Early Life
Bridges was born Alfred Renton Bridges in Melbourne. He went to sea at age 16 as a merchant seaman and joined the Australian sailors' union. He took the name Harry from an uncle, who was a socialist and an adventurer, much like Jack London, the writer who also inspired young Bridges to go to sea. Bridges entered the United States in 1920, where his American colleagues nicknamed him "The Beak" for his prominent nose, "The Limey," as they couldn't tell the difference between an Australian and an Englishman, and finally "Australian Harry" or "Racehorse Harry" to differentiate him from all other Harrys by his nationality and love of the racetrack.
In 1921, Bridges joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), participating in an unsuccessful nationwide seamen's strike. While Bridges left the IWW shortly thereafter with doubts about the organization, his early experiences in the IWW and in Australian unions influenced his beliefs on militant unionism, based on rank and file power and involvement.
Bridges left the sea for longshore work in San Francisco in 1922. The shipowners had created a company union after the International Longshoremen's Association local in San Francisco was destroyed by a strike it lost in 1919. Bridges resisted joining that union, finding casual work on the docks as a "pirate". After he joined the San Francisco local of the ILA and participated in a Labor Day parade in 1924, he was blacklisted for several years. Bridges eventually joined the company union in 1927 and worked as a winch operator and rigger on a steel-handling gang.
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