# Oxnard strike of 1903

The Oxnard strike of 1903 was a labor rights dispute in the southern California coastal city of Oxnard between local landowners and the majority Japanese and Mexican labor force.

## History
### Before the strike

vteLabor disputes by sector :
vteAgricultural strikes
1800s
Thibodaux sugar 1887
Cotton pickers 1891
1900s–1920s
Oxnard 1903
Seattle fishermen 1912
Grabow lumber 1912
Wheatland hops 1913
northern Minnesota lumber 1916–1917
Hanapepe sugar 1924
Imperial cantaloupe 1928
1930s
Imperial lettuce 1930
Santa Clara cannery 1931
Vacaville tree pruners 1932
Wisconsin milk 1933
Yakima hops 1933
California agricultural (Santa Clara cherry, El Monte berry) 1933
Great lumber 1935
Stockton cannery 1937
1940s–present
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Puget Sound fishermen 1949
Delano grape (1965–1970)
Salad Bowl 1970
Watsonville Cannery (1985–1987)
Frito-Lay 2021
vteCoal Wars
1870s – 1900s
Mahoning Valley strike 1873
Morewood massacre 1891
Coal Creek War
Bituminous coal strike 1894
Lattimer massacre 1897
Illinois coal wars 1898–1900 (Battle of Virden, Pana riot, Carterville Mine Riot)
Anthracite coal strike 1902
Carbon county strike 1903–04
1910s
Westmoreland strike 1910–11
Paint Creek mine war 1912
Colorado Coalfield War 1913–14 (Ludlow Massacre, The 10-Day War)
Hartford coal mine riot 1914
1920s – 1930s
West Virginia coal wars 1912–21 (Battle of Matewan, Battle of Blair Mountain)
Alabama miners' strike 1920
UMW General Coal Strike 1922 (Herrin massacre)
Indiana bituminous strike 1927
Colorado Coal Strike 1927–28 (Columbine Mine massacre)
Harlan County War 1931–1939 (Battle of Evarts)
vteGeneral strikes
1800s
Philadelphia 1835
Catalan 1855
St. Louis
Scranton 1877
First May Day (Haymarket Affair) 1886
New Orleans 1892
1900s
Sweden 1909
Philadelphia 1910
Vancouver 1918
Seattle
Winnipeg 1919
Germany 1920
San Francisco
Minneapolis 1934
Oakland 1946
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Ghana 1950
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Spain 1988
Nepal 1992
2000s
Guinea 2007
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European 2012
India 2016
Brazil
Catalan 2017
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vteUS manufacturing strikes
1800s–1920s
Cigars 1877
El Paso smelters 1913
Studebaker 1913
Standard Oil 1915
Boston cigars 1919
1930s–1970s
Tampa cigars 1931
Auto-Lite 1934
Kohler 1934
Flint sit-down 1936
Akron rubber 1936
Remington 1936
Ford 1937
Chrysler Auto 1939
General Motors 1939
General Motors 1945
Boeing 1948
Kohler 1954
International Harvester 1979
1980s–2000s
Todd Shipyards 1983
International Paper 1987-1988
John Deere 1986–1987
General Motors 2007
Boeing 2008
2010s–2020s
Oil refineries 2015
Kohler 2015
Jim Beam 2016
Bath shipbuilders 2020
St. Paul Park refinery 2021
Volvo Trucks 2021
Frito-Lay 2021
Nabisco 2021
Heaven Hill 2021
Kellogg's 2021
John Deere 2021
United Auto Workers 2023
vteMetal mining strikes
1800s
Upper Peninsula 1865
Coeur d'Alene 1892
Cripple Creek 1894
Leadville 1896–97
Coeur d'Alene 1899
1900s–1920s
Colorado Labor Wars (Idaho Springs) 1903–04
Cananea 1906
Goldfield 1906–07
Copper Country 1913–14
Bisbee 1917
Anaconda Road 1920
1930s–1970s
Empire Zinc 1950
Murdochville 1957
Inco 1978–79
1980s–present
Vale Inco 2009–10
vteTransport strikes
1800s
Great Railroad Strike 1877
Camp Dump 1882
Great Southwest 1886
Burlington 1888
Buffalo switchmen 1892
New Orleans waterfront 1892
Pullman Strike 1894
1900s–1920s
Chicago teamsters 1905
New Orleans Levee 1907
Illinois Central shopmen 1911
West Coast waterfront 1916
NYC Harbor Strike 1919
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Portland waterfront 1922
Railway shopmen 1922
1930s–1970s
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Minneapolis teamsters 1934
NYC teamsters truckers 1938
Vancouver waterfront 1935
Gulf Coast maritime 1936
NYC tugboat 1946
USPS 1970
Longshoremen 1971
1980s–2000s
Patco (air traffic controllers) 1981
SEPTA Regional Rail 1983
Pan Am 1985
UPS 1997
Montreal longshoremen 2020
vteSanitation strikes
Memphis 1968
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Charleston 1969
Atlanta 1977
Atlanta 2018
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1800s–1920s
Newsboys 1899
NYC waiters 1912
Actors 1919
Boston police 1919
1930s–1970s
Seattle Post 1936
