Trust Barker to make what could be a dry subject as entertaining a read as it is informative. In this, the third chapter of his fantastic book-length serial, ‘The Story of the Sea,’ he traces the rise of powerful capitalist shipping businesses that also play key roles in imperialist rivalries, expansion, and war. Tom Barker, born in England, was a self-educated, working-class Marxist, a leading figure in the New Zealand and Australian I.W.W., deported to Latin America for his anti-war and union activities, where he worked the Buenos Aires docks and became a leader of the international marine workers organizing. In 1921 he traveled to Europe to attend the Syndicalist Congress in Berlin and then as delegate to the first conference of the Red International of Labor Unions. Below is a letter where he describes Soviet Russia to his comrades in the I.W.W. He would stay in Russia working with Haywood on the Kuzbas Industrial Colony for years, though never joining the Party. A defender of the Russian Revolution, he remained a syndicalist and continued to write for both the wobbly and Communist press for a number of years. He would return to England in the late early 1930s where he worked for the Electric Company and stayed active for decades in Labor politics.

‘The Story of the Sea: III. The Shipowners’ Organizations’ by Tom Barker from Industrial Pioneer. Vol.1 No. 1. February, 1921.

IN MY rough sketch of the rise of the marine transport industry I have pointed out the advantages that the different generations of shipowners have gained from technical discoveries. The “swallowing process” of capitalism has concentrated the power of control into ever fewer and fewer hands. The enormous profits gained during the war period have been reinvested in all corners of Mother Earth. One-time independent concerns in far distant places have passed one by one into the control of gigantic combinations.

In order to show some of the ramifications of these great world organizations, I am going to use portions of a vast amount of carefully collected material made public by Fellow Worker J.T. Walton Newbold, M.A. Fellow Worker Newbold has rendered splendid service to the working class movement of the world by his compilations. He suggests the weapon of Industrial Unionism as the alternative to the present Industrial Autocracy. In the course of this booklet we will point out methods of bringing about a form of organization on the sea which will rid the workers for ever of both their slavery and their masters.

In a very striking pamphlet that ought to be read by all sea-faring men, Mr. Newbold presents facts compiled from various authoritative sources, showing the complicated and far-reaching connections of the marine transportation interests. In “Solidarity Among the Ship-Owners” (Reformer’s Bookstall, Limited, 126 Bothwell Street, Glascow. Price 2d.), he takes as examples the enormous holdings of several great British magnates.

Introduces a Representative Boss

Sir J. Reeves Ellerman is the king-pin in the Ellerman Lines. His papa was in the timber trade and made a fortune out of it. After the manner of capitalists, he handed it down to his son. His son set to work to own more timber. He succeeded. Sir J. Reeves Ellerman—they have dropped an “n” since leaving the land of their own origin—is now a big shareholder in the “Times” and the “Daily Mail,” in addition to other large newspapers of varying political creeds. He is also connected with the Lion Brewery and the Deisel Engine Works at Whiteinch, Scotland. Under the control of the Ellerman Lines come the Papayanni Line, which trades to the ports of the Near East, as well as the Harrison Line and the Hall and City Line, which run to the Far East. Brother Ellerman (pardon the familiarity) is interested in Frederick Leyland & Co., Ltd., and Shaw, Saville & Albion Co., Ltd., which trade to New Zealand thru the Panama Canal. He has large interests in the Wilson Steamship Company and the North Eastern Shipping Company, which connects Holland with the Humber. Through the North Eastern Railway Co., Ltd., he is associated with the Hull and Netherlands Steam Shipping Company Ltd., and the Pyman Steam Shipping Company, Ltd. Through his connection with the Shaw, Saville & Albion Company, Ltd., he is represented in the International Mercantile Marine Company of New Jersey, U.S.A. This latter combination controls such large companies as Ismay, Imrie & Company, Ltd.; Oceanic Steam Shipping Company, Ltd.; and the International Navigation Co., Ltd.

