Bill Rutter recalled that on the first day after the strike, his gang of longshoremen decided they would only take fifteen sacks of barley per sling load, instead of the usual twenty. They informed the bosses of their decision, much as construction trade workers had done in San Francisco a quarter century before them. When twenty sacks came down anyway, “The guys all went and got their coats and were standing there waiting to pull out.” The bosses changed their minds; fifteen was OK with them, after all. Incidents such as this were repeated the length of the coast until work rules were understood to be a matter of discussion, not dictation.

The new sense of solidarity extended beyond work rules. On docks and ships, the workers refused to labor alongside men who had scabbed during the strike. The employers, reluctant to fire the loyal strikebreakers, nevertheless had to give in when confronted with “quickie” strikes and picket lines put up by the maritime workers that were honored, in turn, by teamsters and other workers.

An enlarged sense of comradeship grew from the strike. The San Francisco ILA—an officially racist union until but recently—put a gang boss on “trial” for “slandering colored brothers.” When maritime workers responded to employer provocations two years later with another coast-wide strike, fifteen black longshoremen served on the local strike committee. Within a few years a third of the local membership was African American.