F. J. McGowen, general manager of the Outer Harbor Dock and Wharf Company at San Pedro, recalled that some of the men housed in a company camp "had not eaten for weeks; some of them had not worked for months and years. When they first came to us they were in pretty bad shape. After we got a couple of weeks' food into them and a place for them to sleep, they began to improve .... After sixty days ... the men we took in and trained were better than the longshoremen are today." 10 Durein claimed that, as strikebreakers hardened, they, too, achieved the competence of the old hands-except in stowing cargo which, he concluded, called for years of experience and "a sixth sense."

"We lived in luxury," Durein wrote. Comfortable quarters, daily changes of linen, fresh towels; generous meals-steak, strawberries, and ice cream; two nightly movies, newsreels and cartoons; and weekly boxing bouts. Banks established weekly office hours to receive the better than $90 a week the men were earning. They could buy beer by the case, tobacco, clothes, shoes, etc., at the ship's store. Gambling flourished every night. "All this was free ... Our enormous pay checks were clear profit." 11 A student committee appointed by the president of the University of Washington reported that employers were offering students board and room and wages higher than those paid longshoremen. Said the committee: "Excellent food, brand-new sheets and blankets and first-class Negro valet service convinced many [once aboard a housing vessel] that the life of the longshoreman was not as bad as they believed." 12 Durein would not guess "what it cost the shipowners to keeps us in the style to which we were utterly unaccustomed." He was sure, though, that the shipowners had "decided to work their ships at any cost save that of giving in to the strikers."

In the aftermath of the 1901 teamsters' and waterfront strike, Teamsters, Local 85, had been nailed down by a contract clause that read: "The Brotherhood of Teamsters and Auto Truckmen are not in favor of sympathy strikes and will do everything they can to avoid them." That clause was much in the minds of the leaders of the Industrial Association, the longshoremen, and Mike Casey, longtime president of Local 85 and a veteran of the 1901 strike, as teamsters prepared to take action on the 1934 strike. The question was set for a special meeting Sunday, May 13.

The longshoremen's strike committee sent its own representatives to make sure that the teamsters knew of its willingness to negotiate wages and hours, as well as its insistence on the closed shop. Casey and his associates asked the teamsters for a declaration that they would haul cargo to and from the pierheads, but would not enter the docks. The members rejected their proposal; instead, they shouted approval of a resolution "not to transport merchandise to or from the docks." It was not, Casey emphasized to the Chronicle afterward, a "sympathetic strike," but "a definite boycott of the waterfront." He explained, "our action was taken for protection of the men. If we continued to haul cargoes to the pierheads, our men might become involved in fights and injuries might result." 22 After the meeting, a number of union drivers joined the longshoremen in a picket parade along the Embarcadero. Eliel called it "a definite vote of sympathy in support of the strikers" by a "substantial number" of teamsters. Oakland teamsters took similar action the next day, and the Seattle teamsters on May 15. When Los Angeles teamsters voted to refuse to haul cargoes to and from the harbor areas, vehicles were put under police protection. An ILA statement exulted: "With the Teamsters behind us we've got them licked. We are sitting on top of the world. There are 2500 freight cars sidetracked between San Francisco and San Jose and they can't move until we give in." Southern Pacific reported the 388 cars held up were more than twice normal. 23

Police broke up a gathering of pickets-some estimates said five hundred-at the Luckenbach docks where black longshoremen were working. For the moment it spotlighted a potentially heated issue. In the past, black workers had been widely used as strikebreakers, only to be fired once the strike ended. In the 1919 long- shoremen's strike, black strikebreakers had been imported from and returned to New Orleans. At least two racially segregated gangs of black men worked during the Blue Book years. Early in the strike, an ILA strike bulletin warned that the shipowners were "circulating rumors that the ILA will not accept Negroes .... This is a deliberate and vicious lie." It would accept any worker who had worked in the area for at least one year. It pointed to a Negro delegate to the coastwide convention, five black members of the strike committee, and black members who "speak at all strike meeting[s]." Before the strike ended, the black gangs joined the walkout.

