Path Dependency and Patterns of Collective Action: Space, Place, and Agency in Long Beach, California, 1900–1960

Abstract

Drawing on the insights of the geography, structural, and social movement literature this study analyzes the interactive effects of structure, space, place, and agency on patterns of collective action in Long Beach, California. Long Beach and Los Angeles occupy the same regional landscape with similar economies, yet the logic of collective action varies considerably. It is argued that preceding 1960, pro-business elites in Long Beach allied with their Los Angeles counterparts to spatially restrict labor organizing and foster patterns of noncontiguous interdependencies within and among labor and community groups. Through violence, cultural references, local and extralocal political policies, and regional coalition building before 1960, the Long Beach ruling elites fragmented the labor and community sector and inhibited the emergence of an organizational infrastructure necessary to foster community-based change after 1960. The legacies of this period are reflected in a fragmented labor and community sector set against a powerful ideologically driven, business-led opposition.

Key words:

• collective action
• labor
• elites
• Long Beach
• California

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Walter Nicholls, Byron Miller, Justin Beaumont, and three anonymous referees for their valuable comments and advice on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Notes

1 ¹Miller (2000) has highlighted the conceptual dilemma by defining the scale of the local. Long Beach and Los Angeles represent differing scales of “local.” To many they are part of Southern California, the Southland, and L.A. Empirically, they are part of the same Metropolitan Statistical Area. But for our purposes Long Beach and Los Angeles, at the most basic level, occupy the same regional landscape defined by their inclusion in the same county–Los Angeles County. Moreover, they share a border through their respective harbors although their downtowns are 20 miles apart.

2 ²Rosenfield (2003, p. 1) argues that “Clusters produce two classes of advantages: ‘hard’ externalities based on traded interdependencies and ‘soft’ externalities based on untraded interdependencies. Whereas the former is more easily measured and the basis for many of the early cluster-based economic development formulations, there is good reason to believe that in today's economy the latter may be the stronger force in clustering.” By contiguous interdependencies we are referring to the untraded interdependencies concept used by Storper (1997, p. 5) and the social capital idea of Coleman (1988) and others.

3 ³According to Storper (1997; Storper and Venables, 2004), the concept of path dependency is rooted in evolutionary economics, which stresses technologies develop along pathways or trajectories. These economists hold that choices are characterized by strong irreversibilities making it almost impossible to predict outcomes from a starting point. The outcomes are multiple rather than singularly optimum, reflecting different choices along the “path” and are continually redefined. Thus path dependency is truly historical-not a series of actions on spot markets in which the long-term can be reduced to a series of disconnected instants. The evolutionary economists also discovered that technological innovation and untraded interdependencies are territorialized under certain conditions, most notably where technological trajectories are particularly open. Storper further elaborates that technologies are products of independent choices, and are subject to user-producer and user-user interactions. Every technology created must have a user, and as this number rises it tends to cut off different patterns of use for other users. Since there are significant territorialized technological spillovers in economies, “knowing how to do one thing is frequently consequent upon knowing how to do another, or the key do doing certain other things” (Storper, 1997, p. 19). Thus users who have been cut off from the technological spillover will require a different, and possibly longer, path to establishing contiguous interdependencies.

4 ⁴Social movement organizations can contribute to the emergence of these linkages. Membership organizations not only facilitate networking and information sharing, but deliver services and influence political policies (Rosenfield, 2003). Also, this value added is not restricted to social movement organizations, but is consistent with business associations as well.

5 ⁵The harbor complex includes both the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Both ports lie north of the Los Angeles River further isolating the Port of Long Beach from the City of Long Beach.

6 ⁶In its 45th Annual Mid-Winter Edition in 1930 the Los Angeles Times (1930, p. B4) noted “another milestone marking the forward march of Southern California.” Los Angeles:began with almost no national advantages to industry; the cities of the north [Seattle, Portland, San Francisco] with nearly every one of importance. Apart from these, the only difference between Los Angeles industry and that of the north–the one great difference which has outweighed all natural handicaps and has made this city one of the first manufacturing centers of the country–is the fact that, from its beginnings, Los Angeles industry has been maintained under the open shop as against union rule in San Francisco, in Portland and in Seattle.Only the “American Plan, or open shop principle of industrial relations” has allowed the city to surpass these northern cities in wealth and strength. The Times piece continued “whenever it is forgotten or the vigilance of its maintenance against the constant militant aggressions of unionism is relaxed, then industry is braked down and with it are retarded, halted, or reversed all other elements of our forward progress.”

