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to treason - any strike Whether people were working for the Navy or not. But, of course, the Navy employed local longshoremen for lots of their jobs and the Navy thought of anything that was a workman's protest as comparable to treason and in the same general classification. They would be very solemn about it.

So the Secretary of the Navy occasionally made a report at Cabinet meeting saying, “There's trouble on the West Coast, Mr. President. They say these longshoremen are getting awful tough, that they're stopping work, that they refuse to unload ships,” and so on.

I remember saying once when Swanson reported this, “It hasn't lasted, has it, in any ship or place a full day?”

“Well, perhaps not. I didn't ask, but at least they slowed up the operations. They stopped the loading of a ship, or they didn't start loading. They tried to bargain for something. We pay the regular going wage in the port. We don't cheat them, but they don't work. It's the same all over San Francisco harbor. They stop for a few hours, or they don't turn up for work. A ship comes in at four o'clock in the afternoon, they send out for them and they don't turn up until the next morning. It's very bad.