Fleischer Studios 1937
NYC retail 1937
Disney animators 1941
Musicians 1942
Hollywood 1945
Writers Guild 1960
Cleveland convention 1963
St. John's 1966
Memphis sanitation 1968
St. Petersburg sanitation 1968
NYC teachers 1968
Baltimore municipal (police) 1974
Atlanta sanitation 1977
1980s–2000s
Writers Guild 1981
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SF newspaper 1994
Detroit newspaper 1995
Verizon 2000
Broadway musicians 2003
CA supermarkets 2003
UM Janitors 2006
Umpires 2006
Writers Guild 2007
Stagehands 2007
CBS News 2007
2010s
Government (Wisconsin) 2011
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Tacoma nurses 2014
Verizon 2016
Video games 2016
Teachers (AZ, CO, Los Angeles, NC, OK, WV) 2018–2019
Hotels 2018
Stop & Shop 2019
2020s
UC Santa Cruz 2020
University of California 2022
Medieval Times 2023
Writers Guild 2023
SAG-AFTRA 2023
Video games 2024
vteSteel strikes in the US
1800s–1920s
Homestead 1892
U.S. Steel recognition 1901
Pressed Steel Car 1909
Great Steel 1919
1930s–1970s
Little Steel (Memorial Day massacre) 1937
Nationwide 1946
Nationwide 1952
Nationwide 1959
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USX 1986
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vteNorth American transit strikesStreetcar strikes
St. Louis 1900
Indianapolis 1892
Los Angeles 1903
San Francisco 1907
Pensacola 1908
Columbus 1910
Philadelphia 1910
Indianapolis 1913
St. John 1914
Atlanta 1916
Portland, ME 1916
Bloomington, IL 1917
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1980s–2020s
Greyhound 1983
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Toronto 2006
Toronto 2008
Lyft and Uber 2019
vteTextile strikes in United States
1800s
Mill Women 1834
Paterson 1835
Mill Women 1836
New England shoe 1860
North Adams shoe 1870
1900s–1920s
Skowhegan 1907
New York shirtwaist 1909
Chicago garment 1910
Lawrence 1912
Little Falls 1912–1913
Hopedale 1913
Paterson silk 1913
Ipswich Mills 1913
Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills 1914–1915
New England 1922
Passaic 1926
New Bedford 1928
Loray Mill 1929
1930s–1970s
Los Angeles garment 1933
National 1934
Lewiston-Auburn shoe 1937
Montreal Cotton 1946
1980s–2000s
NYC Chinatown 1982 :
In 1887, Henry, James, Benjamin, and Robert Oxnard sold their Brooklyn sugar refinery and moved to California to capitalize on the growing agricultural economy of the late nineteenth century. In 1897, following the enactment of the Dingley Tariff Bill that heavily taxed foreign sugar, Henry, James, and Robert Oxnard formed the American Beet Sugar Company. Although the seasonal Chinese and Mexican laborers already in place in the county easily satisfied agricultural labor needs early in the factory's history, decline in Chinese populations due to Chinese Exclusion Acts and use of Mexican workers in other agricultural efforts led to an increase in Japanese worker recruitment. A group of 1,000 Japanese farm workers were recruited in 1900 by labor contractors. By 1902 nine major Japanese contractors saw to the seasonal needs in the area.
Since these contractors had already caused minor slowdowns and protests over wages, recently arrived bank owners and merchants organized an owner-interest oriented contracting company called the Western Agricultural Contracting Company (WACC). The WACC quickly replaced the Japanese contractors as principal contractors to the Oxnard Plain and even forced some of them to subcontract through the WACC. This process also adversely affected farmworkers as the WACC charged a fee for subcontracting beneath them. The WACC regularly refused to pay laborers in cash and instead compensated them with credit for company stores which often sold goods at unreasonably high prices. Making up more than 90 percent of the work force, the WACC had a near monopoly of the workers. The WACC comprised two distinct departments, one tasked with the oversight of Japanese laborers and labor contractors and another tasked with the oversight of Mexican laborers and labor contractors. Workers under both of these departments were displeased by the conduct of the WACC. As a result, a large group of Japanese farmworkers and labor contractors organized a meeting at the beginning of February 1903 where they discussed their outrage at the working conditions and low wages under the WACC.

