History of Farm Worker Organizing in the U.S. Part II: The IWW

Farmworker organizing has a long and radical history that precedes both Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW). In 1903, the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (JMLA) tried to organize in the sugar beet fields of Oxnard, California. It was the first agricultural union in California to unite workers across different ethnic groups. However, Samual Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), demanded the exclusion of the Japanese workers in order to get AFL affiliation. Mexican workers refused to break ranks and maintained solidarity with their Japanese comrades. The JMLA, which won many of their demands, did not last long after this strike.

In contrast to the AFL, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) has organized all workers, regardless of ethnicity, race, gender, immigration status, or skill level since 1905. Like other unions, they seek to improve living and working conditions in the here and now. But unlike the AFL, or the UFW, they also fight to overthrow the wage system, abolish bosses, and create a classless society free of capitalist exploitation. The bosses hated and feared them, routinely using vigilantes, cops, Pinkertons, and National Guards to suppress their organizing efforts and strikes.

Fresno Free Speech Fight (1910)

One of the IWW’s first major agricultural battles was the Fresno Free Speech Fight (1910-1911). It was the first Free Speech fight in California and it began as an attempt to organize agricultural workers. But when the city started arresting organizers for public speaking, Wobblies (IWW members) came from across the country to join the fight and fill the city’s jails. They were so successful that the sheriff eventually got fed up and refused to accept any more prisoners. By March 1911, the city backed down and allowed the IWW to agitate freely on its streets.

Frank Little helped lead the Fresno Free-Speech fight. He was a Cherokee miner and a gifted IWW union organizer who helped pioneer many of the passive resistance techniques used decades later by the Civil Rights movement and by the UFW. Throughout his short life, Little organized oil workers, timber workers, miners, and migrant farm workers in California. He was also an anti-war activist, calling U.S. soldiers “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniforms.” In 1917, vigilantes lynched him in Butte, Montana.

During the Fresno Free Speech fight, Little served nearly a month in jail, with half of it in solitary confinement for refusing to work in the yard with other prisoners. He said he preferred the dark cell to forced labor, and that doing unpaid prison work was tantamount to being a scab. (From the “Industrial Worker” October 8, 1910). As many as 80 Wobblies were jailed with him, many also refusing to work. They sang union songs to keep up morale, prompting the Sheriff to get the fire department to flood their cells with water. They even made a sign that said “No duck shooting on this lake.”

Organizing the California Hop Fields (1913)

In 1913, the IWW organized 2,000 migrant hop pickers at Durst Ranch, in Wheatland, California, the state’s largest agricultural employer. Conditions were deplorable. Workers had to pay 75 cents per week to sleep outside in tents, where temperatures often reached triple digits. Toilets overflowed with human excrement and were covered with flies. And the closest drinking water was a mile away. Workers earned less than $1.50 per 12-hour day, half of what those on neighboring farms earned. Durst also held 10% of each worker’s wages until the end of harvest, to discourage them from quitting early.

Not surprisingly, discontent erupted once the actual terms of their employment and living conditions became clear. In August 1, workers created an IWW local at Durst Ranch. They chose Richard "Blackie" Ford to be their spokesman. They demanded an immediate raise; the right to clean and weight their own hops (so the bosses could no longer rip them off by under weighing them); drinking water to be provided in the fields; sanitary toilet facilities; and other reforms.

Durst responded by firing Ford and the other Wobblies on the strike committee. Ford and the others refused to leave the property. Instead, they called a mass meeting, with speakers talking to the crowd in their native German, Greek, Italian, Arabic, and Spanish. The overwhelming majority voted to strike.

The Wheatland Hop Riot

Durst organized a posse of vigilantes that included Yuba County District Attorney Edward Manwell, Marysville Sheriff George Voss, and several deputy sheriffs. They tried to arrest Ford, but the workers intervened. A cop fired a shotgun into the air to disperse the crowd. The crowd responded by attacking Manwell and Deputy Lee Anderson. The cops began shooting wildly into the crowd. Manwell, Deputy Sheriff Eugene Reardon, a Puerto Rican hop picker, and an English hop picker died, quite possibly all from police fire, as the workers were unarmed.

