Andrew Furuseth was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. Furuseth was active in the formation of two influential maritime unions: the Sailors' Union of the Pacific and the International Seamen's Union, and served as the executive of both for decades.
Background
He was born Anders Andreassen, the third son and fourth of nine children of Andreas Nilsen, a farmer, and his second wife, Marthe Jensdatter; he had an older half-brother by his father's first marriage. The surname Furuseth was taken from the name of the cottage near Romedal, Hedmark, Norway, in which he was born. The family was poor, and young Andrew left home at the age of eight to support himself by working for a farmer at nearby Ostby.
Education
While there he attended school and acquired the love of reading by which he augmented his meager formal education.
Career
At the age of sixteen he left school to work in Christiania (later Oslo) and three years later went to sea for the first time. He sailed under many flags, finally making his way to the west coast of the United States in 1880. Thereafter he shipped out intermittently from west coast ports until he quit the sea in 1891.
During the 1880's he was active in organizing seamen, and he was elected secretary of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific in 1887. During his years at sea Furuseth found the great purpose of his life--to end the sailor's age-old serfdom to his ship.
In that day sailors who quit ship before completion of the return voyage were subject to arrest, imprisonment, and forfeiture of wages, so that a strike or other protest against ill treatment was impossible.
In 1894 he went to Washington as legislative agent for the seamen's unions. For the next twenty-one years he devoted himself to a campaign which, after achieving limited success in the Maguire Act (1895) and the White Act (1898), was finally crowned by his greatest achievement, the enactment of the La Follette Seamen's Act of 1915.
Sponsored by Senator Robert M. La Follette, the act made many improvements in the sailor's lot, including abolition of imprisonment for desertion. From 1908 until his death Furuseth was president of the International Seamen's Union.
As a delegate to international conferences of sailors' unions, he tried to win the European unions to support the principle of the La Follette Act but was not successful until 1920. Curiously, the socialist leaders of European unions at first considered Furuseth's proposal anarchistic in its supposed threat to discipline at sea.
During the 1890's, besides acting for the seamen, he served as legislative representative of the A. F. L. He and Gompers together drafted the "Bill of Grievances" which served as the rallying cry for labor in the congressional elections of 1906. Furuseth maintained, however, that no labor law was any good unless the unions were strong enough to enforce it.
He was therefore skeptical of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914), although Gompers enthusiastically hailed it as "Labor's Magna Carta. "
Having been a victim of the injunction, Furuseth worked hard against its use in labor disputes and contributed both to the drafting and to the passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932. Furuseth was very tall, thin, and stooped, always clad in a dark suit with unpressed trousers. His face was striking, revealing the strength and intensity of his character.
Furuseth died in Washington, after a year's illness, at the age of eighty-four. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins ordered that his body lie in state in the Department of Labor auditorium, an honor never before given to any labor leader.
In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were scattered over the Atlantic Ocean, midway between America and Europe.
Politics
Believing that the democratic United States offered the best chance of changing the ancient legal status of the sailor, Furuseth planned to win his victory first in this country and then compel other maritime nations to follow suit.
Views
Although Furuseth opposed American entry into the war in 1917, he urged American seamen to serve faithfully and was largely responsible for the success of his union's no-strike policy during the war.
As president of the Seamen's Union he refused to accept any more salary than the union rate for an able-bodied seaman, on the principle that "the only man who can do anything for his fellows is he who has nothing and wants nothing for himself. "
Though he was a grim and indefatigable fighter, he was no fanatic; he was always ready to accept a partial gain when fighting for more promised to be too costly. Diffident and silent in social intercourse, Furuseth was eloquent in behalf of his cause.
Quotations:
When brought before a San Francisco court for defiance of an injunction, he stated: "You can put me in jail. But you cannot give me narrower quarters than as a seaman I have always had. You cannot give me coarser food than I have always eaten. You cannot make me lonelier than I have always been. "
Personality
He had a prominent nose, piercing blue eyes, and a protruding lower lip over a firm chin; in his old age, he was said to look more like a Plains Indian than a Viking.
His best-known likeness is a portrait bust by Jo Davidson, erected near the waterfront in San Francisco. Furuseth lived in the simplest possible fashion.
Quotes from others about the person
The last sentence epitomized the man's life. Gompers called him "a genius with extraordinary dramatic power. . He had no ties of the flesh, either family or kindred, to interfere with the absolute dedication of his time to the seamen's cause. "
Senator La Follette said of him, "He was logical, rugged, terse, quaint, and fervid with conviction. "