Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW: Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, California 9780292734722

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Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

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Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement Before the UFW Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i, California Dionicio noDín ValDés

University of Texas Press   Austin

Copyright © 2011 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2011 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html ♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Valdés, Dennis Nodín. Organized agriculture and the labor movement before the UFW : Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i, California / Dionicio Nodín Valdés. — 1st ed.   p.  cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-292-72639-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-292-73472-2 (E-book)  1. Agricultural laborers—Puerto Rico—History. 2. Labor unions—Puerto Rico—History. 3. Agricultural laborers—Hawaii—History. 4. Labor unions— Hawaii—History. 5. Agricultural laborers—California—History. 6. Labor unions—California—History. I. Title. HD1527.C2V35 2011 331.88′130973—dc22  2011001181

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1.

Colonizing a Movement: The Federación Libre de Trabajadores in Puerto Rico 25

2. Dreams of Democratic Unionism: The Confederación General de Trabajadores and Puerto Rican Agricultural Workers 60 3.

Up from Colonialism: Hawaiian Plantation Agriculture and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union 107

4. Challenges and Survival: Sustaining Agricultural Unionism in Hawai‘i 147 5. Marked in the Annals of the Labor Movement: The National Farm Labor Union, Organized Labor, and the DiGiorgio Strike 169 6. From Factory to Industrial Area: Areawide Organizing in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys 203

vi Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

Retrospective and Prospectus: The Labor Movement and Agricultural Workers 231 Notes 243 Glossary: Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Short Terms 275 Bibliography 279 Index 303

Acknowledgments

Over the years many people have offered me direction, inspiration, and assistance in completing this book, and some deserve my special thanks. Archivists and librarians in the many locations I have worked have been helpful, in particular Kathy Schmelling, in charge of the farmworkers’ collections of the Reuther Library, Eugene Vrana of the ILWU library, and the late Erick Pérez-Velasco of the Archivo General de Puerto Rico. David Myers, when he was at the Wisconsin Historical Society, introduced me to several important collections of great interest. I also wish to thank my dear friends Cindy Navarro and Robert Bowman for support and assistance on this project, for sharing the joy of interviews, and, along with union loyalist Tom Poy, for joining me in explorations of the Hamakua coast. Critical reading and insightful conversations with José Moreno, Luís Moreno, Ernesto Todd Mireles, Nora Salas, and Rochelle Trotter sharpened many parts of this work. August Nimtz and David Roediger provided helpful suggestions. I received valuable criticism from Luís González and Jorge Chinea, and I will long remember archiving with Jorge. I also thank Emilio Zamora and Gilbert González for criticism beyond the call of duty. Lastly, Huemac and Tekis allowed me respite from the job, and Guadalupe again helped to inspire and keep me on track.

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Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

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Introduction

Conquest is never civilized. ErnEsto Galarza, national Farm labor Union

California, Hawai‘i, and Puerto Rico, sites of the most concerted organizational campaigns by agricultural workers in lands under U.S. dominion in the early twentieth century, shared the experience of military and economic conquest and annexation in the nineteenth. This introduction will examine rural dimensions of those conquests, with a particular focus on the resulting social formations that agricultural workers faced in each setting. The conquerors promised that they would bring civilization and democracy to the lands they annexed, and more than a century later it is still widely believed the promise was central to their mission. The story I examine demonstrates that agricultural workers in the conquered lands were aware of the promises but quickly realized that their only hope of experiencing them would result from their own conscious collective struggles. The nineteenth-century conquests of Mexico, Hawai‘i, and Puerto Rico had distinct military and economic dimensions. Military conquest was well understood by one of its leading advocates and beneficiaries, Charles Magoon, military governor of the Panama Canal Zone (1905– 1906) and provisional governor of the Cuban Republic (1906–1909). As an attorney for the War Department’s Bureau of Insular Affairs, the agency responsible for the colonies, Magoon defined a military conquest as “a property seized as a spoil of war, and held to reimburse this nation for the loss of blood and treasure occasioned by the war.” A second type of conquest, economic, involved investors, supported and often encouraged by government officials from the United States and other major world

2 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

powers, gaining economic domination over foreign lands but not necessarily through direct rule. The late nineteenth century marked a critical period for economic conquests. The 1846–1848 U.S. military invasion of Mexico that culminated in the annexation of California preceded the economic conquest that subordinated the Mexican nation to its northern neighbor. In Hawai‘i economic conquest preceded military conquest, while in Puerto Rico government strategists planned a military conquest, which set the stage for economic conquest. Through military and economic conquests, the United States gained strategic and commercial advantage in competition with European powers, involving both formal and informal imperialism, “coercion . . . to extort profits above what simple exchange can procure.”1

Continental Empire The earliest military conquest of the three was California, which many considered the real “prize” the U.S. government sought when it provoked war with Mexico in 1846. The U.S. military conquest and annexation of California predated the economic conquest and modern corporations, and its leaders were not as concerned with global commerce or tapping labor pools as were their successors. But agriculture was important, and Anglo American land speculators and ranchers, led by military officers paid by the U.S. government, stood in the forefront of the earliest provocations against Mexicans in California, including the so-called Bear Flag Republic.2 In the aftermath of annexation in 1848, agricultural interests, including land speculators and bankers supported by politicians and bureaucrats representing local, state, and federal governments, enacted legislation and taxation policies and condoned violence that subordinated and marginalized former Mexican citizens. Even the ricos, the wealthy Mexican Californios, were dispossessed of most of their lands, and although they were United States citizens, they became increasingly marginalized from political and institutional life. They and their descendants did not belong to the class of large growers with whom organized workers periodically struggled in the twentieth century. Nor would a substantial working class descended from the Mexican Californios or Native Americans appear in the subsequent agricultural labor history of the state. But the military conquest and its immediate aftermath reinforced assumptions among European Americans that Mexicans were inferior while the ide-

Introduction 3

ology stemming from it subordinated them in the racial hierarchy into which they were incorporated.3 The conquerors deemed Mexicans less capable people, characterized by political incapacity and irresponsibility, which justified taking over their land. But the military conquerors did not speak to the capacity of Mexicans as workers. European Americans would have to re-imagine Mexicans as potential wage laborers in conjunction with the later economic conquest of Mexico. The military conquest was not a prerequisite for the economic conquest, but it reinforced notions of Mexican inferiority and helped convince both investors in the United States and elites in Mexico, often reimagined as Spaniards, that the U.S. economic model contained what Mexico needed. Accepting the underlying notion of the model—U.S. superiority—Mexican elites, the comprador caciques, were willing to accept the role of junior partners. Both became convinced that they as individuals as well as their nations stood to gain from the exploitation of Mexico’s resources and its working people. The economic conquest was conceived in the 1860s and reached fruition during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, the Porfiriato (1876–1910). Investors from the United States established corporations through which they set up banks, established railroads, purchased and refurbished mines, located oil wells, and acquired millions of acres of land for commercial agriculture.4 The corporations in Mexico provided raw materials of the industrial revolution, typically unprocessed or semi-processed, destined for the United States, where workers considered more highly skilled transformed them for industrial purposes and commodity consumption. European Americans were also interested in culture as they pondered, gazed, and re-imagined Mexico’s distant past, which they portrayed as continuing into the present, simultaneously exotic, partly civilized, but practically unchanging. Unlike the military conquerors of the 1840s, they were deeply interested in Mexico’s peasantry, whom they imagined as a fixture of the rural landscape, backward but malleable. While the economic conquistadores considered Mexicans inferior, as their predecessors had, the earlier invaders considered them an impediment to their acquisition of land and a potential threat to the institution of slavery in the South. The captains of the economic conquest, in contrast, were very interested in their economic potential, and depicted them as peons, naturally subservient and generally docile, who could provide labor on the railroads, in the mines, and on the haciendas, ranches, and plantations. They were, according to Gilbert González and Raul Fernández, “the first victims of Mexico’s modernization—that is, economic conquest.”5

4 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

The economic subordination of Mexico to the United States in the late nineteenth century was taking place in tandem with the global industrial revolution, highlighted by European military and economic conquests of territories in Asia and Africa. In its relations with Mexico, the United States accomplished similar goals as the European nations—expansion of markets, extraction of raw materials destined for the metropolis, and exploitation of labor under conditions of extreme control. In both, the relationship of metropolitan and peripheral settings intensified in conjunction with greater capitalist penetration. The major distinction between formal European colonial empires and the informal United States economic empire in Mexico was that in the latter case the metropolitan government was not the political administrator, a function performed by collaborating Mexican elites. The era of the Porfiriato marked an early phase in the neocolonial relationship between the two countries, of the informal empire.6 While the economic subordination of Mexico afforded wealth and power to foreign investors and benefits for the Mexican elite, it disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of rural Mexicans, displacing them from their lands and making it more difficult for them to produce their own subsistence. They were increasingly compelled to turn to wage labor in the expanding transportation, extractive, and agricultural sectors of Mexico, and they soon had linked international labor histories. Employers who invested in and managed Mexican railroads, mines, and cotton plantations had little difficulty being convinced that Mexicans were capable workers. Not surprisingly, the trains that transported products soon would be bringing workers living near those routes along the densely inhabited sections of central and western Mexico through the sparsely populated northern desert to the booming Mexican north. By the first years of the twentieth century, capitalists were recruiting the same workers into the United States for employment in sectors of the economy where they had already established large-scale operations in Mexico— particularly the railroads, the mines, commercial cotton ranches, and other sectors of agriculture.7 The international labor migration that burst forth geographically extended the neocolonial labor system based on Mexico’s economic subordination to the United States. It had much in common with contemporary colonial labor systems elsewhere—owners and bosses of European origin, differential wages between workers from metropolitan and peripheral settings justified by elaborate racial discourses, a job hierarchy unfavorable to Mexicans, unstable employment, and inequality sustained through the

Introduction 5

law and state-sponsored violence. The unfolding unequal relationship between the United States at the core, and Mexico at the periphery, was gradually intensifying.8 In California, agricultural investors were quick to take advantage of opportunities for profit as they and allies in government framed favorable legislation as well as banking and tax policies and made deals that ensured additional public investments in infrastructure and crop experimentation. The huge commercial ranches they acquired enjoyed many public subsidies. Their labor problems were more complicated because the local pool of agricultural workers was inadequate—neither the direct descendants of Mexican Californios nor Native Americans would be available in sufficient numbers. So again, operating in concert with government assistance, growers experimented with different groups of workers and labor regimes to meet their escalating demands. They sought U.S. citizen and European immigrant workers from different parts of the nation and even from Europe. More importantly, they turned to East Asia—particularly China, later Japan, and in the early twentieth century the Philippines. While recruiting from new lands, owners and managers constantly racialized workers to keep them divided and maintain control. Soon they were looking increasingly to and experimenting with workers from Mexico, able to take advantage of unequal economic relations between the two nations.9 Their search for the ideal, hard-working, low-paid, tractable, invisible worker never did cease. It is not surprising that under the circumstances—massive numbers of workers, instability of employment, and harsh working and living conditions—agricultural laborers in California organized and struck repeatedly. They often formed unions and frequently sought support from the mainstream of organized labor. But the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in most instances lived up to its reputation as a decentralized, exclusive organization for the “aristocrats of labor,” skilled workers, only infrequently showing interest in the marginalized immigrant workers in the California fields. Consequently, in the early twentieth century, agricultural workers more often formed their own ethnic unions or joined more radical organizations, including the Industrial Workers of the World, and at the onset of the Great Depression, the Communist Party.10 Organizers affiliated with the Communists demonstrated a commitment to workers of all backgrounds. A major party-led campaign among agricultural workers in California in the early years of the Great Depression stimulated and challenged other labor organizations, and it influenced the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). For

6 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

a brief period between 1937 and 1939 the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), a CIO affiliate, actively organized farmworkers, particularly in California. The widespread organizing and the interest expressed by agricultural workers posed a challenge even to the AFL, which granted local charters, particularly of its decentralized affiliate, the Agricultural Workers Union, to workers in California and other states. The Great Depression thus marked a surge in organizing and strike activity throughout the nation. Stuart Jamieson reported more than 275 agricultural strikes in the United States during the 1930s, half of them in California.11 Continued pressure from within finally convinced the AFL to commit to a serious, sustained campaign to organize California’s farmworkers at the end of World War II. It was coincidentally an unusual moment in the labor history of the state, when the majority of workers in large agricultural operations were European Americans, a condition that never occurred in the history of Hawai‘i.

Empire in the Pacific In the islands of the mid-Pacific, the economic conquest by the United States was a gradual process and had been largely accomplished by the time of the military conquest in 1893 and annexation in 1898. As economist Frank R. Rutter observed shortly after the islands were annexed, both conquests were “more closely connected with the sugar trade than is commonly supposed.”12 Global sugar consumption escalated after the Civil War and was intimately linked with the industrial revolution in both rural and urban settings. Sugar was an important battleground in the economic competition between the United States and Europe, as many governments invested heavily in research and technology and supported labor practices that encouraged sugar production in order to achieve national self-sufficiency. During the final three decades of the nineteenth century, beet sugar production in the world increased sixfold, while the industry’s share of the total rose from less than four-tenths to nearly two-thirds. By the early 1880s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was engaged in a campaign of research and promotion aimed at achieving domestic self-sufficiency, which involved increasing sugarcane production in Louisiana and establishing a domestic beet sugar industry in sections of the nation where it was feasible. However, domestic sugar consumption was escalating far beyond the capacity of government researchers and promoters, and by

Introduction 7

the 1880s, the cost of importing sugar had become the nation’s “largest single item of foreign expenditure.”13 As U.S. capitalists looked to foreign settings to satisfy the nation’s growing demand, they quickly turned to Hawai‘i. The sugarcane industry was the driving force behind the economic conquest of the Hawaiian Islands, and native Hawaiians were the first workers in the fields. However, from the moment of initial contact in the late eighteenth century, foreigners disrupted their lives in countless ways, leading to a shocking demographic holocaust comparable to that of the Caribbean following the arrival of Columbus, central Mexico in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and elsewhere in the Americas through the end of the nineteenth. Among the foreigners, those from the United States quickly gained the upper hand politically and economically, starting in the 1820s, when missionaries became advisors to the Hawaiian royalty and brought an ethnocentric and arrogant “imperialism of the spirit” to the land. They introduced a New England–centered Christian morality to the islands. But as Dr. G. Trousseau, former physician to King William Lunalilo, observed critically in 1893, the missionaries “brought exactly nothing,” while they imposed an additional drain on the labor of Hawaiians who built their houses, tended to their needs, and “did most menial work without compensation.”14 As advisors to the monarchy in the 1830s and 1840s, foreigners from the United States also introduced a new legal code based on a New England morality and legal universe of worker discipline, disrupting reproductive and familial patterns and further subjugating native Hawaiians. A critical moment was the Great Mahele of 1848 and accompanying legislation, which privatized lands of the kingdom. The privatization had at least three profound consequences. First, it made the Hawaiian nobility “largely indebted to the whites” who interpreted the laws. Second, it made it possible for European Americans to trade the chiefs out of a large portion of their shares. It happened so quickly that by 1851, H. L. Severance reported, “three-fourths, at least of the business done here is by Americans, and they already own much of the real estate. The sugar-planters are nearly all Americans, and have a strong interest in annexation to the United States.” Third, despite its professed intent of creating small farmers, the vast majority of the native population, at whom the law ostensibly was directed, did not receive any lands. Hunger and want accelerated as people were displaced from the use of land that formerly offered them security and subsistence.15 Native Hawaiian population decline continued as the islands were

8 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

drawn into the economic orbit of the United States. A decisive moment occurred when the foreign advisors convinced the Hawaiian monarchy to agree to the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty, which enabled the United States to establish a naval station at Pearl Harbor and to gain a near monopoly in commercial shipping. In 1902 economist Frank Rutter noted that while the original purpose was to obtain a coaling station, U.S. investment “soon became a stronger reason for maintaining the treaty,” which permitted the tariff-free importation of unrefined sugar into the United States. Commerce between the two nations accelerated, and “the sugar industry went into the hands of corporations” owned overwhelmingly by citizens of the United States or their descendants.16 The Reciprocity Treaty sealed the economic conquest as Hawai‘i experienced “an intoxicating increase of wealth, a new labor system, an Asiatic population, an alienation between the native and white races, an impoverishment of the former, an enrichment of the latter, and the many so-called revolutions.” United States minister to Hawai‘i John L. Stevens confirmed, “sugar is the chief source of the financial life—is the banking capital—on which the present and future prosperity of this country depends.” The group to benefit most from the Reciprocity Treaty was the small community identified with the United States, which owned threefourths of the value of the sugar plantations. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the Reciprocity Treaty, the Hawaiian government directly spent approximately two-thirds of the total cost for the importation of foreign laborers on behalf of the planters.17 Because of escalating sugar production, the Reciprocity Treaty encouraged planters to expand landholdings rapidly, further displacing small farmers and resulting in dependency on foreign trade from the United States for “nearly all of the articles required in daily life and in the industries of the islands.” While the sugar industry was booming, a contemporary critic observed, apart from one large sugar interest, “none of the American firms or planters ever brought a cent from the United States here. In dividends and investments they have exported millions of dollars.”18 As the Hawaiian economy boomed, its planter-dominated monarchy wrote increasingly elaborate legislation to maintain control over workers that included a system of fines and imprisonment for those who failed to obey commands, refused to work, or were unwilling to complete the terms of their contracts. The combination of displacement from the land, intensification of the labor process, and expanding production contrib-