The International Mercantile Marine Company of New Jersey is under the control of the American International Corporation. John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan & Company stand behind this corporation. Morgan and Ellerman are of different nationalities, religions and temperaments, but their interests are the same. Taking the case of Ellerman as an example, we find workers of diverse nationalities and colors toiling in all the corners of the earth to enrich the single man and the single corporation. The London newspaper reporter, the English brewer’s drayman, the Scotch mechanic, the Greek docker, the Burmese stevedore, the Dutch tugboat engineer, the North Eastern railway shunter, the Pa ama locks-man, the New Zealand crane driver, and the “free-born” British seaman, all work in the interests of Brother Ellerman. And I guess you will agree with me, fellow workers of the sea, that it will take more than a national political party to put our future fellow worker, Sir J. Reeves Ellerman, into dungarees.

“Fellow Worker” Inchcape and His Little Set.

We will now introduce, through Fellow Worker Newbold’s kindness, Lord Inchcape. This distinguished ship-owner is also a journalist —of a kind. He writes letters to the “Times” on the tyranny of trade unionism. He is irritated with his seamen for working only two watches on deck. There were, apparently, in the good old days iron seamen who worked 24-hours shifts seven days a week. It was a pity that the thyroid gland of eternal youth was not discovered in the days of Lord Inchcape’s forebears, or we would have an eternity of iron men creating profits for an eternity of Inchcapes. Lord Inchcape did very well out of the war. Fortune smiled on him; danger was far away; he was never wakened from his bunk by the lookout-man’s cry of “Submarine!” Today he is president of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom, which is the parent body of thirty-four great shipping companies, with an almost unlimited capital at their command. Like the British and American railway companies, the British ship-owners realized long ago the stupidity of cutting each others’ throats. They leave that business to the working class and its trade union Jonahs.

Lord Inchcape is the head of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, Ltd. Thru this great concern, which touches every port of importance from London to Yokohama and Auckland, N.Z., he has a controlling influence over the famous British India Steam Navigation Company, Ltd., which with the P. & O. has recently absorbed the Hain Steamship Company and the Nourse Line. Associated with the P. & O. is the Blue Anchor Line, Ltd., the Australasian United Steam Navigation Company, Ltd., and other shipping concerns with interests in the South Pacific. Inchcape has his finger in the pie of the Eastern Telegraph Company, Ltd., and was appointed by the democratic British government to be chairman of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Ltd., which has the honor of supplying oil (for cash on the spot) to the British navy, and any other navy that can pay an honest, price. Quite a nice little military force was utilized to invade Persia in order to protect the pipe-lines from the Persians, who seem to have some notion that the oil belongs to themselves. Mr. Newbold tells us that this little business is a big weight on the entire life of the East. Lord Idnchcape is only an ordinary man, sleeps in one bed at a time, eats much the same number of meals as a navvy—when the latter can get ’em—and is allowed only one wife by law; yet he appropriates the joint product of the labor of tens of thousands of workers in all the corners of the earth.

Lord Inchcape is on the board of directors of the Suez Canal Company, The Eastern Extension Australasian’ and China Telegraph Company, the Salonah Tea Company and the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders. There is a popular legend abroad that he obtained his original $100,000.00 by selling “Old Moore’s Almanack” outside Lime Street Station, Liverpool. As this is not mentioned in “Who’s Who,” we must take it for granted that the legend has no foundation. “But,” says Fellow Worker Newbold, “It will be realized what an important personage he is in the commercial world ‘east of Suez.’ He is, in fact, one of the mighty potentates of the Indian Empire, and one of the most influential persons in British finance and politics.” When Lord Inchcape wants anything, Lloyd George immediately discovers that the thing wanted is a “national necessity.”

Other Mighty Potentates and a Puny One.

Messrs. Inchcape and Ellerman—God bless their iron souls—are not the only pebbles on the beach by any means. There are others. In Britain we have, in addition, the Geddes, the Pirries, the Rhonddas, the Mond, the Mordens, the Furnesses, the Andersons, the Vickers, and the Beardmores. Their gripping fingers close on everything that is a need to the race. They reach overseas into the back waters of the Amazon and to the paddy patch of Borneo. All must pay tribute,—or be damned. Alongside of them we have good old, tame old, self-satisfied old trade unions, which, according to a re¬ cent speech of the Lord High Cardinal of the British National Union of Railwaymen at Prague, in Checho-Slovakia, are going to buy the business from these gentlemen with the workers’ savings, which are placed in one little comer of one of the banks owned by the aforesaid gentlemen. After that wonderful statement, we feel that in the future we had better go to a Weddell Sea penguin for our economics. One of the future humorous sketches of labor-in-politics will surely be enacted around the business of buying out the bosses.

