by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
They will, it is believed, do good and efficient work on the terms which they have agreed to among themselves. They are, it is also believed, deliberately hindered from moving about and finding work on the terms on which they seek it. The obstruction to their movement and negotiations for work comes from the commercial clubs of the country towns and the state and municipal authorities who are politically affiliated with the commercial clubs. On the whole, there appears to be virtually no antagonism between employing farmers and these members of the I.W.W., and there is a well-founded belief that what antagonism comes in evidence is chiefly of a fictitious character, being in good part due to mischief-making agitation from outside.18
The fear that I.W.W. strikes in mining and lumber during the war years would spread to agriculture, led to stepped-up legal and extra-legal suppression. The federal government banned strikes in those industries which were “vital to national defense”—including mining, lumber, and agriculture. In July 1917, sixty I.W.W. organizers were arrested in Ellensburg, Washington, and charged with “interfering with crop harvesting and logging in violation of Federal statutes.”19 In the same month, army officers in South Dakota announced that they knew of a state-wide plot to destroy South Dakota’s crops and that Wobbly organizers were ready to set fire to the fields when a certain signal was given. Vigilante violence and a wave of arrests greeted this announcement. Headlines in the Morning Republican in Mitchell, South Dakota, read: “Shotguns Will Greet Any Attempts of I Won’t Workers To Destroy Ripened Grain Crops.”20 The newspaper story stated, “Any of them who attempt to carry out the threat of wholesale crop destruction will be roughly handled and will be lucky if they escape with their lives.”21
In many towns, I.W.W. members were arrested for loitering, for riding trains without having tickets, and on various other charges. Troops and vigilante groups raided I.W.W. headquarters, burned records, and smashed and destroyed furniture and other property.
In addition to mass arrests and vigilante activity, the local authorities attempted to suppress I.W.W. activities by recruiting less militant types of labor for farm work. Women and young boys were enlisted to work in the harvest fields throughout 1917 in anticipation of a labor shortage. Mexicans and Indians from the reservations were used in California. Chambers of commerce, working with the employment service set up by the U. S. Department of Labor, recruited and screened farm laborers. “County Councils for Defense,” organized by county agricultural agents and farmers to handle harvest workers, were started during 1917. “Work or fight” orders were sent to men in the fields who, for one reason or another, balked at living or working conditions.
In California, where the I.W.W. had conducted a successful strike among vineyard workers near Fresno in early 1917, a roundup of I.W.W. members and leaders was launched in the fall of that year. Based on a story in the Fresno morning paper describing charges of I.W.W. sabotage on local growers, the I.W.W. hall in Fresno was raided. Over one hundred men were seized, and nineteen were arrested. Later raids and arrests were carried out in Stockton, Hanford, and elsewhere in the state. The round-up continued throughout the rest of the year. Farmers having labor trouble were directed to get help at a U. S. Department of Justice office in Fresno.
Finally, the Agricultural Workers’ Industrial Union was completely disorganized when the federal government cracked down on the I.W.W. in the fall of 1917 and arrested more than one hundred Wobblies around the country on charges of violating the federal Espionage Act.
Legal suppression of the I.W.W. continued during the postwar period. Throughout the country, I.W.W. organizers and members were arrested and jailed under the terms of state syndicalism laws passed as postwar emergency measures. Postwar demobilization and unemployment created a surplus labor supply which further weakened the union organization.
However, meeting in September 1920, the “one-ten cats” resolved to launch another organizing drive in the Midwest wheat fields. They had spotty success. In Colby, Kansas, for example, Wobbly harvesters controlled the town’s labor supply for a week when they collectively refused to work at the going wage rates. In some areas the harvest drive was quite successful through the mid-twenties. Elsewhere, however, mechanized harvesters were replacing mobile harvest hands. The combine, developed as a labor-saving device during the war, cut and threshed grain in a single operation. Five men did the work of 320. As Paul Taylor wrote:
As the use of the combine spread, migratory labor declined, and with it labor radicalism and the social problems caused by a great male migration disappeared from the harvest fields. When radicalism came again to the Middle West it was the farmers who agitated and organized, not the laborers.22
Industrial Worker, February 13, 1913,
1
These verses were printed in the third edition of the I.W.W. songbook. Little is known about Walquist except that he was the author of a popular I.W.W. pamphlet, The Eight Hour Work Day: What It Will Mean and How to Get It.
I WENT TO THE COUNTRY
By AUGUST WALQUIST
(Tune: “My Wife Went to the Country”)
It was on a sunny morning in the middle of July,
I left in a side-car Pullman that dear old town called Chi.
I got the harvest fever, I was going to make a stake,
But when I worked hard for a week I found out my mistake.
Chorus
I went to the country, Oh! why? Oh! why?
I thought it best, you know; the result nearly makes me cry,
For sixteen hours daily, Oh! say; Oh! say;
John Farmer worked me very hard, so I’m going away.
When I left that old farmer he cussed me black and blue;
He says, “You gol durned hoboes, there’s nothing will suit you,”
So back to town I’m going, and there I’m going to stay.
