Chapter 5: To Rule or Ruin: The Struggle for Control

The Dock and Cotton Council emerged as a crucial vehicle through which screwmen and longshoremen, comprising both Black and white workers, negotiated labor conditions and defended their autonomy against coordinated management efforts to undermine their authority. A central innovation of this period involved the implementation of half-and-half hiring arrangements and integrated work crews, strategies designed to prevent employers from exploiting racial divisions and undercutting wages by favoring one group over another. The introduction of mechanized systems like the shoot the chute method represented a fundamental challenge to worker control, as steamship companies prioritized speed and cost reduction over the skilled labor and traditional workplace customs that had previously governed dock operations. The strikes of 1902 and 1903 constituted pivotal moments when screwmen successfully resisted lockouts, secured recognition of their negotiated work rules, and reasserted their control over labor supply decisions despite facing injunctions, police action, and the importation of replacement workers. Meanwhile, longshoremen confronted persistent challenges including excessive working hours, imposed arbitration systems, and management attempts to dismantle collective decision-making structures. Other dock laborers including freight handlers, coal wheelers, and teamsters occupied more precarious positions due to their limited bargaining leverage and organizational capacity. The chapter situates these local conflicts within the broader national context of anti-union campaigns and the expanding open shop movement, revealing how competing visions of workplace governance collided on the docks. Throughout this period, the interplay between workers' pursuit of dignity, respect, and equitable treatment and employers' relentless drive for operational efficiency and profit maximization created enduring tensions that defined labor relations in the early twentieth-century South.