Talk:1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike

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Review[edit]

The whole article appears to be more about the conflicts, actions of both sides during and racism. It never really discuss why the strike occurred. I wouldn't say that it's neutral as there is a lot of representation of conflicts caused by the police or directors, never mentions the conflicts of the workers. It also never states the goals of the strike, why the strike occurred in the first place and what the strike ended up obtaining or losing for the strikers.

No cites in hook.

"In 1935 longshoremen along the entire coast had struck from October 1 through November 27 to little avail except for fourteen more killings". Needs to be reworded to "had been on strike."

The results part mentions "West Coast Fall strike" the reference says that the "Spring Strike" is the cause of the "Fall Strike". Without paying I can't 100% certify this, but given all the context clues I would say this is miss placed information. Certainly doesn't appear to have anything to do with a "Gulf coast strike".

It also never mentions what the "Gulf Coast strike" actually did or didn't do for the workers.

"but not, as some sources suggest, only in this 1936 Gulf Coast strike" makes no sense and the cite links to certain people that were apart of the strike, but has nothing to do with the sentence. Although, i'm not sure what the sentence is supposed to be stating to start with.

Cite 1 is linked to page 99 and the actual mentioning of the material covered isn't until page 100.

Cite 2 and 3 are not able to be found with the link given. At least not by me.

Cite 9 doesn't give a direct link to the article. Didn't search through all of it to find the correct place.

Cite 11 works well, but the article calls him a strikebreaker. Which doesn't fit the position that he was in given he wasn't hired to do the "striker's" job. The cite states that he was put on strike duty with the police force.

Cite 12 and 13 again doesn't work and I'm not able to find the article on name alone.

The cite's appear to be legitimate, maybe some biased opinions occurring, but they are coming from what would be trusted sources. If you can find them at least.It seems that some of the cites aren't related or don't directly link to the articles. I'm not saying they aren't there, but i'm not able to find them with the information given and the website's search function. So i'm not saying they should be deleted, but they definitely should be rerouted or find a more direct source. Cjefferys (talk) 03:13, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Response[edit]

Hi Cjefferys -- the above review has some inaccuracies. It creates an impression that the article is riddled with errors and bad citations. So here's my response to a few of your points.

"(The article) never really discuss why the strike occurred." The article says, "maritime workers had suffered declining wages and increasingly untenable working conditions." Yes, it could be more specific and explicit. Complaints about clarity, I'll always listen to.
The reviewer says "I wouldn't say that it's neutral as there is a lot of representation of conflicts caused by the police or directors, never mentions the conflicts of the workers." The reviewer must have missed the part where members of the wildcat Maritime Federation are attacked by "beef gangs" of ISU members, and missed understanding that this entire string of strikes was only necessary because of poor ISU representation -- conflict inside the union.
The article attempts to be clear about the relationships among this strike, the preceding maritime strikes on the Gulf Coast in 1934 and 1935, and the west coast labor actions in March 1936 and October 1936. They were all wildcat strikes caused by poor ISU representation. All relevant.
"had struck" is good English
Of the 17 citations, the reviewer describes problems with 7. Cites 2, 3, 12 and 13 validly name a newspaper source and provide a link to a subscription service. (The citation to the source is the key thing, not whether it's conveniently available online or not. This according to the guidelines for citing sources.) On Cite 1, the relevant material does indeed begin on page 99. And on Cite 9, it is impossible to link more directly to the first page of the Orange Leader where the cited article appears.
On Cite 11, the reviewer asserts that "strikebreaker" must always equal "replacement worker". I don't know where that idea came from, but it's not an accurate description of how the anti-labor operations of (for instance) James Farley and Pearl Berghoff worked. In this case Frank Hamer was indeed hired to administer a strikebreaking effort under color of authority. Calling him a strikebreaker is fair and accurate.
There is also no citation problem on Cite 11.

As always I'll assume good faith on your part. With an awareness that this is a school project of some kind. Oh..... a Comp I class. Summer. Oh, whew, ugh, sorry. That sort of changes things. You accidentally got a real person on the other end of the hook here. More than anything else wikipedia is an excellent machine for starting pointless arguments, which is a shame and a waste of time. To counter that, peace, and I wish you a good grade & good air conditioning. --Lockley (talk) 07:29, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lockley, no one is here to start pointless arguments. Thank you. Dr Aaij (talk) 00:05, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Cjefferys, I think you're playing the "direct link" card a bit too strong. First of all, and I'll mention this in class too since I heard classmates talk in the same way, there is no requirement that references be available online (note that I'm saying "references"--you and your classmates, indeed most younger people, usually talk about "links"). That some link doesn't point directly to the article--meh, that's just how those newspaper archives work, and now you know that: they are very useful sources of knowledge, and I appreciate Lockley having dug through the sources to find such references. By the same token, that you or I can't access something doesn't mean it's invalid; in this case, for instance, where clearly a good-faith effort has been made to write up something old, WP:AGF applies and I'll take the writer's word for it. Remember, a lot of things are simply not accessible via the internet and that's fine. But please remind me to talk about this in class: I have no doubt the other (younger!) students need to hear this. Thanks, Dr Aaij (talk) 15:20, 14 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]