### The strike and the JMLA

On February 11, 1903, 500 Japanese and 200 Mexican laborers became the charter members of the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association (JMLA) joined together and formed their organization based on the grievances of the Oxnard laborers. Despite its status as a farmworker's labor union, the members of the JMLA were laborers working under contract, labor contractors, and temporary workers - many of whom were students from Japan. The JMLA is notable for being the first major agricultural union in California to unite agricultural workers of different minority groups. Overcoming obvious language barriers between the two constituent groups, they immediately elected Kosaburo Baba (president), Y. Yamaguchi (secretary of the Japanese branch), and J.M. Lizarras (secretary of the Mexican branch); Baba and Lizarras were both labor contractors and Yamaguchi has been recognized as a boarding student recruited from San Francisco. Their immediate concerns opposed the WACC on three conditions:
* they accused the WACC of artificially suppressing wages;
* they opposed the subcontracting system arguing that it forced workers to pay double commissions; and
* they called for the freedom to buy goods rather than be subjected to the inflated prices of the company store.
In order to remedy these issues, the JMLA membership ceased working through the WACC (essentially declaring a strike). The strike came at a serendipitously precarious time in the sugar beet season, the staple crop of Oxnard Plain agriculture, since the labor-intensive and yield-defining work of thinning the seedlings needed to be done within the scope of a few weeks. By refusing to work through the WACC during the thinning of sugar beet crops, the JMLA challenged the backbone of financial operations in the Oxnard Plain. Laborers who participated in the strike threatened the profits of the owners of the WACC, the American Beet Sugar Company, and the farm owners. Their actions were met with hostile responses from local newspapers and the leadership of the American Beet Sugar Company. Colonel Driffil, manager of the American Beet Sugar Company, formally declared the company's support for the WACC and threatened to drive those who participated in the strike "out of the country." Outside of their own membership and other local Mexican and Japanese residents, the JMLA found little support from the white community in Oxnard outside of a few opportunistic merchants who saw the strike as a chance to disrupt WACC operations.
By the first week in March, the JMLA recruited a membership larger than 1,200 workers (over 90% of the labor force of the county's beet industry). The JMLA's increased recruitment pulled the WACC's former contracted workers from it and essentially brought the sugar industry to a standstill. Along with the labor strike, the JMLA staged large demonstrations and marches in Oxnard, displaying the union's strength in numbers. During the second and third weeks of March, the WACC formed an alternative union known as the Independent Agricultural Labor Union (IALU) which intended to undercut the JMLA's efforts. The IALU worked with the WACC as a strikebreaking organization seeking to restore regular working conditions in the sugar beet fields rather than advocate for farmworkers' rights.
On March 23, 1903, the strike reached its turning point. During a confrontation between the JMLA and IALU strikebreakers in Oxnard's Chinatown shots were fired, wounding two Japanese and two Mexican members of the JMLA. Luis Vasquez, a Mexican member of the JMLA, was killed by the gunfire. Initial reports by local newspapers blamed the JMLA for the violence; however, a statement released by the JMLA in the following days asserted that union members were not armed at the confrontation, pointing out that no union members had been arrested. The sole arrest from the confrontation was that of Deputy Constable Charles Arnold for the murder of Luis Vasquez. A subsequent coroner's inquest to determine Arnold's role in the murder saw the testimonies of 50 witnesses, many of which contradicted one another with certain witnesses claiming they had observed Arnold firing at Vasquez and others claiming that Arnold had not even raised his gun at the confrontation. After a series of conflicting witness accounts, the county coroner requested that more Japanese witnesses speak at the inquest in the following days. However, the all-white male jury refused to continue the inquest as they had reached a verdict with the given evidence. The jury found Charles Arnold innocent in the murder of Luis Vasquez and he was cleared of all charges.
Despite the outcome of the coroner's inquest, the WACC continued their striking efforts, bringing organized laborers from outside of town as well as intercepting potential strikebreakers. The Ventura Free Press reported on an incident in which members of the JMLA confronted a group of strikebreakers headed to a local farm and successfully convinced them to join the union's cause.
After the deadly skirmish in Chinatown, JMLA representatives met with representatives of local farmers and the WACC to engage in negotiations. During the first two days of negotiations, the JMLA stated clearly that they would refuse to end the strike until the WACC ended their monopoly over Oxnard Plain sugar beet operations and allow workers to contract directly with local farmers. The strike reached an official end on March 30, 1903 after the WACC agreed to cancel all standing contracts with local sugar beet farmers and grant farmworkers the right to contract directly with local growers.

### Aftermath

Japanese and Mexican laborers, formerly pitted against each other, had unified to achieve their labor goals. With the WACC as their common enemy, Japanese and Mexican farmworkers recognized their primary struggle as an issue of class conflict. JMLA membership viewed Anglo, Mexican, and even Japanese contractors who worked in conjunction with the WACC as antagonists to their cause. The success JMLA achieved showed the effectiveness of a multi-racial labor front and showed that class and Asian and Mexican shared oppression could be the unifier in labor organizing.
The racial dimensions of the JMLA victory against the WACC brought several issues to the attention of the mainstream American labor movement which traditionally refused to integrate minorities and agricultural workers into unions. While certain socialist groups and local factions of organized labor supported the organization of Japanese and Mexican farmworkers, the majority of AFL affiliates and leadership did not support the JMLA. This position was mostly based in anti-Asian attitudes and the traditional exclusion of farm laborers from AFL activities.
Following their victory against the WACC, the JMLA sought to charter as the Sugar Beet Farm Laborer's Union of Oxnard (SBFLU) under the American Federation of Labor (AFL). However, the JMLA withdrew their request to charter under the AFL after AFL president Samuel Gompers refused to recognize the membership of Asian laborers under the AFL.