LARC's fascinating guide book exploring the hidden history of San Francisco through the eyes of workers past and present recently went into its second printing at Inkworks. At the end of February, LARC held a celebration of its 23rd anniversary and the publication of the guide book which features 88 different historical sites including working class neighborhoods, labor hangouts, monuments, murals, memorials and buildings. It is packed with historical photographs and also includes five neighborhood walking tours.
This second printing was commissioned by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 6 to commemorate their 100th anniversary. Each book is marked with a special IBEW Local 6 seal on the cover and a copy was given to every member. The guidebook has been used in other unique and interesting ways as well. At San Francisco State, two Creative Arts students used the guidebook as the basis for their graduate photography thesis project. An Anthropology class is exploring archaeology utilizing four sites in the book, excavating with historical documents rather than shovels.
Inkworks is extremely proud to present a sample of this important historical document. Below is an excerpt from the book's preface followed by the description of site #53 from the guide book: Market Street. For more information on LARC and where to order copies please see below.
San Francisco's Rich Labor History
Few cities can rival the rich, lively labor history of San Francisco, a history preserved at the Labor Archives and Research Center at San Francisco State University. Founded in 1985, the Labor Archives documents the lives of working people in the Bay Area since the Gold Rush.
The history of labor in California stretches back long before the Gold Rush: California’s first producers were its native peoples, who had been living and working here for thousands of years before waves of immigrants flocked to their land. First the Spanish came and compelled many of them to work in the Mission system. Later the Native Americans served as the main labor force during the Californio period. Thus, California was not without its own class of laborers when cries of “GOLD!” reached the East Coast, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.
During the Gold Rush, hundreds of thousands of would-be miners flocked to the town of San Francisco, which swiftly became the main point of entry into the gold country. Representing every possible trade and profession, the immigrants arrived with skills, ambitions, and dreams. The patterns of San Francisco’s labor history emerged early: when newspaper publishers united to cut wages in 1850, printers quickly organized the San Francisco Typographical Society, the city’s first union.
As workers in other trades organized to win fair wages and better working conditions (including the eight-hour day), employers united in associations to fight them. Labor conflicts between one employer and one union sometimes escalated to an entire industry and occasionally, as in 1934, to the entire city. Both sides often looked to City Hall for protection and reinforcement of their interests.
Massive “redevelopment” of the downtown, Mission, and South of Market areas—only the latest in an ongoing series of such projects—has substantially diminished the working-class character of San Francisco. Yet monuments to the city’s workers remain: Mission Dolores, the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, towering sky-scrapers, the Municipal Railway and BART, the elegant bell-ringing of cable car gripmen, murals and statues depicting working people and their struggles. Pieces of folk art in union halls recall work as a source of creative inspiration; plaques and memorials mark the achievements of the labor leaders of yesterday. The achievements of organized labor also endure in the excellent wages and working conditions in many occupations, in a progressive political record, and in the tolerance of diversity now considered central to San Francisco’s character.
Market Street
Market Street, the principal artery of downtown San Francisco, runs diagonally from the Ferry Building to the foot of Twin Peaks. Before Market Street was surveyed, the city lay largely to its north. The surveyor who laid it out, Jasper O’Farrell, lined the street up at a diagonal to the blocks to its north and perpendicular to the blocks to its south, creating peculiar triangular blocks along its length. Market Street also marked a social division of the city, separating the business and financial district to the north from the manufacturing regions and working-class residential areas to the south.
An ideal parade venue because of its width and prominence, Market Street has hosted public statements of protest, determination, grief, and celebration by different segments of the city’s diverse communities. The working people of San Francisco have often marched from the Ferry Building to City Hall. One notable event took place on Labor Day, 1911, when the San Francisco Wage Earners’ Suffrage League sponsored a parade float depicting the female figure on the California state seal bestowing the vote on a variety of working women. The League’s campaign for suffrage proved successful that November.
In 1934, Market Street served as the processional route when San Francisco’s labor community mourned the deaths of two fellow workers, Howard Sperry and Nicholas Counderakis (known as Nick Bordoise), who were killed by police on July 5th (“Bloody Thursday”) during the Maritime Strike. On the morning of July 9th, thousands of longshoremen and their supporters gathered in front of the ILA headquarters on Steuart Street. Without a word, the crowd filed down Market Street to Duggan’s Mortuary on Valencia Street as a union band played the slow cadence of Beethoven’s funeral march. (For more information, see the Bloody Thursday entry in the Guide Book).
Labor Day parades during the late 1930s were particularly colorful and dramatic. The wail of the Ferry Building’s siren signaled the beginning of these parades, which typically lasted between three and four hours. Estimates of the number of participants ranged from fifty to seventy thousand individual union members, representing hundreds of unions, marching twelve abreast up Market Street. In 1938, the march reflected the split between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1939, trade unionists and supporters celebrated the release from prison of Tom Mooney, wrongly convicted of the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing.
Market Street has served as the venue for other notable San Francisco parades. One hundred and fifty thousand marched in 1984 before the opening of the Democratic Convention, and every June since 1976, the Gay Pride Parade has drawn tens of thousands to participate and celebrate. In 2002 and 2003, many thousands of people from the western states gathered to march the route from the Ferry Building to Civic Center protesting the looming US war on Iraq.
To order a copy of the San Francisco Labor Landmarks Guide Book:
email larc@sfsu.edu
or pick up a copy at Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia Street in San Francisco.
For more information on the Labor Archives and Research Center please visit:
http://www.library.sfsu.edu/about/depts/larc.php
For more information on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 6 please visit:
www.ibew6.org
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