Introduction 9

uted further to native Hawaiian population decline, which compelled planters to look abroad. Like their counterparts in California, planters in Hawai‘i experimented with workers from around the world and with distinct labor relations. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, many of them sought out Europeans. In one experiment, a small group recruited from Norway quickly gained attention because they used the law and gained popular support to protect themselves from the terrible conditions of employment. While their treatment as plantation workers was not atypical, what was unusual was their willingness to challenge authority and abuse, along with the sympathetic attention they received. Not surprisingly, the planters’ experiment with Norwegian workers ended quickly. Reflecting on employers’ overall experience with Europeans, plantation manager William Blaisdell concluded that “they did not seem suitable. They could not stand working in the sugar cane.”19 The exception was a large contingent of Portuguese workers imported by the Hawaiian government. Manager Blaisdell reported that planters considered them “a more desirable class of employees than any other class of laborers” brought to Hawai‘i, but they were considered too expensive. This was attributable in part to the higher cost of importation from Portugal than from East Asia. But it was also standard practice to recruit adult Portuguese men along with their wives and children, who rarely worked in the fields, in contrast with Asians, usually recruited as adult men who came alone. Furthermore, the Portuguese men “received higher rates of wages” along with “free house room, fuel, [and] medical attendance for the whole family.” It was a self-fulfilling prophecy that plantation manager C. B. Wells unwittingly formulated, suggesting that the Portuguese are “the best class of labor we have. . . . The only drawback is you have to pay them more wages. They can not live as cheaply as the Japanese and Chinese. For that reason we have quit bringing them.”20 The economic boom wreaked further havoc on native Hawaiians and instilled fear of total loss of control by the monarchy, which was increasingly dominated by foreigners. Interested in the simple survival of its subjects, in the late 1880s the monarchy attempted to regain control by insuring native Hawaiian representation in the cabinet and other government posts, which upset planters and their allies, who turned directly to politicians and diplomats from the United States who had long coveted Hawai‘i. As J. M. Stevens, minister plenipotentiary to Hawai‘i, observed, since the days of John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster, “we have avowed the superiority of our interests to those of all other nations,

10 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

and have always refused to embarrass our freedom of action by any alliance or arrangement with other powers as to the ultimate possession and government of the islands.”21 The foreigners provoked a crisis over a proposed change in the cabinet that resulted in the 1887 Revolution, in which the monarchy backed down, resulting in a pro-planter cabinet. Then in 1890, the proposed McKinley tariff, which would have rescinded the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty and abrogated planters’ privileged access to the U.S. market, convinced many to seek annexation in the expectation of permanent free trade. The proposed tariff frightened planters and caused a sharp decline in the price of sugar. In early 1893 a nervous Queen Lydia Lili’uokalani, upset with rising haole (white) arrogance and disdain for the Hawaiian elite and commoners, again proposed a change in her cabinet to ensure a more equitable representation of the native majority. Her proposal became the pretext for a group of foreign conspirators, prodded by Foreign Minister Stevens, to stage a coup against the monarchy and seek immediate annexation to the United States.22 Stevens plotted openly and promised the conspirators protection from possible arrest and imprisonment, as well as support from the U.S. Navy and Marines stationed in Honolulu. The February 1893 coup succeeded, the conspirators took control without a battle, and the U.S. government promptly recognized the Hawaiian Republic. As U.S. Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham reported later in the year: “the troops were landed not to protect American life and property, but to aid in overthrowing the existing government.” The Hawaiian monarchy “surrendered its authority under threat of war” with the United States. John F. Colburn, a member of the cabinet of the Queen, explained that the coup leaders lacked either popular or military support, and “we would have annihilated them were it not for the United States troops and minister Stevens.” Sugar magnate Claus Spreckles acknowledged that the coup occurred against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the population, and that the planters “do not want the natives to vote.” William Cornwall, a planter and U.S. citizen, concluded that the proposed McKinley Tariff of 1890, which caused sugar prices to plummet, along with sugar planters’ fear of the loss of power, “were the only and true reasons for the revolution. The prospect of the sugar bounty is the main motive for the desire to be annexed,” along with an expectation that an economic boom would follow.23 But annexationist efforts in Congress were opposed by Democrats upset about the flagrant violation of international law in the overthrow of a friendly government. A new round of imperial politics, involving the struggles for indepen-

Introduction 11

dence in Cuba and the Philippines shortly prior to the U.S. declaration of war against Spain, again thrust Hawai‘i into the limelight. Hawaiian annexation was stalled in Congress in late 1897 and early 1898, as Democrats were not swayed by racist fears that with “the silent invasion of Asiatics the people would lapse into barbarism and even the confiscation of American property might result.” In fact, “annexation was well-nigh a dead issue until the victory of Commodore Dewey at Manila brought more clearly to light American interests in the Pacific.” The war demonstrated the strategic value of Hawai‘i when the government of the Hawaiian Republic, “in violation of the international laws of neutrality, permitted American ships to coal at Honolulu and to make the city a base of war and naval supplies” for the U.S. Pacific fleet in preparation for its invasion of the Philippines. Continued control of Hawai‘i would make it easier for the United States to expand its political and economic empire in the Pacific. Journalist Amos Fiske wrote on July 3, 1898, “if we are to look for a large extension of our commercial relations, to extend political relations will necessarily accompany the naval power that has to guard commerce in the present stage of the world’s development . . . if in the end we are to keep the Philippines, most surely we must have the Hawaiians.” The United States annexed Hawai‘i three days later as an incorporated territory.24 As Claus Spreckles recognized in 1891, Hawai‘i was already under the economic and cultural sway of the United States: The Hawaiian Islands are American in sentiment and sympathy. Visitors from the United States to Honolulu feel themselves at home the moment they land from the steamship. There is nothing in the social conditions to remind them that they are on foreign soil. Hotels and stores are conducted on the American plan. American money is the circulating medium. Outdoor sports and popular amusements are fashioned on the American pattern, and the Fourth of July is a national holiday. . . . The native Hawaiian people look to America as their best friend.25

The overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy had important parallels to the uprising that resulted in the formation of the Republic of Texas in 1836. In both settings European American leaders staged a “revolution” in which they sought immediate annexation to the United States. When internal divisions in Congress stalled their efforts, the “revolutionaries” declared a Republic that the United States government soon recognized. Another parallel was the relative economic, political, and social decline

12 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

of the native Mexican and Hawaiian populations following annexation. In both settings commoners were marginalized while elites shared few of the fruits of the boom in commercial agriculture, primarily plantation cotton in Texas and sugar in Hawai‘i. Still another similarity was that in neither setting were the new citizens of the United States, formerly citizens of Mexico and Hawai‘i, sufficient in numbers to contribute substantially to the rapidly expanding agricultural labor force. Following annexation Hawaiian planters, recognizing that their attempts to lure Europeans yielded little, realized that workers from East Asia would be their most important source of labor. As they turned away from Chinese workers, in the 1890s they focused mostly on Japanese immigrants, who quickly became the majority in the fields. But Japan was not subordinated by European or U.S. imperialism, and employers soon became convinced that Japanese workers were not tractable enough, particularly after the conquest and subjugation of the Philippines offered them a more pliant force of rural workers, subjects but not citizens of the United States. An early experiment with Puerto Rican colonial subjects had very modest success, and plantation owners almost immediately turned to Filipinos, whose recruitment peaked between the early years of the century and the early 1930s.26 Planters could exclude Japanese immigrants and Filipino colonial subjects from a presence in institutional political life that citizens enjoyed, while contributing in their own ways to the anti-Asian racism rampant in the continental United States and pervasive in the American Federation of Labor. Organized labor showed little interest in Hawaiian plantation workers, who were thus compelled to form their own ethnic organizations when they organized to protest. The Asian workers were fortunate to arrive in a context of sharply escalating demand for labor due to expanding sugar production and the geography of Hawai‘i, isolated in the middle of the Pacific and distant from large populations, which made labor recruitment expensive. Growers decided to establish paternalistic relations, which allowed them a great deal of control but with some positive features for workers including steady and long-term employment and residence in stable plantation communities with housing provided. Following annexation a majority of Asians who were recruited remained on the islands, some staying on the plantations and others moving into towns and cities.27 As long as they were noncitizen workers barred from participation in institutional political affairs and racial minorities excluded from the mainstream of organized labor, growers could tolerate their occasional protests and strikes, aware that the too frequent use of blacklisting or deportation was counterproductive be-

Introduction 13

cause of the expense of recruitment and transportation of replacements. While workers faced a distinctly Hawaiian version of European American racism and limits imposed by the designation of Hawai‘i as an incorporated territory, they were fortunate to reside in a richly multiethnic setting where they encountered less competition from the demographic minority haole population. Furthermore, in the stable communities where they lived and worked, at least they could hope for a better life for their citizen children. Their working and organizational experiences in the fields contrasted sharply with those of the resident sugarcane workers of Puerto Rico, which was annexed only a few months after Hawai‘i.

Imperialism and the War of 1898 Puerto Rico had attracted the interest of annexationists since the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, but the occasion for military conquest arose only in the late 1890s in conjunction with the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). To many observers it is puzzling that a protracted, brutal war broke out in Cuba while very little happened in neighboring Puerto Rico. Much attention has focused on leaders, particularly the hardened combatants involved in the Guerra de Diez Años (Ten Years’ War, 1868–1878) and the Guerra Chiquita (Little War, 1879–1880), who fought for political independence and the abolition of slavery.28 Leaders could conceive, plan, inspire, and gain support from the outside, but the staying power of war would require the support of thousands of soldiers and other local residents, overwhelmingly rural working people. To understand what became a war of military conquest for the United States in 1898, it is necessary to examine the political economy and its impact on the rural working people of the two islands. While both Cuba and Puerto Rico were overwhelmingly agricultural, their late-nineteenth-century economies followed substantially different trajectories. Cuba’s links with the world economy intensified sharply in response to the rapid increase in demand for sugar. Production increased sharply, and with it the self-sufficient agricultural hacienda, with its accompanying steam-powered sugar mill (ingenio), was replaced by the huge sugar processing factory (central), separated from the capitalist plantation, whose product was oriented for export. Cuban dependence on sugar production accelerated with rising international consumption in the 1880s and early 1890s. It was the world’s leading producer of sugar, almost all exported to the United States. While Cuba was still a political colony

14 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

of Spain, it was becoming an economic colony of the United States. But the intensive focus on sugarcane took place at the expense of other crops, particularly those for subsistence, and required massive imports of foodstuffs from abroad to feed plantation workers. By the early 1890s, one observer noted that sugar had become “the staple industry of Cuba and gives employment to nearly two-thirds of the population.”29 The Cuban economy and its rural wage-earning workers were dependent on a single industry and vulnerable to economic cycles that influenced prices and levels of production. Meanwhile Puerto Rico did not share in the late-nineteenth-century sugar boom, had a more diverse agriculture, and was less dependent on the world economy. Its rural proletarianization was driven by coffee, which did not dominate the island’s economy to the same degree as did sugar in Cuba. Puerto Rican coffee went primarily to markets in Europe, while a much smaller sugar crop went to the United States. The Puerto Rican economy was not reeling from the economic depression, as historian Laird Bergad observes, and “wage rates rose considerably in the 1890s when labor demand was most intense because of rising coffee prices.” The island also benefited from substantial exports of other items, including tobacco and cattle, reflecting a much more balanced trading profile than Cuba’s. Its diverse agricultural economy involved commercial links with Spain, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Cuba, as well as the United States, whose merchants and investors were much less familiar with the island than with Cuba and held comparatively little control over its commerce.30 Furthermore, rural proletarianization proceeded more slowly than in Cuba, as Puerto Rico was still “essentially the land of the small farmer” and “the great majority of these little farms are owned by their occupants.” In contrast with Cuba, in Puerto Rico “the agriculture is so diversified that sufficient food is produced for the sustenance of the inhabitants.” According to one study there were eleven hundred large holdings devoted to tobacco, coffee, and sugar, functioning as self-sufficient haciendas whose residents could survive economic downturns. The study added that “the greater proportion of the island is cultivated in individual holdings,” including thirteen thousand smaller farms in fruits and vegetables; four thousand in fruits and coffee; and four thousand in miscellaneous crops. Its crop diversity was indeed impressive, as farmers on the island produced, among other items, tomatoes, potatoes, yams, peas, maize, numerous varieties of oranges and bananas, plantains, lemons, limes, coconuts, guavas, alligator pears, pineapples, avocados, guavas,

Introduction 15

honey, and root crops including sweet potatoes, yams, and yautia. They also raised mules, asses, sheep, hogs, goats, cattle, and horses. The average Puerto Rican farm in 1890 was forty-five acres, of which twelve were cultivated. Of the area under cultivation 41 percent was devoted to coffee, 15 percent to sugar, crops that went mostly to market; while 14 percent were for bananas and 8 percent for sweet potatoes, primarily for subsistence. Coffee was the main cash crop on the haciendas and the small farms but could not be grown alone, as the sensitive coffee bushes had to be shaded, most often by larger banana trees.31 As commercial production increased, hacendados adopted a range of mechanisms to gain greater control over land and labor. Among the most important, they “‘graciously’ allowed peasants the use of land under their dominion in exchange for work by the peasants in the hacienda.” Whether or not they had formal title to the land, the coffee farmers in the hilly sections and mountainsides in the interior of the island were compelled to engage in intercropping, which allowed them space for fruits, vegetables, chickens, and grazing animals, for both consumption and for sale. The rural people of Puerto Rico relied for subsistence on a “banana diet,” the fruit of which was a medium of exchange in the island’s cash-poor economy, so producing coffee for the market did not interfere with growing food for personal consumption. In many locations, fifty bananas constituted a standard day’s wages for workers being drawn into the world economy. Because of its self-sufficiency in food production, one contemporary observer noted, prior to the War of 1898 and the devastating hurricane of 1899, despite poverty in Puerto Rico, “there was no actual starvation.”32 But Azel Ames, a sanitary engineer and surgeon researching on behalf of the U.S. Department of Labor during the military occupation of 1898–1900, recognized that the economic self-sufficiency of the Puerto Rican peasantry was an obstacle to the large-scale capitalist agriculture of the plantation, which government planners considered key to the island’s future. He observed that “until the natives could be made to want something there was no available means for reaching them.” Elaborating on the matter, Frank Colby, a professor of history and economics, observed that “the great drawback to developing the agricultural possibilities of the island, and thus furthering the well-being of the people, is that the laborers are not in absolute need of anything more than they have.” Meanwhile, wage labor was not attractive, as the major commercial crops, coffee, tobacco, and sugar, “have not been capable of paying more than the smallest wages.” As long as rural working people could produce for themselves or

16 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

otherwise obtain a major portion of their subsistence needs, they would not have to work for others and would not be willing to work on the sugarcane plantations.33 The survival of haciendas and small peasant holdings and the paucity of sugar centrales with separate plantations, coupled with the lack of dependence on wage labor, further suggest that the economic conquest of Puerto Rico had not kept pace with that of Cuba, which had important implications in the struggles for independence. The war-hardened veteranos of the earlier wars in Cuba spent more than a decade and a half planning and plotting before they again launched an offensive against Spain, the War of Independence, in 1895. They consciously chose a moment in the midst of the severe worldwide economic depression that began with the Panic of 1893 and the loss of reciprocity in 1894, as the Cuban economy went into a tailspin and the world price of sugar sank to its lowest level yet. Not surprisingly, the depression “seriously affected the sugar trade,” and as planters found production unprofitable, massive numbers of agricultural workers were “thrown out of employment.” The economic collapse, as Massachusetts-born planter Edward Atkins, owner of a sugar estate near Cienfuegos, observed, “offered the best encouragement to [José] Martí and other Cubans who had long been working to foment insurrection.” Cuban revolutionary leaders found “ready recruits among the unemployed.”34 The revolutionary leaders immediately focused on the rural economy and “made it their first object to destroy the most important class of capital in Cuba; from the outset they relied for success on the power to stop the planters from making sugar.” They sought to “halt cultivation and manufacture of sugar which they did not themselves sanction,” and to “burn canefields and ruin factories” of planters who refused to cooperate. Consequently, “many thousands of labourers were thrown out of employment, and for these emigration or revolution were practically the only alternative.” The movement spread rapidly from its initial base in Oriente, the easternmost province, to the central and western provinces, heart of the sugar industry where anti-Spanish forces during the earlier Ten Years’ War had failed to establish a foothold, unable to gain support from rural peasants or plantation workers. Not surprisingly, the majority of the soldiers and guerrillas fighting for independence were Afro Cubans.35 The war in Cuba intensified the economic depression. Sugar production on the island fell from more than 1 million tons in fiscal 1894 to only 212,000 tons by 1897. The economic impact was most telling on its major

Introduction 17

market, the United States, where Cuban exports fell in value from $89 million to $18 million.36 Why the uprising in Cuba was not replicated in Puerto Rico has often been explained by the roles of political leaders. Many Puerto Ricans were mollified by the offer of an Autonomista (Autonomous) government by the Spanish Crown in 1897, which granted universal male suffrage. The Autonomista government was dominated by hacendados, particularly coffee growers who were faring well economically during the 1890s. Furthermore, hacendados controlled the lives of agricultural workers and peasants not only through economic means, but also through mutual services and ritual ceremonies, creating “a culture based on deference and paternalism.” Peasants and workers were also faring comparatively well at the time, making it easier for the hacendado class to win their vote in the local elections of 1898 under the Autonomista government. But Puerto Rico also had pro-independentista (pro-independence) exiles in Europe and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and there were Puerto Rican independentista organizations, often operating in conjunction with Cuban counterparts in the United States. It is important to emphasize that the Puerto Rican political elite were not hardened by war in the 1860s and 1870s, let alone in the 1890s. The experience of fighting would have afforded them greater understanding as well as the esteem of rural workers. Among Puerto Ricans, there was a sharp class rift between middle-class independentista leaders and the majority population of peasants and workers that hindered the realization of warfare against Spain and profoundly influenced early-twentieth-century political and labor activities in the colony.37 Also important in understanding the immediate course of the struggles against Spain was the impact of the economic depression on the two islands. The economic downturn did not hurt coffee exports to Europe, which actually increased in the mid-1890s. Unlike the struggling sugar planters of Cuba, who were upset that the Spanish government was not assisting them, the coffee growers of Puerto Rico were experiencing good times economically and had little motivation to sever relations with Spain. The impact on workers also differed profoundly. Cuba’s large rural working population, heavily dependent on employment in the sugar industry, was devastated by the economic depression and driven by hunger to join the revolution. Puerto Rican rural coffee workers were employed in an expanding industry and enjoyed rising wages even during the nadir of the economic depression. A much larger portion of them were still peas-

