism that Harry Bridges and his union stand for. Arbitration on the docks, they argue, would lead to arbitration in Hawaii's sugar and pineapple industries, where the I.L.W.U. has 30,000 members. What is more, they said, Harry Bridges' union had frequently abused arbitration agreements on the mainland. A fact-finding board appointed by Governor Ingram M. Stainback tried to find a compromise formula by this week, but the fact-finders had no power to enforce their recommendations and little reason to believe that either side would accept them.

Appeal lor Help. Harassed Hawaiians, fearful of the ruthless hold that Harry Bridges had fastened on their islands, turned to Washington for help. In three days last week, 3,930 Hawaiians (including at least a few I.L.W.U. men opposed to the strike) contributed $10,650 to a Honolulu Advertiser campaign to pay for huge two-page ads describing their plight in the Washington Post and Evening Star and the New York Times. "We know that the people of the 48 states do not know what the people of Hawaii are up against," said the ads. "And we can't seem to find anyone in America that gives a damn. Isn't there someone in the Congress of the United States or in high official position who will help?"

Apparently there wasn't. The President of the U.S. has the principal responsibility for the safety and welfare of U.S. Territories. But Harry Truman had taken the view that there was nothing he could do.

* Missing from the delegation: Richard Gladstein, who is busy defending two of the 11 Communist leaders on trial in Manhattan.

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