Nine policemen were injured, two men shot, and 11 others given hospital treatment in these clashes. Scores suffered minor injuries ranging from bad does 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 st., 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 by 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.

In their wake they left a battered Seaboard Transportation Co. of Los Angeles truck, its empty paper carton load scattered, windshield shattered, tires hacked, radiator smashed.

Then things began to pop. Simultaneously, strikers vented their anger on other trucks in the vicinity and police attempted to disperse them.

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 sts. Sometimes the grenades didn't go off, and the strikers pounced on them, tossing them back at the police.

Shots were fired by a policeman as the bluecoats tried to disperse the crowd at Second and Townsend and later at Third and Townsend sts. Eugene Dunbar, union seaman, was struck in the left ankle, and Berton Holmes, 24, bank teller, was cut over the left eye by a stray bullet.

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.

Trucks in the area were mistaken by strikers for trucks moving cargo from the waterfront. Teamster union officials said that none of the drivers of the attacked trucks wore union buttons, which might have prompted the strikers' action.

This was denied by A.E. Boynton, managing director of the Industrial Association, who declared that an investigation had proved that the possible exception of one man, all drivers were union teamsters and working for independent operators who had no connection with the strike.

Return to the Museum's General Strike Page.