18 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

ants who produced their own food, and even rural workers who labored on haciendas were granted garden plots, and they could survive by growing and exchanging the abundantly available local foods, particularly bananas, root crops, coconuts, seafood for those who lived near the coast, and other items of easy access but lacking a profitable commercial market. The combined staying power of the Cuban insurgents and their scorched earth policy, which intensified the economic devastation and the impact of tropical diseases on Spanish soldiers, were taking their toll. As historian Louis Pérez argues, by the end of 1897, there was a widespread perception in Spain and Cuba that the days of Spanish rule were numbered, and that the exhausted Spanish troops had lost their will to fight. For the Spanish cause, as the war dragged on, domestic opposition intensified and the resolve of the monarchy to continue was wearing down.38 Meanwhile, opinion in the United States became increasingly divided. There was strong support for Cuba Libre, Cuban independence. In late 1897, even the former United States minister to Spain, Hannis Taylor, was arguing that the “time had arrived for the United States to recognize the independence of Cuba.” But the voices of annexationists in Congress and the administration were becoming increasingly shrill. The Naval War College had been preparing contingency plans for a possible war with Spain since 1894, and those plans became more elaborate following the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence. Neither the administration of Grover Cleveland nor that of William McKinley supported Cuba Libre, and both worked feverishly to prevent its success. By the end of 1897 the administration was overtly supporting an updated version of Manifest Destiny as “starving reconcentrados (Cuban civilians herded into concentration camps to prevent them from supporting insurgents) and struggling Cubans crowded quite into the background of our imagination to make room for our own larger prospects and ambitions.”39 The sinking of the battleship Maine in mid-February emboldened annexationists, but advocates of Cuba Libre remained committed. The rift between the two was ultimately resolved by a compromise—the Teller Amendment, enacted on April 16, 1898, only nine days before the United States declared war. The Amendment explicitly disclaimed interest in exercising “sovereignty, jurisdiction or control” over Cuba, and at the end of its pacification promised “to leave the government and control of the island to its people.” It was a compromise on several levels. First, the United States disavowed intent to establish a formal colony on Cuba and thus appeased advocates of Cuba Libre. But it left the door open for the United States to establish a four-year military occupation (1898–1902),

Introduction 19

ending with the Platt Amendment (1902–1934), which made Cuba a protectorate, appeasing annexationists. Repeated political interference and interventions by the United States throughout the period compromised the sovereignty of the Cuban Republic. The Teller Amendment further placated annexationists because it was silent on the status of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, permitting Congress to declare them unincorporated territories, formal colonies whose residents were not automatically considered citizens of the United States, in contrast to legal residents of incorporated territories like Hawai‘i. They were the prizes of war obtained by military conquest. Prior to the Teller Amendment some military planners were still interested primarily in coaling stations and military bases, but immediately afterward, “the question of Porto Rico seems quite inevitable and meets little opposition.” From that moment forward it was openly recognized that annexing Puerto Rico as a colony of the United States “has been the plan from the first.” Immediately before the United States declared war with Spain, the administration had determined that after the war it would establish a military government of occupation in Puerto Rico and that it would annex the island.40 The war strategy of the administration was to avoid any peace negotiations with Spain until it could bolster claims on the territories through military conquest. In its first bellicose act after declaring war on April 25, the United States Pacific Squadron bombarded Manila on May 1, and Spain agreed to surrender the entire Philippines archipelago with little further ado. War planners hoped to repeat their success at Manila by adopting the “naval option” for Puerto Rico. But the bombing of San Juan on May 12 did not achieve the desired effect, as the city was heavily fortified and Spanish military officers were unwilling to surrender the entire island on such a flimsy pretext. The following week, Acting Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt urged a friend in the Senate: “Do not make peace until we get Porto Rico.” The McKinley administration realized that if it wanted to stake a claim on the island it would have to stage an invasion. But there were not enough trained troops available, so the attack would have to be placed on hold for a few more weeks. On May 24, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, an imperialist, was also adamant: “Porto Rico is not forgotten and we mean to have it.”41 In early June U.S. troops invaded the south coast of Cuba at Guantánamo and soon gained control of Santiago de Cuba and the surrounding region. Spain again attempted to negotiate to end the hostilities, but McKinley again instructed negotiators not to accept a truce until the U.S. military could claim Puerto Rico, a sine qua non of peace. Time was of

20 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

the essence, Secretary of State William Rufus Day recognized in early June, to “capture Puerto Rico before Spain sues for peace.” Occupation would be necessary, he insisted, because Puerto Rico “is the indemnity” of war. Finally, U.S. troops landed on the southwestern coast of the island at Guánica on June 25, an event depicted as “uneventful,” and within two weeks they had gained control of much of the south and west, with little resistance from Spain. It is notable that when the armistice was declared on August 12, U.S. forces occupied neither Havana nor San Juan, the capital cities, nor their surrounding regions, and had obtained a Spanish surrender of the Philippines after a single day of bombing. Understandably, some Spanish military leaders protested that there were more battles to be fought, but the Crown had long lost the will to fight, without regard to the wishes of some military leaders or the inhabitants of the island colonies.42 Puerto Rican leaders who advocated independence—much less experienced in military warfare and with a much smaller community in the United States than Cuban leaders like José Martí—were surprised by the military conquest and annexation. Julio Henna, the president of the Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico, advocating independence, supported the invading troops because like many of his countrymen he believed that the United States was the “classic land of liberty” and lacked territorial ambitions. Another influential Puerto Rican, General Antonio Mattei Lluveras, who joined General Nelson Miles at Guánica, assumed that the invaders would not seek to place a person from the United States “at the head of affairs in the island.” But the McKinley administration had already determined that the island would be occupied and held indefinitely.43 Puerto Rico was the prize of war, as a strategic location that could serve as a base for expansion of the U.S. commercial empire into the Caribbean and Latin America, a “natural stepping stone to South America,” and a “laboratory for Americanization.” But investors were not familiar with the island. So the military government hired engineers and researchers, who, along with the commercial press and travelers, unveiled its promise and promoted its commercial potential. Even before the declaration of war, the promotion had begun, as it was widely asserted that “Puerto Rico is unusually fertile.” In March 1898 the press was lauding Puerto Rico for “the most healthful climate and the most productive soil . . . the plains and the lowlands are exceedingly productive . . . foreigners become easily acclimated.” Less than two weeks before the invasion, Amos K. Fiske of the New York Times reported that “the soil is most prolific and the climate especially salubrious,” but “the real need is enterprise and industry.” A few

Introduction 21

days later, he reassured investors that local Puerto Ricans offered great potential as workers: “the labor force already there has never been half utilized. . . . The population is not ignorant or indolent or in any way degraded. It is not turbulent or intractable, and there is every reason to believe, under encouraging conditions it would become industrious, thrifty and prosperous.”44 Economic conquest was intertwined with military conquest, and a leading imperialist, Senator Joseph Foraker of Ohio, claimed in October: “as a matter of simple business policy we owe it to ourselves to retain the whole of the Philippines and Porto Rico,” and not just acquire coaling stations. The fate of the two former Spanish colonies was up to the Congress, as Article IX of the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898, declared: “the civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of the territories hereby ceded to the United States will be determined by Congress.” It was the culmination of the turn-of-the-century version of Manifest Destiny, as economist H. H. Powers argued in 1898, and it was “not accidental or capricious, scarcely even voluntary.” Rather, it was “the natural outcome of forces constantly at work in the race and exceptionally characteristic of the American people,” namely of annexing empires while “disguising our ambitious commercial schemes under pretexts that are now forgotten.”45 Following the treaty, the military government of 1898–1900, while concerned about pacifying the country, devoted most of its energy and resources to creating conditions for opening new markets “to American producers and manufacturers.” The administration sent engineers, researchers, and social scientists to study the people and the land. A member of one government expedition, geologist Herbert Wilson, wrote in 1900 that the group of which he was a part, “with the energy and thirst for knowledge which characterizes our people, commenced a scientific crusade against the oblivious which envelopes our knowledge of the resources of Porto Rico.” The researchers, like other policy makers, recognized that each territory of “which we have lately come into possession is the natural habitat of the sugar cane.” Furthermore “the commodity of which we stand most in need is produced in the greatest abundance in the new possessions . . . it is only necessary to stimulate the production of sugar in the colonies” to supply those needs.46 The metropolitan state meanwhile “designed policies to encourage national capital to invest in the colony,” “laws to protect the property and privileges of United States business and citizens,” tariff, fiscal, land tenure, and monetary measures and cheap labor policies that “con-

22 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

verted Puerto Rico into an investor’s paradise.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed or widened roads, built dams, drained swamps, cleaned up trash, eliminated or contained certain tropical diseases to increase workers’ productivity, and set up schools aimed at Americanization, which meant for colonized people, “above all, remaining in your place.” The efforts ensured that the United States would control trade and that investors would find certain profits in the planned expansion of the sugar industry. The primary geographic focus was the south, centered on the commercial city of Ponce, and including the port of Guánica, the initial site of the invasion, which had the largest anchorage on the south shore. The north coast, including the capital of San Juan, was portrayed in less favorable terms, as a bureaucratic city, although friendly to commercial possibilities.47 Not surprisingly, during military occupation the two largest sugar complexes in the colony were set up on the southern coast: Central Aguirre Sugar Syndicate (1899) headquartered in Salinas, and the South Porto Rico Sugar Company (1900) in Guánica. Both were incorporated in the United States and promptly established classic company towns. The promoters of enterprise portrayed Puerto Rico differently in some important ways than their predecessors in California a half century earlier. The lack of knowledge that had turned the former Mexican north into a “Virgin Land” converted Puerto Rico into an “undeveloped country.” The difference was that the military conquerors of 1846 and 1847 were trying to erase and remove Mexicans and native Americans from their midst, while those of 1898 were clearly aware of Puerto Ricans’ presence and importance to ensure development—as workers. It involved manipulating race much differently, and geologist Herbert Wilson was up to the task, explaining that the Puerto Rican peasants, “Gibaros,” were of mixed racial stock, but with “Spanish blood evidently predominating. . . . The negro is rarely seen,” and so “the negro problem is practically eliminated from the island.”48 Government promotion of the sugarcane industry was made easier not only by legislation, investments, and researchers; nature was also on its side. The 1899 hurricane devastated the coffee industry, and it did some damage to sugarcane. However, with cane lands planted year after year in the same location, the soil “is much impoverished in many places,” so the hurricane was actually a blessing in disguise, “bringing down silt and fine sand or organic matter” to the fields below. As military governor Brigadier-General George W. Davis reported in December 1899, as a result of the hurricane the previous August, “sugar-cane was greatly injured

Introduction 23

by overflows and sedimentation, but was benefited—that is, fertilized— by the same for future crops.”49 Following military conquest, the metropolitan government ensured that in Puerto Rico, sugarcane would be the driving force of economic conquest. The economic and political conquests by the United States in California, Hawai‘i, and Puerto Rico did not widen political participation or spread democracy to the rural working people newly incorporated into the empire. In the case of California, the intrusion of a government that lauded its form of electoral democracy nevertheless disenfranchised Mexican Californios, including the elite. In Hawai‘i, conquest created a republic dominated by plantation owners who were able to displace native Hawaiians from significant influence in politics. With annexation, the haoles in control were even more effective in excluding the growing majority, sugarcane workers from East Asia, from a voice in institutional affairs. In the Caribbean, the economic conquest played a central role in stimulating a revolution in Cuba that was largely thwarted by military conquest, while in Puerto Rico, the military conquest eliminated the autonomous government that had granted universal adult male suffrage. Instead it created a classic colonial state that “was neither representative nor accountable to the colonized people.”50 But rural Puerto Ricans were neither strangers nor immigrants, and as the cane sugar industry spread across their island, they were disappointed but ready to struggle for a place in the island’s institutional life, and they soon found an ally from the metropolis in the American Federation of Labor.

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CHAPTeR 1

Colonizing a Movement: The Federación Libre de Trabajadores in Puerto Rico

The workers must unite under the red flag of the Federación Libre to defend their rights and enjoy a better world, more in harmony with true justice. lUisa capEtillo, FEDEración librE DE trabajaDorEs

In 1918, a report by the American Federation of Labor on the organizing campaign in Puerto Rico conducted by its affiliate, the Federación Libre de Trabajadores (Free Federation of Workers; the Federación), complained that the “industrial colonization” of the island by the sugarcane industry was advancing “a dense cloud of sordid interests.” Federación leaders in Puerto Rico were in their fourth year of a sustained effort to organize workers in the cane fields as well as the centrales (sugar processing factories), leading strikes in which tens of thousands participated each year. Working closely with President Samuel Gompers, they established locals of the AFL Unión Agrícola (Agricultural Workers Union) in sugarproducing districts throughout the island where workers had organized. But as the AFL complained, employers and a repressive colonial state were blocking workers’ dreams, “barring the way of democratic institutions, social justice and human redemption” in the Puerto Rican colony.1 This chapter examines the resurgence of the sugarcane industry of Puerto Rico in the early twentieth century and its relations with workers in the Federación, whose unions dominated organized labor in Puerto Rico between the turn of the twentieth century and 1940. I argue that actions of the Federación in the first two decades of the twentieth century belie interpretations that the AFL and its affiliates, which typically catered to the skilled trades, were unconcerned with agricultural workers or simply functioned as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. The view is unduly linear and simplistic, as evident in its early campaigns to empower

26 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

Cities, towns, and sugar centrales in Puerto Rico, 1920. From e. Fernández García, ed., El libro de Puerto Rico: The Book of Porto Rico (San Juan: el Libro Azul, 1923), p. 1103. Courtesy of the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture and Labor.

agricultural workers, create a democratic workers’ movement, and challenge metropolitan corporations and colonial rulers. During its heyday, the Federación had a progressive and varied constituency and over time had an uneven and complex relationship with workers in Puerto Rico’s cane fields, the industry, and colonial and metropolitan governments.

Sugar Cane Colony The Puerto Rican sugar industry languished during the quarter century following the abolition of slavery in 1873. Writing in 1898, when the nation was at war with Spain, U.S. Consul Philip C. Hanna lamented “the ruins of once valuable sugar estates. The great sugar factories have fallen down, the machinery has been eaten by rust, and the land has passed into the hands of those who held the mortgages.” Many prominent Puerto Rican landowners envisioned a recovery of the industry and economic prosperity facilitated by a closer political relationship with the United States through tariff-free access to its huge market. Hacendado Ricardo Nadal acknowledged that duty-free entry of Puerto Rican sugar “has been the determining point in favor of annexation to the United States.” Industry insiders feared that “if Puerto Rico were independent, its sugar could never compete successfully in the American market” because it would not gain favored access.2 The immediate dreams of the sugar interests came to quick fruition as a result of plans begun during the military occupation of

Colonizing a Movement 27

1898–1900 to stimulate the industry. Production soon soared, and sugar enjoyed an unprecedented boom lasting more than thirty years. New plantations quickly appeared along the coast and interior valleys, extending into “the most improbable places, right up over the hills, and even high up in the mountains,” taking over former farms, pastures, and even fallow lands. By the early 1940s, Miguel Lugo López confirmed that, “with few exceptions, sugarcane occupies at present all the best Puerto Rican soils.” Between 1899 and 1934 sugar production soared from 39,000 to more than 1 million tons, and in 1940 sugar accounted for about 62 percent of the total value of Puerto Rican exports. Already by the 1920s the industry employed over half the island’s working population, and it continued to dominate its economic, political, and social life for another generation. As Dudley Smith, associate director of the Asociación de Productores de Azúcar de Puerto Rico (the Sugar Producers Association of Puerto Rico), the leading corporate interest group in the industry, “sugar is the lifeblood of the island.”3 In effect, Puerto Rico had become a sugar plantation for the United States. But most Puerto Ricans’ hopes for amassing riches were tempered by the blunt reality of military conquest, which was followed by economic conquest and a large-scale “passing of lands from native to American control.” Bankers and refiners based in the United States benefited most, as colonial legislation allowed only raw sugar to enter the continent for refining, enabling them to gain control of the high-profit sectors of final processing and marketing. They also acquired the best lands and the largest processing factories. Monopolization was evident by 1930 when four corporations, South Porto Rico, Aguirre, Fajardo, and United Porto Rico, owned “principally by continental Americans living in the United States,” controlled eleven centrales that produced more than half the island’s sugar, sent in raw form to the continent. A smaller group of wealthy Spaniards and Puerto Ricans, including the Serrallés, Fantauzzis, and Roigs, who also owned sugar centrales and massive landholdings, played important but lesser roles than the absentee corporations, although the two groups shared many interests. Antonio Barceló, president of the Partido Unionista and of the Puerto Rican Senate in the 1920s and an associate of the Fajardo interests, observed that the absentee corporations and their landholding affiliates “practically own the south, west, and east of the island, and they are so strongly constituted . . . that I believe their strength is greater than that of the Government of Porto Rico.”4 Industry success depended on several forms of colonial government largesse. On the heels of the military conquest, Puerto Rican sugar was

28 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

exempted from the protective tariff, gaining the most favored access possible, and later obtaining quotas guaranteeing it a share of the huge metropolitan market. During military occupation, the imposition of U.S. currency devalued prices on the island by 40 percent, offering an opportunity for speculators from the continent to gain windfall profits by purchasing land cheaply. The corporations were also permitted to openly violate congressional legislation enacted in 1900 that defined Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States, prohibiting any corporation from owning lands in excess of five hundred acres. While the Jones Act of 1917 appeared to tighten the screws, a loophole allowed them to establish holding companies and continue to control the lands directly. As José Acosta Velarde of the Puerto Rican Land Authority observed, “all our economy has been constructed on the violation of the law.”5 Corporate investors further profited in the early twentieth century from public funding of massive irrigation projects that brought vast stretches of land into commercial production after private investment had failed. Acosta Velarde observed that the Aguirre Corporation “went nearly bankrupt, unable to drill the ground for water. The people of Puerto Rico mortgaged their good will and built the south coast irrigation service; actually we made Aguirre possible.” Accompanying the irrigation system was the formation of the Insular Hydroelectric System, which provided the industry inexpensive electricity.6 These government projects represented economic and political favors to the corporations, tapping public waters and taxes for private gain. As a result of colonial government largesse, absentee corporations enjoyed windfall profits. As a case in point, the Fajardo corporation paid dividends greater than 50 percent for twenty-three consecutive years. The good times continued into the 1930s, when economist Robert W. Clairborne complained of “units that earned as much as 100 percent on investments in the worst depression the world has ever known,” sustained by federal government support of corporation efforts to maintain starvation wages for thousands of workers.7 With the economic downturn of the Great Depression, debates intensified about who actually benefited from the economic expansion. Corporation spokesmen quickly took credit for having made the wealth of Puerto Rico possible and claimed to deserve continued favor. William Requa of the Sugar Producers Association argued that since sugar derived greater exchange value than any other crop per acre of land, “the welfare of the island’s people demands that every tillable acre be put to its

