As early as 1869 Chinese workers were hired as strikebreakers by San Francisco shoe manufacturers Buckingham, Hecht and Company when white workers at the company put down their tools. By the mid-1870s Chinese workers comprised slightly over half of the boot and shoe industry, and a larger majority of cigar makers. Yet unions in these industries refused to include Chinese workers. Instead they created “white workers labels” to distinguish their goods from those produced by Chinese labor. The Knights of Saint Crispin, a union representing shoemakers, in 1870 had two locals in San Francisco, one for men and one for women. It called for and enforced boycotts against Chinese-produced goods. (A “boycott” means refusing to patronize a business or its products. The term came from the landlord’s name in a famous rent strike in Ireland, although the practice predated the word.)