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Book Review: Making Global and Local Connections: Historical Perspectives on Ports

Cole is unfamiliar with the latest research on dock work. His view of it as a "hell on earth" compared to other occupations is entertaining but hardly convincing. Instead, casual labour on the docks was generally comparatively well paid. Cole occasionally mentions fluctuations in port traffic, but he does not provide a single table or graph with this essential information. Other social factors, such as immigration or the racial composition of the workforce, are also discussed without complete time series or tables. Cole is most convincing when analysing conflicts between the local Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union and the IWW. He explains why radical trade unionists were low key during the First World War when several central figures in Local No.8 were imprisoned. This begs the question ofwhy employers agreed to cooperate for a decade with a syndicalist trade union which was prosecuted during the Great War. After reading this book I am more puzzled than ever. How was it possible for the IWW to secure what amounted to a closed shop on the Philadelphian waterfront without a written collective agreement? What did Local 8 deliver to employers during this otherwise unstable decade? How could Local 8 lose a strike in 1920 and still maintain a closed shop until 1922, when a lockout eventually brought about the demise of the IWW in Philadelphia? Moreover, the inner life of the union, changes in the labour process on the Philadelphian waterfront and an analysis of the income development of the dockers deserved more rigorous handling. It really is a pity that important historical problems which are still relevant today are given a romantic treatment. This may stem from the fact that the author has compassion for this trade union and especially for its African-American leader, Benjamin "Ben" Fletcher. The author claims that Wobblies on the Waterfront seeks to rescue Local 8 from historical obscurity. This noble task may well have been achieved by publishing this book, but a thorough analysis of the success and eventual failure of interracial trade unionism on Philadelphia's waterfront has not yet been written.