July 3, 1934

The Battle of the Waterfront begins when shipping companies supported by San Francisco business interests attempt to break a three-month waterfront strike and reopen the port. Non-union drivers under heavy police guard transport goods from Pier 38 to the Garcia & Maggini Warehouse. Fighting rages for five hours.

July 4, 1934

The holiday is quiet. The Daily News reports on yesterday's events:

Despite the fact that tear gas spurted, shots were fired, bricks hurled, heads cracked and trucks attacked in riots yesterday, the Industrial Association will continue its plan to open the port to commerce tomorrow at 8 a.m. from Pier 38. No attempt was being made to move cargo today because of the holiday.

Nine policemen were injured, two men shot, and 11 others given hospital treatment in these clashes. Scores suffered minor injuries ranging from bad doses of tear gas to being hit by flying missiles. Trucks having no connection with the strike were wrecked.

The police used so much tear gas that Chief Quinn asked the Department of Justice to rush him more gas equipment from Alcatraz island, where the government keeps a supply.

Eighteen round trips were made by trucks of the Industrial Association yesterday from Pier 38 to the Garcia & Maggini warehouse, 128-136 King Street, without injury to drivers or cargoes. An area of two blocks, surrounding the pier and warehouse, had been kept free of strikers by a cordon of police, though fully 5000 men were milling outside the police lines.

Hostilities started shortly after the first two battered trucks rumbled out of the pier to the warehouse, escorted by a police convoy of radio cars and motorcycles. More than 1200 strikers, kept at bay at Third and Townsend, a short distance away, silently watched the trucks drive into the warehouse.

Like toy leaden soldiers, motionless, aloof, almost indifferent, they stood. But suddenly they moved into action, heading toward the police. The blue-coated line wavered as a barrage of bricks whizzed about them. Chief Quinn's car sped up, rocks pelting about it, one narrowly missing the chief.

Gold-braid glistened in the sunlight as chief and captains led the attack. Police reinforcements came sprinting up, wielding clubs. Rocks pattered about them, gashing their faces, ripping their uniforms, but they waded into the melee, swinging their clubs. The strikers scampered up Third and Townsend streets, dribbling like quicksilver into surrounding streets and alleys....

An advance guard of four policemen, looking like grotesque Martian monsters–they wore khaki gas masks, hard black helmets, and brandished tear gas hand grenades and tear gas guns–cleared the way for the mounted officers and their club-wielding comrades.

Staccato explosions of tear gas cartridges and hiss of tear gas grenades echoed through the warehouse vicinity as police drove the strikers from Second and Townsend to Fourth and Townsend, then to Second and Brannan Streets. Sometimes the grenades didn't go off, and the strikers pounced on them, tossing them back at the police....

Crowds thronged Rincon Hill and scores peered out of office buildings at the swirling mob.

No jeers or oaths were hurled at the police by the strikers. The burly, lithe seamen and stevedores were strangely quiet as they battled the police.

July 5, 1934 and After

The battle resumes on what becomes known as Bloody Thursday, and two strikers are killed. Public outrage leads to a General Strike which shuts down San Francisco from July 16-19.

The strike is settled on terms favorable to the workers.

The long-term consequences are significant. Collective bargaining is established on West Coast waterfronts, Harry Bridges emerges as leader of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, and San Francisco becomes a union town and remains one today.