Imperial (101 page)

On Monday, 8 January 1934, we read with relief that the strikers abstain from violence, so there is
no trouble in the sheds.
A certain woman has convened a radical meeting near State and Second; Filipinos are driving in with strike banners. Meanwhile, the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union calls for, among other insolences, equal pay for women and free clean drinking water on the job. On the following morning almost a thousand lettuce strikers (not five thousand as we read a paragraph ago; perhaps both sides deploy figures with a light hand) refuse to disperse, compelling the police to charge and tear gas them, an action which, I am happy to say,
broke up the meeting without violence of any sort.
Eight people have already been arrested for
investigation relative to picketing activities.

As for the Communist agitators, Dean Hutchinson’s notes indicate that the police already know who they are:
Jan 9th crowd formed
in Brawley ...
blocaded
[
sic
]
traffic. Milling about excited—Chief
[
of Police
]
asked what going to do. Said hold a parade. Told them they could not do so. Some yelled let’s go pay no attention to Police—no leaders. Went around in front of group in his car. Americans Filipinos negroes gathered out of curiosity but apparently not in group. Streets blocked two blocks. Threatened to shoot tear gas. They did shoot tear gas—riot gun short range projectile, hit one man—then a hand grenade of gas—maybe another one thrown. Mob dispersed. Woman—Dorothy Ray does a lot of talking, agitation. Chief filed complaint about John Do Hancock, Pat Chambers & Dorothy Ray and told his men to pick them up.

On the tenth, the
Press
reassures us that life continues in the same tranquil spirit, I suppose because another hundred-odd strikers are just now marching to jail in order to be investigated for picketing activities. What might these crimes be—intimidation of scabs, or merely holding up signs? Well, after all, if we want our fields to be almost as efficient as washing machines, can we let any demands whatsoever interrupt the spin cycle? The authorities now arrest more people with Mexican-sounding names, and on the next day the
Press
reports that the strike is
believed to have weakened,
thank goodness. Accordingly, on the day after that (we have now reached the twelfth), a front-page headline promises:
Legionnaires Assist Officers Who Declare Militia Will Not Be Required
. The character of the Legion’s assistance may be imagined. Meanwhile, Sheriff Campbell sends a telegram to the Governor’s office giving notice that he may need the National Guard.

When officers threw bombs into the meeting room they closed the doors. Within a few seconds a gasping crowd composed entirely of Mexicans began breaking the glass.
Meanwhile, eight women and twelve men get arrested on the fields.
The American Legion has answered the emergency call . . .
Other sources verify that the Legion does indeed perform its patriotic part, employing clubs as necessary. I can’t help believing in people. If Dean Hutchinson’s notes are to be believed, the picketers do not exactly adhere to Gandhi, either:

By the thirteenth the
Press
hears the music of quietude in the lettuce fields! . . .
THE DESERT DISAPPEARS
. Seventy people now sit in prison. It is Saturday, and I hope that on this very night, Edith Karpen, who must have been strongwilled, self-reliant and effective, will dine with her sweetheart at the Owl in Mexicali.
You would go back and there was the gambling and the bar, and you would go back to the dining area, and it was real plush.
At the Owl, beer remains five cents a glass for Bock, and the management is advertising a new floor show—new faces in the chorus, exotic dancers, beautiful girls! On Sunday, Imperial’s finest raid two locations, arresting six Filipinos and two whites, one of whom, you will be sad to read, is female. In addition, officers seize and confiscate alleged Red literature from two people whom they accuse of
roaming about from place to place without any lawful business.
Where do these types originate, anyway?

I rejoice to see the following news from Tuesday:
ALL QUIET ON STRIKE FRONT
. On Wednesday,
OFFICIALS BELIEVE BACKBONE OF LETTUCE STRIKE BROKEN
, although
alleged attorneys
do annoy the peacemakers by asking for writs of habeas corpus. A Constitution is one of those magic exemplars of crockeryware whose beauty remains untouched for those who break them. On Friday, Imperial issues a bench warrant for the arrest of a misguided attorney. By the way, I have it on the reliable authority of the
Press
that the valley’s troubles are not at all homegrown; Reds from outside are the villains; and so in obedience to agitators, not by locals. And so Dorothy Ray, Stanley Hancock and a third Communist, Frank Nieto, now view events through prison bars. The latter two enroll in a chain gang, and vigilantes allegedly greet them with death threats. As for Ray,
the tank in which she is held reaches a summer temperature of 122 degrees.
That same day, the California state police chief denies that his officers have used any violence against strikers. How could I have doubted it?

