) The truth was, the rankandfile dockworkers had walked out in 1919 without either union or IWW leadership, and only afterward appealed to the Wobblies for guidance. "The strike ended in the first week of November," wrote labor historian Calvin Winslow. "It failed for many reasons: certainly the odds were overwhelming-the unwavering opposition of the union leadership, the shipping companies, and the federal government. Federal soldiers actually entered the Harbor in the second week of the strike, though their presence was mostly symbolic. They confined their activities to the army terminals and never directly confronted the strikers. The strikers themselves were undoubtedly exhausted by this conflict, as must have been their families, existing a month without wages or strike benefits." There was not another major strike on the waterfront for twentysix years, though working conditions for longshoremen remained as problematic as ever. Joseph Ryan, who ruled the International Longshoremen's Association throughout this period, getting himself elected the union's president for life," saw to it that there would be no strikes, by promoting a system that kept the men weak and subservient. The cornerstone of this system was maintaining an oversupply of labor, which tended to depress Wages and employ men on a casual basis, with no guarantees of an income from one day to the next. Long after most industries, even most other waterfronts, had gotten rid of the practice, the New York docks continued t0 e rued by the infamous "shapeup," in which longshoremen would e to gather every eight hours outside the pier shed, usually in horse oe configuration, and the pier foreman would select the workers lucky enough to form the crews that day. All troublemakers and organizers were excluded, thus limiting the possibility of reforming locals from within. Not only was the shapeup a demeaning way for men to seek work, but it gave hiring foremen the opportunity to profit by various extortions: kickbacks for jobs, bribes, payroll padding, loansharking (those wanting work had to agree to take out a loan), card games in which the longshoremen were expected to lose, and contributions extracted to phony charities. Many of these hiring foremen were exconvicts, who intimidated the men by threats as well as acts of violence, sufficient to ensure the "D&D" (deaf and dumb) response characteristic of longshoremen. Shipping companies condoned the use of thugs to run things because it kept the men in line. Ultimately this criminal element translated into racketeers taking over the union. Extensive pilferage of imported goods became routine, and the mob took a cut of everything that moved in and out of the port. Illegal immigrants who had jumped ship were given waterfront jobs immediately, so long as they bribed the foreman and bought a brass check. (A dock worker collected his pay by turning in a brass check or disc, but he could sell it to someone else before payday if he was hard up for cash.