Three days after its strike action, the ISU asked the Pacific Coast District of the ILA to agree that neither of them would return to work until the demands of both have been met. Within days, the Masters, Mates and Pilots and the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association announced their numbers were joining the strike. Shipowners belittled the impact of the strike call on the ranks of their licensed employees. Herman Phleger, the shipowners' attorney, doubted the seamen's economic power. "The sailors unions were totally unorganized, but when they saw that the longshore workers were making progress, the leaders of the sailors union, desiring to obtain the same results that the longshore workers might, participated in the strike."

Before two weeks had passed, the count of strikers neared 22,000: 12,000 longshoremen; 5,000 from the Sailors Union; 2,100 from the Marine Firemen; 1,500 from the Marine Cooks and Stewards; 900 from MEBA; and 200 from MM&P.

Ryan had gone to work in New York as a longshoreman in 1912. He worked his way up in the union movement to become ILA president, then president of the Central Labor Council of New York City. When he landed in San Francisco in 1934, he stepped into a waterfront world almost totally unlike the one from which he hailed. Accustomed to "painted neckties, pinstriped and elegantly tailored double-breasted suits, flashy diamond rings," as historian Irving Bernstein pictured him, Ryan ran the New York waterfront at a "rather spectacular level of corruption." Annual dinners or campaigns against Communists on the waterfront provided funds for his plushy style. On the docks, he fully accepted the shape-up, reportedly cutting in local union officials on the job rackets and kickbacks and cooperating with gangsters moving in to control waterfront jobs. When a civic committee concluded that the water- front provided a lucrative field for racketeers and that the shape-up was responsible for evil waterfront conditions, one voice-Ryan'sobjected that it was unfair to the waterfront employers. Strikes in the east, shipowner lawyer Phleger commented, "were usually settled between Joe Ryan and the representatives of the steamship companies and ... rumor was that Ryan was susceptible to being influenced by payments to him." It did not help matters that the Pacific Coast District, by an agreement of twenty-five years' standing, had virtually complete autonomy over its own affairs. Neither the international union nor Ryan had had any substantial part, let alone control, in the district's long and turbulent history. Nor, in the light of his commitment to the pierhead shape-up, did Ryan understand the West Coast concern with their own hiring halls. His foot-in-the-mouth declaration on his arrival was not the first, nor the worst, in a continuing series of misadventures. 20

In the confusion of the attack, the police charge swept over and
injured many bystanders. The newspapers were equally random in
their reports. The News called it a demonstration of "striking long-
shoremen;" it was not, as the New York Times reported. The News
counted one unidentified sixteen-year-old girl and twenty-four men
hospitalized with head injuries. The Chronicle said nineteen persons
had been treated; two youths "were reported to have been shot
and subsequently spirited away." Harry Bridges testified later that
a number of the young people, frightened, uncertain-"! would say,
young boys and girls about sixteen or seventeen"-had been hidden
from the police in the ILA hall. 2 Henry Schmidt also witnessed the
attack from a window in the ILA hall. "Isn't that a helluva way to
treat those kids," he commented to a longshoreman alongside him.
"Ah, hell," the guy said, "They're just a bunch of Commies." Some
time later, Schmidt again was watching police chase "several hun-
dred guys" with tear gas and shotguns, among them the man who
had watched the police attack the "Commies." Schmidt watched
him run into a second bunch of cops and start to jump the fence. At
that moment a cop fired-"That guy's ass was riddled with buck-
shot." Schmidt said he never got around to asking the guy how he
felt about the police after that.

Their conclusions stood, at best, on a shaky foundation. Plant and Ryan and the City Hall group had acted on the belief that the agreement was binding, despite repeated assertions that Ryan had no authority to sign on behalf of the district and that the strike would not end without the members' ratification. Casey said the teamsters would return to work Monday, no matter what the longshoremen did. But it quickly became apparent that longshore lead- ers, local and coastwise, recognized no peace. Ryan told Plant the next day that Bridges had been waiting for him when he returned to his hotel. You may have thought you executed an agreement, Bridges told him, but Ryan would find out that he had no control over the situation and the thing would not stick. Ryan told Plant he had never been talked to in his life the way Bridges talked to him at that time. 22 To reporters, Bridges said the men would return to work if the agreement was approved by a two-thirds vote of the entire Pacific Coast membership. And, as expected, the seamen's unions vowed their strikes would continue.

