THE cognitive work performed by longshoremen and the initiative expected of them are sources of potential power. These two features of waterfront work prepare longshoremen to take themselves seriously as self-conscious actors and to resist intrusions on their selfhood. By themselves, however, cognition and initiative do not translate into actual power. Something else must happen. San Francisco longshoremen are able to wrestle with their employers, and sometimes to capitalize on their potential workplace power, because codes of conduct, or working principles, have been generated by the union's political community and are enforced on the docks. In combination, these codes, along with the employers' dependence on longshoremen, have produced a situation where personhood is reciprocally acknowledged on the San Francisco docks, where longshoremen are recognized as citizens of the waterfront and accorded all the rights and obligations associated with such status.