F. J. McGowen, general manager of the Outer Harbor Dock and Wharf Company at San Pedro, recalled that some of the men housed in a company camp "had not eaten for weeks; some of them had not worked for months and years. When they first came to us they were in pretty bad shape. After we got a couple of weeks' food into them and a place for them to sleep, they began to improve .... After sixty days ... the men we took in and trained were better than the longshoremen are today." 10 Durein claimed that, as strikebreakers hardened, they, too, achieved the competence of the old hands-except in stowing cargo which, he concluded, called for years of experience and "a sixth sense."

"We lived in luxury," Durein wrote. Comfortable quarters, daily changes of linen, fresh towels; generous meals-steak, strawberries, and ice cream; two nightly movies, newsreels and cartoons; and weekly boxing bouts. Banks established weekly office hours to receive the better than $90 a week the men were earning. They could buy beer by the case, tobacco, clothes, shoes, etc., at the ship's store. Gambling flourished every night. "All this was free ... Our enormous pay checks were clear profit." 11 A student committee appointed by the president of the University of Washington reported that employers were offering students board and room and wages higher than those paid longshoremen. Said the committee: "Excellent food, brand-new sheets and blankets and first-class Negro valet service convinced many [once aboard a housing vessel] that the life of the longshoreman was not as bad as they believed." 12 Durein would not guess "what it cost the shipowners to keeps us in the style to which we were utterly unaccustomed." He was sure, though, that the shipowners had "decided to work their ships at any cost save that of giving in to the strikers."