7 ⁷According to Lew Head (1928), the Better America Foundation (BAF)–an employer association linked to the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association-was principally involved in getting Merriam elected as Speaker of the Assembly. The BAF's predecessor, the Commercial Federation of California, claimed to have been instrumental in electing eighteen members of the state legislature and six members of the Los Angeles City Council in 1918 (Layton, 1961, p. 138).

8 ⁸The Committee of 200–also referred to as the “Pine Avenue Gang” and the “Virginians”-only began to change after the 1920s to “accommodate” (i.e., co-opt) the “nouveau riche”: the oil barons in the 1920s, the Navy brass in the 1930, and the aerospace and defense lords after 1940 (Norfleet, 2004a, p. 19). These same interests coalesced around the Pacific Coast Club, the largest private club south of San Francisco (Norfleet, 2004a, pp. 20, 34). A similar handful of private interests control Long Beach today.

9 ⁹ Buffum was the Macy's of Southern California owned by brother Charles and Edwin (Norfleet, 2004a, p. 24). He also served a term as mayor of Long Beach (1921–1924) headed the school board and the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. He boosted Long Beach in much the same way as Harry Otis Chandler promoted Los Angeles (McDougal, 2001, p. 103). The two families were not only united ideologically, but through marriage, as Buffum's daughter Dorothy married to Norman Chandler–son of Harry Chandler–who became a major landowner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times and a founding member of the Economic Roundtable.

10 ¹⁰As many as 80% of the largest firms in Los Angeles County belonged to the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association (Stimson, 1955, p. 258; Fredericks, 1990, p. 381). The M&M was gradually replaced in the 1930s by Southern California Inc. (Los Angeles Industrial Council, 1940). The other associations allied with the M&M included the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Realty Board, the Founders’ and Employers’ Association, and the Better America Foundation (BAF)–the BAF grew out of the Commercial Federation founded by Harry Haldeman, a close business partner of Harry Chandler, and Watergate's H. R. Haldeman's grandfather (Open Forum, 1926a; Layton, 1961; McWilliams, 1973; Donner, 1990; McDougal, 2001). In turn, such semipublic clubs as Rotary, Kiwanis, Ad Club, among others belonged to the Better American Foundation (Layton, 1961, p. 138). Member firms had interests in the major economic sectors of the time, including water, real estate, railroads, and manufacturing. Evidence shows that employers subsidized these associations; Southern California Edison Company contributed $3,000 annually to the Better American Foundation (Los Angeles Industrial Council, 1940; Layton, 1961, p. 139; see also Donner, 1990).

11 ¹¹ According to Kevin Starr (1985), Otis was capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment. But son-in-law Harry was no lightweight; he would eventually sit on more than 40 corporate boards of directors and hold large blocs of stock in several dozen companies (McDougal, 2001, p. 113).

12 ¹² In addition to Craig, other often mentioned members of the open shop movement included, Henry Barbour, F. Von Schlegell, Charles Buffum, and George Smith (executive secretary of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce). See also Clark (2002) regarding the region's elites and adherence to the open shop philosophy. According to the Los Angeles Times (1936), the M&M agreed that Long Beach “will be [a] source of union labor difficulties in the future” and that the M&M will aid Long Beach in combating “radical labor elements,” “subversives,” and “unionism” in the city. Given that Long Beach was named along with San Pedro and Wilmington, suggests that the harbor–and not Long Beach more generally-was the center of union organizing activity.

13 ¹³The harbor was created as Long Beach's “industrial district.” Long Beach provided incentives to successfully encourage industries to relocate to the Long Beach side of the harbor (Los Angeles Times, 1914b). Although elites in both cities were allied against labor, they nonetheless competed for inward investment.

14 ¹⁴Legislation was enacted with support by business and industrial interests to reinforce the open shop principle. Eldridge Dowell (1939, p. 51) argues that “In practically every state where a criminal syndicalism bill was passed, there is evidence of a bill having been sought by those interests and industries which were having trouble with the I.W.W., feared trouble with them or were apprehensive concerning the effect of the I.W.W. and radical doctrines on the more conservative unions in a period of labor unrest.” William Stephens of California was a former director and former president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce whose platform included a plank for suppressing the I.W.W. (Dowell, 1939). Frank Donner (1990) provides evidence the Criminal Syndicalism Act of 1919 became law because of the lobbying efforts of the Better American Foundation. McDougal (2001, p. 107) also argues it was through Chandler's influence that California legislators had passed the Syndicalism Act. Violation of the Act meant punishment by up to fourteen years in prison.

