The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-12-30
BY ]. LOUIS ENGDAHL.

The discovery of gold in California in 1848,
while revolutionary struggles were raging in
urope, brought this section of the United
tates into the world linielight The gold rush
rev fortune hunters from every corner OF the
lobe California has ever since been known as
The Golden State
Today fruit raising, the Hollywood movies
reduction of cereals of every kind, enormous
hippng lumber and an endless flood OF oil, all
i,elp pour forth riches untold. in addition to the
resent mineral production of more than half a
iIlion dollars annually in gold silver, copper,
cad and quicksilver All this in addition to The
mushroom groyths of such internationally no.
orious religious rackets as Aimee McPhersons
-Four Square Gospel" has made California
famous" in a multitude of forms, proudly
tretching itself along more than half Of the
Pacific Coast line of the United States
Fury Workers in Prison.
! But this is also the infamous boss-ruled Cali
rornia that buries workers alive in its prison
dungeons when labor struggles miitantly to win
/ little more than mere crumbs from this enor-
nous wealth.
For the last % years especially California has
been the scene Of the most savage attacks on
he WORKING clcss, inaugurated with the life SEN
enceG ifr'poscd Oh John B. Mcnamara and
Matthew A. Schmidt in the employers war to
maintain the open shop in Los Angeles This
anti-labor attach, was directed by the notorious
nilit2rist Garrison Gray Otis, an army general
out lately returned from the suppression of the
Filipino resurrection against Yankee imperial
ism, who was editor CT the Los Angeles Times,
most malignant OF all capitalist dailes.
In the period Of the world war this same boss
class transferred its offensive to San Francisco
and attempted to send Tom Mooney to the gal
rfl,o ~, If vqs
muted to lie imprisonment, and the same SEN
tence nesed out to Warren K Billings, which
the California state supreme court has again
recently upheld in spite Of the confessions to
perjury OF all important witnesses.
Fcce Imperial Valley Victims.
Under the so-called criminal syndcalist" laws,
adopted in California in the postwar year Q819)
of red-oaiting hysteria, hundreds were thrown
into prison for long terms, until in recent years
1920 Yetta Stromberg. the 19-year-old Pioneer
leader at the Yucsipa Childran's Camp was ar
rested, convicted and sentenced to ten years
Imprisonment. While the leaders of the Imperial
Valley agricultural workers struggles have this
year been railroaoed to prison up to as high
as AZ year sentences life sentences, since no
prisoner survives AZ years in the black holes of
Folsom and San Quentin. This was the boss
class reply to the first real struggles Of Amer
ica's agrarian workers.
The struggle is organized and grows for the
liberation of these Imperial Valley prisoners Carl
sklar organizer of the Los Angeles Communist
Party; Tetsuji Horiuchi, Japanese organizer Of
the Trade Union Unity League; Oscar Erickson
national secretary of the Agricultural Workers
Industrial Union: Lawrence Emery, of the Mar
inc Workers Industrial Union: Frank Spector
Los Angeles organizer of the International Labor
Defense: Danny Roxas. Imperial Valley secre-
tary Of the Agricultural workers Industrial
Union: Eduardo Herrera and Braulio Orosco, both
Mexican workers.
The slogans of this struggle are being raised by
the workers of Latin America on the second
anniversary CT the massacre of 500 men,. women
and children of the fruit plantations of Colombia
South America when the workers went on strike
against the United Fruit Company, an American
monopoly, but were shot down by the gendar-
merle Of the local puppet government.
Strengthen Labor's Unity.
Free the Imperial DEATH Valley Prisonersl"
is an amagam knitting the unity of both North
and South American workers and building the
demand for the release of Mooney and Billings
Mcnamara and Schmidt the Centralia. the Port
land. the Atlanta prisoners, as well as other
victims OF capitalist class Justice, that now num-
Der into the hundreds, the majority Of whom
are in prisons in the three Pacific Coast states
of WASHINGTON. oregon and California, especial
ly in THE Golden State"
It is not a far cry from the banana planta-
IONS OF Colombia, soil stained red with the life's
I'd of slaughtered workers. and the fruit and
-e'e fields Of Southern Imperial Valley
where Negro and Mexican, Filipino.
nasiys White yeslen aoys pndeE "