THE TEAMSTERS' WALKOUT on Thursday morning (July 12) marked the real start of San Francisco's general strike. The Strike Strategy Committee had made no report, proposed no plans, nor had the San Francisco Labor Council yet acted. But one local union after another followed the teamsters on strike, set dates to strike, or authorized a strike when and if the council or committee called for it. Sympathy, anger, and the determination to join the fight boiled up, finding unmistakable voice in the workers' many and independent decisions to act, with leaders or committees or without them. The general strike was clearly on and rapidly becoming more general, hour by hour.

Joining some 25,000 maritime workers on strike that morning were San Francisco and East Bay teamsters, numbering together over 4,000. Nearly 200 wholesale butchers on both sides of the bay had quit work; they would be joined the next morning by 1,500 retail and jobbing butchers, and on Sunday morning by 2,600 laundry drivers and workers and unknown numbers of culinary workers. Twenty-five San Francisco and six East Bay unions had voted to walk out if the Strike Strategy Committee recommended joint action. Thirteen unions were in the process of voting; the Building Trades Council was collecting the vote of forty-eight building trades locals. Cleaners and dyers walked out on behalf of their own demands. Boilermakers left their jobs in sixty shops. Labor Council President Vandeleur refused to comment on what actions the Strike
Strategy Committee might take at its meeting that afternoon, but
he did say: "Do you fellows have to see a hay-stack in the air before
you can see which way the straws are blowing?"