Across the Atlantic.

Fellow Worker Newbold presents a good deal of illuminating information in his little book on “The Menace of American Capitalism” (British Socialist Party, 21 a, Maiden Lane, London, W.C. Price 2d.), in which he analyzes the composition of the American International Corporation. As already stated, this corporation is linked up with both the Rockefeller and the Morgan interests. Not only do the strategic industries of the United Stales lie under their control, but they are also predominant in China, Mexico and South America. In certain mines in Chile they have their own government and police force, and their own laws.

In the chapter devoted to “Wilson’s Sea Shuttles,” Fellow Worker Newbold writes as follows:

“Banking and exchange were the first considerations, and, after that, the provision of a native mercantile marine. This the ubiquitous American International Corporation set out to obtain. It began by taking over the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (a British concern), and then acquired the New York Ship-building Company. In April, 1917, the vice-president of the corporation stated in International Marine Engineering: ‘We are generously equipped, ready to begin our struggle for our place upon the ocean…We have arrived at a crisis in our commercial history…If we grasp it, our trade will be enormously extended.’

“Meanwhile McAdoo had set up the United States Shipping Board and, in this very month, established the United States Emergency Fleet Corporation, a federal concern in which the United States held a majority of the shares, and which, with a capital of $50,000,000, set out to purchase and to build ships to charter or to lease to U.S. citizens to operate in the foreign trade. This new corporation not only took over all the interned German and Austrian ships lying in the U.S. harbors, but by the autumn of 1917 the Shipping Board had requisitioned every ton of shipping under construction in American yards. The larger part of these ships were being constructed for English companies…This drastic action placed in the hands of the Shipping Board 403 ships of 2,500,000 tons. (World’s Work, December, 1917.) About this time, the American International Corporation secured from J.P. Morgan and Company the control of the International Mercantile Company and others, of fleets of the White Star, Leyland, American and other lines, and a measure of control in the ship-building firm of Harland and Wolff, Ltd. Since that time, the Belfast firm has been making vast extensions on the Clyde, at Liverpool and elsewhere. It was this deal that caused the Federation of British Industries to send out a frantic ‘S.O.S.’ It is the $90,000,000 of ships belonging to these lines which the U.S. Government would not permit to be sold to a British syndicate. The Hamburg-America, Nord-Deutscher Lloyd and American ‘pool’ steamships, which, before the war, did a prodigious trade to the East, to Central and South America and to Europe, are now under the control of the American International Corporation, the protection of the U.S. Emergency Fleet Corporation and the spreading folds of the Star Spangled Banner.

Cyclonic Ship-building.

“To beat the German submarines, the Emergency Fleet Corporation embarked upon a colossal ship-building effort. It made the American International Corporation its agent, and this body founded the American International Ship-building Corporation to look after its ship-building business. A ‘world’s record’ yard was laid out at Hog Island on the Delaware, to construct fifty ships simultaneously and to build into them 7,500 tons of steel a day. (This means that a 4,000 ton ship could be built in 28 days, which indeed happened.—Author.) The Bethlehem Steel Corporation had been making enormous profits, and had, just outside Penn’s city of Philadelphia, a cynical monument to Christian brotherhood busy on $250,000,000 of munition orders in the biggest ordnance factory on earth. Charles M. Schwab, its president, having under his control the Union Iron Works at San Francisco, the Ford River Yard in New England and other establishments, set out to help the Government transform the United States into ‘one huge factory for the production of ships.’ He, first of all, bought up several big steel works, put down immense new rolling mills for ship-plates, and proceeded to lay out new Bethlehem yards in California and in New England. (Here the reader will notice the coming of the “standard ship,” which simplified and accelerated construction, and, as a result, displaced thousands of workers, that under the old system of construction would have had employment.—Author.) “Then,” continues Fellow Worker Newbold, “says ‘Syren end Shipping’ (Jan. 1, 1919), Schwab was ‘persuaded, on the personal appeal of President Wilson’ to become Director-General of Ship-building. By October, 1919, the United States Congress had voted $3,449,000,000 for ship-building purposes…They had more yards, more ways, and more workers than any other nation. There were 200 shipyards with 1,020 berths…The United States had become the leading ship-building nation in the world.’ The head of the Shipping Board said officially, ‘We are building a merchant fleet of 25,000,000 tons. Vast ships will run to every port. Once more we will have a real U.S. merchant fleet under way, backed by far-reaching policies for efficient operation.”