15 ¹⁵According to the statute, “criminal syndicalism” was defined as “any doctrine or precept advocating, teaching, or aiding and abetting the commission of crime, sabotage … or unlawful acts of force … as a means of accomplishing a change in industrial ownership … or effecting any political change.” Likewise the California act, in accordance with the Idaho model, defined participation in “criminal syndicalism” as “a felony … punishable by imprisonment” (U.S. Supreme Court, 1927). AsOpen Forum (1926a) points out, the principal contribution of the Law to the Penal Code was for the purpose of destroying labor unions; the law specified that any “member of a labor organization can be jailed for 14 years if another member of that organization commits a crime or advocates committing a crime.” The legislation was a powerful tool in the arsenal of the open shop supporters. Other legislation used in California to combat “communistic activity” included varying “types of flag acts” prohibiting the flying of certain kinds of flags (Gendel, 1930, pp. 68–69).

16 ¹⁶The M&M used blacklisting, sophisticated espionage, and outright violence against labor–including using the Los Angeles Police Departments “Red Squads” (Sides, 2004; Labor News, 1934b). Detective agencies notoriously active in the “labor spy racket” had branch offices in California: two in Los Angeles, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and the Burns International Detective Agency; and 11 in San Francisco (Huberman, 1937). The Pinkerton Agency was heavily involved in anti-union activities during the period when the Los Angeles Times building was bombed (Donner, 1990). In Long Beach, real estate and port interests relied on the Long Beach Police Department and the Ku Klux Klan to suppress union organizing (Norfleet, 2004a).

17 ¹⁷In some respects, the bombing was L.A.’s Haymarket event in terms of the negative effects on the labor movement. Perhaps coincidental, perhaps not, Pinkerton Detectives were involved in both incidents (Donner, 1990). It is also noteworthy that the union's defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow, was tried–and later acquitted–for jury tampering after the trial.

18 ¹⁸These ordinances are essentially anti-labor and intended to restrict the right to picket. They were challenged in the late 1930s and 1940s as violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendment (L. L., 1946). The Long Beach ordinance (Long Beach Penal Code, 315), which prohibited carrying or display of “any banner, transparency, or sign” in connection with picketing on public streets, was held unconstitutional in People v. Young: to keep the streets free for travel, the municipality may regulate the use of banners and signs by pickets, but prohibition of their use is a deprivation of “legitimate means” of effecting a boycott and is therefore “repugnant to the 14th Amendment” (Columbia Law Review, 1938, p. 1523).

19 ¹⁹An initial result of the anti-picketing ordinance, and the mass arrests that followed, was a general surge of support for radical reform and for Job Harriman's mayor candidacy of Los Angeles (Kahrl, 1983). Harriman was moving toward victory until the confessions of Iron Workers Unionists John and James McNamara to the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in December 1911. Although there is some disagreement as to the direct effect of the confessions on Harriman's campaign, the confession at least negatively affected his campaign given his links to organized labor (Stimson, 1955). Second, labor was wounded, but not mortally, as organizing continued albeit much more quietly in Los Angeles County.

20 ²⁰The Metal Workers’ Union continued to organize at the Long Beach shipyards, however. In April, 1916, they struck at the California Shipyards for the eight-hour work day, for higher pay, and to establish a closed shop (Morgans, 1940). Facing the threat of imported strikebreakers, the union ended the strike in June in what the Los Angeles Times (1916) called a “victory” for the open shop. With the exception of a brief walkout at the Long Beach Shipyards in October 1919, this was the last strike in the Long Beach shipyards during this period– though activity continued in San Pedro, Wilmington, and the Los Angeles harbor (Morgans, 1940).

21 ²¹Formally an independent city, San Pedro is located directly north of the Los Angeles–Long Beach harbor complex. San Pedro was annexed in 1909 by city of Los Angeles in their efforts to develop the port.

22 ²²See Morgans (1940) regarding other early union lodge activities, such as the Bricklayers Union, Local No. 13 (chartered 1904), the Plumbers, Local No. 494 (chartered 1904), the International Typographical Union, Local No. 650 (chartered 1905), and the Painters Union, Local No. 256, among others.

