1952 speech— The story of Minneapolis

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Leaders of the Minneapolis strike and the Socialist Workers Party celebrating their release from prison in 1944. Clockwise: Clarence Hamel (turning toward camera), Harry DeBoer, Farrell Dobbs, James P. Cannon, Emil Hansen, Oscar Coover, Sr., Carl Skoglund, Carlos Hudson, Jake Cooper, V.R. Dunne, Max Geldman.

Today I want to talk about the famous Minneapolis strikes of 1934.

The drivers and all the workers employed in the truck transportation industry at that time enjoyed miserable conditions which existed throughout the history of Minneapolis prior to 1934. When the economic crash came the misery was intensified.

In the produce market area it was common practice for drivers and helpers to start work at 2 or 3 a.m. and continue work until 6 p.m. They were low paid and sometimes had to work seven days without any extra pay. If complaints were made they were fired.

The workers in trucking, and most other industries, were not unionized before 1934 and had to accept whatever conditions employers imposed. Many strikes were called between 1922 and 1934, and all suffered defeat. Minneapolis was known all over the country as the worst scab town.

In the early 1920s the bosses started the open-shop drive. They formed the Citizen's Alliance whose only aim was to keep Minneapolis non union. The bosses were successful in carrying out this program up to 1934. In fact, they were confident that no one could ever lead a drive to unionize the city.

Dunne, Dary DeMier George Crosit (who was vice-president of Local 574), and myself worked in the same coal yard. We held meetings in the early part of 1933 to discuss and plan a program for organizing the coal industry. If that test case was successful we would proceed with the rest of the trucking industry.

We all recognized that the trucking industry was the most powerful and also the most difficult in dealing with strikebreakers because scabs have to operate on the street. We had great strength in We started organizing the coal drivers in late 1933 and early 1934. The bosses refused to recognize us and we were forced out on strike. After I was appointed a picket captain, Skogie [Carl Skoglund] sat down with me and we discussed what had to be done.

Our role was to see that no trucks hauled coal. Where we didn't have enough forces to stop the trucks we formed cruising pickets. Wherever we caught a truck we would dump the coal and send the driver back or, in some cases, we would tip the truck over.

Now look at what the workers faced. They faced thousands of special deputies. They fought them head on. They fought the police when they killed two of our strikers. The governor brought out the National Guard and they even fought them. I recall we had enough injunctions to paper wall.

As for the lessons of the strike, well, to begin with you have to understand that when you call a strike you've got to prepare for it. Also, our union was a democratic union. We had our own paper to inform the public of what was going on. It is a big thing to have the public on your side.

Without that we could not have won the strike. And, of course, we had a leadership that understood the capitalist system.

8 Socialist Action March 1984 numbers and understood the task of organizing. We therefore picked the coal industry as the starting point. This industry was strategic because of Minnesota's sub-zero winters.

We were convinced the employer would never recognize the union without a bloody battle. Consequently we made all possible preparations and were extra careful to proceed legally-appearing before the Central Labor Union, the executive board of the drivers union, and the Teamsters Joint Council. The response from these bodies was to throw a wet blanket over our proposal.

Some made statements like, "The drivers know where we are, why don't they come and join us." This attitude was discouraging but we still went on with our plans, confident of victory if we prepared properly.

Workers committees from various companies drew up contract of demands. And when we presented this contract to the employers they, as we had expected, refused to meet with us. We then called an open meeting of all workers to present the results of our efforts. When the leaders of the A. F. of L. found out about this meeting and the possibility of a strike—a rumor had been spreading throughout the industry-they ganged up on us in mass, preventing us from taking any action. About 500 to 600 coal drivers present at this meeting tore up their union books and littered the union headquarters with the pieces.

The only action taken was a motion to hold a special meeting Sunday at 2 p.m., predicated on the fact that no business agent then would come out on Sunday and interfere with us. This proved to be strategically correct. Between Friday and Sunday all our forces were in motion to bring out all the coal workers to this meeting. The meeting was packed and a motion passed to strike on Monday morning at 5 a.m. and to set up a strike committee.

After a three-day ViCtorious. No one could get a pound of coal without a doctor's prescription. The success of this strike caused a sensation among the drivers and workers.

A mass meeting was organized in a big theater for the purpose of inaugurating a real campaign to unionize other trucking industries. The meeting was well advertised and a capacity crowd filled the place. Organizational preparations were carried out for about two months. The famous committee of one hundred was made up of representatives from all sections who became involved in the strike. This committee had full authority to decide on all questions. Contracts of demands were presented to the employers. There was one answer received-a flat no.

We appealed to the Teamsters International Union for a strike sanction and strike benefits. We received the command to continue negotiations. Knowing that the International would never endorse a strike, we still-for the sake of the ranks-sent another appeal explaining the employer's attitude in refusing to meet with the union committee. The answer again was: proceed to negotiate.

This procedure caused a delay of action for at least a month. But it was well worth the time in order to prepare the workers for the coming strike. It became plain that a big battle was unavoidable. The issue would be recognition of the union. The outcome of this battle could not be predicted.

All the preparations for the strike began to be made. Regular charts were made up of the main highways and streets for picketing. Instructions for the picketing captains were drawn up. Registration of all available vehicles for service on the picket line, installation of a loud-speaking system in the strike headquarters-everything was done according to plan.

Early one morning in May 1934 the strike started. The workers responded practically 100 percent. The employers were caught by surprise at the response of the workers. The methods used by them were nothing new—the use of tionary man--equipping them with weapons to beat and arrest the pickets. During the first days dozens of strikers had been arrested and beaten up in the most brutal manner. Sixteen women had been beaten unconscious after being lured into an alley where an attempt was being made to deliver newspapers.

