Employers who failed to recognize the good business sense of unionization were asked to justify their refusal before the united board of culinary crafts. If this interrogation proved fruitless, the employer was reprimanded to a higher body: the executive council of the SFLC or a conference of retail and service unions including the Bakery Drivers, Milk Wagon Drivers, Bakers, and other involved parties. When these oral persuasions went unheeded, the restaurant faced increasing pressure through the council's “We Don't Patronize” list. Few employers could withstand the business losses of withdrawn union patronage when approximately one-fifth of San Francisco's entire population belonged to a labor organization. The Duchess Sandwich Company, for instance, explained that they refused to “force unionism” on their employees and declined to recognize the culinary workers. After less than a month on the council's unfair list, the co-owners of the company wrote that “we have given further consideration to your request that we take the initiative in bringing our employees into the Culinary Workers Organization…. We will be glad…to work out ways of bringing our plant into complete union membership…[and] to get away from the penalties which have piled up on us as a result of your putting us on the unfair list.”