In November 1849, San Francisco carpenters earned $12 a day (in New York carpenters made less than $2) but still couldn’t keep up with enormously inflationary prices for food and rent in the rapidly growing city. On November 10, when their employer refused to raise their pay to $16, a group of these workers declared the first recorded strike in California history. A week on strike brought a compromise: a dollar a day raise, from $12 to $13, to be followed by another dollar increase after three weeks.