Colonizing a Movement 29

maximum income-producing use.” Yet economist Raymond Crist countered that profits from sugar provided “little practical benefit to the mass of poorly nourished Puerto Ricans, who have little share in the sugar income.” Furthermore, he asserted, because the cost of food imported from the continental United States was much higher than if produced locally, workers were “ground extremely fine . . . between metropolitan industrial prices and colonial preindustrial wages.” Another critic concluded that “the corporate form drained away all the profits for the benefit of those who participated neither in the work nor greatly in the risks of the enterprise.” Antonio Luchetti, executive director of the Public Utilities Water Resources Authority, complained that the absentee owners had no concern for the well-being of the people of Puerto Rico and asserted, “as a matter of fact, you could not get private capital to do anything except invest in sugarcane.”8 The corporations had paid very little of the cost of Puerto Rican economic infrastructure and reinvested few of their profits in the island. The sugar industry profoundly transformed the Puerto Rican landscape as well as its people, causing “a tendency for [the] population to be concentrated around the large and vast sugar holdings.” It undermined the hacienda and its accompanying paternalistic culture, it extended the area under cultivation, while it created the prototypical workplace of the early twentieth century, the sugarcane complex. As the industry expanded, it lured tens of thousands of peasants, landless rural workers (agregados), and day laborers ( jornaleros) from more densely inhabited rural sections of the interior to the coast, hiring some in the centrales, but most as “simple agricultural workers” performing wage labor in the fields. The population shift took place without much planning, and as Crist noted, “the process of uprooting the peasantry has been so rapid that chaotic conditions have inevitably resulted, and in consequence adjustments have been painful.” The transition to wage labor, proletarianization, was incomplete and uneven, and it contributed to conditions that led to uneven prospects for labor organizing in different settings and at different times. Individuals drawn to locations where proletarianization was more complete tended to be more receptive to collective action than those in places where they still had opportunities to obtain at least a portion of their sustenance in other ways. In particular, peasants able to grow or obtain food and other resources outside the employer–wage worker relationship, especially if they could also sell or barter the surplus, enjoyed greater autonomy and were more inclined to aspire toward obtaining land

30 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

or other means of income. Those who could free themselves from wage labor in agriculture were generally less receptive to the lure of collective action through unions.9 But both wage workers and peasants were increasingly subject to sugar central management. The older and smaller ingenios, owned by hacendados, combined the operations of growing and grinding cane. Because of its much greater grinding capacity, the giant central needed huge amounts of land and hand labor. To supply its needs, each central required thousands of acres of neighboring sugar lands. The corporations initially attempted to purchase or lease as much land as possible, sometimes through subsidiaries. As their capacity to acquire land directly on the densely populated island became more difficult, they had to deal with a growing number of colonos (farmers), who were dependent on the centrales. The sugar central “became the focal point not only of the Puerto Rican economy, but also of Puerto Rican politics and social life . . . a vast social force on its own.”10 The central and its affiliated plantation complex were most fully realized in settings where prior commercial economic activities had not been as dense, particularly along the southern and eastern coastal areas. In the north, the plantations were not as extensive, small farmers were more influential, and the sugar industry had to compete with a greater range of economic activities, allowing workers and peasants more varied options for sustenance. The expansion of the colonato further contributed to the reconfiguration of Puerto Rican society in the early twentieth century. Colonos were highly stratified socially, composed of a few very large landholders who were often former hacendados, a much larger group of small farmers, and huge numbers of sharecroppers and cash tenants. A handful of the largest colonos hired hundreds of wage employees during harvest, while at the other extreme more than half had plots small enough to perform their own labor. One quarter of all colonos had holdings so meager that they hired themselves out to the sugar companies for part of the year. Most colonos were dependent economically on the neighboring central to which they sold their harvested cane through annual production contracts. The contracts typically lasted from one to six years, with provisions for small growers to take out loans to cover the expenses of planting, fertilizing, cutting, and hauling sugar. Central managers had the right to determine cane varieties and schedules for planting, fertilization, and irrigation; to supervise the labor of cultivation and harvesting and grade the quality of cane delivered; and they could cancel a contract for failure to comply with its terms. The corporations reduced their risks by dealing

Colonizing a Movement 31

with colonos, who were responsible for the vagaries of the growing cycle and field labor. By encouraging the formation of the colonato, the corporations also dispersed workers, which made organizing more difficult while it shifted much of the responsibility and headache of the agricultural phase of production.11 Meanwhile the rapid increase in the number of colonos represented modest upward social mobility for thousands of aspiring small farmers. In Puerto Rico, colonos were most numerous and influential politically in the northern and east-central sections of the island, while in the south, with the classic company towns, massive “administration” plantations dominated. In 1940 there were between twelve thousand and fourteen thousand colonos on the island, of whom the largest 2 percent grew twothirds, and the smallest 50 percent produced only 3 percent of colonoproduced sugar. In the 1930s sugar corporations and their subsidiaries directly controlled about half of Puerto Rico’s sugarcane land and leased an additional quarter. Colonos held the other quarter, and their share increased after the Great Depression.12 Reflecting the dominant industrial ideology of the era, many observers criticized small colonos as inefficient because yields on their properties were lower than those of corporation lands. The differences reflect different planting and growing strategies. Large plantations typically replanted one-fourth of their fields each year, while on the poorer soils of the south they often had to replant every two or three years. By contrast, the smallest colonos replanted as infrequently as every eight years, while investing substantially less on fertilizer, irrigation, weeding, and planting in order to reduce their expenses. The lower outputs on colono lands stemmed from lack of resources and lower inputs, not necessarily inefficiency.13 While small colonos did not prosper, as a group they fared demonstrably better materially than wage earners. A study by the Puerto Rican government calculated that annual family earnings among colonos on small sugarcane farms around 1940 averaged $805, compared with $255 for families employed on the agricultural lands affiliated with the Central Lafayette, where workers enjoyed the highest earnings in Puerto Rican agriculture at the time. Furthermore, Labor Commissioner Manuel Pérez observed, because they could provide an important portion of their own subsistence needs, “small farmers’ families do have more and better food than wage earners’ families.” Governor Rexford Tugwell, critical of colonos’ hostility to unionism and their widespread violation of minimum wage laws, in 1941 portrayed them as “smaller monopolists” with “determination . . . to substitute themselves for larger ones whose success

32 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

they resent.”14 Even small colonos were capitalist farmers, but dependent economically on central management. Their political influence served as a wedge between the large corporations and the workers, as it blurred the sharp contrast between large capitalist corporation owners and wage workers while the individualist ideology of the small farmer made the union’s task of organizing more difficult. At the sites of the new centrales, small communities expanded and new ones appeared. The central complex included a raw sugar factory, power house, grinding mill, chemical lab, sugar house, machine shop, warehouse, railroad station, medical aid station, single family homes for the manager and staff, a hotel for less permanent or unmarried staff, barracks for itinerant workers, and clusters of single family dwellings for permanent resident workers. The largest complexes were associated with the absentee corporations: Aguirre of the Aguirre Sugar Company and Ensenada of South Puerto Rico, the best examples of the “thorough-going company town.” Like company towns in Mexico during the era of Porfirio Díaz, they were sharply demarcated physical spaces that were highly stratified socially. The geography of the central community incorporated the most significant class divisions in the industry and the most important racial demarcation in Puerto Rico stemming from the military conquest, distinguishing continental U.S. Americans from puertorriqueños, identified by Pedro Vargas Rodríguez as “los tostados del trópico.”15 The company town affiliated with the sugar central had segregated spaces for the hierarchy of Anglo American management, Puerto Rican administrators, and Puerto Rican workers. Top management at the Guánica Central was composed of about fifty Anglo American employees who resided at Ensenada, mostly white men from the southern United States who formed a “good old boy” network and reproduced forms of segregation and discrimination with which they were familiar. They even treated Anglo Americans from the north as outsiders. The Anglo American neighborhood had controlled access, large and elegant houses of colonial English style newly introduced to the region, with private guards and exclusive facilities that typically included a barber shop, golf course, churches, clubs, and schools. At the next lower level were Puerto Rican office employees, professionals, white-collar workers, and foremen, who occupied very nice houses and grounds in a less exclusive neighborhood than that of the Anglo Americans. They were well served, as Aguirre boasted the first modern pharmacy and department store on the island, among the earliest telephone services, and residents who did not wear homemade clothing. While imported items from the continent served the new colonizers and

Colonizing a Movement 33

their staff, they also permitted entry for metropolitan producers into the colonial middle- and working-class market. In 1904 the general manager of Aguirre, W. J. Lowrie, bragged about rapid changes that had taken place in just two years, as “peones [company employees] now purchase American goods of all descriptions, even fancy articles and articles of luxury, which they had no idea of under the old regime,” including canned goods, biscuits, scented soaps, watches, and jewelry. The distinction between Anglo Americans and Puerto Ricans of the middle class was not as sharp, and it gradually broke down in the 1940s and 1950s as the latter entered top management positions, profits from sugar declined, and investors from the continent were lured to opportunities elsewhere. The shift was often accompanied by the addition of a public library, improved park and formal sports facilities, more social, civic, cultural, and religious spaces for Puerto Ricans, and in the case of Ensenada, extrication of the company town from Guánica Central.16 In the company town the mass of Puerto Rican workers were segregated sharply from Anglo American and Puerto Rican managers and professionals, and distinguished internally between permanent residents and migrants. Permanent workers in town lived with their families in wooden houses of uniform construction lined up in rows, often with tin or corrugated iron roofs, heavy wooden shutters, commonly painted bright red or yellow, with one or two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a lean-to shed set two to three feet above the ground to keep the dwellings drier and free from insects. While simple and small, they were considered “better than most” houses for working people in Puerto Rico. Migrant workers typically resided in barracks and were not accompanied by their families. Workers’ sections generally had shared showers and toilet facilities, commonly privies, located in separate outside units. While company advocates asserted that housing was free as a condition of employment, workers often were charged a fixed rate or received housing to compensate for low wages. Workers did not commonly receive plots of land to grow crops and had fewer opportunities to obtain outside employment than agricultural workers in other industries.17 Most agricultural workers did not reside in the company towns of the centrales but in rural barrios and colonias, unincorporated villages and hamlets often located on “administration” lands, on colonos’ properties, or in nearby villages, towns, and cities. Larger colonias commonly had a small headquarters building, sheds to store plows and cultivators, stables for horses and mules (earlier there were facilities for oxen), a storehouse for feed, and piles of portable track or rows of oxcarts. Their landowners

34 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

often constructed camps consisting of small wooden houses for permanent workers and their families and barracks for unaccompanied male migrant workers brought in by labor contractors (rematistas). Landless migrant workers and peasants who came down to the cane fields seasonally or traveled as far as five to ten miles as a daily or weekly commute constantly sought more permanent roots. They moved into available housing or built dwellings, typically of inferior quality, scattered individually or in small clusters on employer properties or unclaimed public land on the periphery of towns and along roads, where they might have a space for a garden, a few chickens, or a goat. By the 1930s most sugarcane field workers resided permanently in villages, towns, and scattered dwellings less than a mile from their daily work assignment, strengthening their sense of community and consciousness as workers, conditions more propitious to collective action. They purchased goods from the company store or small private shops located along roadsides or in nearby towns that offered basic stocks like lard, salt, dried cod, and corn flour. Street vendors and local peddlers also traveled to even the smallest communities to sell a variety of items including hot bread, sorbet, toasted maní (peanuts), oranges and other local produce, sweets, fried bacalao (codfish), and household items.18 As rural workers were drawn increasingly into the wage relationship, their consumption of imported foods had increased markedly, but nutrition had not improved. In larger towns workers engaged in a wider range of social and cultural activities, including dances, tent theaters, tertulias (literary and cultural gatherings), peleas de gallos (cockfights), billiards, card games, dominoes, and juegos de pelota (ball games), but even in the smallest hamlets they found some diversions. As USDL investigator Caroline Ware reported, “in town, every night in every plaza in Puerto Rico, is like Saturday night in a small town, as hundreds of people mill about, talking and chattering.” Many towns and cities also had workers’ temples where members of the Federación met, and organizational campaigns were active with meetings, lectures, tertulias, workers’ theater, and rallies. But there were few additional formal social and cultural outlets that offered direct venues for organizing. Labor Commissioner Manuel Pérez reported that among adults over age twenty, less than 6 percent belonged to any social, civic, or religious groups, the largest by far being the Parent Teachers Organization, reflecting remarkably low rates of institutional participation.19 The hierarchy of the workplace reinforced the colonial racial order. While exclusive Anglo American spaces were set apart from Puerto Rican managers and professionals, the newcomers separated themselves

Colonizing a Movement 35

much more sharply at work and in public spaces from skilled and unskilled workers, who recalled not even being permitted to face an Anglo American boss. Puerto Rican professionals and management who understood some English and had authority, on the other hand, acted as if they were superior to the rest. The Tienda Grande (Main Store) in Ensenada permitted only Anglo Americans and Puerto Rican bosses to enter via the front door, while workers had to come and go through the back entrance.20 It marked an imposition of the culture of imperialism, aimed at the preservation and reconstruction of social relations in the colony. Transplanting racial practices from an earlier history of the sugar industry in Louisiana and the Caribbean, employers prohibited Afro Puerto Ricans, who already tended to concentrate in coastal areas, from social and cultural spaces reserved for blancos. Internal racial distinctions were less sharply marked in agricultural colonias and workers’ spaces, as the corporations’ direct influence on intimate aspects of life was less pervasive. In Canóvanas on the north coast, “an infinity of shades is exhibited, from white to tan to brown to black.” Discrimination in public places was most systematically enforced in the largest establishments frequented by Anglo Americans, which often refused to hire people of color. As late as the mid-1950s, for instance, teachers kept the daughter of a sugarcane worker who was elected Valentine’s Day Queen by her fifth grade classmates from being crowned. Residential segregation and other consequences of the military and economic conquests peaked in company towns during the 1910s and 1920s but remained latent through the 1960s.21 Class prejudice was reinforced by language differences, segregated spaces, and slights against workers and their children, indicating a selective application of democratic principles by the men from the continent who accompanied the military conquerors of 1898. The colonial state reinforced class and racial distinctions imported from the continental United States in other ways. Juan Tomás Ramos, who resided in the La Hoya neighborhood of Ensenada recalled that the Anglo American section along Brandon Street was the finest section of town, “but we could hardly go there since the company private guards kicked us out.” For several decades electricity and public services were available only in the exclusive neighborhoods while workers’ districts lacked electric lights, so people went to bed early.22 In Ensenada there were three distinct social clubs for persons of the rank of strawboss or higher—an American Club, a Puerto Rican Club, and an Artisans Club, the last “composed of the dark-skinned people who were excluded by the Puerto Ricans from their club and so they formed

36 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

one of their own, there being several very dark employees in responsible positions making good money.” But “the workers have no social organization,” and despite having a union, they lacked a union hall. The town housed a Protestant church and a private school for Anglo American children, which accounts for the sugar corporation’s vigorous opposition to paying local taxes for public schools and other services that managers and bosses already enjoyed and were meant to serve the Puerto Rican working class.23 Yet racial distinctions were not as openly articulated in earlytwentieth-century Puerto Rico as in the continental United States, and the more rigid demarcations of the colonial racial order were gradually weakened by collective worker actions and by the mobility of small numbers of children of Puerto Rican workers into professional positions. Anglo Americans who visited the island were surprised by the lack of overt racial hostility among Puerto Ricans. Accompanying the military in 1898, journalist Margherita Hamm wrote, “there is little or no race prejudice.” Paul Blanshard, a former member of the Anglo American Caribbean Commission, asserted in 1946 that “there are some racial tensions and discriminations on the island, but there is no color line or segregation comparable to mainland practices. The people are, on the whole, far ahead of us in the practice of racial fair play. Puerto Ricans who come to the mainland are deeply shocked and offended by certain forms of Jim Crowism.” A 1952 metropolitan officer’s report from the Sindicato Azucarero (Sugar Workers Union), an affiliate of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, suggested that racial integration in Puerto Rico “could present us with a goal to work toward” on the continent.24 Weaker levels of racial animosity among workers, the geography of settlement, lack of migration from outside the island, and social relations of work in the fields established conditions more propitious for labor organizing in Puerto Rico than California and other parts of the continental United States, where employers could more readily recruit new groups of workers to manipulate distinctions based on race, national background, and gender to promote divisions. New Deal–era reforms in Puerto Rico, including a prohibition of company stores, further loosened employer leverage. Also, as seasonal migration from the interior highlands to the valleys and coastal zones diminished and workers moved into their own residences in towns and villages near the fields, workers were less frequently under the watchful eye of managers.25 While Federación members were organizing agricultural workers starting in the first decade of the century, conditions for expressing their collective consciousness as workers became much more propitious by the 1930s, when most sugarcane

Colonizing a Movement 37

workers resided within walking distance of their place of employment. Throughout the continental United States, including California, on the other hand, travel between permanent homes and workplaces increased rapidly during the Great Depression as employers sought to prevent workers from establishing roots and to thwart their collective aspirations.

