This photograph by Otto Hagel shows a common sight on the San Francisco waterfront during the 1930s—longshoremen unloading the 160-pound bags in which coffee arrived to the city. This slingload of eight bags was typical of the close to 65,000 tons unloaded on the city’s docks in 1936. 

Hagel photographed farmworkers, dockworkers and other victims of the Depression for Time, Life, Fortune and other magazines. He and his wife Hansel Meith were part of the school of socially conscious documentary photo-journalists that included Dorothea Lange, Imogene Cunningham, Peter Stackpole and Robert Capa.

To see more of Hagel’s photographs and to view a pictorial history of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) visit the Labor Arts exhibit Images from the Waterfront.