And at the end of 1919, the United States already possessed 13,091,773 tons, compared with Great Britain’s 18,607,875 tons. Owing to its losses in the submarine war, Britain’s tonnage had shrunk from over twenty million tons at the commencement of the war to the above figure. During 1920 Great Britain is again holding her own in building, and then again many United States ships have been found to be defective. They are about as useful for commercial purposes as Leavenworth Penitentiary is for stopping the advance of Industrial Unionism.

Argentina and New Zealand.

The tentacles of the huge marine transport interests can be found everywhere. The great Mihanovich Company of the River Plate and the Rio Parana, which monopolizes the vast trade of that district, has now passed into the hands of the octopus. They have the same grip on the Eastern Latin American Republics as the Canadian Pacific Railway has on Canada. When the Federacion Obrera Maritima of Argentina (the local seamen’s and firemen’s union) struck against the Compania Mihanovich in 1920, they found that they had also struck against the Argentine Government. It was big British and American interests that forced Brazil and Peru into the war, as a pretext for seizing the interned ships of the Central Powers. They also made a strong effort to do the same in Chile in order to get possession of the eighty odd steamers and windjammers which were interned in Punta Arenas, Valparaiso, Chanaral, Mejillones and other ports of the Republic.

The Union Steam Ship Company, Ltd., of New Zealand, is another huge over-seas combination directed from London. It was one of the links in the famous “All Red” route, connecting both Vancouver and San Francisco with Australasia. When, in 1913, the workers of these companies struck throughout New Zealand, the N.Z. Government, headed by the cow-punching Massey, filled the jails, cells and corridors, with striking seamen and laborers from the wharves. The U.S.S. has a stranglehold on the workers of New Zealand; the commands come from London.

In the Royal Beige Lloyd we see a vast concern owned by British and Belgian magnates. Some of their ships fly the British flag and the others the Belgian ensign. Some sail from London and the remainder from Antwerp. In over-seas ports one can often see American-owned ships flying the Italian, Chinese, Cuban or Roumanian flags. The flag that flies on a ship today is no indication of either the nationality of her owners or her crew. The latter can only be classified as the “skinners” and the “skinned.”

Towards the One Big Union of the Bosses.

In spite of internal squabbles, the tendency of all the great shipping interests is towards consolidation, or what Justus Ebert in one of his books calls integralization. In their efforts to bring this end about, the shipping magnates may hurl Great Britain and Japan into another war; but this time with the United States. Such an event would not prevent ultimate consolidation; more likely it would hasten it. War always strengthens the tentacles of financial and economic interests. Even war cannot really divide the closely interwoven connections of the International Marine Corporation of the United States and the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom.

Paste This in Your Hat, Fellow Worker!

Let this fact burn itself into the brains of the marine workers of the world: If the two countries do go to war, don’t forget that the Inchcapes and the Ellermans and the Pirries would sooner marry their daughters to the sons of the Morgans and the Schwabs and the Spreckels than they would to the captains or the engineers or the quartermasters aboard their own ships. They would sooner give their daughters away to the depraved scions of the ruling class of an enemy country than to clean, intelligent workers in their own country. Class is of more importance to them than nationality. That was why Hughes, the Australian renegade politician, sent the captain of the German raider, “Emden,” back to this country as an honored guest, while his crew had to rot for nearly four years in the concentration camp at Holdsworthy, New South Wales.

The spectacular wrangles between these gentlemen is no concern of the men who go to sea on ships, nor of the men who load and unload these ships. When we are skinned, it is not for us to prefer one skinner for the other. It is our business to abolish the skinning business for all time. It is a world disease, and we have to find a world remedy for it. When we see the far-reaching connections of the world power of capitalism, we can well understand the incompetency of trade unionism, and of national labor and Socialist parties and politicians. Capitalism is an economic force, and has its being in the FIELD OF THINGS! It is a concrete, tangible power. This cannot be said for either trade unionism or labor politics. The political institutions of a country are determined by its economic basis. We cannot change the weather by tinkering with the barometer, nor can we re-shape a substance by fooling with its shadow.