Governor Johnson sent the National Guard, who supported the police as they arrested 100 migrant workers. They attempted to force prisoners to testify against the strike leaders by starving and tortured them. One prisoner hanged himself. Ultimately, they issued arrest warrants for Blackie Ford and another Wobbly, Herman Suhr, on murder charges.

The trial was totally rigged, with a judge who was a close friend of one of the victims. And eight of the twelve jurors were farm owners who were biased against the IWW. The defense tried to get the trial moved to a different county that was less hostile to the defendants, but their request was denied. No witnesses saw either Suhr or Ford with a gun. And defense witnesses said that the shots which killed the cops had been fired by the dead Puerto Rican picker, who had seized Deputy Reardon's gun during the scuffle. Nevertheless, the jury convicted Ford and Suhr of second-degree murder. They both got life sentences. Two other Wobblies were acquitted.

In spite of the repression, the stature of the IWW grew among farm workers. By the end of 1914, there were 5,000 Wobblies in California, with forty locals throughout the state. Blackie Ford was paroled in 1924, but rearrested and charged him with Riordon’s murder. This time the jury acquitted him. Soon after, the governor pardoned Herman Suhr.

Agricultural Workers Organization

In 1915, the IWW created the Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO) in Kansas City, Missouri. Their demands included: adequate food and housing for farm workers; a 10-hour workday; a $4.00 minimum wage; and free transportation to long-distance jobsites. By utilizing a system of roving “field” delegates, organizers signed up thousands of new members within their first two years. The roving delegates would board freight trains and demand that hobos prove IWW membership by showing their Red Cards. Anyone who couldn’t produce a Red Card was given the choice of signing up on the spot or being kicked off the train. The delegates also served as organizers and presented grievances to the ranch foremen and owners. And they had the authority to call a strike against farmers who did not resolve their grievances. Between 1915 and 1917, the IWW/AWO organized over 100,000 migratory farm workers throughout the Midwest and western United States.

Organizing in the Yakima Valley

The IWW was already active in the Pacific Northwest, primarily in timber and mining. However, by the summer of 1910, they were organizing migrant farm workers in Eastern Washington. In July 1910, the police arrested IWW members John W. Foss and Joseph Gordon for speaking on a street corner in downtown Yakima, even though they had a permit to do so. While in jail, they were fed a diet of bread and water and forced to carry a ball and chain. In 1915, they created a Yakima branch of the AWO. But the mass arrests and vigilante violence against them continued. On July 9, 1917, federal troops raided their Yakima Union Hall, arresting 24 Wobblies for their opposition to World War I.

The Battle at Congdon Orchards

The IWW continued to be active for decades in the Yakima Valley, but accomplished little in the 1920s. However, things heated up again in the1930, when hop pickers began fighting for an eight-hour work day, an end to child labor, and a minimum wage of 35 cents per hour, for women and men, alike. At the time, most growers were paying only 10 cents per hour for men, and 8 cents for women. In August, 1933, they went on strike in Saleh and at Congdon Orchard. The owners organized vigilantes, who attacked the picketers with clubs and other weapons. And the police jailed 61 Wobblies. The next day, the National Guard destroyed the hobo camps where they were living and built a stockade of wood and barbed wire for their prisoners. They also mounted 30 caliber machine guns at major intersections. Whenever prisoners were released from the stockade, vigilantes would kidnap them, beat them, and tar and feather them. The violence and legal repression ultimately broke the strike.

Conclusion

The IWW had a major influence on farm labor organizing in the 20th century by demonstrating that it was possible to effectively organize unskilled, immigrant laborers that the mainstream unions, like the AFL, considered unorganizable. Though they weren’t the first to organize across multi-ethnic, multi-national, and multi-linguistic groups, they were one of the largest and most effective at it. And they pioneered many tactics that would be used by future farm labor organizers, including Cesar Chavez and the UFW, like signing up workers in the fields and on trains, and using tactics like direct action and civil disobedience to pressure employers.

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