) The International Longshoremen's Union both exploited immigrants and gave them a leg up. In this way the union was similar to the old, patronagedispensing Democratic Party machine, Tammany Hall, which, on the one hand, was incorrigibly corrupt, and on the other, in its muzzy fashion, at least negotiated with the needs of newly arrived immigrants when the patrician Establishment could not be bothered. Joseph Ryan, the ILA president, was as much a creature of Tammany Hall as he was of the labor movement: a beefy exlongshoreman with a sentimental streak he indulged in afterdinner speeches at testimonial banquets in his honor, his favor was sought by every important public official in the region, from Mayor Jimmy Walker to Governor Franklin Roosevelt. Ryan's indifferent stewardship of the longshoremen looks all the shabbier in contrast with his dynamic West Coast counterpart, Harry Bridges ("Red Harry"), who helped eradicate the shapeup by registering longshoremen and instituting a system of seniority and rotation in hiring, while fighting for better wages. Though Ryan appeared in public as the union's leader, each New York pier was in fact a "pirate's nest," as one reporter called it, dominated by different "warlords." The Irish controlled the West Side's Chelsea Piers, with the Bowers Gang holding sway, and the Red Hook docks in Broo were run by "Tough Tony" Anastasia, brother of Albert Anastasia, was chief executioner for Murder Incorporated during the late 1930s. One of the ironies of the ItalianAmerican immigrant story is Italian longshoremen were split into two factions, activist reformers racketeering union officials, but popular culture remembers only the ond branch. The most outspoken, courageous leader against the ra teering locals was a twentysevenyearold ItalianAmerican named I Panto, who signed up more than a thousand supporters in 1939. The disappeared. According to the gangster Abe Reles, who offered to state's witness, Panto kept an appointment with some guys he didn't t He was taken to a shack on the waterfront where Albert Anas instructed Mindy Weiss to strangle him. His body was then dumped lime pit in New Jersey. Vito Marcantonio, the American Labor Party gressman, and author Richard Wright were enlisted to bring pressur an investigation into Panto's demise. Reles "fell" to his own death frc hotel window while under police protection, and the case was drop The murder of Panto and the failure to prosecute his killers had a chi effect for years on efforts to democratize the union. In the postwar 1940s, the rank and file's appetite for struggle rea\ ened: the ILA's sweetheart contracts with shipping companies anc introduction of the sling load, a more onerous, injuryinflicting apf tus, had provoked the longshoremen's anger. There were wildcat st: in 1945,1948 (this one reluctantly backed by Joseph Ryan and the I] and 1951, with concessions won in the areas of increased hourly wage, с time, guaranteed vacations, and the establishment of a welfare fund, the union remained largely a tool of organized crime.