San Francisco's First Daily Newspaper
The city's first
daily newspaper, the Alta California, appeared in January, 1850, employing
eleven printers. Before the year was out, it was joined by four more dailies
with 36 printers. The city's newspaper business, though, was fiercely competitive,
the economic climate stormy, the mortality rate high. Prices of printing
equipment and materials were usually exorbitant, except when a paper went
broke; then its gear was often sold at less than cost. Five times in 1850
and 1851 the city in good part was burned down, newspaper offices along
with the rest. From one daily in January, 1850, the city's roster of dailies
soared to eight in January, 1851, dropped to two in April, 1852, zoomed up
to 12 in December, 1853.
The first notice of a printers' organization appeared in June, 1850. The
organization, called the San Francisco Typographical Society, was apparently
intended to stabilize wage rates. The Alta paid something like $50 a week;
the Pacific News $2.00 per thousand ems. The men chose the piece rate, since
a competent compositor could earn at that rate from $60 to $110 a week. The
Pacific News, with a rich state printing contract in its pocket, accepted;
the Alta balked. In August, the Alta attempted to rollback the piece rate
to $1.50 a thousand ems. When the printers balked, the paper took on a new
set of hands. The new hands, though, proved incompetent and the Alta reluctantly
rehired the old crew at the old rates. The attempted reduction, first in
a long series of such attempts ahead, led to the reorganization of the union.
In November, eight journeymen formed the Pacific Typographical Society. In
its short, hectic life, its member-ship rolls eventually climbed to 147.
In March, 1851, the Society resolved that its members would not work for
an office that did not pay its men promptly every week; the Alta had complained
that it was handicapped by competitors who were less than punctual in meeting
their payrolls. Soon after, following one of the city's disastrous fires, the Alta joined with the Pacific News
in asking a reduction in pay. The current rates, the newspaper owners said,
"are ruinous." What is "ruinous," the union replied, was the owners' lack
of knowledge about the business, overspeculation, greedy competition. In
the Union's opinion, the business would be better off if the burned-down
newspaper offices were not rehabilitated. In any case, the answer was "no."
That fall, the Alta tried, once again, to reduce the printers' pay--to a
base rate of $1.50 a thousand ems. The Society, "having perceived no reduction
in the price of living, "rejected the proposal. In July, 1852, the desperate
Alta "determined to risk all upon a venture." It advertised for printers
to take the place of its current crew. The Society agreed to a reduction
to $1.50 per thousand ems, but it added a new rule: stand-by time while waiting
for copy would have to be paid at the rate of $1.25 an hour. The Alta, presented
with an especially large bill for stand-by time, finally refused to pay.
The Society thereupon called its first strike. Unable to replace the men,
the Alta yielded--grudgingly and only for the moment.
The Alta struck back in October the next year when it brought a crew of nine
printers from New York to replace the Society members. In defense of its
action, the Alta said it had assured the newcomers "the highest rates in
San Francisco." It went on to denounce the Society: "They have been the lords
of the printing offices . . . We bore the tyranny as long as it could be
borne, and until we could free ourselves from it." The Society charged the
paper had "quietly and craftily invested their cunning capital in a regular
`Coolie' speculation." Some of the men, it said, had been proclaimed rats
by the New York printers' union. A letter in the Herald said five of the
Alta printers were among "the most notorious `RATS!' at ever left the port
of New York."
Later that month,
the city's printers were called to two meetings. The first meeting--the Society's
last--apparently refused to declare the Alta a "rat shop"; the printers loyal
to the union met in a second meeting an hour later "for the purpose of taking
preliminary steps for a thorough organization of the profession." Out of
it came the Eureka Typographical Union.
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list of San Francisco newspapers from 1847
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