Labor organizers had fought for over a decade to increase wages, decrease work hours, and legalize unions for streetcar workers of the Los Angeles basin.

After having been denied unionization rights and changes in work policies by the National War Labor Board, streetcar workers broke out in massive protest before being subdued by local armed police force.

Huntington shared like-minded ideas with the likes of David M. Parry, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Harrison Gray Otis, owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

The National Association of Manufacturers was established in 1895 and had originally promoted trade and commerce, but by 1903 it began to side with anti-strike and anti-union ideologies.

He framed supporters of unions in a highly negative light and claimed that strikers were deserters who should not be allowed into the Los Angeles community.

Businessmen were strong-armed into supporting open-shop policies with threats of cutting off bank credit, denying advertisements in the Los Angeles Times, and withholding shipment of materials to companies, forcing them to buy from competitors.

LACA ensured the safety of its companies from unions and boycotts by providing its members one dollar per day for each worker that walked off from a strike.

The Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees decided to assist the Mexican laborers working in the Huntington construction gangs to organize their own union.

Huntington refused to meet these demands and replaced them with black, Japanese, and white laborers while still paying them higher wages than had been paid towards the Mexicans.

The Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees took advantage of the discourse and organized the Los Angeles trainmen and created Carmen's Local No.

From 1913 to 1915, the amalgamated workers fought for lower work shifts and higher wages but found themselves blocked by powerful enemies of labor.

[1]: 145  The vice-president of the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees, Ben Bowbeer, began to unionize workers with strong support from federal government wage-adjustment bureaus in 1918.

The Mexican tracklayers walked out in solidarity, strikers greased streetcar wheels, trolleys were overturned from their tracks, and a riot broke out on August 20 in downtown Los Angeles.