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That is good Marxist ideology, but Harry Bridges is doing no more than any other militant labor leader to hasten the end of the employing classes in his day-to-day tactics. John L. Lewis is as much of a capitalist as Tom M. Girdler. Their immediate objectives may differ but neither could conceive of working for those objectives except within the framework of capitalism. But while Harry Bridges also works within a capitalistic framework, socialism to him is a desirable reality. Both Harry Bridges and John Lewis are working for Labor, both believe in political action by Labor. But their thinking processes are as different as those of Trotsky and Stalin. Theoretically the organizing team of Lewis & Bridges is about as formidable as could be lined up in the field today. But while Harry Bridges has a masterful hand with the rank & file he has never been able to work smoothly with his labor peers. This may prove to be the real weakness in the C. I. O. maritime drive, for John Lewis, who knows little about waterfront labor, will have to rely almost entirely on Harry Bridges.
Harry Bridges' entrance into C. I. O. may raise another problem for John Lewis. That is the fact that though Harry Bridges is no revolutionist, millions of people think he is. And at the moment the favorite method of attacking C. I. O. is to raise the hoary cry, "Communism!" Typical was a charge made in San Diego last week by E. H. Dowell, an A. F. of L. organizer. He solemnly declared that he had been "authorized" to announce that the Department of Justice had in its possession $750,000 in canceled checks paid to John L. Lewis by communist sources. Repudiated by A. F. of L. headquarters, shrugged at by Department of Justice officials, this spurious tale was probably accepted as gospel by all good haters of C. I. O.
Factionalism. Not all of Mr. Bridges' enemies are publishers and shipowners. He has had to battle the old-line A. F. of L. leaders as well as insurgents he himself boosted to power. As early as 1931 he ran head on into a movement to affiliate the San Francisco company unions with A. F. of L.'s International Longshoremen, headed by Manhattan's Joseph P. Ryan. Having stopped this movement, the Bridges group founded their own local, got a charter from Ryan in 1933. At the start of the 1934 strike Mr. Bridges was on the Ryan payroll as an organizer. Not until he was made chairman of the Joint Marine Strike Committee did San Francisco wake up to the fact that there was a Harry Bridges. Old Michael J. Casey, Irish boss of the West Coast teamsters, fought to keep .his men out of the maritime strike, fought the general strike, rising in one meeting to cry: "Don't do it, lads. I know what it means." In the end the venerable old teamster had to play ball with the dynamic young longshoreman, and while they represented the two extremes of U. S. Labor they grew to have mutual respect for each other.
After Teamster Casey died last spring at 79, his reins passed to Teamster David Beck pudgy, aggressive "Tsar of Seattle labor" who is out to organize "everything on wheels," a definition broad enough to take warehousemen as well as restaurant help, newspaper circulation hustlers and already organized brewers.