A labor strike which began on 29 July 1835 was a response to Hull's orders limiting the workers' lunch period and what they were allowed to bring on the navy yard. After Hull's hard experience with the Boston inquiry he was particularly sensitive to any hint of misappropriation. When he learned of alleged thefts of government property he promptly issued an order limiting workers' lunch privileges, and the workers went on strike. Hull was aware that the workers were striking over more than his newly imposed restrictions. He speculated that "the mechanics have been acted on by other causes," Hull was concerned that the ten-hour day movement and the Board of Navy Commissioners resistance to reducing the workweek was the actual cause of the strike, and that the calls for general strike that summer by the Philadelphia shipyard workers had found an attentive audience. To Hull's chagrin the strikers were encouraged by Naval Constructor William Doughty to hold out for higher wages. The workers felt Hull often treated them with "silent contempt" which was probably the result of his deafness." In Hull's report to the Secretary of the Navy, Mahlon Dickerson, he stated that 175 white mechanics and workers had joined the strike. Their walkout also immediately exposed longstanding racial discord in the Yard. The strike quickly morphed into the infamous Snow Riot as many angry white workers now out of employment took out their resentments on the black community, their anger fanned by the false rumor that free black restaurant owner Beverley Snow had disparaged their wives. Josephine Seaton, the wife of the publisher of the "National Intelligencer", William Seaton, expressed alarm in a letter regarding the strike and riot: "Snow will certainly be torn to pieces by the mechanics if he be caught, and they are in full pursuit of him. Unfortunately, several hundred mechanics of the navy yard are out of employment, who, aided and abetted by their sympathizers, create the mob, ... and it is truly alarming." As the riot spread the city government became alarmed, the strikers had sent a delegation to President Andrew Jackson, who was sympathetic, pleading their case for his intervention and referring to Commodore Hull's order as "despotic".