Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s

By Bruce Nelson

Book Overview

With working lives characterized by exploitation and rootlessness, merchant seamen were isolated from mainstream life. Yet their contacts with workers in port cities around the world imbued them with a sense of internationalism. These factors contributed to a subculture that encouraged militancy, spontaneous radicalism, and a syndicalist mood. Bruce Nelson's award-winning book examines the insurgent activity and consciousness of maritime workers during the 1930s. As he shows, merchant seamen and longshoremen on the Pacific Coast made major institutional gains, sustained a lengthy period of activity, and expanded their working-class consciousness. Nelson examines the two major strikes that convulsed the region and caused observers to state that day-to-day labor relations resembled guerilla warfare. He also looks at related activity, from increasing political activism to stoppages to defend laborers from penalties, refusals to load cargos for Mussolini's war in Ethiopia, and forced boardings of German vessels to tear down the swastika.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252061446
• ISBN13: 9780252061448
• Release Date: May 1990
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a must read for labor historians

If you got to this review, buy this book. There are a few problems. Nelson could have spent more research taking the longshoremen's perspective into account. Nonetheless, his research is solid and this is a must for those interested in the Great Depression, San Francisco or labor history. Nelson account is the most complete research on the subject during this era. I only wish he had devoted more time to the East Coast.