Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 5, 1903 Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part I
From The International Socialist Review of August 1903
A Foretaste of the Orient
[-by John Murray Jr.]
[I of III]
The San Francisco Call March 25, 1903
The town of Oxnard is in Ventura county, about sixty miles north of Los Angeles, and was founded by the American Beet Sugar Company, in which Henry T. Oxnard is the central figure. On the evening of March 24, of the present year, the Associated Press dispatches announced that there was “riot” in Oxnard — that the Japanese and Mexican unions were terrorizing the town, shooting and killing peaceable non-union men, whose only desire was to exercise the right of American citizens and work for any wage they chose.
Being within a few hours’ ride of the place, the next morning’s train carried me to the gates of the sugar factory. My only companions on the car were a parcel of drummers, who were quite naturally anxious to know just how peaceful a state the town might now be in. To this end anyone who might know, and especially the conductor, was cross-questioned in a most thorough manner:
“How many men were killed-could the sheriff control the situation-was it safe for a traveling man to go about his business on the streets?” were some of the queries that received apparently confusing replies.
“Yes, there was a man killed and four others wounded-all union men-and the town is now quiet.”
“How’s that,” said a salesman for a wholesale hardware firm, “union men start a riot and only union men shot? Something queer about that! I know a house that shipped revolvers here last week-who bought ’em, that’s what I’d like to know. Couldn’t have been the unions if all the dead men are on the other side,”-which was without doubt a common sense conclusion from a purely business point of view.
Certainly the town seemed quiet, as I walked up from the station, the only noticeable thing being a little squad of Japanese union pickets that met the train and were easily recognized by their white buttons labeled “J. M. L. A.” (Japanese-Mexican Labor Association) over the insignia of a rising sun and clasped hands. Oxnard was full of those white buttons-and when the first thousand of them had been distributed, and no more obtainable, hundreds of beet thinners put red buttons in their button holes to show that they were union men.
On the presentation of my blue card, I was warmly welcomed at headquarters by J. M. Lizarraras and Y. Yamagachi, secretaries of the Mexican and Japanese unions. They had a plain tale to tell, and one which I found was fully borne out by facts known to all the towns folk-for even the petty merchants, strange to say, freely acknowledged that the men had been bullied, swindled and shot down, without reason or provocation.
The Beet Sugar Company had fostered the organization of a scab contracting company-known as the Western Agricultural Contracting Company-whose double purpose was to reduce the price of thinning beets from five to as low as four and a quarter dollars an acre, and at the same time undermine and destroy the unions. Not content with the lowering of wages, they also forced the men to accept store orders instead of cash payments, with its usual accompaniment of extortionate prices for the merchandise sold. These tricks, of course, are as old as the hills, and consequently when the men rebelled there was a great surprise among the labor skinners, who had no idea that Japanese and Mexicans would ever have wit enough to unite for mutual protection, or that if they did temporarily unite, their organization could possibly last for any length of time, with the obstacles of different tongues, temperaments and social environments to bring speedy wreck to such a union. But the men did organize, did hang together-in spite of the rain of bullets which were poured down upon them — and finally whipped Oxnard’s beet sugar company, with its backing of millions.
To Socialists it is needless to point out that to whip a capitalist to-day means nothing more than that you must fight him again to-morrow, but the significance of this particular skirmish, in the great class war, lies in the fact that workers from the Occident and Orient, strangers in tongues, manners and customs, gathered together in a little western village, should so clearly see their class interest rise above all racial feelings of distrust.
Almost as soon as the union was formed, Major Driffel, manager of the Oxnard sugar factory, asked that a committee confer with him. It was done, and the following significant sample of conversation which took place was opened by the major with this question:
“The object,” said Secretary Lizarraras, “is to keep the old prices. The Western Agricultural Contracting Company cut prices to control the business and we could not compete.”
“You have a perfect right to do so,” replied the Major, “but I have heard that you have a scale of prices which is detrimental to the interests of the farmers, and the interests of the farmers are our interests, because if you raise the price of labor to the farmers and they see they cannot raise beets at a profit, we will have to take steps to drive you out of the country and secure help from the outside-even if we have to spend $100,000 in doing it.”
With this ultimatum the union’s committee retired, and the war commenced in earnest. Secretary Yamagachi was arrested for holding an orderly street meeting and forced to furnish five hundred dollars bail-which he did, and was promptly acquitted by the jury that tried him. Two more Japanese were arrested for “disturbing the peace”-their offense being a successful persuasion of some thirty of their fellow countrymen to leave the company’s ranch and join the union. Failing in their attempts to break up the union by “legal” means, the union-smashers tried more forceful methods. Armed guards-drummed up from among the rifraf of the saloons-were stationed over the few non-union men that were still at work in the fields, and those who desired to quit the ranches, where they were “protected,” were not allowed to take their blankets, and, moreover, their pay was held up. Farmers sent orders into town for rounds of buckshot-cartridges, hoping with threats and intimidation to drive the men to their bidding. From the scab contracting company’s headquarters came rumors of the purchase of arms and ammunition in large quantities-and these were not false rumors, as the events that followed amply proved.
On Monday afternoon, of March 24, the employers played their last card and the crisis came. A farmer by the name of Arnold-notorious as a union hater -was deputized a constable, and, arming himself with two revolvers and considerable whisky, set about escorting a small number of scabs from the company’s boarding house to a nearby farm. A crowd of union men collected around the outgoing wagon, and, without show of force or violence, tried to persuade the scabs to join the union. The last scab to leave the boarding house for the wagon came out armed with a shotgun and revolver and the trouble commenced. The crowd tried to disarm him as he made his way through the press, and while a tussle for the possession of the shotgun was in progress, Deputy Constable Arnold stepped up behind a union man and shot him in the neck. This was the signal for a rain of bullets that poured down upon the crowd of unarmed union men from the doors and windows of the scab boarding house. Death followed the volley-one man being killed and four wounded.
All honor to the martyrdom of Louis Vasquez!-the first man to lay down his life for his mates in the town of Oxnard.
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