 Web pages by John Howells Adapted from: A Century of Democratic Unionism, the San Francisco Typographical Union Centennial book celebrating the 100th birthday of San Francisco #21 and the 1972 International Typographical Union Convention, held in San Francisco. Century of Democratic Unionism By David F. Selvin, 1972 California was the magnet that drew
wanderers from all over the world, in search of gold and excitement. Miners,
prospectors, shopkeepers, and adventurers of all descriptions diverged
on the mining camps, but not without first stopping off at San Francisco
for their supplies. Many stayed and never reached the gold placers. Those
were the days of excitement and adventure. With the shortage of help --
newcomers headed off for the mines and their sure fortunes -- workers were
quick to organize unions. It's no surprise that printers were among the
first to arrive, and most of them were members of typographic societies.
And printers led the labor movement. The deserted ships were converted into hotels, offices, warehouses, stores--one into a jail. Hundreds more ships were buried in the Bay, beneath tons of sand from the surrounding hills, obliterating the tiny cove and gravel beach where the first traders had come ashore only a few years before. Construction sounds played a raucous obbligato to a bustling, brawling, jostling throng. Among them, the historian Bancroft counted editors, ministers, "the trader, the toiling farmer, whose mortgages loomed above the growing family, the briefless lawyer, the starving student, the quack, the idler, the harlot, the gambler, the hen-pecked husband, the disgraced, with many earnest, enterprising, honest men and devoted women." Among them, too, were union men. And, inevitably, printers. |
When the news of gold in California reached the eastern part of the country, the floodgates opened. A
flood of mankind of every sort and condition inundated San Francisco, once
word got around that there was gold in those nearby hills. The near-barren
sandhills of the sleepy little village on the Bay sprouted rows of tents,
canvas houses, ramshackle frame buildings. Hundreds of ships emptied their
loads of gold-hungry passengers, then were abandoned themselves by equally
hungry crews.
San Francisco, 1847, before Gold Rush began