You won’t catch me out on a farm; no more you’ll hear me say:
Chorus
I went to the country, Oh! why? Oh! why?
I thought it best you know; the result nearly makes me cry.
For sixteen hours daily, Oh! say; Oh! say;
John Farmer worked me very hard; so I am going away.
Now the Industrial Workers, they have put me wise;
They tell me I won’t need a boss if the slaves will organize.
They’re all a bunch of fighters; they’ll show you where they’re right.
So workingmen, come join their ranks and help them win this fight.
Chorus
Then we’ll own the country, Hurrah! Hurrah!
We’ll set the working millions free from slavery;
We’ll get all that we produce, you bet! you bet!
So, workingmen, come organize along with the rest!
2
These verses by Ed Jorda appeared in the Industrial Worker (October 3, 1912).
CLASS COMMUNION
By ED JORDA
(Tune: “Yankee Doodle”)
A farmer boy once worked in town,
He thought to make a fortune;
The bosses cut his wages down
By capitalist extortion.
Chorus
The I.W.W. waked him up
By preaching class communion,
Said fire the bosses all corrupt
By forming One Big Union.
He thought to get another job
And so regain his losses,
But found it was the same old rob
And by the same old bosses.
He then returned unto the farm,
Perhaps you think it funny;
The farmer boy did all the work—
The boss got all the money.
This farmer boy then came to see
The need of class communion.
Went like a man and paid the fee
And joined the One Big Union.
He joined in with a mighty throng;
I know you think it funny.
He only worked just half as long
Bu
t got just twice the money.
So they in winning full control
Depend on class communion.
Demand the earth from pole to pole,
All bound in One Big Union.
3
Mortimer Downing (1862- ? ) a former editor of the Industrial Worker, was a member of the I.W.W. Construction Workers’ Industrial Union No. 310. He was a chemist and assayer by trade. Convicted in the 1918 federal trial of I.W.W. members in Sacramento, California, Downing was one of the leaders of the “silent defenders,” the group of I.W.W. prisoners who refused to testify before the court. After his release from prison, he took an active part in writing publicity to obtain the release of I.W.W. members who had been arrested in California under the state criminal syndicalism law. Downing’s account of the Wheatland Hop Riot appeared in Solidarity (January 3, 1914).
BLOODY WHEATLAND
By MORTIMER DOWNING
Bloody Wheatland is glorious in this, that it united the American Federation of Labor, the Socialist Party and the I.W.W. in one solid army of workers to fight for the right to strike.
Against the workers are lined up the attorney general of the state of California, the Burns Agency, the Hop Growers’ Association, the ranch-owners of California, big and little business and the district attorney of Yuba County, Edward B. Stanwood. For the army of Burns men, engaged in this effort to hang some of the workers, somebody must have paid as much as $100,000. The workers have not yet gathered $2,000 to defend their right to strike.
Follow this little story and reason for yourself, workers, if your very right to strike is not here involved.
By widespread lying advertisements Durst Brothers assembled twenty-three hundred men, women and children to pick their hops last summer. A picnic was promised the workers.
They got:
Hovels worse than pig sties to sleep in for which they were charged seventy-five cents per week, or between $2,700 and $3,000 for the season.
Eight toilets were all that was provided in the way of sanitary arrangements.
Water was prohibited in the hop fields, where the thermometer was taken by the State Health Inspector and found to be more than 120 degrees. Water was not allowed because Durst Brothers had farmed out the lemonade privilege to their cousin, Jim Durst, who offered the thirsting pickers acetic acid and water at five cents a glass.
Durst Brothers had a store on the camp, and would not permit other dealers to bring anything into the camp.
Wages averaged scarcely over $1 per day.
Rebellion occurred against these conditions. Men have been tortured, women harassed, imprisoned and threats of death have been the portion of those who protested.
When the protest was brewing, mark this: Ralph Durst asked the workers to assemble and form their demands. He appointed a meeting place with the workers. They took him at his word. Peaceably and orderly they decided upon their demands. Durst filled their camp with spies. Durst went through the town of Wheatland and the surrounding country gathering every rifle, shot gun and pistol. Was he conspiring against the workers? The attorney general and the other law officers say he was only taking natural precautions.
When the committee which Ralph Durst had personally invited to come to him with the demands of the workers arrived, Durst struck the chairman, Dick Ford, in the face. He then ordered Dick Ford off his ground. Dick Ford had already paid $2.75 as rental for his shack. Durst claims this discharge of Ford broke the strike.
This was on Bloody Sunday, August 3, 1913, about two o’clock in the afternoon.
Ford begged his fellow committeemen to say nothing about Durst’s striking him.