Fruits of Labor The proletarianization of sugarcane workers in Puerto Rico was complicated, irregular, and incomplete, yet profound. The ubiquitous rural poverty and unemployment contributed to criticism that the agricultural phase of sugarcane production remained backward and unchanging. Yet the industry was constantly in motion as it expanded following the military invasion. Research and experimentation in the early decades of the century focused primarily on the introduction of new varieties of cane, new techniques of planting and cultivation, and the use of fertilizers. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of preharvest inputs were adopted, including machines to prepare the ground, plant seeds, water the fields, and repair machinery. Between 1910 and 1934, the labor required to produce one hundred tons of cane fell from twenty-five to eight workers.26 Capitalists used technical innovations not only to reduce labor and lower costs, but also to hinder workers’ efforts at collective expression. The shift from the hacienda and ingenio to the plantation and central that accompanied the economic conquest intensified gender distinctions in the labor process. In the 1890s, Puerto Rican women still performed some of the hard labor in the sugarcane fields. Journalist Margherita Hamm observed: “they cut the cane, stack and load it into carts or carry it on the head to the mill.” Women also worked on the plots granted to their peasant or rural laboring families on the haciendas, tending kitchen gardens and fruit trees and cultivating vines. As family members of sugarcane workers, many also engaged in petty commerce, selling locally produced items while still performing domestic tasks.27 But with the appearance of the centrales and recruitment of workers from greater distances, employers quickly turned to hiring men almost exclusively for the physically demanding tasks in the cane fields. On plantations, each commonly divided into several distinct farms, as well as the larger colonias, the field labor process was organized hierarchically, as the central supervisor determined tasks and issued orders carried out by a mayordomo (overseer) responsible for each affiliated colo-

38 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

nia. The mayordomo assigned tasks to a contractor or foreman responsible for assembling and overseeing worker gangs, typically ranging from four to twelve men for cultivation and twenty to thirty for harvesting. In the early years of the century the contractor recruited, hired, and paid workers, thereby gaining a great deal of arbitrary power, partly by posing as their protector.28 But pressures stemming from the World War I strike era, and from the great strike of 1933–1934, intensified criticism of labor contractors and reduced their influence, which removed another impediment to worker unity. While adult males performed the overwhelming majority of field tasks in sugar, the notion of a neat household division of labor between productive work by men and reproductive work by women is unduly simplistic. The tasks women performed complemented those of other family members. While women rarely worked for wages in the sugarcane fields, they continued to work in coffee production, while their sons, spouses, and fathers often migrated to the cane fields for seasonal employment. For the families that still had access to a plot of land, women continued to maintain kitchen gardens and care for small animals. In the early years of the century, thousands of women found employment for wages in the tobacco industry, most importantly stripping the veins and stems of tobacco leaves in cigar shops and factories, while their male family members often went to work in the cane fields. The cigar shops formed the initial power base for the Federación in the early years of the century, from which organized workers, women and men, moved into the cane fields. Women from the families of sugarcane workers also kept small stores and shops, and they prepared and sold food for other workers on payday. A great number of women also worked for wages in domestic tasks, as laundresses, washerwomen, pressers, cooks, and maids in the houses of Anglo American or Puerto Rican bosses.29 As family members of sugarcane workers, women also played important roles in sectors of the economy that had not established a major presence prior to the U.S. invasion. Needlework was the most important, for like sugar it was an industry of the colonial economy that thrived on low wage labor whose finished product went to the metropolis. Women worked in shops that made textiles, but more frequently in their homes, through contractors who supplied them materials, often alongside their daughters, sons, and husbands, stitching and embroidering to gain a meager subsistence that kept them from starving during the tiempo muerto (dead season). From the early years of the century, a small number of women found

Colonizing a Movement 39

employment as typists, clerks, and receptionists in the offices of the sugar companies.30 Meanwhile, men who worked in the cane fields commonly engaged in tasks associated with “reproduction,” including “most of the family food buying.” The gender division of the household economy was further complicated because many family members performed several tasks to make ends meet. Boys often obtained odd jobs in town and sometimes found employment on the colonia performing irregular tasks like collecting trash or catching rats, or they augmented family subsistence by heading to the hills to gather wild fruit or to the coast to go fishing. In many locations almuerzeros (lunch boys) took meals to the fields, but more often female family members cooked and delivered hot food, including rice, beans, bacalao, plantains, boiled greens, and black coffee. Preparing meals was the most important direct contribution of women to the family economy for it limited debt, as the cost of food accounted for up to two-thirds of workers’ wages.31 Maintaining a degree of autonomy became increasingly difficult and was less frequent in sugarcane than other agricultural industries, particularly on the large plantations of the south coast where the corporations controlled most of the land and were reluctant to share unused portions with employees. In the north and the interior valleys in the eastcentral sections of the island, corporation control generally was weaker and workers had greater access to small plots where they and other family members could raise a cow, a horse, chickens, turkeys, pigs, or goats or grow sweet potatoes, bananas, yams, corn, yucca, beans, plantains, sugarcane, and tobacco for subsistence, barter, or sale in nearby markets. In coastal areas, particularly in the north, many workers also could augment subsistence and obtain extra cash by cutting wood from forests to make charcoal or by fishing in nearby mangrove swamps, marshes, or the sea. But such options became increasingly difficult in the 1920s and 1930s as sugar companies extended their control over land and resources. Growing crops for subsistence declined sharply, and by 1940 local growers produced only half the food required for consumption by residents of Puerto Rico, compared with nearly total self-sufficiency in 1898. Nevertheless, workers continued to covet land and frequently staged strikes to obtain access to holdings not under cultivation. As alternatives diminished, sugarcane field workers became “the most class conscious of all the strata” of Puerto Ricans, and often self-identified as los pobres (the poor), los arrimados (the unwanted), or el obrero mal sufrido (the badly suffering

40 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

worker). Lacking access to the land, cane cutter Pedro Canilarias testified that during tiempo muerto people spent most of their time fighting hunger by “wandering from place to place in search of work and bananas.” The shift away from peasant activities for women and men took place more rapidly along the south coast, yet wherever families became dependent on wages they commonly had to turn to a wide range of irregular tasks to earn enough money to survive.32 Furthermore, the period of unemployment each year increased, for at the beginning of the century, workers could obtain employment for about seven months in cutting and grinding between December and early July. To extend working opportunities during slow times, the industry maintained two distinct plantings, gran cultura from June to December (harvested 18 months later); and primavera from January to June (harvested 12 months later). Technical changes in field production reduced labor requirements during planting and cultivation. The most labor-intensive operation was cane cutting, performed by men with machetes who cut the cane stalks into lengths, stripped them of their leaves, and threw them onto piles. Then came the second most labor-intensive task, loading the cut cane, which was done early in the century by men who filled ox-driven carts by hand. Eventually, employers replaced oxcarts with railroad cars on portable tracks that workers set up in the fields; later they replaced railroad cars with trucks that drove the cut cane directly to the factories.33 Although worker protests and strikes occasionally slowed the introduction of new machines, tiempo muerto became longer. With the expanding labor reserve, unemployed men standing around factories or at the edges of fields seeking jobs became a ubiquitous feature in the countryside. In August 1940 during tiempo muerto, the Puerto Rican Department of Labor (PRDL) estimated that 400,000 men were without work, while in February 1943, at the peak of the harvest, Puerto Rico’s unemployment was calculated at 46 percent.34 While the presence of large numbers of unemployed people deterred worker unity, particularly during strikes, it also made it difficult for employers to justify hiring women, children, or immigrant workers from outside Puerto Rico. Thus divisions based on residency status, citizenship, race, and ethnicity or the part-time employment of children and women, widely manipulated by growers in the continental United States, were infrequent in Puerto Rico. In the early twentieth century employers introduced changes that made workers rely increasingly on wages. These included the elimination of lodging, breakfast, and garden plots as conditions of employment. U.S. Bureau of Labor investigator Walter Weyl also reported “a

Colonizing a Movement 41

tendency, especially since the American occupation, to give out work under the contract system, and to give up as far as possible the payment of day wages.” He observed that “this substitution of piece rates for time rates is taking place very rapidly and extensively.” Meanwhile payment in vales (vouchers) redeemable at designated businesses, including company stores, also became increasingly popular. The companies argued that the stores offered “good quality products,” and “in many cases at lower prices,” than neighboring businesses. But workers staged frequent strikes to eliminate piece rates and payment at company stores whose operators adopted tricks to cheat them, including inaccurate measurement and weighing of goods, requirements to shop at a specific store or to purchase undesired items, and the deduction of the entire store debt from their paycheck, which often left them broke.35 Apologists for the sugar industry reported that per capita income in Puerto Rico had doubled between 1900 and 1940. Yet at the latter date it was still only one-fifth the average for workers in the continental United States. Eastern Sugar President Clarence Bowie defended the wages employers paid with racist assumptions: I think the wage we pay . . . is adequate to keep them through the year, if they work. But one of them will work two days and then he will have a brother or son work two days, and then another will work for a day. They will come down from the hills and maybe before Easter and make a certain amount of money and then go back in the hills. They may come down, make some money, have a spree and then go down in the hills. It is sort of resented if you try to get a personnel file, such as an employer here [in the United States] would expect to have to. It is just not done. There is some dependable labor, but it isn’t American standard labor.36

Many disagreed with Bowie, including the governor, who reported in 1942 that wage increases of the late 1930s and early 1940s enacted through collective bargaining and the Sugar Act did not keep pace with the “proportionally greater increase in the cost of living.” Even sugar expert A. B. Gilmore acknowledged, “extreme poverty still rules among the masses. By far the great majority of the island’s population still lives at a bare subsistence level.” In 1937, the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration reported that average annual earnings for sugar cane families were $254.63, or $48.59 per capita, but the annual cost of food alone for a family of five stood at $353.86. As Assistant Commissioner of Labor William D. López acknowledged, “this meager wage is not sufficient to meet all the needs of

42 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

a laborer’s family while he is at work, hence he is unable to pay his debts to the merchant who allows him credit during the period in which he is out of work, and, consequently, he and his family are condemned to starvation all year round.”37 Low and irregular wages and meager social services in Puerto Rico contributed to appalling health conditions, as family members commonly suffered from severe undernourishment, malnutrition, and an inadequate intake of vitamins and minerals. A 1941–1942 Bureau of Labor Statistics report indicated that families still spent over half their earnings on food, but “it is obvious that the diets of Puerto Rican wage- earner families are poorly balanced,” heavily dependent on starchy items, “highly deficient in the consumption of green and yellow vegetables, milk and eggs,” and “markedly deficient in high grade proteins, calcium, Vitamins A, C, and riboflavin.” Surveys conducted in 1936 reported that 60 percent of family members reacted positively to the tuberculin test, 11 percent tested positive for malaria, and 79 percent carried parasites, particularly tapeworm and hookworm. They also suffered high levels of gastrointestinal disorders, enteritis, and diarrhea, and a mortality rate four times that of workers in the United States. Meanwhile, 43 percent of families lacked sanitary facilities in their houses, 52 percent used latrines, and 5 percent had water closets. A report in 1938 concluded that “over 75 percent of the wage-earning population of this Island inhabit dwellings which are quite below all reasonable standards of sanitation, comfort and human decency,” although in the sugarcane areas conditions “are somewhat less appalling.” Sugarcane representative Esteban Bird, connected with the Fajardo Corporation, acknowledged in 1937 that the average worker in Puerto Rico “is under-nourished and cannot afford medical treatment.” Formal education was also meager, as a 1934 study found that only 37.5 percent of family heads had completed fourth grade, while another in 1942 reported that only about 40 percent of school-age children were even enrolled in public day schools.38 The impact of the economic conquest on the health and well-being of rural Puerto Ricans proved devastating, as greater nutritional imbalances and longer periods of hunger exacerbated a range of health problems. Informed observers blamed many of the aforementioned problems faced by agricultural workers directly on the absentee corporations for their lack of social responsibility. Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) investigator Robert Watson reported in 1934 that many of the largest sugar corporations had not paid taxes to local municipalities for seven or eight years despite soaring profits. Esteban Bird acknowl-

Colonizing a Movement 43

edged that the “sugar industry as a whole has paid little attention to the general interests of the community.”39 Tax evasion exacerbated inadequacies in medical care, schools, and recreational and community centers where workers might socialize or listen to the radio, all free spaces potentially conducive to collective action. Despite the difficulties that workers faced, the mainstream leadership of organized labor from the metropolis expressed interest in the Puerto Rican sugar industry and its workers almost immediately after the conquest.

The Federación Libre de Trabajadores In the early years of the twentieth century, many members of the Federación Libre de Trabajadores accepted the responsibility of organizing agricultural workers with missionary zeal. Influenced by radical political thought coming from Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States and by their own experiences in Puerto Rico, members adhered to a wide range of political expression, particularly variants of socialism and anarchism. They understood the need to educate workers from all sectors of the economy, urban and rural, men and women, in order to organize and empower them. They established their strongest initial base in cigar shops and factories in towns throughout the island, where they produced some extremely dedicated unionists, a majority male but including several remarkable women. Among the most notable organizers was Luisa Capetillo, born in 1879 in the northern coastal city of Arecibo, where she was reared. Her parents were financially stable, working- class political radicals born in Europe who, like their daughter, spurned the convention of marriage. Encouraged by her mother, Capetillo became an avid reader and devoured contemporary works by social and political authors of the era. As a girl, she also assisted her mother, who washed and pressed clothes as a domestic worker in the houses of the wealthy. In the early years of the twentieth century she worked in the expanding textile industry, where she embroidered handkerchiefs and blouses at home on contract for middlemen who sent the finished product to the United States. She soon found employment as a lectora (reader) in a cigar factory, where she educated and entertained men and women with news and history lessons, reading from newspapers and magazines from Puerto Rico, Latin America, and Europe as well as political and philosophical classics, including the texts of Mikhail Bakunin, Victor Hugo, Pytor Kropotkin, Karl Marx, Andrés Mata, and

44 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

Leo Tolstoy. The experience further radicalized her and enhanced her oratory skills. In the intellectually rich and politically tolerant political environment of the cigar workers, she became an anarchist, with strong syndicalist and libertarian sympathies, while she engaged less radical socialistas including Federación president Santiago Iglesias. In 1904 she began writing short articles for labor newspapers and magazines and was a frequent contributor to the Federación newspaper, Unión Obrera. She also wrote four books and a number of working-class plays.40 Capetillo was also one of scores of tobacco workers, both men and women, including Concha Torres and Paca Escabi de Peña, who participated in the Federación campaign in 1904 and 1905 to organize agricultural workers. Union sympathizers from towns throughout the island ventured to nearby agricultural barrios and colonias, focusing in particular on the rapidly expanding number of workers employed in the sugarcane fields. In 1905 she joined her fellow tobacco workers to report on, organize, and support a strike of sugarcane cutters in the fields near Arecibo, in which more than fifteen hundred workers along the north coast eventually participated. “Her role in the Arecibo strike determined the direction of her life,” and she dedicated the rest of her years to the labor movement. Sugar workers also struck that year around Ponce, Humacao, and Juncos, as well as on the island of Vieques. The following year organizers were more active, and workers in the cane fields waged another wave of strikes. However, the colonial governor, employers, and their allies accused the workers of violence and setting fires while police arrested, beat, and clubbed strikers.41 For the organizers, the strikes demonstrated that agricultural workers were not yet prepared to confront the power of the state. The experience convinced the Federación to shift its strategy, and again led by tobacco workers, it launched a major campaign it called La Cruzada del Ideal (The Crusade for Workers’ Ideals). Organizers visited rural and urban workers in cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, traveling on foot, on horseback and by train. Aimed at enhancing “el espíritu de clase” (class consciousness) by promoting education and organization of worker circles, the campaign addressed the totality of workers’ lives while it organized them in preparation for another round of direct struggles against employers.42 Capetillo, who represented the most radical, anarchist tendencies in the Federación, became involved in the Cruzada in 1909, speaking to workers in factories, holding workshops at local labor temples, and talking with workers in tobacco- and sugar-producing districts in the countryside. It

Colonizing a Movement 45

was primarily an educational campaign, as the organizers recognized the need to overcome levels of illiteracy among agricultural workers exceeding 90 percent and to speak directly to their needs and aspirations. Capetillo proclaimed, “education is the basis of human happiness.” She wrote for labor newspapers, lectured, and talked to rural workers extensively as she traveled from one district to the next. She denounced social injustice, the state, and institutionalized religion. She saved her severest criticism for capitalism, which caused unhappiness, poor nutrition, and hunger, “men with their ragged clothes and barefoot and half-naked children.” Addressing workers, she wrote: “Wage slavery is modern slavery. . . . You don’t have anywhere to rest your aching body, and with what you are paid, you can’t feed yourselves. Where is the product of your labor?,” to which she responded, “In the strongboxes of the capitalist.” Yet, she reminded her working-class comrades that “redemption is in your hands.” She envisioned a “Social Revolution” based on a worker-controlled communal society that encouraged healthy and fulfilling lives for all and supported free love, working-class feminism, vegetarianism, Spiritism, and especially egalitarianism. On a more immediate level, the Cruzada sought to educate and prepare workers for a massive organizing campaign across the island.43 In 1915, the Federación Libre de Trabajadores formed a new workers’ party, the Partido Socialista, and initiated a simultaneous campaign to organize agricultural workers in the fields and incorporate all workers into the electoral arena, although literacy requirements for voting were not eliminated until 1936. Supported by the AFL and its president, Samuel Gompers, the highlight of labor organizing was a nonstop, five-year, islandwide organizing campaign among sugarcane workers. Workers were upset because of conditions stimulated by the war in Europe—escalating prices for imported goods and windfall corporate profits, although employers refused to increase and in many cases actually reduced workers’ pay. Even the unsympathetic governor, Arthur Yager, acknowledged that wages and working conditions were pitifully low. In mid-January of 1915, sugarcane workers around Bayamón struck spontaneously, and enthusiastic Federación members quickly offered support. At the peak of the strike, labor officials estimated that nearly eighteen thousand workers were involved, halting production in the sugarcane fields for more than two months. But police retaliated brutally in many locations, attacking pickets and parades, jailing hundreds, injuring scores, and killing half a dozen strikers.44 In 1916 the organizers intensified their efforts, holding meetings, rallies, marches, tertulias, and workers’ theater. In his 1916 play El poder del obrero

46 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

o La mejor venganza (The Power of the Worker, or the Best Revenge) Antonio Milián told the story of the 1915 sugarcane strike from the perspective of workers. He detailed employer and police abuse and addressed charges that workers started cane fires in order to ruin employers, demonstrating instead how employers hired scabs to set fires they immediately put out, and then placed the blame on strikers. In 1916, labor officials estimated that more than fifty thousand sugarcane workers joined the strike, which spread throughout the island and lasted nearly six months. Federación leaders strongly disavowed violence while even colonial authorities acknowledged that the strike was much more peaceful than the previous year. But police prohibited workers from assembling, limited pickets larger than three people, and continued to accuse them of provoking violence. In Arecibo, police shot at a parade of women strike supporters “under fabricated charges.” Capetillo had joined and was among those assaulted by police, who killed at least one striker in Arecibo. Yet Yager blamed the violence on Socialista “agitators” led by Santiago Iglesias, who, Yager claimed, was seeking political gain for his party. Pressure from the strikes did lead to laws protecting union members, their right to work, and freedom to strike, although the legislation went unenforced. In 1917, organizers claimed support from more than twenty-five thousand workers in a strike around Fajardo and in the north that began in February and lasted more than a month. Capetillo again participated, and in Patillas she was clubbed by police. While the goal of union recognition was thwarted, many employers again granted wage increases to strikers.45 Federación organizers had demonstrated that agricultural workers throughout the island were eager to establish new locals of the Unión Agrícola, and that new leadership would continue to appear from among workers’ ranks. Despite the privations of lost income, hunger, being thrown out of their homes, harassment from employers and police, and the threat of losing their jobs to strikebreakers, tens of thousands of workers were willing to strike to demand better wages and justice. But Federación leadership faced even stiffer challenges in 1918 as the United States entered the war in Europe. Federación leaders recognized that “employers have no difficulty breaking strikes,” because they had the sympathy of colonial governor Arthur Yager, who was viciously antilabor in his policies. Yager consistently ordered police to break up union meetings and arrest workers, in contravention of existing labor legislation and workers’ constitutional rights of free speech and assembly. Colonial government officials also helped employers recruit strikebreakers from the “great surplus of labor.”

