Between 1977-1981, Mary Deaton worked as a free-lance writer specializing in labor, labor history and women's issues. In 1979, The Weekly published her piece on the anniversary of The Seattle General Strike of 1919. Mary Deaton had numerous other publications in local newspapers and history and union journals and in 1981 served as project director for the 1981 Labor Film Festival of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association.

Deaton was commissioned in 1979-1980 by International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Local 23, and the Port of Tacoma to write their history under a grant from the Washington Commission for the Humanities to the Working Waterfront Project. Deaton researched and visited the ILWU headquarters in San Francisco and collected oral histories from many of the members and their children. Deaton submitted a manuscript "Hungry Port: A Documented History of Longshoring in Tacoma, WA," to the commissioning board, which they rejected. In the manuscript, Deaton took a pro-Congress of Industrial Organizations position and delved further into the reasons for breaking the strike and the aftermath, going deeper than odd references to communists. The commissioning body then engaged Tacoma longshore historian Ron Magden to complete the work. Deaton's notes and original manuscript comprise this collection.