Hard life on the tugboats of New York City harbor. A whole world of exploitation never seen. Swedish-born Gunnar Soderberg was a veteran labor militant a, founder of the British C.P. who later moved to the U.S. where he was associated with Jay Lovestone’s tendency and expelled in 1929. In 1931 as secretary of the Independent Tidewater Boatmen’s Union he led a strike in New York City harbor. Arrested with other union leaders, framed-up on a ‘bombing conspiracy’ against struck boats charge, Soderberg was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in Sing Sing. A Marine Workers’ Defense Committee with Carlo Tresca as secretary fought for his release which finally happened in 1942, at which point he was deported to war-time Europe.

‘The Exploitation of the N.Y. Harbor Boatmen’ by Jack Soderberg from The Militant. Vol. 4 No. 35. January 12, 1931.

Very little, if anything, has even been said about, the harbor boatmen, a branch of the Marine industry until recently, when some of us connected with the organization of these workers were arrested on a frame-up charge of dynamiting some of these old floating coffins. Very few workers even in other branches of the Marine Industry realized the extent of exploitation of the barge captains.

There are employed approximately 4,000 men in the New York harbor in this particular industry. Their wages ranged from $110.00 per month down as low as $65.00 per month. Many companies pay nothing to the captain when the boat is empty; others pay, a dollar a day when light, while some pay straight wages, loaded or light.

The O’Boyle Towing Co., for instance, (and incidentally the complainant in the frame-up to keep us in prison and railroad us for life) is of the “dollar a day” type. This company also has a habit of having one captain take care of 4 or 5 boats, even when these boats are loaded and waiting for consignment. When these boats are loaded, the company receives anywhere from 7 to 14 dollars per day for each boat as long as they are loaded; yet they cannot afford to have a man aboard. Due to lack of real militant organization among these workers, conditions have grown so bad that hundreds of boats today in New York harbor are being taken care of and kept floating by men who receive no pay in any shape or form while waiting for cargo. The remuneration is that of being allowed to sleep on–the boat and live there if they can steal, beg or borrow something to live on.

Miserable and Degrading Living Conditions

What are the living conditions on these boats? Take the boat on which William Trajer, one of the defendants, was employed. Trajer, an active and militant union man, had been out of work for months due to his union activities, when he got this job. Naturally he had no money and the only clothes he possessed were those he wore. He came abroad this boat and found a cabin–dark, foul-smelling and overridden with bed bugs and roaches. The total furnishing of that hole consisted of one stove, one table and one soap box that was used for a chair–no bed, no blankets, no cooking utensils, He slept on the damp floor. He went out and begged a coffee pot and some coffee to put in it.

His pay day was 15 days off and in the meantime he was compelled to beg from other captains–a loaf of bread here, a little coffee there, a few potatoes somewhere else and so forth. The experiences of Trajer are typical of all the rest. Sanitary conditions there are none. When a bath is needed, it is taken by using a pail of river water–if you have the pail. The cabin is bed-room, the dining-room, bath-room, toilet or what have you.

On the majority of these boats, captains are compelled to bring up their families. Five, six or more children is nothing unusual. What chance these children have to obtain even the most elementary education can be imagined when one takes into consideration the fact that the boat moves from–say Port Reading today to Harlem River, from Harlem River next day to Perth Amboy and so on. Naturally the children cannot attend school under these conditions, as the pay is not enough to allow the captain to rent a place ashore for the wife and children. so that the latter may attend school. The result can be imagined. The child is born on the river, grows up on the river and dies on the river. The only education such a child gets is to become an expert boat captain when he is grown up and to serve the boss well for little or no pay. The life of a boat captain’s girl is to grow up and become a good boat captain’s wife and in turn help produce some more prospective boat captains and boat captain’s wives. Born in misery. Live in unbelievable misery and poverty. Die in misery, poverty and suffering. That is the outlook and life for these members of our class.

The working conditions on these boats are on a par with all other conditions in the industry. No 8-hour day here. No over-time pay. No regular house at any time. Load the boat in the daytime and tow up the canal at night time. A boat captain is expected to be on the boat at all hours and be ready when the tow boat blows the whistle to get out and make the tow. Failure to be aboard means he misses his boat, which never fails to mean that he also has missed his job. And when his job is gone, his “home” is gone too, because that dirty, foul-smelling and dark cabin was the only home he possessed, and he possesses it just so long as the boss allowed him and no longer. A captain is expected to be everything from a deck hand to an authority on naval architecture. If the boat leaks too much, he is expected to get down there and stop the leak. But if he wants to keep his job, he had better not present a bill to the company for materials bought to repair that leak. He is expected to always keep the boat painted and in trim, but can’t ask for more than a gallon of paint every year or so, or he is accused of selling the paint.

Men and women are compelled to live for years under conditions described back to their floating coffins called boats. means of escaping this degrading and miserable life where the most elementary principles of decency and human rights are denied them. There was no escape. Nowhere to go. There remained but one way–to Organize.

The Union Is Formed

The union was formed. It had its flood and its ebb. Up and down. A struggle with the bosses or their hirelings. Struggle against ignorance, bred and fostered through the living conditions and general environment. Step by step these things were overcome, but a struggle at every step. The union gradually grew. It grew into fighting form. It hit back. Won a few concessions but after a while lost them again. Men went back to their floating coffins called boats, some disillusioned, some with all the fight taken out of them; others seemed not to care any more and the bosses, especially the type of O’Boyle and Hourahan, took advantage of this situation and slashed the wages still more.

But there was a small body of men who had not yet given up hope. A small body of men that realized that we could only regain our lost ground by again organizing, and organizing in such a way that when the time came we would be ready to fight; we would stop the retreat. From defense we would take the offensive. The union came to life again. It gradually grew. Already one of the companies was listening to the rumbling undercurrent of revolt among its captains and decided to recognize the union and hire nothing but union men and hire them out of the union hall.

Another company was about to follow suit. Captains on the O’Boyle Line came back to the union. There was talk about strike sometime in January on this line. O’Boyle officials heard of it. Others picked up their ears and suddenly realized that the union was again about to come to life and to become a factor on New York’s waterfront. Something had to be done. The usual cry of “Communist” did not seem to affect the workers. Something else must be done.

The frame-up. I need not here go into details. Workers everywhere will soon know the whole story. Enough to say that three of the union’s most active members, including the writer, are today about to be railroaded up the river for life for a crime we did not commit. Our crime was the crime of trying, by organization, to rectify some of the wrongs described in this article and to gain for the members of the union an equal and decent scale of wages.

If, with the assistance of the workers everywhere, the Defense Committee succeeds in defeating this attempt of a frame-up, we shall continue, no matter where we are, to commit the crime of organizing the workers against their common enemy, the boss. To conclude! this article I want to repeat my statement to police captain Lennard in the station after my arrest and when told to “confess”. “There was not enough money outside to buy me, there is not enough terror in here to break me.” That statement goes for all three defendants.

JACK SODERBERG. Secretary-Treasurer of I.T.B.U.

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1931/v4n35-dec-12-1931.pdf