In Portland, two crews of gang bosses stood by for emergencies. Otherwise, longshoremen -- estimated at from 1,100 to 1,500 -- stayed off the docks. A newspaper told the men that, unless they reported for work by 8:00 A.M. the following morning, they would be fired. The employers counted heavily on unemployed workers to move the port's cargo. Teamsters were refusing to cross the longshoremen's picket lines; sailors, bargemen refused to work cargo and members of the United Licensed Officers balked at furnishing steam, tending hatches for strikebreakers, or assisting in moving scabs. By the end of the first day, thirty-one ships were tied up at Portland docks. The Portland City Council wired President Roosevelt, asking him to intervene personally in the dispute which, it said, would affect all classes of the population unless settled immediately.

The strikebreakers, Plant said after the strike, "were nearly all Americans, nearly all citizens of San Francisco, nearly all family men, and in the large majority of cases men who had been on relief, willing to work and satisfied with the conditions under which they were employed." 6 On the other hand, Theodore Durein recorded his experiences as a strikebreaker-most of the time as a pot-washer in a housing ship's bakery-in Reader's Digest. He described strikebreakers as "mostly pasty-faced clerks, house-to-house salesmen, college students and a motley array of unemployed who had never shouldered anything heavier than a BVD strap before in their lives." 7 Among them were platoons of husky football players from the University of California, recruited by their coach, William "Navy Bill" Ingram. One of them, though, was rescued from scabbing by his irate father who managed to get aboard the housing ship. The son apologized when he reappeared in his father's tow: "I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. The coach said that working on the dock was a good opportunity to keep in shape for football." His father contributed $100 to the strike fund before he left. 8 Durein said some of the "hard nut" strikebreakers imported from San Pedro had been guaranteed their return fare. He also met an analytical chemist, a bacteriologist, two members of the California bar, and five school teachers. "They were the softies," he added. Said one premedical student: "I'd rather have salt on my torn body, but God, I have to be a doctor." His earnings of $150 paid for his return to college. 9

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."

In the aftermath of the 1901 teamsters' and waterfront strike, Teamsters, Local 85, had been nailed down by a contract clause that read: "The Brotherhood of Teamsters and Auto Truckmen are not in favor of sympathy strikes and will do everything they can to avoid them." That clause was much in the minds of the leaders of the Industrial Association, the longshoremen, and Mike Casey, longtime president of Local 85 and a veteran of the 1901 strike, as teamsters prepared to take action on the 1934 strike. The question was set for a special meeting Sunday, May 13.

The longshoremen's strike committee sent its own representatives to make sure that the teamsters knew of its willingness to negotiate wages and hours, as well as its insistence on the closed shop. Casey and his associates asked the teamsters for a declaration that they would haul cargo to and from the pierheads, but would not enter the docks. The members rejected their proposal; instead, they shouted approval of a resolution "not to transport merchandise to or from the docks." It was not, Casey emphasized to the Chronicle afterward, a "sympathetic strike," but "a definite boycott of the waterfront." He explained, "our action was taken for protection of the men. If we continued to haul cargoes to the pierheads, our men might become involved in fights and injuries might result." 22 After the meeting, a number of union drivers joined the longshoremen in a picket parade along the Embarcadero. Eliel called it "a definite vote of sympathy in support of the strikers" by a "substantial number" of teamsters. Oakland teamsters took similar action the next day, and the Seattle teamsters on May 15. When Los Angeles teamsters voted to refuse to haul cargoes to and from the harbor areas, vehicles were put under police protection. An ILA statement exulted: "With the Teamsters behind us we've got them licked. We are sitting on top of the world. There are 2500 freight cars sidetracked between San Francisco and San Jose and they can't move until we give in." Southern Pacific reported the 388 cars held up were more than twice normal. 23

Police broke up a gathering of pickets-some estimates said five hundred-at the Luckenbach docks where black longshoremen were working. For the moment it spotlighted a potentially heated issue. In the past, black workers had been widely used as strikebreakers, only to be fired once the strike ended. In the 1919 long- shoremen's strike, black strikebreakers had been imported from and returned to New Orleans. At least two racially segregated gangs of black men worked during the Blue Book years. Early in the strike, an ILA strike bulletin warned that the shipowners were "circulating rumors that the ILA will not accept Negroes .... This is a deliberate and vicious lie." It would accept any worker who had worked in the area for at least one year. It pointed to a Negro delegate to the coastwide convention, five black members of the strike committee, and black members who "speak at all strike meeting[s]." Before the strike ended, the black gangs joined the walkout.