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The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, September 22, 1864

STRIKE OF THE STEAMER EMPLOYES

A large body of the strikers who have been employed on our ocean steamers, and who quit work because their wages were reduced below living rates, marched to Dall's shipping office, at the corner of Vallejo and Davis streets, yesterday morning, and afterwards proceeded to North Point, where the America was ready to set sail, but was waiting to ship a crew. Here they found men going aboard to take the vacant places at the reduced rates, and compelled them to take their kits ashore again, and give up the idea. Several men were knocked down and roughly handled in the melee which ensued, among them Captain Lees, of the Detective Police, who received a heavy blow on the head with a billet of wood. About noon the officers of the America acceded to the terms demanded by the workmen, and restored the former rate of wages, and a crew was then shipped without molestation. Wages on the Golden City will doubtless remain as they were before, also. The prices heretofore paid (and no increase was asked by the men,) were as follows: firemen, $70 a month; coal-passers, $60; sailors, $40, and waiters, $40; and they are little enough. Men who leave families ashore, could not support them on less, and it is anything but just to ask them to do it. The insignificant sum the steamship companies would make by the small reduction contemplated, would be lost again by the inferior capacity of the men employed, for good and capable men would not work at the terms offered.

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