"Are you willing to work under present conditions?" a printed ballot asked some fifteen hundred teamsters who jammed Dreamland Auditorium Sunday. The wording was somewhat vague and indirect but the intent was plain. They voted no, 1220 to 271. They also decided they would no longer work under those conditions starting Thursday morning Ouly 12) unless the strike was definitely settled or was on the way to a settlement. They would meet again Wednesday evening to confirm their strike vote.

You have no grievances of your own, Mike Casey had told the teamsters. Your contract with your employers runs to next May, and you will probably lose the $10 a week strike benefits usually paid by the international union. Afterward, Casey said, "the men feel very strongly about the final demands of the marine strikers, for the control of hiring halls and the recognition of certain of the unions, and also about strikebreaking truck drivers being used to break the deadlock." He added: "In all my thirty years of leading these men, I have never seen them so worked up, so determined to walk out. I don't believe any power on earth can prevent their going on strike unless the marine strike is settled by Thursday."

As the morning waned, crowds began gathering at the ILA hall on Steuart Street, where the bodies of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise had been lying in state, and where at 11:00 A.M. funeral services for the two victims of Bloody Thursday would be held. Alex Walthers, who had been a longshoreman in the 1919 strike and whose brother was working on the waterfront, spoke a simple sermon. In the distance the bell of a Belt Line locomotive could be heard. Bridges, asked if he would say something, shook his head, a reporter noted, "too distraught to utter his feelings." After the brief ceremony, the caskets were placed on black-draped flatbed trucks, and flowers were loaded on three more trucks. As the trucks moved along Steuart Street, then turned into Market Street, thousands-strikers and strike leaders, honor guard, families, sympathizersfollowed to the slow step of a funeral march. "That strange, silent march,'' as George Hedley described it, a march without banners but with a profound moral surge powerfully impressed a city still deeply shaken by the bloody violence of July 3 and 5 and the occupation of the waterfront by the National Guard. It heated the angers of many, reinforced the sympathies of the sympathizers, and converted the sympathies of many more. It put the "riots" and the "mobs" of the port opening, the tortured turns of the strike, as pictured in the daily press, in a different light. Events had made a general protest likely; now this grim, silent parade made it inevitable

Cushing asked him if a union hiring hall means a closed shop. Bridges's discursive answer added up to an argument for preferential hiring for ILA members. But he conceded, given the membership of the union and the amount of work, it would result in assignment of union men only.

On the third and final day, Plant once again restated the shipowners' case. Two agreements and one proposal had been repudiated by the men "under the domination of radicals and communists." Picketing by "longshoremen, sailors, and Communists" practically closed the ports of Portland and Seattle; intimida- tion and threats of teamsters had blockaded San Francisco, although loading and unloading cargo on the docks and by freight car were handled readily. Plant listed the violence that had resulted. The employers offered to agree to a jointly controlled hiring hall, to hire only registered men, and to spread work through job distribution. They would even accept government supervision of the halls. But a union hall and union dispatcher would not only mean a closed shop (contrary to law), they would also end the employer's right to select his own employees.

Hundreds of longshoremen, Bridges included, waited outside the hall when the teamsters went into session that Wednesday night July 11). Mike Casey, O'Connell, and Kidwell backed a plea from the board to delay their walkout until Monday, at least. A noisy and determined audience listened impatiently, clamoring insistently to hear Bridges. When he was finally brought in, the teamsters gave him a rousing ovation. Casey introduced him: "I give you the man of the hour." Bridges reminded the men of past defeats and warned, "The entire labor movement faces collapse if we maritime workers are defeated. If you fellows join us, you will double our power." Casey asked for questions. Had he (Bridges) been run out of Australia, identified with a red organization there? If he had, Bridges replied, he would have been found out long ago. What about arbitration? He personally opposed it, but the members will vote on it. When Casey called for the yes votes, thousands of hands went up; only a few responded to the call for no votes. John O'Connell announced the vote: "The ayes have it and the no's know it." Casey told the teamsters: "You'll go out like gentlemen with nothing to be ashamed of. Of course, you'll be allowed to do the decent thing. Don't worry, the children can eat and have their milk. Retail food deliveries won't be affected. And bless you, San Francisco may have its beer. The brewery drivers are a separate group." Casey later told Eliel that the union "was out of control," blaming it on communists unsympathetic with the traditional labor viewpoint, some wanting a change in leadership, some who saw it as a lark.

In the East Bay, teamsters walked out at midnight, though a few retail deliveries continued until 7:00 A.M.; in San Francisco, they left their jobs at 7:00 A.M. the next morning.