A week later, on Wednesday the twenty-fourth, A. L. Wirin, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has expressed concern about the treatment of strikers, answers a knock on the door of his hotel room (unlike Dean Hutchinson, he is staying at the Planters’ Inn in Brawley). His guests throw a sheet over his head, drag him off, and reward him with
a cut lip and other bruises alleged to have been received during the scuffle.
After rolling his Ford roadster down into the dump, then robbing him and threatening to burn him, they leave him in the desert north of Calipatria. He walks eleven barefoot miles before finding help. In my own time it will not be uncommon for illegal
pollos
and
solos
to walk such distances and more (in the opposite direction); but presumably, being agricultural laborers, they are habituated to the outdoors, and they surely have shoes or tough feet.
¹⁸³
Mr. Wirin was lucky to have survived. But why dwell on such pranks?
Calm and quiet ruled in Imperial Valley today.
And on page five, the
Press
sets our souls at rest regarding the methods by which calm and quiet was achieved:
Contrary to rumors spread about the streets, it was learned this morning from authoritative American Legion sources that the Legion had little or nothing to do with the abduction of Wirin . . .
Well, nothing like going to the source!

Wirin files suit against the Governor, the head of the Los Angeles police “Red squad,” the police chief of Brawley, the chief of the state Highway Patrol and one of his officers, and twenty-five John Does. But when he is summoned before the El Centro District Court, he declines to appear, expressing fear for his life.

Perhaps he was wise, for I read that another lawyer for the strikers is attacked in Niland, still another arrested within three hours of his arrival and imprisoned for thirty-five days; a third is
assaulted on the very steps of the Court House by a band which included county officials.

Or perhaps, as Dean Hutchinson’s investigating committee concludes, the accounts of Mr. Wirin’s “kidnapping” (quotation marks supplied by the Committee) have been embellished.

And now it is the end of January, and the strike has finally been foiled. I suppose that fewer brown faces and more white ones now appear in the lettuce fields. (The following exclamation of pleasure comes from the San Joaquin Valley Agriculture Labor Bureau, and hence bears no relevance to Imperial:
The labor that came voluntarily from the drought area,
in other words Oklahoma,
came at the opportune time.
) Not everything is heavenly; Brawley’s anti-strike ordinance has been found unconstitutional in district court; and lettuce prices continue so low that the growers declare a three-day holiday. But at least the Imperial Valley remains unsullied by any farmworkers’ union.

The strikes resume in February. The Imperial County Board of Supervisors addresses them with a new ordinance: Strikes will now be illegal near public thoroughfares! Just in case that measure fails to achieve expectations, a number of Imperial Valley growers join together with like-minded souls to form the Associated Farmers of America. After all, the injunction against Brawley’s ordinance implies that the authorities can no longer protect us from alien Reds. That eerily real novel
Babbitt,
published more than a decade before these happenings, invented a nationwide organization called the Good Citizens’ League, which found its greatest strength in
commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most of which . . . lay inland, against a background of cornfields and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery . . .
It was our Good Citizens’ credo that
the working-classes must be kept in their place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought . . .
The creed of the Good Citizens strangely resembled that of the new Associated Farmers, whose weapons include axe handles and whose helpers include a Colonel of the U.S. Army Reserve and that same chief of the California Highway Patrol whom Wirin named in his lawsuit. In June, one of their kind will deliver a speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on the subject of “California’s Embattled Farmer.” Here is a sample:
We object most strenuously to inferences that those workers were required either to live in those camps or to consume muddy water. What they get out of that ditch water is up to them, just as it is up to their employers.

Despite the forces and resources on their side, the growers must have found it unprofitable or otherwise impractical to hold the line absolutely; for at the end of March, the growers agree to wages of a quarter per hour for field labor and thirteen cents per hour for cantaloupe picking (the strikers had wanted thirty-five and sixteen). The Communists accordingly prepare to attack the May cantaloupe harvest.