had juggled the books to cover for US$70,000 of loans that were never repaid. Cotterill (already voted out of office, and a "lame duck" at the time the scandal broke, had apparently received at least one loan for $190; it is unclear whether he had paid it back. This scandal coincided with the start of the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, a particularly complicated situation in Seattle. Not only was the ILA faced off against the Waterfront Employers Association (WEA), but the Port and the Teamsters' Union both wavered in between, and newly elected Seattle mayor Charles L. Smith outflanked the Employers Association, undercutting a tentative agreement with the ILA by declaring a "state of emergency" and ordering Seattle police to open port operations by force. The result was a violent and deadly confrontation known as the "Battle of Smith Cove", followed by federal arbitration that gave the longshoremen almost everything they had initially asked for, and made Seattle a "union port", which it has remained ever since. However, this and further labor confrontations in the following years left Seattle with a "reputation in business circles as the least cooperative port on the coast"; sending the port into decline until the coming of World War II. The war led to a common cause among management and labor, but the militant International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which had broken away from the ILA in 1937, still harbored strong memories of 1934. In the context of Seattle's and the Port's relatively weak post-war economy, the start of the Cold War, a generally conservative Port Commission, and the even more hardline WEA, the Seattle longshoremen walked out on September 1, 1948, as did their co-workers up and down the West Coast. Despite red-baiting and the relatively anti-labor Taft–Hartley Act, the ILWU won their fight. Seattle's Griffiths and & Sprague Stevedoring Company was the first to reach an agreement with the union; the soon Port followed their lead; and while the WEA held out for 95 days, once it became clear that Harry Truman and the Democratic Party would remain in control of the federal government, they also came to the table and negotiated. The result was such a blow to the WEA that it soon merged into the American Shipowners Association, forming the Pacific Maritime Association. As discussed above (see section The Fifties), this labor militancy combined with a lack of leadership