By Herb Mills

Page 7

The old Barbary Coast had truly earned its worldwide reputation as a degrading social maelstrom within which a brutal exploitation was enforced by violence and corruption. By the late 1930s, however, the waterfront had been transformed.

It was now the domain of men who by long and bitter struggle had won a far better life than what they had previously known. In that struggle, those men had forged a clean and democratic union.

It was through their union that they had also made important contributions to the struggles of untold numbers of other workers. This was a remarkable chapter in the history of American labor. By their union with one another, the men of the San Francisco waterfront had won a richly deserved, if long denied, dignity and standing. Most American trade unions have at least upon occasion been distinguished by some sense of community, it" only on an ideological level. However, the sense of community which first became visible amongst the San Francisco longshoremen during the early 1930s was destined for a unique longevity and elaboration.

By the end of that decade, the sense of community had become extraordinarily rich in both form and content. Ideology had in part occasioned that elaboration. Ideology would also contribute to its subsequent elaboration and maintenance.

But the persistence, form, and content of that communal spirit, together with the extraordinary loyalty which it elicited, also reflected a basic social reality-these men had effected a uniquely democratic and broad-based "working out" of their own experience as a community. The reality of their communities was also understood as the social bedrock of their achievements as a union and as a veritable wellspring of their individual self-esteem and vitality. The fashioning and maintenance of this community was underwritten in part by the concrete social relationships which were produced between the men by;

(1) the manner in which the work of the port was allocated amongst them and

(2) the contact which they routinely had with one another simply as longshoremen.

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