23 ²³Attempts were then made to pass a statewide “anti-picketing” measure, Proposition Number 1, to “bring labor peace” by regulating picketing and union activities. The Proposition failed in the November 1938 election. According to advertisements by the main proponents, Southern Californian Inc., opponents of Proposition 1 were “financed and directed by union leaders, by Communists and by racketeers who do not come out into the open” that have come to California from “all over the country” to litter the “city with unsigned lies” (Los Angeles Times, 1938; Open Forum, 1936). Note: the Los Angeles Times supported the Proposition. Anti-picketing ordinances were subsequently challenged as violations of the 14th Amendment in the 1940s (see above).

24 ²⁴Both the Pacific Coast Strike of the Longshoremen and the Teamsters 1937 major union shop agreement in Los Angeles were spurred by the Roosevelt's NIRA.

25 ²⁵Long Beach appears marginally in the two events that figured prominently in the labor history of the port. In 1923, the Liberty Hill strike organized by the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union 510 of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W. or Wobblies) resulted in the arrests of hundreds of immigrant and striking dockworkers, as well as Upton Sinclair, under the California Criminal Syndicalism Law (Perry and Perry, 1963). Sinclair's arrest led to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU, n.d.). In 1934, the pivotal West Coast strike, which began on May 15th when striking longshoremen fought with police, guards, and replacement workers in Wilmington, led to the founding of the ILWU and involved hundreds of strikers and battles in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and San Pedro. The turning point in the strike was the decision of the San Francisco labor movement to declare a four-day general strike in support of the longshoremen's and maritime unions. Eventually, the federal government intervened and the union agreed to arbitration on all issues, leading to, among other things, the formation of the first multi-employer collective bargaining unit covering the entire industry (Almeida, n.d.; ILWU, n.d.; Bonacich and Wilson, 2008). Although Long Beach area workers were likely involved in both strikes, the main sites of the struggles were outside of Long Beach. It is noteworthy that Long Beach's Frank Merriam, who was governor at the time of the 1934 strike, called the strikers a horde of public enemies, mostly aliens attempting to undermine the American ideal of human liberty (Open Forum, 1934a). We might also note that the ILWU home is in San Pedro.

26 ²⁶As Fredericks (1990) points out, the San Francisco/Oakland metropolitan district was a little more than half the size of the Los Angeles metropolis in 1930, but had a central city to suburban population ratio of 30 to 1; the Los Angeles ratio was only 3 to 1.

27 ²⁷By 1937, 51% of those eligible at the harbor were organized, compared to 20% “elsewhere in Los Angeles”- and part of this 20% was due to the harbor unionizing effort (Garnel, 1972, p. 155).

28 ²⁸The ordinance was declared invalid in November 1937 (Morgans, 1940).

29 ²⁹According to Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (2009, p. 106), Republican Governor Earl Warren opposed the bill because “a campaign on a measure of this kind would be a bitter one that [will] cause disruption rather than unity … during this war period.” His argument kept even the California Chamber of Commerce from endorsing the initiative.

30 ³⁰There is evidence that Red Squads also operated in Long Beach. Professors Craig Hendricks spoke of the use of “Red Squads” by the Long Beach police force into the 1970s in Long Beach. Professor Jerry Harris reported that the Long Beach Police regularly conducted surveillance of local activists, thought it is not clear how far back into history these units go. Personal communication with Craig Hendricks, August 14, 2008, and with Jerry Harris, August 15, 2008. See also McLafferty (1970).

31 ³¹The Long Beach Police Department had a Criminal Syndicalism Bureau (Open Forum, 1934b) that collaborated with the LAPD. According to the Los Angeles Times (1932a), Captain Hynes of the LAPD assisted in the arrest of 62 men and 20 women in Long Beach on suspicion of criminal syndicalism. In 1927, Southern California's ACLU identifies then Lieutenant Hynes as “chief of the Los Angeles red squad of detectives” (Open Forum, 1927).

32 ³²Long Beach Press (1924, p. 1) reported that “Thousands of Klansmen Stage Gigantic Parade at San Pedro,” in an “Americanization gathering” complete with a “twenty-foot fiery cross … fed from two huge tanks of gasoline.”

