Citizen Employers: Business Communities and Labor in Cincinnati and San Francisco, 1870–1916

2. Race and Class Alignment in San Francisco

61 2 RACE AND CLASS ALIGNMENTS IN SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco in the summer of 1907 was worlds away from Cincinnati. Employers in most sectors recognized and bargained with unions. That summer , even the metal trades—one of the most resolutely open shop industries in Cincinnati—fell into line. There were holdouts, notably Patrick Calhoun’s United Railway Co., which waged a violent battle with streetcar operators from May through July. Despite the efforts of San Francisco’s Citizens’ Alliance to rally local capital behind Calhoun’s open shop stance, leading business associations refused to go along; the Civic League instead joined with the Labor Council to try to mediate. The political scene that summer also differed dramatically from Cincinnati’s. The Union Labor Party ran city government, as it had for the previous six years. Mayor Schmitz would soon be leaving office amid a corruption scandal. That scandal might appear to have been a golden opportunity to purge the party, but as in labor relations, San Francisco businessmen were divided. Some championed clean government. Others opposed the prosecution of Schmitz and his co-conspirators, in good part because those co-conspirators included such prominent businessmen as Patrick Calhoun. These contrasts appear between two cities that had much in common economically around the turn of the century. Their manufacturing sectors were of similar size; they were composed of many of the same industries; and they featured proprietary firms of small to middling size (the statistical details are offeredlaterinthischapter).Despitethesesimilarities,classalignmentsdeveloped in nearly opposite directions. San Francisco businessmen in the summer of 1907, as in prior decades, neither belonged to common organizations nor subscribed 62 PART I. SOLIDARITIES to common principles in their dealings with labor. Using Cincinnati as the yardstick , class formation in San Francisco did not happen until after 1910. Workingclass formation, by contrast, most certainly did. Thanks in part to divisions among capitalists, San Francisco labor achieved remarkable degrees of unity and power at work and in politics. This chapter explores the distinctive path of class alignments in San Francisco . Many of the obstacles to class formation differed little from those found in Cincinnati. Here too, manufacturers stood apart from merchants, industries followed competing interests, and small businessmen resented large corporations . San Francisco businessmen, however, utterly failed to overcome these obstacles. Significant groups of local capitalists aligned themselves, not with other capitalists, but with organized labor. That alignment, in turn, can be traced back to San Francisco’s race relations, to the relative timing of manufacturing development and union growth, and to the weakness of solidary civic institutions. Operating in a cumulative historical sequence, these factors divided capital and allied many entrepreneurs with skilled white unionists. As chapter 4 will argue, they also led San Francisco businessmen to construct social identities and boundaries and to embrace a civic ideology quite different from that of their Cincinnati counterparts. SAN FRANCISCO EXCEPTIONALISM The gold rush made San Francisco an “instant city,”1 driving both the hectic pace and peculiar character of its early growth. A settlement of 1,000 in 1848, the city’s population reached 36,151 by 1852. Initially, the city acted as the miners’ main base for services—small businesses loaned them money, sold them equipment and provisions, and for the lucky few, exchanged gold for cash. These early activities gave San Francisco a head start as the West’s financial center and as the gateway for Pacific trade. The city’s growth continued unabated, expanding from 56,802 residents in 1860, to 149,473 ten years later, to nearly 300,000 by 1890.2 San Francisco’s gold rush roots and pell-mell growth shaped the city’s social character. Whether captivated by its democratic charms or appalled by its crudity , observers then and scholars now see San Francisco’s early social structure as departing from East Coast norms. The 49ers were a mixed lot. Few unskilled workers could afford to travel to California and equip themselves as independent miners.Among those who could, however, clerks and professionals mingled with mere mechanics. Moreover, for these transplants, standards of refinement that maintained status boundaries back home (including the genteel stigma RACE AND CLASS ALIGNMENTS IN SAN FRANCISCO 63 against getting your hands dirty) temporarily fell away in the scramble for gold. In some ways, this more fluid social structure survived the gold rush. Rapid economic expansion and exaggerated swings of boom and bust as new...