We organized rehearsals, padded our caps with cardboard and proceeded to hit one another on the top of the head. If it hurt the first time some more padding was applied until the blows became painless.

The daily newspapers carried screaming articles warning the public not to appear in the market area on such and such a day as violence was prevalent and some innocent bystander might get hurt.

Battle of Deputy Two days after the women were beaten up an attempt was made to open the market with scabs. The morning when this happened all radio stations had their speaking equipment on the roof of buildings to broadcast the intended movement of trucks. Instead they had to broadcast the Battle of Deputy Run.

The story of Deputy Run is known all over the country, in fact all over the world. It meant that 1500 deputies and 500 uniformed police, under the pressure of the strikers' superior force, had to run for ther lives. One deputy, a prominent open-shop employer, fell dead on the battlefield. Another died a few days later. Many others went to hospitals.

Governor Floyd B. Olsen then intervened, demanding a 48-hour truce, and during this time no trucks were to move. Both sides accepted this truce proposal. During these 48 hours we were in continual negotiations; union representatives in one room and employers in another, and the governor as a go-between.

After many hours of negotiations, a contract with recognition of the union and a small increase in wages was presented. The big question at issue at that time was our right to represent truck drivers, helpers, and inside workers working for each employer. This issue was scuttled, and finally a paragraph, very ambiguous in wording, was accepted with the guarantee of the governor that it meant the right of the union to deal for all the mentioned classifications. On this basis the strike ended after 1l days.

The whole working class in the city was jubilant over the great victory. But in the first meeting called to negotiate a definite contract, the employers refused to recognize our union as the bargaining agent for the inside workers. The strike was again set in motion.

Now the employers really set to work They placed full-page ads in all the city dailies. A vicious red-baiting campaign was carried out by the newspapers, picturing the leaders as "Trotskyist-Communists" intending to make a revolution in Minneapolis instead of building the union. It became necessary to meet all these slanders by issuing a daily paper to present the position of the union.

The strike hit with solid ranks. All transportation stopped and the city again looked like a Sunday. This time the employers proceeded to arm the police with rifles and sawed-off shotguns loaded with slugs. Many dummy deliveries were made under very heavy police protection, such as medical supplies to a hospital or groceries to an old peoples' home. The aim was to get the pickets involved in trying to stop them and use this as an excuse for shooting the pickets. But deliveries could be made to these institutions without interference.

The strike went on for weeks without much action. One morning a report came in that an attempted delivery was planned in the wholesale grocery area and that the police, with shotguns, were there to protect the drivers. Pickets were dispatched and when they attempted to stop the delivery the police opened fire and shot down 52 pickets, killing two.

(continued on page 9, in “San Francisco's GENERAL STRIKE!”)

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I became a member of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union soon after the United States entered World War II (after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941).

The war effort required the hiring of hundreds of new waterfront workers. Thousands applied. I applied to the ILWU. Since the union favored men with a union background, I was accepted.

The war hysteria was in full swing. Radios blared jingoistic ditties: "Remember Pearl Harbor! As we march against the foe! Remember Pearl Harbor, as we did the Alamo!" Plastered on warehouse and pier walls were racist anti-Japanese posters, and always there was Uncle Sam, in uniform, with a forefinger to his lips, warning, "Loose lips sink ships."

The ILWU's top leadership, headed by Harry Bridges, was ready to sacrifice there were over 20 million unemployed. Marches of the unemployed, the hungry, the homeless were given the same brutal treatment as strikers.

In 1919 a West Coast longshoremen's strike had been broken, and subsequently, until 1934, open shop reigned. The unions went underground. But with the slight economic upturn of 1932-33, the longshoremen in International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) began an organizing drive. It was directed, not by the corrupt official ILA leadership, but by rank and file committees led by the Communist Party and Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World). By early 1934, 95 percent of the longshoremen on the West Coast were in the ILA (on the West Coast, the ILA later became the ILWU).

Pre-strike wages and working conditions were atrocious. "Steady men," (subservient longshore gang members record against arbitration.

The employers refused to negotiate with the rank-and-file-controlled union. So the union voted to strike. On May 9 the entire West Coast went on strike.

In San Francisco the union established mass mobile picket lines—1,000 in each column-and closed the waterfront down tight. A few scabs were recruited and housed behind electrified barbed wire on tied-up ships (the seamen's unions had also gone on strike). They unloaded some cargo but could not get it off the piers because the teamsters supported the strike. Several attempts were made to move cargo through the mass picket lines, to "open the port." Bloody clashes took place but no cargo moved. The unions held fast.

On July 5 the waterfront employers resolved to move cargo from Pier 32, opposite Rincon Hill. Eight-hundred Stuart and Mission streets and shot down two men. That afternoon Governor Merriam brought in the National Guard, 2,000 strong. The Guard set up machine guns and enclosed the Embarcadero in barbed wire.

On July 9 a massive funeral march of 40,000, bearing the bodies of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise, moved up Market Street. On the insistence of the ILA, not a cop was in sight. Strikers directed traffic. The next day federal mediators entered the picture. The union held fast to its original demands and began pushing for a general strike. San Francisco union workers were ready. If the ILA was broken, what would happen to them?

The conservative Labor Council leadership opposed a general strike but was forced to give way when the overwhelming majority of the unions voted to The general strike went into effect on July 16. Picket lines blocked all traffic in

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On the picket line