At 5:30 that Sunday afternoon the workers were assembled in meeting on ground rented from Durst. Dick Ford, speaking as the chairman of the meeting reached down and took from a mother an infant, saying, “It is not so much for ourselves we are fighting as that this little baby may never see the conditions which now exist on this ranch.” He put the baby back into its mother’s arms as he saw eleven armed men, in two automobiles, tearing down toward the meeting place. The workers then began a song. Into this meeting, where the grandsire, the husband, the youth and the babies were gathered in an effort to gain something like living conditions these armed men charged. Sheriff George Voss has sworn, “When I arrived that meeting was orderly and peaceful.” The crowd opened to let him and his followers enter. Then one of his deputies, Lee Anderson, struck Dick Ford with a club, knocking him from his stand. Anderson also fired a shot. Another deputy, Henry Dakin, fired a shot gun. Remember, this crowd was a dense mass of men, women and children, some of them babies at the breast. Panic struck the mass. Dakin began to volley with his automatic shot gun. There was a surge around the speaker’s stand. Voss went down. From his tent charged an unidentified Puerto Rican. He thrust himself into the mass, clubbed some of the officers, got a gun, cleared a space for himself and fell dead before a load of buckshot from Henry Dakin’s gun.
Thirty seconds or so the firing lasted. When the smoke cleared, Dakin and Durst and others of these bullies had fled like jack rabbits. Four men lay dead upon the ground. Among them, District Attorney Edward T. Manwell, a deputy named Eugene Reardon, the Puerto Rican and an unidentified English lad. About a score were wounded, among them women.
Charges of murder, indiscriminative, have been placed for the killing of Manwell and Reardon. This Puerto Rican and the English boy sleep in their bloody graves and the law takes no account—they were only workers.
Such are the facts of Wheatland’s bloody Sunday. Now comes the district attorney of Yuba County, the attorney general of the state of California and all the legal machinery and cry that these workers, assembled in meeting with their women and children, had entered into a conspiracy to murder Manwell and Reardon. They say had no strike occurred there would have been no killing. They say had Dick Ford, when assaulted and discharged by Durst, “quietly left the ranch, the strike would have been broken.” What matters to these the horrors of thirst, the indecent and immodest conditions? The workers are guilty. They struck and it became necessary to disperse them. Therefore, although they, the workers were unarmed and hampered with their women and children, because a set of drunken deputies, who even had whisky in their pockets on the field, fired upon them, the workers must pay a dole to the gallows.
Solidarity, September 2, 1916.
To vindicate and establish this theory an army of Burns men have been turned loose. They took one Swedish lad, Alfred Nelson, carried him around the country through six jails, finally beat him brutally in a public hotel in the city of Martinez. One of these Burns thugs is now under a sentence of a year in jail and $1,000 fine for this act.
These same Burns men arrested Herman D. Suhr in Prescott, Arizona. He was confined like a beast in the refrigerator of a box fruit car. These Burns men poked him with clubs and bars to keep him awake. He was taken to Los Angeles and tortured in that jail. Thence they carried him to Fresno for further torture. Thence to San Francisco, thence to Oakland. Here for four days three shifts of Burns men tortured him by keeping him awake. In order that no marks should show on his person, they rolled long spills of paper and thrust the sharp points into his eyes and ears and nose every time his tired head dropped. He was placed in a three-foot latticed cell so that these animals could easily torture him without danger from his fists. He went crazy, signed a “confession,” and the judges of Yuba and Sutter counties and the district attorneys thereof have tried to make it impossible for him to even swear out a warrant for his torturers.
Mrs. Suhr’s wifehood was questioned when she first visited her husband.
Edward B. Stanwood, the present district attorney of Yuba County, has had more than a score of men arrested. He has kept them for months in jails at widely separated points. Burns men have been permitted to enter their cells and use every effort to frighten them into confessions. Men say they have been brought before Stanwood, himself, and when they told the truth about their actions these Burns men have calle
d them “God damned liars.” Stanwood has sat by. Again and again Stanwood has refused to take any action concerning Durst’s gathering of arms, concerning the actions of the Burns men. He has refused to put charges against these men until compelled to do so by writs of habeas corpus.
Here were a band of men, all of them armed, many of them drunken, who charged a peaceful meeting endangering the lives of women and children. Stanwood says it was because of a conspiracy among the workers that anybody was killed. None of the workers had arms. All the deputies had pistols and rifles.
In the city of Marysville, where the trials will take place the newspapers constantly allude to the men in jail as fiends. The judge is the life-long friend of the dead Manwell, every juror possible knew the sheriff and the other deputies. They publicly allow them to be called fiends. The acts of the Burns men are excused as necessary. To cinch the whole thing the courts have refused a change of venue. The whole community fears that this case should be tried by a jury not involved directly in the facts.
Under the same law the next strike can be broken in the same way. Let a drunken Burns man or a deputy or strike breaker fire upon strikers, kill some of them and the same method will be used. If only these two workers had been killed the six men now held would be charged with murder. It is only handy and incidental to the movement of the bosses that two of their own were involved, whose deaths enrage their friends. The case is plain, workers. Unite to free these six men or it will be your turn next.
4
These unsigned verses about the Wheatland Hop Riot appeared in Solidarity (August 1, 1914).
OVERALLS AND SNUFF
(Tune: “Wearing of the Green”)
One day as I was walking along the railroad track,