Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 7, 1903 Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part III
From The International Socialist Review of August 1903
A Foretaste of the Orient
[-by John Murray Jr.]
[III of III]
The San Francisco Call March 28, 1903
Frightened at the turn [the strike] had now taken, Major Driffel, of the Beet Sugar Company, asked for a joint meeting of committees from the unions, the farmers and the company. The first day’s conference came to nothing, but at the second meeting the employers realized that they were facing a labor trust that had cornered all the available labor power in the valley, and so the men’s scale of prices was agreed to, with an additional pledge that all the idle union men would be immediately employed.
Twice, after this, the company tried to import a carload of scabs from Los Angeles-even going so far as to lock the last shipment in its car and receive them at the station with armed guards-but each time the new men joined the union as soon as they reached Oxnard-the last lot escaping from the car windows.
At this juncture, the Los Angeles County Council of Labor passed resolutions favoring the organization of all Asiatics now in California. This was done upon the recommendation of Comrade F. C. Wheeler, organizer for the A. F. of L. in Southern California, who had visited Oxnard, organized the two unions, and was much impressed by their fighting qualities.
So far everything was well with the beet thinners, the company whipped in the first battle of the local class-war and the field hands unionized. But a most unexpected and disheartening blow capped the climax of their struggles-a blow from behind. Samuel Gompers, while granting the Mexicans all rights and privileges, refused to grant the Japanese union a charter, and in his letter to Secretary Lizarraras made the following remarkable statement:
It is further understood that in issuing this charter to your union, it will under no circumstance accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese. The laws of our country prohibit Chinese workmen or laborers from entering the United States, and propositions for the extension of the exclusion laws to the Japanese have been made on several occasions.
In making such an extraordinary ruling, President Gompers has violated the expressed principles of the A. F. of L., which states that race, color, religion or nationality, shall be no bar to fellowship in the American Federation of Labor.
California, alone, contains over forty thousand Japanese who, if unorganized, will be a continuous menace to union men.
“Better go to hell with your family than to heaven by your self,”said the speaker whose stirring words decided the Mexican union to send back its charter to President Gompers, along with the following letter:
Oxnard, Cal., June 8, 1903.
Mr. Samuel Gompers, Pres. American Federation of Labor, Washington, D. C. Dear Sir: Your letter of May 13, in which you say: “The admission with us of the Japanese Sugar Beet & Farm Laborers into the American Federation of Labor cannot be considered,” is received. We beg to say in reply that our Japanese brothers, here, were the first to recognize the importance of co-operating and uniting in demanding a fair wage scale. They are composed mostly of men without families, unlike the Mexicans in this respect. They were not only just with us, but they were generous. When one of our men was murdered by hired assassins of the oppressors of labor, they gave expression of their sympathy in a very substantial form. In the past we have counciled, fought and lived on very short rations with our Japanese brothers, and toiled with them in the fields, and they have been uniformly kind and considerate. We would be false to them and to ourselves and to the cause of Unionism if we, now, accepted privileges for ourselves which are not accorded to them. We are going to stand by men who stood by us in the long, hard fight which ended in a victory over the enemy. We therefore respectfully petition the A. F. of L. to grant us a charter under which we can unite all the Sugar Beet & Field Laborers of Oxnard, without regard to their color or race. We will refuse any other kind of charter, except one which will wipe out race prejudices and recognize our fellow workers as being as good as ourselves. “I am ordered by the Mexican union to write this letter to you and they fully approve its words.
J. M. Lizarraras, Sec’y S. B. & F. L. Union, Oxnard.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 3, 1911 “Switched off the Main Line” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of November 1911:
ON the last of September, the long delayed strike of the System Federation among the shopmen of the Harriman lines took place, extending from the middle west to the Gulf in the south and taking in all that territory westward to the Pacific ocean.
The System Federation comprises the shopmen of ten different organizations. the principal ones being the International Association of Machinists, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Brotherhood of Blacksmiths and Helpers, International Association of Sheet Metal Workers, the steamfitters, clerks, painters, engine hostlers and members of the Federal Labor Union. The first five mentioned are the leading organizations involved. The international presidents of these unions, having had many conferences with Vice-President Kruttschnitt of the Harriman lines, finally called the strike on three lines, these lines being the Illinois Central, the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific lines.
The union officials claimed that 25,000 men came out. The railroad heads asserted there were only a few thousand at most.
In this strike there are just two questions with which the men in the ranks need concern themselves, and these are-hours and wages. The matter of recognition early in the fight was made the most of, but of all the issues involved, this was the most insignificant. However, the Federation heads insisted on making recognition the leading demand and pushing the first two fundamentals into the background.
Of all the questions at issue, that pertaining to the hours of labor is supreme. Men on strike can afford to make the matter of wages a secondary issue. It is the hours that count, for it cannot be too often repeated that shorter hours in variably mean higher wages.
Several thousand unorganized workers followed the union men out, and having been given the impression that the revolt was for an eight hour day and better conditions, they were eager for the fight.
But on learning that the question of hours and conditions was not going to figure in the struggle, and on hearing the incessant chant of the Federation heads that they asked only recognition for the Federation, the unorganized men soon lost interest and began to drift back into the shops.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 28, 1909
Spokane, Washington – June 29th Speech of Gurley Flynn, Part IV
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 15, 1909:
ELIZABETH G. FLYNN ADDRESS TO WORKERS
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(Concluded From Last Week)
Address of Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Organizer and Lecturer of the Industrial Workers of the World, given at Spokane, Wash., on Tuesday evening, June 29, 1909.
Employers Unite Industrially.
The tobacco trust is organized from the tobacco fields straight through all the productions to the United States cigar stores and sell it over the continent; the American woolen trust, from the backs of the sheep clear through the mills, where the cloth is sold to the wholesaler; the beef trust is organized from the ranchers of the West through the slaughter houses and packing houses, and even in through the tannery, where leather is tanned, and they are now grasping out for the shoe factories, where the shoes are made.
Everywhere in the field of industry you see the organization according to the commodity produced, from the source of the raw material straight through the distribution of the finished product; and you find that straight line of capitalist industry sliced across by the union, just a little slice here and there; and by that method a class that has no capital hope to defeat those that have every power at their command. We have only our organization, fellow workers; they have capital; they have the power of the government, the slugging community of the capitalist class; they have the power of the state; they have the power of international capital-and we have but our power of organization. They can call out against us the militia, the army and the navy, and we have no means of stopping it, until we are organized to shut off from that army and navy their supply of food and their means of transportation. (Applause.)
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 23, 1919
New York, New York – Chinese Fellow Workers Arrested and Deported
From the South Bend (Indiana) News of February 21, 1919:
RAID ON CHINESE I. W. W. MAY CAUSE DEPORTATIONS
[Detail]
I. W. W. Organizers: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Harry Kelly, Jack Isaacson, Carlo Tresca, and Frank Levy —–
Thousands of Chinese in the United States may be deported as a result of the recent discovery in New York of an active Chinese branch of the I. W. W. Just as Chinese there prepared to sow discontent among their fellow countrymen by misrepresentation, intimidation and other means the police stepped in and obtained sufficient evidence to cause the deportation of four Chinese. In the round up of the Chinese I. W. W. fifteen prisoners were taken and eleven remained to be tried by the federal authorities. The Accompanying pictures shows some of the most prominent agitators.
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