San Francisco's Civic Auditorium was packed the night of June 19-ten thousand in its seats and more in every foot of standing room. (No vessel had sailed through the Golden Gate that day for the first time in forty-five years.) One estimate guessed strikers made up 40 percent of the audience, families, friends, and the general public the balance. A noisy mix of boos and cheers greeted the appearance of Mayor Rossi, escorted by Police Captain W. T. Healy, and interrupting Bridges's review of the strike. Captain E. B. O'Grady, of the Masters and Mates, banged his gavel hard, asking "a respectful hearing and a courteous welcome." He was only partially successful. The mayor was frequently, and similarly, interrupted as he declared he would work for peace without bloodshed and violence. His promise to help the American Federation of Labor (AFL) brought renewed jeers. His advice was "keep cool. Win without violence." His departure won another round of cheers and jeers. Following the mayor, a series of speakers-including Harry Jackson of the Marine Workers Industrial Union-rehearsed their unions' grievances and their strike goals. Several urged a general strike as the only action that could win the strikers' demands.

The longshoremen's strike was barely three weeks old when Ralph Mallen, the ILA publicity chairman, touched on the possibility of a general strike. Some local unions invoked the possibility in letters to the city's unions-some, Sam Darcy said, at the instigation of the Communist Party. 12 The ILA strike committee had pro- posed a twenty-four-hour work stoppage. On June 11, the ILA asked unions throughout the area to consider a sympathetic strike in support of its strike. The June 19 mass meeting was, Sam Kagel has suggested, a testing ground for the idea. 13 A leaflet circulated in advance of the meeting urged "a solid front of all workers" as the necessary response to the Chamber of Commerce-Industrial Association plans to use force to break the strike. More than one of the speakers called for a general strike. Machinists, Lodge 68, informed the San Francisco Labor Council that on June 20 its membership had voted to participate in a general strike if the unions affiliated with the Council deemed it necessary "to aid the striking unions on the waterfront." 14 Still, when an ILA delegate, Charles (Curley) Cutright, raised the question in the June 29 Labor Council meeting, it was met with applause that Eliel called "only scattered" and the ILA Strike Bulletin "a wave." The butchers' representative declared that if the employers attempted to open the port, union workers in the city's meat jobbing houses would be called out. The teamsters' joint executive board told the council that it had taken a stand against a general strike and had asked its affiliates to take similar action. Other unions would also look at the possibility in the days immediately ahead, but it was at the moment little more than a distant rumbling.

THROUGH THE MORNING of Monday, July 2, thousands of longshoremen, seamen, teamsters -- strikers, sympathizers, the merely curious -- clustered on the Embarcadero. By early afternoon, a dense crowd (the Chronicle said 1,500; the ILA strike bulletin, 20,000) expectantly faced the docks around Pier 38. "Huddled four deep, approximately 4,000 strikers along the waterfront eyed the Matson and other docks, waiting for the port to open," the News reported. A few clutched clubs or stones. The outnumbered police "grinned at the strikers." Mounted police stirred restlessly as their horses fidgeted. From Rincon Hill above the Embarcadero a gallery of hundreds looked down on the tense scene. Doors of the dock were partly open, motorcycle cops waiting on each side. Overhead two planes circled. One bore the letters S.F.P.D., the police department's one-plane air patrol. (It had only a one-way radio; it could receive orders, hear alarms, but its only communication with the ground was by a handwritten note, weighted with a rock and dropped as near as possible to the closest policeman.) The other belonged to Universal News Service. On the ground, news photographers and newsreel cameramen cruised slowly by. From his seat on the crowded top of a freight car, one striker wondered, "Will they try to move the trucks?" and realized that the same question was on everybody's mind. What do we do? he asked an older man, a squad captain. "Use your own judgment," the man replied, "but I reckon we'll try to storm those trucks."

Word of the Industrial Association's intention to open the port that afternoon was spread wide. The newspapers, radio stations, and word of mouth had alerted the entire city. At 3:00 P.M., they announced, a parade of trucks, under heavy police protection, would enter Pier 38, load, then deliver the merchandise to the Atlas warehouse on King Street.