Penn's Landing

This guide to Penn's Landing in Philadelphia starts with the shape-up, the hiring system that once ruled these wharves, where longshoremen crowded the docks each morning bidding for a single day's pay and called the scene a slave market. In May 1913 more than four thousand dockworkers walked off the piers and organized as Local Eight of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union that mixed Black, Irish and immigrant workers in roughly equal thirds on a waterfront built to keep them divided. You'll hear about Ben Fletcher, the union's Philadelphia-born leader known for his wit, and how long this unlikely alliance managed to run hiring here. Look toward the skyline and picture the piers that once crowded this shoreline.