The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-08
Back Of the California "VigiIontes'
''TerrOr Cannot Smash
Workers Fight for
Life ITSELF
BY ORRICK JOHNS
Former Secretary, North California
branch Committee for Defense of
Political PriSoners)


branch Committee for Defense of
Political PrisOners)
IN 1882 two great movements
l were, maturing on the Pacific
Coast. Upon these movements hung
the only hope of the great masses of
California workers, reduced to con-
ditions which make some historical
forms Of slavery preferable. No more
than the dumb ass Of burden, or the
draft beast Of the plow, could the
majority Of these people raise their
levels of existence or even be heard
in their own defense.
These two great movements were
the welding together of urban work
ers and agricultural workers into
new organizations, with clear pro-
gram of struggle, and with honest
and fearless leadership.
The condition of the city workers
had been growing worse for gen.
Grafton. They had unions, but these
unions had become nothing but
stalking horses to conceal eorrup-
ton and cowardice. At the head
of them sat sly and willy bsrgainers,
long calloused in secret councils,
such as Paul Scharrenberg and
Michael Casey Of the San Francisco
Labor Council. Under their hypo-
critical thimble-rigging, wages fell,
privileges disappeared, the very fact
of union became a sham and pit
fall. Mooney was framed, scores
we're railroaded under the criminal
syndicalism laws, the unemployed
starved, militant organizations were
undermined, workers were shot, XII
Kluxed, tortured, while Scharren-
berg, Casey, King, ct al, smiled like
fat monks, counseled peace" to the
obedient and conspired with the en-
ployers and police.
The condition Of the agricultural
workers was somewhat different.
Most of them were that commodity
known as "cheap foreign labor"
eagerly imported by the growers in
the days when the profit on sweat
was the biggest item in the fruit
and vegetable fortunes. They had
no unions at all. Or if they had,
they were company unions, spawned
to suppress every struggle. Work
ers died in the internal fields of
ditch-water and fever. Nobody
bothered. The first demands of the
Agricultural and Cannery Workers
locals were for shower baths and
drinking water. But shower baths
meant machine guns, drinking water
meant terms of from to AZ years
in San Quentin.
Who has seen hundred young
vegetable-picker lined up in the side
of field, by deputies gun in hand |
and searched - for whatP For
weapons? No, for union cards.
What did Scharrenberg and Casey
do when six Vacaville fruit strikers
were logged and tarred by respec-
table citizens led by a justice of
the peace? They whitewaShed the
mob in an official statement.
What did they do when a cam
paign was conducted in 1888 to re-
peal the criminal Syndicalism law of
California? Scharrenberg, working
with his friends in the Judiciary
Committee, first denatured the re-
peal bill, and then conspired to have
it lost in the legislative dead house.
In the effort to build up honest, |
clear thinking and energetic unions
of the rank and file to displace the
snake-nests of the old guard, in the
task Of bringing them together into
strong political movement, the
Communist Party took a leading
part.
THE response among the toilers
1 was immediate. New words,
union" and fight" ran through the
cities and the countryside Of Cali
fornia. The docks, where men were