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HARVEST
THE HISTORY OF FARM WORKERS' STRUGGLES
IN CALIFORNIA.
The following excerpt from the website "Farmworkers.org"
offers a very good overview of the struggles to unionize farm workers in
California throughout the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century.
Much of this information touches on historical facts
that are involved in our current show (even opening up with the lyrics to a
song included in our production!). The section entitled "The
1933 Cotton Strike" speaks directly to the real life events on
which Langston Hughes' play is based and illustrates just how accurate the
play is to these facts.
We at Subversive Theatre are proud to do our small
part to help keep these important lessons from the history of workers'
struggles alive!
We
Have Fed You All For a Thousand Years
We
have fed you all for a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You
have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share,
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We have bought it fair!
Written
by "An Unknown Proletarian", 1908
We have not just been organizing and fighting for the last twelve years, but
ever since farmworkers were first brought to cultivate the valleys of
California.
As
U.S. business expanded West after the Civil War, thousands of new workers were
needed to mine the gold and silver, lay the railroad ties, and do back
breaking labor in the fields and orchards.
At
the same time, Western businessmen were searching all over Asia and Latin
America for raw materials and new markets for the U.S.'s growing industrial
production. They do not just bring back tea, silk and valuable
minerals. Thousands of unemployed peasants were "recruited"
to come to California.
Many
of them, forced off their land to make way for large foreign-owned
plantations. In the cities of these countries, there was little work
because imported Western goods prevented industry from developing.
Chinese and Japanese Workers
In
the late 1800's, thousands of Chinese and Japanese workers were brought to
work in the fruit orchards and sugar beet fields. They were the first
farmworkers, to form associations and strike for improved wages and
conditions. But their victories were short-lived.
The
growers were able to play them off against Anglos and other immigrant workers,
especially during the depression years of the 1870's and early 1900's --
when Asian workers were blamed for taking away jobs from "Americans."
The result was racist laws excluding the Chinese (1882) and Japanese (1920)
from the U.S.
The IWW - First Multinational Union
In
the 1910's, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized and led
strikes in California among workers of all nationalities. The IWW
believed in letting growers' crops rot until they paid a living wage.
They pioneered direct action tactics, like chasing scabs out of the fields.
By
1917 the IWW had over 10,000 migrant field worker members, but the growers and
government teamed up in the following years to jail their leaders and shut
down their union halls in Fresno, Bakersfield, San Diego and elsewhere.
Filipi
no Workers
After
World War I, California growers began importing farmworkers from the
Philippines, which the U.S. had taken control of after a war with Spain in
1898. Laws were passed forbidding Filipino women from entering the U.S. In
many rural towns it was a crime for Filipino men to associate with women of
other races. The growers hoped to keep their expenses down by employing a work
force of single men. But in the early 1930s, the Filipino workers responded by
organizing into associations which led some powerful strikes.
The Great Depression
The
Great Depression brought a wave of displaced farmers to California from
Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. They joined the Mexicans and Filipinos
working on the "factory ranches" of DiGiorgio and the other
grower-shippers.
As
the Depression deepened, the growers slashed wages and laid off workers.
Between 1929 and 1933, wages dropped from $3.50 to $1.90 a day. A 3-year
residency requirement disqualified most farmworkers from relief.
Farmworkers
had no choice but to walk out of the fields (50 strikes in 1933 alone) telling
the growers, "You can pick your own crops for $1.75 a day!"
Many
of these strikes were led by the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial
Union (CAWIU), whose leaders included communists and other progressive
workers. The CAWIU worked closely with the CUOM, a newly organized
confederation of Mexican workers in the Imperial Valley.
The 1933 Cotton Strike
The
biggest strike took place among cotton workers near Corcoran in the Central
Valley. Wages in cotton had fallen from $1 to 40 cents per 100 lbs.
picked. The CAWIU called for a strike and 1800 workers walked out in
October 1933. Three-fourths of them were Mexican and 1/4 were white and
black.
The
growers started evicting the strikers from company owned labor camps, but this
only concentrated the union's forces in one camp. The growers then
called on the police and formed armed vigilante squads, which shot down 11
strikers, killing two. But the strikers resisted and held picket lines
in front of the jail to demand freedom for the arrested strike leaders.
In one farm, about 100 workers invaded the fields and drove off all the
strikebreakers.
After
24 days on strike, the cotton workers won an increase in wages to 75 cents per
100 lbs., though they had also demanded union recognition and an end to the
labor contractor system.
During
the wave of strikes in 1933, which pushed wages back up, the growers were
preparing to counterattack. The newly formed Farmers Association (which
was controlled by the biggest farm corporations) pushed through anti-picketing
legislation in 20 rural California counties and pressured courts and police to
arrest CAWIU leaders under the charge of criminal syndicalism (union
organizing). By the end of 1934, the CAWIU was smashed. The
American Federation of Labor, its leadership dominated by sellouts, did
nothing to help.
In
fact, the AFL Teamsters Union, moved into many canneries and packing sheds
after the militant CAWIU had been driven out. Many of the grower
shippers saw that the cannery and shed workers would be unionized sooner or
later and welcomed the conservative Teamster officials. They could be
counted on to ignore the mostly Mexican and Filipino field workers, who were
still unorganized.
1934-36 Salinas Strikes - Divide and Conquer
In
1934, Filipino lettuce cutters and mainly white packing shed workers (AFL)
struck the powerful Salinas Valley grower shippers, demanding union
recognition and improved conditions. They made an agreement between
them, neither union would bargain without the other.
After
several weeks of an effective strike, the grower-shippers agreed to bargain.
The agreement was made on a Saturday night. "Send your workers
back to work immediately," said the bosses, "and we'll
negotiate on Monday." Sunday is not a work day and no one
returned to work until Monday.
When
Monday came the growers sat and negotiated with the packing shed
representatives, while they refused to even talk with Filipino representatives
because they had "violated the agreement to return to work
immediately." So while the packers union was negotiating its
contract, organized vigilante gangs were burning down Filipino labor camps,
driving Filipino organizers from the valley and bringing in scabs to break the
field strike.
Packingshed
union leaders "forgot" their agreement with the Filipino
field workers, and allowed field and shed workers to be divided.
Two
years later, in 1936, the shed bosses took back the "favor."
When the contract expired, they refused to re-sign it. They hired a
vigilante army of 3,000, and used police and sheriffs to arrest and beat
workers while escorting scabs into the sheds.
Some
field workers walked out in support of the strike, but unorganized, their
sporadic support was not very effective. In a month the strike was
broken, and the shed union was busted.
In Conclusion
So the 30's ended with the temporary defeat of unionism in California
agriculture. While industrial workers were launching successful union drive
under the CIO and were pushing through pro-labor legislation like the National
Labor Relations Act (which guaranteed the right to have secret ballot union
elections), farmworkers, increasingly Mexican braceros, remained unorganized
and unprotected. The Farmworkers isolation from the new labor movement did not
end until the 1960's.
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