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    Publishing Information

    The Decline of Dave Beck

    By Shelden C. Menefee

    The Nation
    March 26, 1938
    Vol. 146, No. 13, p. 354-355.

    Seattle, March 11

  1. The Seattle elections of March 8 were hailed by the press of the nation as a swing toward conservatism in a city heretofore dominated by labor and the New Deal. It is true that the conservative councilman Arthur Langlie was elected mayor, and that a bevy of conservatives and reactionaries were swept into office at the same time. But it is also true that in spite of the split in labor's ranks Lieutenant Governor Victor A. Meyers, running on a New Deal platform and indorsed by the C. I. O. and more than twenty progressive A. F. of L. unions, received 48,114 out of a total of 127,111 votes. Moreover, the councilmanic candidates of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, Michael Smith and James Sullivan, who were opposed as "subversive" by the reactionary executive board of the Central Labor Council, polled twice the vote of the federation's candidates in the 1937 primaries, and received more than 43,000 votes in the final election. In another year, given a more united labor movement and a measure of disillusionment with the conservative regime, the progressive forces may well win a majority.

  2. The real significance of the elections, however, was that they were a milestone in the decline of Dave Beck, West Coast teamster czar. Beck's candidate, Mayor John F. Dore, was ingloriously defeated in the primary election of February 21 by Langlie and Meyers. Though Dore had carried on a vicious red-baiting campaign, and a force of 2,000 teamsters checked the voting books and dragged voters to the polls, the returns showed that a considerable proportion of the A. F. of L. membership voted for Meyers.

  3. Dore said upon taking office in 1936 that Beck had been the most important factor in his election and that he was going to pay Beck back if it was the last thing he ever did. At first he tried to straddle the fence, declaring that Dave Beck and Harry Bridges were "the two greatest friends I ever had," but when it came to an issue he was forced to join the A. F. of L. forces. As Beck's tactics became more and more high-handed, it was evident that Dore's choice might well put an end to his political career.

  4. For the past year Dore has been Beck's strong right arm in the political field. Even the Chamber of Commerce was forced to bow before this combination and to play ball with Beck in what is euphemistically called "Seattle's model labor plan." In the strikes of the C. I. O. Newspaper Guild, four workers, and warehousemen the police were used virtually as pickets for the teamsters. A teamster "goon squad" in a car bearing the license plate of Claude O'Reilly, teamster business agent and president of the Central Labor Council, assaulted a crippled newsboy who opposed the A. F. of L. regime. C. I. O. fuel-truck drivers were beaten, and one fuel yard which dared to deal with them was bombed. A cleaning and dyeing shop which refused to pay 3 per cent of its gross income to the "association" run by Beck's ally William Short was wrecked by a "mysterious" explosion. Yet the police took no action.

  5. These occurrences did not help Dore politically, and in an attempt to regain favor he turned to that last resource of the politician without an issue—red-baiting. The Communist Party had obtained the use of the Civic Auditorium for a mass-meeting on November 10 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. At the last moment Dore ordered the lease canceled. John Caughlan, Secretary of the American Civil Liberties Union, took the case to court without avail. The American Legion had volunteered to use force if necessary to keep the reds out of the auditorium, and Dore told the court that his action was taken to avoid bloodshed. The meeting was not held. But for Dore the incident backfired when the conservative New Order of Cincinnatus condemned him on the ground that they too were a political minority group and feared similar treatment.

  6. As the election approached, Dore's supporters again used the red scare. Harry H. Lewis, former American Legion commander and strike-breaker, charged that "Vic" Meyers was receiving the support of "Communists scheming to seize control of the city government." Lewis said: "It is difficult for Seattle citizens, good Americans, to believe, but it is true that these Communist termites already have bored into some labor unions, into your schools, your churches, and even your homes. Their policy is the sitdown strike, the picketing of hospitals and cemeteries. Do you want to turn the city government over to their ghoulishness, or retain a loyal American, Mayor Dore?" But the ancient red herring had been so overworked that it did Dore little good. The public, knowing his record, could not take him seriously as a crusader for Americanism, and the chief effect of this propaganda was to disgust the average voter with both sides.

