1923 San Pedro maritime strike
One of the largest staged protests during the strike was led by author Upton Sinclair on a small plot of land called Liberty Hill where he was arrested for reciting the First Amendment.
[1] One of the most effective weapons used by open shops to combat radical forces was “decausualization,” which relied heavily on the use of company-controlled hiring halls to weed out as many union sympathizers as possible from working in the docks.
Even with all the preventative measures put in place, members of the IWW were able to still infiltrate a vast amount of the docks on the West Coast under the guise of other organizations used as a front.
Although there were large amounts of IWW members under the new California criminal syndicalism law, there was still high levels of unrest on the San Pedro docks.
[7] The strike began on April 25, 1923, shortly after the Los Angeles County Grand Jury held hearings on violations of the criminal syndicalism act.
The walkout was national in scope, with its pivotal points in New York and Los Angeles; it brought out 5,000 men on the east coast and probably 1,500 locally, with estimates at San Pedro ranging as high as 3,000.
Members of the Sailors Union of the Pacific refused to support the strike, not only because it was IWW-inspired, but also because they were already "working the oracle" or, in other words, conducting a slowdown with some success.
In its nationwide aspects, it sought to secure the release of political prisoners, particularly those accused of sedition against the federal government or held under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act.
On the same day, IWW leaders persuaded approximately 450 of 2,200 men to strike at refinery construction jobs two miles north of the harbor, and it seemed likely that the dispute would spread beyond the water front.
The Los Angeles headquarters of the KKK handed out a pamphlet to local citizens to get more supports and help the police force break up the strike.
The latter began to look on the dispute as a free-speech fight and continued to hold meetings near the water front at a point known as Liberty Hill, a privately owned parcel of land used with the permission of the owner.
Local sympathizers and members of the American Civil Liberties Union joined the IWW leaders in seeking to maintain rights of free speech.
He spoke, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech .
So effective was police action against strike leaders that the Shipowners' Association declared the walkout over on May 18, when eighty-five vessels were loaded or unloaded by 2,800 longshoremen for the busiest day in port history.
[16] The 1923 San Pedro Maritime strike was the biggest challenge to the dominance of the open shop philosophy that controlled Los Angeles until the 1930s.