Colonizing a Movement 47

Growers advertised widely for workers, in violation of legislation stipulating that employers seeking replacements “state clearly and precisely in all such advertisements, whether written or verbal, the fact that a strike or lockout exists.” Yager even suppressed critics within the government, and in 1918 he removed labor mediator F. C. Roberts, whose detailed reports revealed widespread violations of labor law and criticized the governor’s improper use of the island’s police forces. Roberts wrote that the colonial government “routinely repressed sugar strikes” and protected strikebreakers, while hypocritical employers praised unfettered private enterprise but used public officials and police to stifle worker organizing.46 In the aftermath of the 1917 strikes, many Federación leaders nevertheless were optimistic because the Jones Act had recently granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans, which they hoped would convince metropolitan and colonial officials to show greater regard for workers’ constitutional rights of assembly and free speech. They were also exhilarated by the positive Socialista showing at the polls that year. However, the colonial and metropolitan governments found the war an opportune moment to intensify repression of radicals and dissidents who advocated for basic constitutional rights. As part of this effort, the metropolitan government turned toward an increasingly conservative top AFL leadership, which it induced to serve U.S. foreign policy ends. The collaboration soon led to the formation of the Pan American Federation of Labor, aimed at “stemming the revolutionary tide of the Latin American workers’ movement and bringing it under the control of organized labor in the United States.” As cane cutting season began in late 1917, Federación leaders continued to wait for metropolitan AFL approval to declare a strike, which it delayed in response to requests from federal officials to promote mediation in the interest of wartime labor peace. However, employers showed an utter lack of willingness to mediate as they continued to gain support from colonial officials in repressing workers, despite the recent granting of citizenship and recent labor legislation.47 After five months of delays and frustration, in late March sugarcane workers finally went out on strike en masse, most impressively in the eastern districts, and organizers claimed that more than twenty-five thousand had joined the stoppage. Unfortunately, a majority of the cane had already been cut. Furthermore, employers had strong support from Governor Yager and federal officials, who continued to support employers by accepting their claims that the strike was insignificant and thus there was no need for mediation. Capetillo was again in the middle of the action, working with local strike leader Domingo Santos Cruz around the towns

48 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

of Ceiba, Naguabo, Fajardo, and Luquillo. Unionists held rallies, demonstrations, and marches at local Federación worker temples and in working-class neighborhoods in towns and rural barrios. During a rally in Ceiba, police entered the labor temple without a warrant, searched workers, and took away their tools. Capetillo was attempting to educate them about their constitutional rights, as she explained in correspondence to Santiago Iglesias. She had been speaking from inside the union hall, where “I addressed the campesinos who were outside, and I spoke in a very loud voice, and told them, ‘How can you let them take your tools away without protesting? That’s citizen’s abuse and you’re all cowards.” The strikers cheered, and then they started singing “The Internationale.” It upset the police, whose report on the incident had a much different perspective, claiming that “the socialist agitator Luisa Capetillo . . . incited a riot and advised a large number of people in said Federation to commit violent acts and battle the police.” Although no battle had taken place and the workers had committed no violent acts, police then forcibly grabbed her and hauled her to the police station, where they roughed her up. But she continued to speak to the crowd from the balcony. She had to pay an extraordinary fine of four hundred dollars before she was released. AFL President Samuel Gompers criticized Governor Yager for denying justice to the strikers, but police attacks on unionists did not subside. The Red Scare had come to Puerto Rico, permitting colonial authorities to violate workers’ rights of assembly and free speech with impunity.48 Increasingly aware of the political context of attacks by employers and their government allies, Federación leaders incorporated an electoral component into their World War I–era campaign. Facing intensified repression at the end of the war, many backed away from anarchist visions of a worker-controlled society, toward more immediate results. They hoped that the electoral path would provoke less repression than strikes and allow them a means of countering the dominance of the major bourgeois parties in the colonial government. The Partido Unión, controlled by large landowners whose paternalism and political practices antagonized agricultural workers, maintained hegemony over electoral politics for two decades following its formation in 1904. Unionistas supported low corporate taxes and opposed the expansion of public schooling and social services and the removal of literacy requirements for voting in island elections. The party favored autonomy and eventual political independence from the United States. Unionista influence in Congress helped shape the Jones Act of 1917, which redefined the colonial relationship and kept the maximum property tax rate at only 10 percent of assessed value.49

Colonizing a Movement 49

Meanwhile the Republicanos, composed largely of professionals, including bureaucrats and administrators employed by the sugar corporations, offered little to workers, but they did not oppose expanding the franchise and state services that might offer them jobs while benefiting working people. The Republicanos, who favored annexation to the United States, had made a few efforts at electoral coalitions with the small labor parties in the first years of the century, but they had consistently ended in failure. The massive strikes of the World War I era failed to win contracts, but they forced mainstream politicians to pay greater attention to potential influence of workers. “Due, in a large measure, to the insistent and ever-increasing clamor of the organized labor movement of the island,” in 1915 the Puerto Rican legislature created the Homestead Commission, the first government effort since 1898 to address the woeful conditions of worker housing. At the peak of the strike wave in 1917, the Puerto Rican legislature enacted Law 42, explicitly granting workers the right to organize without employer interference. However, with the intensified repression in 1918, combined with pressure from metropolitan AFL leadership to seek labor peace, Federación leaders soon backed away from encouraging strikes, and the party of the workers became “enmeshed in political struggles.”50 The impressive initial Socialista electoral showing reflected the impact of the recent Cruzada and the massive strikes. In its first islandwide election, in 1917, the party gained 14 percent of the vote, and in 1920 it increased its share to 24 percent, electing four representatives and one senator. But intensified pressure from the metropolitan government and the more open AFL promotion of conservative unionism, compelled it to narrow its focus and retreat. The death of Luisa Capetillo in 1922 was more than symbolic of the decline of remaining anarchist voices in the labor movement, and of the early progressive vision of a worker-controlled society with its strong commitment to egalitarianism, working-class feminism, and hostility to capitalism. The Social Democratic faction headed by Iglesias henceforth was in charge. The conservative influence of the metropolitan AFL became even more apparent in 1925, when Iglesias was named secretary of the Pan American Federation of Labor. Under Iglesias’s increasingly centralized leadership in Puerto Rico, the Federación and the Socialistas renounced any links to radicals and anarchists, or hostility to government and its institutions. The labor leaders and their party had become “intensely reformist,” even willing to make pacts with the parties they once loathed. In 1924, opposition leaders in the Partido Unión, along with the pro–United States segment

50 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

of the Republicanos, composed of businessmen and planters, formed the Alianza (Alliance) in order to counter the growing electoral clout of the Socialistas. In response, a dissident faction of the Republicanos, comprised largely of bureaucrats and middle- class professionals, the technicians of representative democracy, joined with the Socialistas in the Coalición.51 The Coalición remained an influential and loyal opposition throughout the 1920s, while the Socialistas maintained their proportionate influence within the electorate. The Alianza collapsed in 1929, leading to another internal party realignment. A new Coalición emerged for the 1932 elections, in which the Socialistas joined with the most reactionary sectors of their traditional class enemies among former Unionistas and Republicanos, including representatives of the absentee sugar corporations and antinational capital. It marked a class betrayal and an open repudiation of socialist principles to which the more conservative faction of the Federación had earlier claimed to adhere. But the new Coalición came to power in 1932. Although literate women joined the franchise for the 1932 elections and literacy requirements were eliminated in 1936, the percentage of votes for the Socialistas had barely increased since 1920, at 26.2 percent of the total. The labor party was shedding any pretensions of advocating for workers’ interests against capital or increasing workers’ direct voices in government institutions or even within the labor movement. Meanwhile, its “urban artisan leadership embarked on a truly remarkable trajectory of political careerism.”52 Through the end of the decade, the Coalición remained the dominant faction in colonial Puerto Rican electoral politics. Agricultural workers gained favorable legislation while Socialista leaders gained posts in the government. But the Socialistas were junior partners in the Coalición, the legislation remained largely unenforced, working conditions deteriorated, wages plummeted, and politicians were pressured to respond to escalating labor unrest. Through the electoral system, union leaders hoped to capitalize on divisions within the industry, particularly between corporations that controlled the plantations and colonos. Large producers were represented by the Asociación de Productores de Azúcar (Sugar Producers’ Association, the APA), formed in 1909, the most influential industrial group. Initially representing mostly Spanish and Puerto Rican producers, absentee interests from the United States gained control by the 1920s. But the largest producers were unable to impose discipline on colonos, who had political influence at the local level and constantly challenged central interests. But the feuds accrued little benefit to workers who had meager success con-

Colonizing a Movement 51

vincing the colonial executive to abide by the letter of labor law, or even to enact legislation that would tax corporations to cover their share of supporting local schools, public works, or social services.53 In 1924 colonos formed their own organization, the Asociación de Agricultores de Puerto Rico (AAPR), the Farmers’ Association of Puerto Rico, affiliated with the American Farm Bureau Federation. It was dominated by the largest, wealthiest, and most conservative within their ranks and, like its metropolitan counterpart, displayed an unyielding hostility to organized labor. In the aftermath of the 1933–1934 strike, most small colonos left the organization to form the Asociación de Colonos, and they also opposed unions and labor legislation. Union organizers agreed with Governor Tugwell that colonos “were hard on labor.” Adhering to strong individualist attitudes like farmers in the continental United States, they fought tenaciously to avoid signing collective bargaining agreements under any circumstances. Meanwhile corporation representatives understood that cooperation with Federación leaders could result in labor peace as labor contracts imposed worker discipline, and they displayed less visceral opposition to organized workers. Furthermore, the economic downturn of the Great Depression did not cause great harm to the absentee corporations, while small colonos often suffered, and they fought the Federación tooth and nail.54 Scattered strikes broke out in 1932, and the recently created Mediation and Conciliation Service of the Puerto Rican Department of Labor (PRDL) recognized the legitimacy of workers’ demands for daily wages (instead of piece rates), shorter hours, and the abolition of company stores. In 1932 the Federación signed a convenio (collective bargaining agreement) with the United Porto Rican Sugar Company (Eastern Puerto Rico), a model for subsequent industrywide contracts. The agreement set a basic rate of seventy-five cents for an eight-hour day in cultivation and eighty-five cents for cane cutters. It guaranteed equal pay for women and minors. But with an overabundance of available adult men, the agreement in effect reinforced the gender and generational division of labor in the cane fields. Women and youth were confined to supportive tasks in the fields, or were lured into the much lower-paying needlework industry as it expanded during the Great Depression.55 In the newly ascendant Coalición government, despite their divergent interests, Republicanos and Socialistas helped forge Puerto Rico’s first colonywide convenio, between the Federación and the APA, effective for the 1933–1934 season. Prudencio Rivera Martínez, secretary of labor and Federación vice president, and Rafael Alonso Torres, Federa-

52 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

ción secretary-general, played major roles in negotiations. The agreement covered factory employees as well as agricultural workers on “administration” lands, the plantations directly controlled by the large centrales that were members of the APA. The agreement established a minimum wage of sixty-five cents for agriculture in the interior and seventy cents on the coast for an eight-hour day, it abolished piece rates for agricultural workers, and it maintained a twelve-hour day in the factories.56 While in principle the convenio represented a political accomplishment for the Coalición, it angered workers. It applied only to those employed on lands controlled by the centrales affiliated with the APA while it excluded colonos. It lacked any enforcement mechanism. Furthermore, union representatives failed to challenge employers who refused to adhere to its terms, like Sr. Ramos, head of the Puerto Rican Employers’ Association, who testified that there was no need for convenios or minimum wages, claiming that workers preferred piecework and that, in addition to wages, “they get a house, light, water . . . and they eat a lot of cane.” But workers were particularly upset because the agreement did not improve their earnings and its terms were inferior to those of the agreement involving United Porto Rico the previous year. FERA investigator Robert Watson reported that agricultural workers in some locations were still earning as little as twenty cents per day and that factory workers continued to toil twelve to fourteen hour per day during grinding season. Even top Federación leaders acknowledged that tens of thousands of workers still were paid piece rates and earned as little as twenty-five or thirty cents per day, far below the seventy-cent minimum set in the convenio. In most locations, Federación negotiators had agreed to lower earnings than those of the previous year, as wages for the lowest paid group, cane cultivators, fell from an average of 11.1 cents per hour to 9.6 cents per hour. The PRDL calculated that basic weekly incomes for field workers from the previous season fell from $4.44 to $3.60, or 23 percent, while the cost of food, their major expense, rose by 58 percent, or from $11.17 to $17.50 for a family of five. Yet the corporations continued to enjoy windfall profits, and workers justifiably felt that Federación leaders had sold them out by signing the agreement without their approval. Rather than contributing to labor peace, the convenio was a catalyst for unrest.57 Already upset by declining conditions prior to the signing of the convenio, groups of hoers, ditch diggers, water carriers, weeders, sowers, and yoke drivers in several locations began staging scattered strikes in August 1933. In September employees of the United Puerto Rico Sugar Company conducted a larger walkout.58 Unrest escalated sharply in December after

Colonizing a Movement 53

the Federación signed the convenio conceding lower wages and a twelvehour day for factory workers and following refusal by several APA members to accept the terms of the agreement. Agricultural workers quickly joined the general strike initiated by dockworkers that soon spread throughout the island. In early January, cane cutters from around Fajardo began a spontaneous walkout that workers elsewhere in eastern Puerto Rico quickly joined, and it spread along the southern coast to Guánica. Within a few days more than forty thousand workers affiliated with twenty-nine of the forty sugar centrales and neighboring cane fields joined the strike, and by January 20 an estimated seventy thousand people had stopped working, more than in any of the World War I–era strikes. Workers’ principal demands were enforcement of the eight-hour day in the fields and its extension to the sugar processing factories, a standard daily minimum wage, an end to the piecework system, and elimination of all company stores. But representatives of the Federación and Socialistas sided with employers, refusing even to criticize employers who flouted the terms of the flawed convenio. Instead they belittled strikers and pressured them to return to work while the APA congratulated Rivera Martínez for strikebreaking.59 Dissidents within the Federación, composed primarily of militant middle-level leaders who opposed the convenio, soon formed Afirmación Socialista. They hoped to return the Federación to its democratic roots while they attempted to unify the striking workers. Soon the strikers invited Pedro Albizu Campos of the Partido Nacionalista to lead them. In accepting the offer he created the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores (FNT), through which he hoped to unite Puerto Rican workers to combat U.S. imperialism. But the Nacionalistas offered a bourgeois vision that spoke most effectively to intellectuals, students, and coffee planters. As Diana Christopulos argues, “he failed to demonstrate the link between independence and economic improvement” for working-class people. His agricultural vision addressed the dream of making Puerto Rico a nation of small proprietors, while it skirted issues of immediate concern to strikers confronting employers. Yet even the most militant and class- conscious labor sympathizers, including those who soon became the core of the newly formed Puerto Rican Communist Party, accepted his leadership.60 They understood that political domination by foreign capital reinforced economic domination and that the Socialista leaders had little interest in greater worker participation in political parties, unions, or other Puerto Rican institutions. For the strikers, the immediate challenge was the powerful front of

54 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

employers and their allies in the Federación leadership and the Coalición government, which controlled the means of violence. Police guarded grower properties and protected scabs, and they broke up pickets on the lands of the United Puerto Rico Sugar Company and the Central Pasto Viejo and on the docks at Humacao. By the end of the month, starving strikers began returning to the fields and factories without any agreement. Rafael Bernabe considered the strike “a particularly shameful moment in the history of the Socialist Party,” which in conjunction with Federación leadership “sought to neutralize and isolate these movements” rather than to coordinate and encourage them. Communist Party leader Juan Santos Rivera denounced Socialista and Federación officials for using their “degenerated power to destroy the strikes in fire and blood.” Meanwhile Albizu Campos launched a scathing attack on the colonial government and lambasted the governor as a puppet of the Central Guánica and the South Puerto Rico Sugar Corporation. Yet the compliant PRDL did not even recognize the strike, claiming inaccurately that labor peace had prevailed during the 1933–1934 season and made possible the production of a record 1.1 million tons of sugar.61 Defeated in the short term, the strikers did enjoy some material gains the following year with a substantial wage increase. But they realized that they as workers, not the Federación hierarchy, would have to continue pressuring employers to ensure contract compliance, particularly the abolition of piecework, elimination of labor contractors, and enforcement of minimum wages. Meanwhile Federación representatives had convinced most industry representatives that the convenio was in their own best interests, and in December 1934, R. A. Veve, speaking on behalf of the APA labor committee, emphatically repudiated the “hateful system of piece-work or labor by contract” because it directed a large portion of workers’ earnings into the pockets of contractors and other intermediaries. Even colono leaders José Pesquera, chair of the Colonos Committee of the Farmers Association, and Oscar Nevares, chair of the Colonos’ Association of Puerto Rico, favored the elimination of arbitrary wage fixing by the mayordomo and the supplying of jobs by the contractor. Parties to the convenio realized that labor contractors and mayordomos had become largely redundant since the overwhelming majority of workers who once migrated to the fields were now settled with their families close to their places of employment, and that at least in theory employers could use the money they spent on labor contractors to increase wages. Meanwhile, as a result of the convenio, representatives of both the APA and the