  7. In Seattle, as in Detroit, the split in labor encouraged the middle-class voter to say "a plague o' both your houses." With the A. F. of L. leaders labeled "racketeers" and the progressive union forces "Communists," the middle-of-the-roaders bolted into the camp of Langlie, who promised them clean, economical government. Langlie, although backed by the Order of Cincinnatus and the Chamber of Commerce, has at least promised to uphold the Wagner Act and to be impartial in labor disputes. This will represent a distinct gain to the C. I. O. compared with the methods of the Beck-Dore administration.

  8. The defeat of Dore is merely the latest of a series of blows which Dave Beck has received in recent months. The first sign of a breath in his power came last September when his teamsters' union demanded a showdown with the C. I. 0. longshoremen and warehousemen in San Francisco. William Green had handed Beck paper jurisdiction over all the inland warehousemen organized by the longshoremen. This led to a series of disputes, which culminated in Beck's order to his teamsters to blockade the waterfront until the warehousemen should be handed over by the longshoremen. The plan broke down when the longshoremen fraternized with the pickets and used loud-speakers to explain to them the silliness of the whole situation. The teamster rank and file then refused to follow Beck's orders and the blockade ceased to function.

  9. The most serious assault upon Beck's rule was the arrest by Oregon police of more than fifty teamster and A. F. of L "goons" who were using the same tactics that had gone unpunished in Seattle. These thugs admitted that they had plotted to bomb a tugboat hauling C. I. O. logs and had bombed non-union cleaning shops and wrecked trucks driven by members of the brewery workers' union. The most serious charge was brought against Al Rosser, Portland teamster chief, accused of arson in connection with a $130,000 fire at an "unfair" box factory in Salem, Oregon.

  10. Unfortunately the teamsters' methods have laid the entire labor movement open to attack. Charles Martin, Oregon's reactionary governor, with complete lack of logic has drawn the moral that the arrests—of A. F. of L. men—prove that the C. I. O. and the NLRB should be driven out of Oregon. When John L. Lewis recently said that he might come to Portland, Governor Martin remarked that Lewis would get a "warm reception" if he did. "It would be a good idea for him to stay out of the state," said this former army general. The Governor also charged that Lewis and Charles Hope, regional NLRB representative, were conspiring to defeat him in the coming elections. Thus under cover of a drive against the A. F. of L. "goons" a fight against all unions is under way. The struggle is reflected in the federal government's refusal to allow Harold Pritchett, a Canadian who is president of the C. I. O. International Woodworkers' Association, to live in the United States, and in the current agitation to deport Harry Bridges.

  11. Beck suffered another major defeat when he tried to annex the drivers of brewery trucks, who have traditionally belonged to the industrially organized A. F. of L. brewery workers. Beck refused to haul beer made in California or the East, where the brewery workers refused to bow to Beck's rule. His action gave local brewers a monopoly of the Northwest market, and a series of court orders recently forced him to abandon this policy, which was clearly in restraint of trade.

  12. Still another blow came in February when the eight-months-old strike of the Newspaper Guild against the Seattle Star ended in a complete victory for the Guild. A boycott supported by a majority of the rank and file of Seattle labor turned the trick, in spite of Beck's active opposition, Dore's police, and the A. F. of L. campaign for Star subscriptions. Last December the management was still defiant enough to appeal from a NLRB decision in favor of the Guild, but by February it had to sue for peace. It got peace only by granting over $29,000 in full back wages to the strikers, preferential hiring through the Guild, no "economy firings" for at least six months, the five-day forty-hour week, severance pay up to fifteen weeks' wages, and other concessions.

  13. The final and crushing blow was the defeat of Beck and Dore in the Seattle primaries, with its repercussions within the A. F. of L. After the primaries the firefighters and several other conservative unions deserted the teamsters to support Meyers and the Washington Commonwealth Federation slate. A few more such defeats might completely wreck Beck's hold on the local A. F. of L. machine, and then labor might once more be united. The logical conclusion to draw from all this is that public opinion is still an important factor in the field of labor as in politics, and will continue to be as long as we have a democracy. The Becks and the Dores who lose sight of this fact are finding that their days are numbered.