33 ³³This was the case, for instance, within the Garment Union who split between the Communists and the Social Democrats in the 1920s (Laslett and Tyler, 1989). The I.W.W. and the oil workers union had long battles over control of oil workers in Signal Hill (Long Beach Press, 1923b, 1923c). A more general treatment of this in the port sector is Chapter 3 of Bruce Nelson's (1990) Working on the Waterfront. Reflecting these divisions, the Long Beach Labor News argued that the I.W.W. does not like to play “the game according to the long accepted rules” but only those rules that benefit them (Ghent, 1920, p. 17). Noteworthy is the case of Whitney vs. California which upheld California's Criminal Syndicalism Law. Charlotte Anita Whitney, a social worker, was arrested in Oakland on November 28, 1919, shortly after delivering a speech before a reformist organization, the California Civic League, “in defense of the rights and liberties of American negros (sic)” (Open Forum, 1925, p. 3; White, 2007). One can easily read the message: no organization–or person–advocating for the rights of the most marginalized sectors of society was safe.

34 ³⁴As in Los Angeles City, Mexicans were the largest minority population in Long Beach. In 1900, for instance, Long Beach was 95.8% white, 3% Mexican, 0.9% African American, and 0.3% Chinese; the total population was 2,252. The major change in 1910 was the growth of the Japanese population, consisting of 1.6% of the population (Day and Hale Tucker, 2007, appendices I and II). These ratios remained roughly consistent until the 1950s. Early migration from Japan was spurred by the expanding port complex and the canneries that brought Japanese, as well as Portuguese, Italian, Croatians, and Slovenians to work in the industry (DeAtley, 1988; Peterson, 2005). Unlike San Francisco, however, Japanese were the largest Asian group. Japanese fishermen had long dominated fishing, and the cannery industry was heavily dependent on them for fish. Terminal Island became known as a “typical Japanese fishing village” in the years before World War II, and Fish Harbor, on Terminal Island, was home to approximately 3,500 Japanese and Japanese Americans. After 1900, the Japanese government reversed its long policy of forbidding emigration resulting in considerable numbers of Japanese moving to the U.S. and Southern California in particular. There was also a sizeable Japanese community located close to several Buddhist temples in downtown and in west Long Beach (Hillburg, 2000). In 1942, the Island was designated as a “strategic area,” due to its proximity to the U.S. Navy Base at San Pedro. In February 1942, the 3,500 Japanese became the first Japanese to be evicted from their homes, most going to the Manzanar internment camp (History of Los Angeles and San Pedro, n.d.).

35 ³⁵Newspapers and ad campaigns also served as a source of information and “boosterism” (even propaganda), to spur migration to Long Beach as a place of freedom, sun, and fun; a great place to live and retire. Slick advertising campaigns designed to lure manufacturers to Long Beach emphasized the “abundant” and cheap Mexican labor (Fredericks, 1990). In 1912, the Long Beach Press-Telegram produced a special “booster” edition on Long Beach. By the 1920s, for instance, the Los Angeles Times was publishing–and distributing nationwide–an Annual Mid-Winter Edition (published in January) designed to spur migration into Southern California (Jones, 2009). According to Allison Varzally, this was part of an “explicit campaign to grow Los Angeles by attracting” Midwesterners (quoted in Jones, 2009). For the Long Beach case, see the Wall Street Journal (1938) and Long Beach Historical Society (1939).

36 ³⁶The Los Angeles Times actually used the term “the White Spot” of America as a means to attract white Midwesterners. Employing the term in its Midwinter Editions, the Times touted Southern California as free of “crime, corruption, communism, and by implication nonwhite races” (Jones, 2009).

37 ³⁷McDougal's (2001) account of Chandler's campaign against Upton Sinclair's gubernatorial race and his “End Poverty in California” (EPIC) plan in 1934 provides a telling example of how effective Chandler was in orchestrating events in California (see also Jones, 2009).

38 ³⁸According to Mike Davis, the Times had the greatest classified ad revenue of any paper in the United States by the turn of the century (quoted in Jones, 2009). In 1921, 1922, and 1923, the Times led every paper in the U.S. in display and classified advertising lineage, and in 1921, the Associated Press elected Harry Chandler its Pacific coast director–“a title that helped him corner the west coast market on breaking news,” according to McDougal (2001, p. 95). The degree to which alternative ideas and information percolated into the mainstream is likely minimal. Otis Chandler and Harry Chandler made sure the Times had few rivals (McDougal, 2001; Jones, 2009). It is noteworthy that in 1933 Harry Chandler provided a loan to William Randolph Hearst that allowed Heart's media Empire to survive (Jones, 2009). See also McDougal's account of the liberal Los Angeles Daily News’s clearly lukewarm position regarding labor in the 1937 May Company strike (McDougal, 2001).