We have given above a rough description of a certain section of capitalist organization. Daily it becomes more scientific, more powerful and better organized. If the labor movement wants to conquer the world, it can do it only by building something bigger, something better, something more scientific than what capitalism has built. That is the only way to power; hard road, long road as it is, IT IS THE ONLY ROAD. The workers have to get POWER, real, tangible, concrete, demonstrable, actual power. Such a thing does not come by nose-counting every three years, nor is it manufactured by hot-air opportunists, whose idea of a revolution is generally that of a coup d’etat. In the thoroughgoing world of capitalism, success to our class can only come through the building up and taking over of the control of industry, upon which the future of the workers depends almost entirely. “It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism.”

In the London “Star” of November 4th, 1920, I note that Lord Pirrie, the British Shipping Controller, is making a visit to the United States. He is to interview the chiefs in the American shipping world. He is to discuss the fitting of all ships with oil-burners, and other matters of importance. When Schwab and Pirrie meet, they are not going to put on the gloves, or attempt to throw one another down the lift well. Their meeting is going to make a big difference to every man in the stokehole, the galley or on the docks, not only in Britain and the United States, but also in Hankow and on Christmas Island. They are making their One Big Union more workable, less reliant upon labor, more profitable. They are wiping out their own “demarcation” disputes, and leaving that line of difference to the “bush lawyer” trade union officials. Out of this they will obtain greater profit, which in its turn will mean correspondingly greater investments, greater power and wider influence.

As to the Future.

When I consider the mighty world-organization of Capital, I feel how totally inadequate my capabilities are to describe it as it deserves to be described. I see the world of Labor with its wrangling intellectuals, who wrap up a simple fact in a mass of verbiage and fine words, and then squabble over the wrapping; the “surface scratchers,” who clamor for red navies while there are yellow marine unions in existence; the Socialist academicians, whose revolutionary studies have taught them to be so careful as to make their attitude verge upon cowardice; the “dyed-in-the-woolers,” whose lifelong object it is to smell out “fakirs;” the humbugging political parties, who wish to take upon themselves the arduous task of disciplining vast organic sections of workers; and, lastly, the “amalgamators,” who believe that by dumping one trade union slum property on another they are creating an industrial mansion. I also see the petty squabbles of aspiring politicians, the lack of real industrial knowledge  and requirements, the parish-pump stunts of municipal milkers; I hear the mouthing of platitudes and see their utter uselessness.

The world movement of Labor has to come from the bottom up, from the intelligent and militant rank and file. It has to learn to perfect its power by using it. The philosophy of Industrial Unionism, as advocated by the Industrial Workers of the World, teaches the workers how to organize industrially; it teaches them how to become powerful enough to abolish capitalism, and efficient enough to carry on production for the benefit of all mankind. There is no national political party that can fully express the requirements of the shipping kings of modern times. While the government’s authority does not extend beyond its three-mile limit, the authority of industrial despotism extends to all the ports of every country. Not even within its own frontier could a proletarian party fight such a huge organization. The Worker’s Mastery of the Sea can only come thru revolutionary industrial unionism, organizing ALL the workers of the sea into ONE fighting force.

And above all, it is a work for the marine workers themselves, and least of all for politicians. But as politicians have had little to gain from the voteless pariah of the, sea, they have worried little about him. We of the Old Guard of the Sea look forward with confidence to the time when the shipping magnates will be working on the ships they used to own, and the politicians will be employed in the sanitary department, for which their peculiar character of obtaining a present-day living admirably fits them.

Long live the Marine Transport Workers of the World!

The Industrial Pioneer was published monthly by Industrial Workers of the World’s General Executive Board in Chicago from 1921 to 1926 taking over from One Big Union Monthly when its editor, John Sandgren, was replaced for his anti-Communism, alienating the non-Communist majority of IWW. The Industrial Pioneer declined after the 1924 split in the IWW, in part over centralization and adherence to the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) and ceased in 1926.

Link to PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrial-pioneer/Industrial%20Pioneer%20(February%201921).pdf