This book portrays the labor movement in the Brazilian port city of Santos in the period between the two World Wars. Author Fernando Teixeira da Silva reconstructs a period of rapid urbanization, economic instability, and worker ferment in a city known for the combative nature of organized labor. The author focuses on the two types of work that predominated in interwar Santos: civil construction and, above all, dock work. Through his finely grained local history approach, Silva describes both the clashes of interests between labor and management and the reformulation of each class from within.