Colonizing a Movement 55

Federación claimed to be “very proud of the peaceful way in which labor relations in the industry were being regulated.”62 The convenio addressed several issues that had provoked workers by setting a daily wage for specific tasks, prohibiting piece rates, and mandating a standard eight-hour working day for both the fields and the factories. It also permitted union shop, referred to as “preferential shop” (job preferences to union members) for Federación members while it prohibited employers from interfering with labor organizing or union functions and required that employers show cause for dismissal of workers. The clauses reducing the working day and offering an overtime differential met another goal of the convenio, whose “aim is to employ the greatest number of men instead of giving out extra work.”63 Pressure from the strike also reverberated among Puerto Rican legislators, who in 1935 passed Act Number 49, which established an eight-hour working day for both urban and agricultural workers, acknowledged the principle of collective bargaining, and granted a 10 percent increase in minimum wages, explicitly to “end a longstanding controversy that was the cause of much discord between employers and employees.” Its impact was immediately evident, for during the 1934–1935 season the workweek averaged 50.4 hours in the fields and 77.3 hours in the factories, while the following season it fell to 49.9 hours in fields and 53.4 hours in factories. For factory workers, the 1933–1934 strike contributed to a reduction in the workweek by an average of almost twenty-four hours within two years. Yet widespread violations of the law continued, as one field inspector from the PRDL discovered during a 1937 incident when he was even threatened by an armed mayordomo.64 The strike also contributed to colonial legislation establishing workers’ compensation and strengthening collective bargaining, enforced by the PRDL. Unfortunately, the Workmen’s Accident Compensation Act was severely flawed, applicable only if employers were willing to voluntarily pay a premium. Soon the metropolitan government gained control over determining minimum wages through the United States Sugar Act of 1937, although initially the secretary of agriculture simply accepted wages already established in the annual Federación-APA convenio. The legislation was also intended to convince colonos not covered by the convenio to accept wage determinations set by the secretary of agriculture in order to receive federal government benefit payments. But the Sugar Act undermined union influence, as rates established by the federal wage board soon became the wage agreed to by the Federación and the APA in the annual

56 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

convenios. In its administrative operation the Sugar Act reduced workers’ incentive to participate in union activities, since their wages were determined by colonial fiat rather than collective bargaining. As labor analyst William Knowles acknowledged, the “minimum wage boards tend to undercut collective bargaining.” Nevertheless Federación representatives were present at regional Sugar Act wage hearings, a phenomenon rare in the continental United States, where neither workers nor union representatives were likely to challenge even the most absurd employer claims.65 Another important legislative enactment, Law 143, the Insular Labor Relations Act of 1938, granted both industrial and agricultural workers the explicit right to engage in collective bargaining without employer interference. It made Puerto Rico the first setting where U.S. citizens employed in agriculture could claim such rights and, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) boasted, “so far as is known, the only sugarproducing area in the world where wages are fixed each year by collective bargaining.”66

Conclusion While the initial appearance of the Federación Libre de Trabajadores and its affiliation with the AFL often has been attributed to the compatible personalities of Santiago Iglesias and Samuel Gompers, its influence in the early twentieth century could be attributed largely to the phenomenal expansion of the sugar industry and the efforts of large numbers of dedicated union sympathizers. The sugar industry was by far the largest employer in the colony, with a work force approaching two hundred thousand at harvest peak on the eve of World War II. It was the most intense concentration of wage-earning agricultural workers in a single industry and concentrated setting under the United States flag. Federación leadership quickly realized that its own domination of organized labor and its political influence in island politics would be based on its claim to represent the workers in the cane fields. By 1940, Otis E. Mulliken, chief of the Labor Section of the Sugar Division of the USDA, asserted that as a result of the Federación, Puerto Rican sugar cane workers enjoyed a greater measure of control over conditions of work and more favorable labor legislation than any other United States citizens or subjects. Riding the wave of participation in the ruling Coalición government, the Federación claimed about 175 locals of the Unión Agrícola in sugar, with the annual islandwide convenios its crowning

Colonizing a Movement 57

achievement.67 Beneath the surface, however, this heroic interpretation was severely flawed. Sustained Federación interest in agriculture began at the turn of the century, and unionists took seriously a commitment to educate workers not solely in the principles of collective bargaining but also in establishing a more just and egalitarian society. Prior to launching an important organizational campaign in 1915, union sympathizers conducted La Cruzada del Ideal, an intense educational crusade that reached into the smallest villages and hamlets on the island. With the Partido Socialista as its political arm, the effort involved organizing workers and gaining electoral representation. But the combination of employer opposition, government repression, and pressure from the AFL once the United States entered World War I turned the Federación leadership away from the fields. In the 1920s, union leadership shifted its focus to electoral politics and obtaining posts in the colonial government. Its Coalición with middle-class parties turned it away from workers. With the 1932 realignment, the Coalición joined with the most reactionary elements in the colonial government, including representatives of the largest sugar producers. Once in power, the Federación and large sugar producers signed the first islandwide collective bargaining agreement in late 1933. But the convenio was riddled with problems, as it lacked an enforcement mechanism, required that factory workers continue twelve-hour workdays despite massive unemployment, and agreed to real wages lower than those of the previous year. Workers were particularly upset that it was a backroom deal and excluded their input. Led by dissidents in the Afirmación Socialista, they staged a spontaneous strike repudiating the agreement and Federación leaders, with additional direction from Nacionalista leader Pedro Albizu Campos and more radical organizers who would soon form the Puerto Rican Communist Party. The workers, however, were unable to overcome the combined opposition of employers, government officials, Federación leadership, and the ravages of hunger and were compelled to return to the fields after more than a month on strike. Afterwards the Coalición government, haunted by the specter of rising worker militancy, did enact legislation addressing agricultural workers’ concerns, such as collective bargaining rights, minimum wages, an eight-hour day, assistance to poor widows, prohibition of tobacco stripping at home, and workers’ compensation. But appearances were deceiving, for the laws were weak and lacked adequate enforcement mechanisms. Furthermore, Federación power was predicated on collaboration with more powerful employers and the colonial regime, and its leaders had

58 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

already demonstrated a willingness to accept substandard wages and working conditions. Its acquiescence to the colonial labor order was fixed during struggles over whether to include Puerto Rican workers in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937, which established a minimum wage of twenty-five cents per hour in industries throughout the United States. Initially the legislation included Puerto Rico, whose workers were guaranteed formal equality with those of the continental United States. But when employers protested, legislators and government administrators backpedaled. As the New York Times reported, Governor Blanton Winship and employers made an “understanding with labor leaders to support a plea for exemption of Puerto Rico from the Wage and Hour law, and Congress enacted the Norton Amendment in 1939, which exempted Puerto Rico.”68 Factory workers from the four centrales of Eastern Sugar Associates promptly struck to maintain the twenty-five cents per hour minimum, angry that Federación leaders had joined with employers and colonial authorities to establish a status for Puerto Rico “completely different from the rest of the country.” Robert W. Clairborne, acting Puerto Rican representative of the United States Department of Labor (USDL) Wage and Hour Division, had already been removed from his position because he attempted to enforce the FLSA, which he considered “the Puerto Rican worker’s first symbol of his rights as an American citizen.” Clairborne predicted that with the enactment of the Norton Amendment, “Puerto Rico will become the dumping ground of the sub-standard employer, even more than now.”69 His words were prophetic, foreshadowing the project that would begin the following decade, popularly known as Operation Boostrap, a new model of economic colonialism that benefited U.S. investors while touted as Puerto Rico’s industrial revolution. The project did become a model of the global industrial future in which first-world investors turned to an offshore setting to produce cheap goods for metropolitan consumers. The success of Operation Bootstrap hinged on political subservience and low wages. It marked the beginning of a vicious cycle of shifting sites of production in which outside investors set up production for export until political leaders in still another third-world setting could be convinced to accept weaker worker and environmental protections and lower wages for the workers they claimed to represent. The Federación hierarchy considered its fate as linked to a continuation of the colonial order and subordination of Puerto Rico to the metropolis. Puerto Rican Labor Commissioner William D. López, a longtime Federación leader, asserted in a 1938 speech to investors from the

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United States: “Puerto Rico needs you, and as a Big Brother it is your duty to give her all the opportunities to grow up by herself. . . . Puerto Rican workers are honest, industrious, peaceful, energetic, and above all loyal.” Union officials attributed their own success to collaboration with employers, and Federación Vice President Francisco Paz Granela asserted, “All this progress has been achieved without need of strikes, loss of lives, persecutions, or causing any social unrest.” Meanwhile Rafael Alonso Torres of the Federación acknowledged that the union’s relationship with employers was “one of absolute harmony and cooperation.”70 Collaboration of Federación leaders with capitalists was predicated on blocking democratic unionism and membership participation. Judged by their continued good relations with the Republican Party, the Farm Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, and the APA, Federación heads had become enemies of workers. But in 1939, following the death of Santiago Iglesias, an internal struggle for Federación leadership broke out, setting the stage for a challenge. The previous year had witnessed the formation of the Partido Popular Democrático (the Popular Democratic Party—the Populares), which openly courted agricultural workers disaffected with the Socialistas for their cozy relations with employer groups. It was a propitious moment for workers to reject the Federación, as the recently formed CIO had arrived in Puerto Rico to initiate a campaign to organize dockworkers, with the blessing of many New Deal leaders. The Unión de Dependientes y Demás Empleados de los Muelles (dockworkers’ union) of San Juan waged a strike against the Waterman Steamship Corporation, which the labor commissioner and acting Federación president, Prudencio Rivera Martínez, helped to break by importing rural laborers and encouraging them to form a rival local union. It marked the beginning of a new stage of labor politics in which militant Puerto Rican workers, most visibly those in the sugarcane fields, challenged longstanding AFL dominance.71

CHAPTeR 2

Dreams of Democratic Unionism: The Confederación General de Trabajadores and Puerto Rican Agricultural Workers

There is no institution as similar to a democratic government as a union of workers. Frank zorilla, sEcrEtary oF labor oF pUErto rico

The recovery of the Puerto Rican sugar industry in the early 1940s convinced experts that its role as the motor of economic conquest would continue into the foreseeable future. The island’s dependence on sugar was evident, and in 1941 the USDL estimated that two-thirds “of everything Puerto Rico uses and possesses—has been obtained from sugar and the other businesses that owe their existence so largely to that crop. . . . for many years to come [it] must continue to be dependent primarily on sugar to support its dense and fast-growing population.” Two years later Dudley Smith, associate director of the Asociación de Productores de Azúcar, dominated by sugar refiners, factory operators, and plantation owners from the United States, agreed that “sugar is the lifeblood of the island . . . everybody who has studied Puerto Rico is sooner or later coming around to the conclusion that Puerto Rico must depend on sugar.” In 1950, economist Harvey Perloff concurred that “agriculture is the backbone of Puerto Rico’s economy and will undoubtedly continue to be the major key to the island’s welfare for a long time to come.” Not surprisingly, politicians and labor activists considered sugar workers critical to their future plans. Unfortunately, scholars have not engaged in a systematic examination of the politics of labor unionism in Puerto Rico’s sugar industry after 1940, for as this chapter demonstrates, if they had, they would have discovered that the expert predictions were wide of the mark.1 Sugar was critical to the immediate political and economic future of

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the island and was central to the political and labor struggles of the era, whose outcomes resulted in significant realignments in colonial politics and organized labor. In this chapter I will examine and interpret three critical labor battles associated with the political realignments. The first involved the meteoric rise of the Confederación General de Trabajadores, which engaged in a struggle with the Federación to represent the sugar industry, followed by its rapid fragmentation. A second concerned the absorption of the largest wing of the divided Confederación by the CIO, accompanied by the takeover of the union representing the sugar workers by the United Packinghouse Workers of America (the Packinghouse). The final conflict centered on the role of agricultural workers and their unions in economic development in general, and agricultural mechanization in particular. The struggles’ outcomes were tied to the political interests of the colonial powers, whose economic priorities changed quickly, leaving workers in the lurch. Much scholarship has placed the Populares, particularly Luís Muñoz Marín, as the centerpiece of this story. Attention on the first leader of the Populares is understandable, particularly because many observers and participants consider him the final victor. He dominated Puerto Rican politics for a generation and is still remembered as its best-known political personality of the twentieth century. It was a critical time for the Populares, who first participated in elections in 1940 and gained a plurality but not dominance in both houses of the Insular legislature. Muñoz Marín became president of the Senate and his party consolidated power in the early 1940s, its ascent closely linked to labor struggles. Already in 1946, admirers including journalist Paul Blanshard portrayed him as the “magnetic apostle of the landless peasant [who] commands a loyalty among Puerto Ricans which amounts almost to worship.”2 Unfortunately, undue concentration on the great man has slighted the complex story involving the interaction of political and labor leaders with agricultural workers and their organizations, particularly the Confederación General de Trabajadores.

The Rise of the Confederación General de Trabajadores The Confederación appeared in March 1940, formed by labor activists and union members, many of them disenchanted with the AFL, joined by other individuals involved in the island’s national liberation and antilatifundista struggles.3 Some were closely linked to political parties, in-

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cluding the Puerto Rican Communist Party (PRCP) and particularly the Populares, and included workers and former workers as well as labor lawyers and other middle-class allies. Many Populares sought links with the Confederación in order to obtain the votes of sugar workers and hegemony in the colony’s political arena. Confederación affiliates included unions that had severed ties with the Federación, others that were formerly independent, and new ones including the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Azucarera (Sugar Industry Workers Union), the Sindicato. Many of its early leaders had participated in recent strikes by sugar workers in 1933–1934, button workers in 1938, the White Star Bus Lines in 1937, and dockworkers in 1937–1938. The last event was particularly important, having gained the support of the National Maritime Union of the CIO after Federación directors again turned their backs on workers, and many labor activists eagerly supported the new Confederación as a challenge to the stodgy AFL. The strike was also significant because it provoked division in the colonial government, as workers thwarted an effort supported by Governor Blanton Winship to break the strike by sending soldiers into the streets.4 It marked the beginning of a shift in political alliances that partially loosened the repressive colonial executive apparatus, and of a decadelong occasional relationship between Puerto Rican labor activists in the Confederación and the CIO. Puerto Rican Communist Party members were among the most dedicated early leaders of the Confederación, including its first secretarygeneral, Juan Sáez Corales, who coordinated the major sugar industry strikes of the early 1940s. Sáez Corales’s early life reflected the instability and turbulence faced by thousands of Puerto Rican workers determined to overcome hard times by collective action. He was born in 1915 in the rural Barrio de Sabana Grande Abajo near San Germán and his parents, who could not read or write, were agregados employed by a rich local landowner, “especially during sugar cane harvests.” Sáez Corales recalled, “in the days of my youth there was much misery.” In 1922, when the family moved to the city of San Germán, his father continued to work in the fields during harvest, while employed in construction when available during the agricultural off-season. There he began his formal schooling, often attending classes barefoot, and “many days I had to go to school without eating.” He dropped out at age thirteen to work, having completed the eighth grade: “There my scholarly studies ended. My high school and my university have been life itself.”5 Conditions for his family, like those of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, deteriorated during the Great Depression, and they were drawn

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into the rapidly expanding needlework industry. It employed not only women but entire families, as he, his brothers and sisters, father, and mother often worked all day and into the night “embroidering handkerchiefs and . . . blouses.” Yet their collective earnings were insufficient to meet basic needs, and his youngest sister died of hunger at age three, while he suffered from typhus, malaria, and catalepsy; at one time all his hair fell out. He furthered his education by associating with tobacco workers, through whom he gained access to labor newspapers and Marxist texts, and “that was how I began to become aware that we live in a society divided into two fundamental classes: workers and capitalists.” He became convinced that workers’ problems stemmed from the colonial status of Puerto Rico and should be addressed by organizing. He was a member of the founding group of the San Germán Puerto Rican Communist Party and participated in strikes involving workers in sugar, buttonmaking, dock work, and saltmaking. Elected Puerto Rican President of the Workers Defense League, he organized the massive 1939 Hunger March on San Juan.6 Sáez Corales envisioned a democratic, autonomous, and worker-directed focus for the Confederación and shied away from intimate relationships with political parties, based on the experiences of the Federación. The fast-rising Populares courted Confederación leaders by offering them government posts and encouraging them to run for office under its banner, blurring the distinction between labor union and party. The Populares, however, had not formed a labor party, and many of their interests conflicted with those of workers. The party attracted people from varied political and class backgrounds, including former members of the Coalición, industrialists, and other individuals and groups who were antilabor. Internal conflicts were muted in the early 1940s before the party gained political hegemony and had to continue seeking workers’ votes by supporting social and economic reforms and other Confederación initiatives.7 Party leaders even chose as its logo an image representing the largest block of voters on the island, the jíbaro, the symbol of the rural Puerto Rican worker. The Confederación and Populares found common ground in challenging the sugar corporations and their compliant ally, the Federación. The AFL affiliate was vulnerable on many levels, even for its crowning achievement, the islandwide annual convenio with the APA. As a result of the Sugar Act the agreement became a mere rubber stamp for wages determined in the metropolis and in the long term did not lead to higher worker incomes. Between 1934 and 1941, while hourly earnings for field

64 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

workers increased from an average of 11 cents to 15 cents, the average workweek fell from 37.5 hours to 25 hours, a decline in weekly incomes from $4.13 to $3.75.8 These official figures, furthermore, failed to calculate the sharp rise in the cost of living in Puerto Rico or the lengthening of the tiempo muerto. It was not difficult for Confederación leaders to demonstrate to workers that the Federación was not advancing their interests. Many workers were personally disappointed with Federación leadership, particularly Prudencio Rivera Martínez, Puerto Rican labor commissioner during Coalición rule, for refusing to support their strikes while siding with employers on a range of issues. Rivera Martínez continued to oppose the equal application of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for Puerto Ricans. When the United States entered World War II, he and other Federación representatives vigorously supported the AFL’s voluntary acceptance of federal wage controls and bans on strikes, despite windfall profits for sugar producers and skyrocketing inflation in Puerto Rico. Rivera Martínez’s actions convinced workers that he was a lackey of absentee metropolitan investors and companies seeking to maintain a colonial labor force with inferior wages and working standards.9 Workers were further provoked by employers who delayed the start of harvest in early winter, when indebtedness from tiempo muerto was highest, “in the interest of greater docility of the men. This tactic is fiercely resented and January is consequently a month in which disorder may be expected.” The actions of Federación leaders and growers made it easy for workers and organizers in the new Confederación to form a militant Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Azucarera, the Sindicato, in 1940, which created 135 local unions and started an organizing campaign that “spread like a fire through the cane fields.”10 But neither the APA nor the Federación accepted the new organization, and with support from metropolitan and colonial allies they waged a fierce battle to hold off their new militant opponent.

