The first to act, printers were soon joined in organizing by San Francisco workers of many occupations, including unions of sailors, musicians, cigar makers, dockworkers, painters, and others. From practically the beginning of the Gold Rush, collective actions by workers contradicted the common image that popularly represents mid-nineteenth-century California: the lone miner, pan in hand, wresting a fortune in precious metal from the land through the sweat of his brow. He existed, briefly, but was never typical, and soon gone. James Marshall, the carpenter and millwright credited with discovering gold, died a penniless alcoholic.

In the 1850s the first workers’ institutions began to take root in the conditions faced by California workers in their places of employment and elsewhere in the frontier society. However, due to the state’s volatile new economy and the strongly held belief in individual initiative shared by mid-nineteenth-century workers, these early organizations were mostly ephemeral. Only the printers’ and longshoremen’s unions managed to last out the decade.