Challenges in the Fields: The Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Azucarera The crucial period of Sindicato militancy was its five-year campaign to dislodge the Federación from the fields in the early 1940s. It concentrated its efforts along the southern and eastern coasts, strongholds of the metropolitan sugar industry that dominated the APA, particularly

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the processing factories and large landholdings associated with the South Puerto Rico, Aguirre, and Eastern Sugar Associates interests. While most scholars have focused on the strikes of 1942 and 1945, the campaign was continuous and worker insurgency began as soon as the Sindicato appeared. Between 1940 and 1945 Sindicato members waged strikes over longstanding abuses and complaints about employers that Federación representatives had neglected, including labor contractors, failure of employers to grant garden plots, piecework, and dangerous conditions including working in burnt cane. They also struck to obtain higher wages, increase membership, and particularly to demonstrate to colonial and metropolitan government officials that they represented the overwhelming majority of workers in the industry and that convenios between the Federación and the APA did not have worker support. In 1940 the Sindicato led several local strikes over wages and working conditions, which surprised its AFL rival, and by 1941 observers including Governor Rexford (Rex) Tugwell agreed that a majority of sugar workers in Puerto Rico had already defected from the Federación “to the less disciplined and more aggressive new group.” Federación leaders responded by overtly siding with employers, as in the aftermath of a 1941 strike on properties affiliated with the Constancia Sugar Factory, when their allies in the Puerto Rican Senate even attempted without success to prevent an investigation of illegal employer actions that included performing tasks contrary to convenio terms and compelling workers to sign inaccurate payroll forms. The most important worker actions of 1941 involved a wave of strikes following the announcement of the annual FederaciónAPA convenio in March that merely confirmed the annual USDA ruling, in which the only wage increase came from the bonus based on sugar prices on the New York market. Yet many large companies and colonos refused even to abide by the USDA determination and tried to pocket the workers’ share of the bonus. Federación President Nicolás Nogueras did not challenge this illegal employer action, but instead simply suggested that workers present their individual cases to local Agricultural Adjustment Administration officials in hopes that the bureaucrats would withhold benefit payments until growers complied with the law. Nogueras became increasingly reactionary and even spoke publicly in favor of restricting the right to strike before a forum of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce. Sáez Corales later criticized him as “the most representative example of the degree of corruption that exists among top labor union leaders in our divided labor movement.”11 At the end of 1941, following the entry of the United States into World

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War II, governor Tugwell made a decision of profound importance to the immediate future of Puerto Rican agricultural unionism. Criticizing the recent declaration of martial law in Hawai‘i as “an absurd blowing up of military prerogative,” he refused to consider such action in Puerto Rico, resisting pressure from employers seeking an emasculated labor movement and even higher windfall profits by blocking workers’ freedom of association.12 In Hawai‘i, military authorities immediately halted the organizing campaign in the cane fields led by the Longshore Workers, which resumed only with re-establishment of civilian rule as the war neared an end. By contrast, Tugwell, as a progressive New Dealer, left the door open to wartime organizing in Puerto Rico, where agricultural unionism flourished. The threat of continued Sindicato-led strikes, combined with skyrocketing inflation, convinced the U.S. secretary of agriculture in 1942 to grant Puerto Rican sugar workers their first wage increase apart from bonuses since 1938, a ten-cent-per-day hike, resulting in a daily minimum of $1.30, and $1.51 for cane cutters. The success of the Sindicato organizing campaign also convinced the APA and Federación to sign an unprecedented three-year convenio, covering the 1942, 1943, and 1944 seasons, in hopes of thwarting the surging young movement. But the agreement merely acknowledged metropolitan-determined wage rates and again was signed without consultation or approval by union members. Workers were further upset that the convenio did not deal with burnt cane, dangerous for them but profitable for growers because it raised sugar content: “failure to discuss it was an important factor in calling the strike by the Confederación at the beginning of the 1942 harvest.” Heated rejection of the convenio and the Federación representatives’ uncontested acceptance of a metropolitan wage determination that kept earnings lagging far behind the cost of living, according to Sáez Corales, “caused the sugar workers’ general strike in 1942.”13 Even the governor recognized that sugar producers “had made stooges out of the old A.F. of L. unions and had collective bargaining contracts for wages, in the face of the great rise in living costs [that] were sufficient cause for revolts. The strikes were thus jurisdictional but also economic.” The Sindicato demanded an islandwide contract with the APA, a fortycent-per-day increase above rates set in the convenios, uniform wages throughout the island, and local agreements to deal with working in burnt cane. On the date the convenio was announced, January 19, factory and field workers in several locations, particularly in the south and east, initiated “a series of disorganized but bitter strikes” that resulted in a “partial

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standstill” of the industry. The PRDL reported on January 21 that seven thousand workers had joined the strike, and by the end of the month conservative police estimates acknowledged that more than ten thousand had stopped working.14 The dispute became acrimonious and deepened political divisions, as producer representatives disparaged the strikers and the merits of their demands. Eastern Sugar President Nadler claimed that workers spoke about the foolish and frivolous ways they would spend their wage increases, implying that they didn’t deserve more. With support from the press they also fabricated or exaggerated incidents hoping they could have “provoked the threat of intervention by the U.S. Marines to establish order.” Meanwhile F. A. Potts, administrator of Russell and Company, the landholding subsidiary for South Puerto Rico, claimed that the Sindicato had very little support on the south coast, yet acknowledged that company employees at its colonias of Limón, Fraternidad, and Santa Rita had shut down operations. Potts claimed that they were being instigated by Padre Ramos, an “anti-American” sympathizer of Albizu Campos, who because of his nationalist sympathies had been defrocked.15 APA members were concerned about the ideas articulated by the progressive faction of Confederación leadership, which not only involved workers’ economic demands but combined them with dreams of a politically independent Puerto Rico. The producers most feared loss of their tariff-free access to the metropolitan market. The Confederación leadership’s objectives were potentially far more frightening to corporations than that of converting Puerto Rico into the land of small independent farmers envisioned by Albizu Campos in the previous decade. An independent island in which working people participated vigorously in economic and political life threatened not just large landholders, but the entire foundations of colonialism in Puerto Rico. Grower allies in the Federación blamed the Populares for the unrest. Wrapping themselves in the mantle of wartime patriotism, Federación officials asserted that the strike was being fomented by the Puerto Rican governor, sanctioned by the Populares’ commissioner of labor, and “represents an act of sabotage against the national defense,” while they claimed to favor labor peace out of the “duty of loyalty to our nation.” They also charged that “under the guise of the strike there is the intention to carry out plans involving personal ambitions of so-called labor leaders who never were real laborers . . . whose distinctive record has been that of adapted bureaucrats and vulgar simulators who have committed all kinds of treason against their own ideals,” and who “serve as an instrument for

68 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

the political purposes of Muñoz Marín’s Popular Party.” Rivera Martínez complained that as soon as the convenio was signed, the “opposing political group serving the purposes of the Insular Government against the AFL started a campaign to discredit the agreement.” He asserted that opponents’ efforts “to line up a political strike . . . to force our members out of work, with connivance of local politicians” had failed, since they had forced only 10,000 of 130,000 employees in the industry to stop working. Yet Rivera and the APA did not address issues that prompted the walkout, such as employers’ widespread refusal even to abide by the USDA wage determination or the terms of the convenio. A closer examination of the strike reveals important rifts among the Populares and within the colonial government.16 The critical factor in the outcome of the strike was police power, controlled by the colonial state. Tensions peaked during picketing at the Aguirre affiliate, Luce & Company, a branch of the Federal Sugar Corporation of Boston. Aguirre management, led by Vice President E. F. Rice and Luce & Company general manager Marcelo J. Obén, initiated the violence, but corporation media and producers portrayed it differently. Basing its information on stories it received from APA officials in the metropolis, the New York Times claimed that the strikers had attempted to force their way into the Aguirre factory. Grower representative Manuel Gonzales Quiñones of the Puerto Rico Farmers’ Association, who was not an eyewitness, offered another version of events: “They started to strike in the southern part of the island. The government officials were instructed to protect this strike, to help the strikers. Even the policemen were instructed not to interfere with labor violating property rights. . . . they came into the place and a fight started and two men were killed. . . . nobody can tell who did the killing.”17 Obén himself claimed that two hundred men had trespassed onto Central Aguirre’s Mercado, Florida, and Torres properties, and local policemen on the scene made no effort to prevent the trespassing, “causing panic and compelling our laborers to abandon work.” Furthermore, he asserted, “most of the men taking part in these demonstrations are not workmen but merely propagandists sent out from nearby towns by employees of the Insular Roads, Senate, Department of Labor and other Bureaus.”18 Obén was obviously frustrated that during the previous five days strikers had been luring more and more workers out of the fields. But eyewitnesses contradicted the versions by the New York Times, Gonzales Quiñones, and Obén and revealed to USDL legal investigator Pedro Santana Jr., after a detailed investigation, that on January 30, about

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fifty unarmed strikers were demonstrating on the road between Guayama and Ponce, at the juncture of the American Railroad tracks near Colonia Josefa, on company property. Carrying a United States flag, they were trying to convince cane cutters still in the fields to stop working. Santana wrote that they were unarmed and acting “in a peaceful way and did not make any provocation.” But Obén, an ex-policeman, led several subordinates employed by Luce & Company, armed with revolvers, a doublebarreled shotgun, and a tear gas pistol, in an attack and fired into the picketers. The volley injured more than two dozen strikers and killed two of them, Justino Ortiz Aponte and Delfín Alicea Sánchez.19 The provocation by Obén and his subordinates had a profound impact throughout the island, the governor wrote, for they had “killed two men and wounded eight others who were parading with a flag. This infuriated the strikers and scared the other employers who feared reprisals. There were none, but there were several days of hysteria among employers that I have seldom seen equated elsewhere.” Tugwell further asserted that the strike, “with an absolutely impartial police, was an absolute fright for the absentee bankers” and that the “most intense efforts, lavishly financed, are being made to get martial law established here” by convincing federal government authorities that widespread violence and disorder were imminent. But at this critical moment, Tugwell refused to succumb to producers’ demands, asserting, “I will not use force on strikers.” Based on the eyewitness accounts, Obén was charged with murder, and he and his accomplices went to trial in Puerto Rico. The sugar producers provided him the best legal counsel money could buy and offset the influence of the colonial executive and the Populares. Despite abundant testimony that Obén had led the volley into the unarmed strikers, they were acquitted of all charges. To honor the fallen workers and protest the court decision, strike supporters staged a massive march and public rally in Guayama, where union leaders and politicians including Samuel Quiñones, president of the Puerto Rican House of Representatives, and Luís Muñoz Marín, president of the Populares, repudiated the verdict.20 Meanwhile, in the metropolitan heartland, the refinery and landholding interests who controlled the APA lobbied to influence the outcome of the strike, and Tugwell asserted, “I believe the worst trouble is to be expected in Washington from [APA Vice President James A.] Dickey and his crowd.” The governor added that the APA was using the Federación as a mere patsy, sending its representative to the nation’s capitol with a sum of cash and instructions, trying “to use the war as a club to prevent wage increases.” He was also upset that the corporations “have never made as

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much money as they will make this year and who can blame the workers for trying to share in it,” particularly in light of the skyrocketing cost of living.21 He understood the strike as a struggle between workers and the metropolitan sector of the sugar industry, representing the largest corporate refiners, factory operators, and landholders. At this moment during the height of the strike, the organized workers in the Sindicato and corporations were vying for the favor of both metropolitan and colonial authorities. The governor quickly took the initiative to ease tensions and resolve the strike. He attended the Confederación Assembly on February 6 and asked strikers to be patient and return to work while he promised to immediately hold Puerto Rican Minimum Wage Board hearings that would gather data justifying legislation to enact retroactive wage increases, effective the day they returned to work. He wrote that workers accepted his personal plea, which “touched me very much as a sign of loyalty,” reflecting his own paternalistic sentiments and understanding of his own role in the strike, and his willingness to accept unionism from above. Tugwell also claimed to have broken the unified front and official silence of the APA when several Puerto Rican employers tired of the fighting approached him informally, “but this has only made the Wall Street section of the producers more furious and more busy in Washington.”22 Tugwell accepted personal credit for resolving the strike, asserting that “by using ingenuity, bluff and improvisation I succeeded in settling, at least for the time being, what I thought was going to be a general strike” that threatened to spread to longshore work and navy construction. The wage study he proposed led to Law Number 44, mandating a minimum daily wage increase for cane cutters 29 cents higher than the $1.51 in the convenio. Puerto Rican workers for the first time gained wages approaching those of agricultural workers in traditionally high-wage Hawai‘i, where union organizing was being thwarted under wartime martial law.23 Following the Confederación victory, Sáez Corales, who presided over the Island Strike Committee, was offered a post as subcommissioner of labor, but “I did not accept the position,” turning down a government salary of four hundred dollars per month to continue working as a labor union leader for fifteen dollars per week, because he thought the offer “constituted a bribe.”24 He hoped to serve the interests of working people as Confederación secretary general, but several other union officers accepted posts offered by the Populares. The struggle over higher wages and union representation were not the only concerns workers articulated during the wartime campaign. Later in

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1942 workers employed at Central Soller demanded land to raise food for personal consumption, complaining that prices were so high they could not feed their families and they wanted to grow their own. They struck for a month in March and April until the employer offered them thirty acres of high-quality cane land, enabling 585 employees and their families to grow for subsistence but not sell any food. The strike highlighted a contradiction between workers’ economic visions of agriculture, in which they valued producing for subsistence, and those of professional economists, who argued that it was in Puerto Rico’s best interest to produce as much as possible for export earnings rather than strive for self-sufficiency. While production for an outside market might yield higher profits for capitalists, agricultural workers understood that they would fare better providing for their own needs. But workers’ calculations were excluded from formal economic models, which sacrificed self-sustaining agriculture and low food prices for profits accruing to absentee colonial investors. As labor researcher Victor Clark had acknowledged a decade earlier, “production of subsistence crops has suffered in the process of commercial agricultural development” by the sugar industry.25 Sindicato opponents, including Federación president Rivera Martínez, who had recently lost his position as commissioner of labor and was losing control of sugar workers, were not prepared to concede defeat in 1943. Rivera Martínez found himself in league with employers such as Gonzales Quiñones, head of the Farm Bureau affiliate, who criticized Tugwell for his efforts “to foster this organization headed by the leader of the Communist Party,” and to undermine the APA-Federación convenio. During testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Gonzales Quiñones submitted into the public record a copy of Resolution No. 31, which Rivera Martínez had introduced at the AFL convention in Toronto in early 1943. It complained that Tugwell had introduced a “reign of terror” and charged that Communist and Nationalist Party “agitators,” inspired and supported by the governor, had instigated what amounted to “a government-provoked revolt.” It also claimed that the PRDL, the Puerto Rican Department of Finance, the U.S. Department of Interior, and even local police departments “were moved throughout the island not only to get the people to strike, but to prevent them by coercion and intimidation to work peacefully in compliance with the agreement,” and it demanded Tugwell’s removal. Accepting this highly skewed interpretation of events, the AFL convention endorsed the resolution.26 During the same month, another representative of the Farmers Association, sugarcane grower Augusto Soltero, criticized the Populares-led

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government for its plan “to discredit the sugar industry.” He further complained that “the captains of the industry, the promoters, and the technical experts are referred to disrespectfully as the sugar barons and exhibited to the people as proper objects of hatred by leaders of labor and by their political associates.” Soltero’s bearers of industrial progress in the Puerto Rican colony had distinctly European origins: “Our culture was fed exclusively on the heritage of European cultural wealth transmitted by our Spanish ancestors and exhibited in our blood, in our conduct, and in our faith.” Identifying with the empires, he even acknowledged the “coexistence of Spanish and Anglo-American culture on American soil,” while oblivious to the African heritage that distinguished sugarcane workers throughout the Caribbean. Meanwhile APA representative Gabriel Soler, a civil engineer, banker, landowner, and operator of Central Eureka, in testimony before the U.S. Senate, disparaged the “so-called general strike” as a fabrication of the Populares. Similarly he complained, with more than a touch of paternalism, that “during the last twelve months hatred and antagonism has been stirred between classes to such an extent that one distrusts one’s most faithful servants. Politics are rampant throughout our island affecting everything and everyone.”27 Employers and employer organizations shared his contention that the Populares had instigated the 1942 strike and that the Confederación was little more than a front for the party which was conniving to gain workers’ votes. Representatives of both the Federación and employer groups would have agreed with Sáez Corales, who asserted that their concessions in 1942 only marked a truce. Early the following year he asserted that the “1942 strike is on foot and demanded an island-wide contract with the APA.” Workers were further upset by inflation heightened by the German submarine blockade. Despite wage increases stemming from the recent strike, the governor reported, a “more rapid rise in the cost of living led to a great number of labor disputes, especially during the first six months of 1943.” Labor actions were particularly intense on colonias affiliated with South Puerto Rico’s Russell & Company, Eastern Sugar Associates, and the Constancia and Loíza sugar factories, where workers were trying to compel employers to pay the legal minimum wage, in addition to the annual Agricultural Adjustment Act benefit payments employers owed them, averaging from $40 to $160 per worker. USDL mediator Charles Goldsmith found that scores of employers “in fact have been compelling the more ignorant of their workers to accept in a few cases as little as $3 in payment in full for all claims under pain of dismissal.” Goldsmith recommended that the director of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration

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in Puerto Rico stop payments to growers until it could confirm that each worker received the total amount due.28 The strikes again demonstrated that organized workers under a neutral state could pressure employers to comply with the law and bargain with their union. By the end of the 1943 season the Sindicato had signed separate contracts with nineteen sugar factories and affiliated landholdings recognizing it as the collective bargaining agent for employees. Employers who signed Confederación contracts promised to provide protective gear and clothing for workers in fields infested with itching plants (pica-pica and pingamosa). They agreed not to burn more than 10 percent of the total crop, and then only if an agreement on local conditions were reached with an authorized union representative. Employers were also willing to provide land for workers residing in colonias for animals and gardens on company-owned properties, if space was available, and to ensure sanitary housing. Disagreements would be submitted to a grievance committee, and neither side would call a strike or lockout during the life of the contract. While workers retained the option of working under the inferior terms of Federación contracts, the Sindicato had gained the support of the overwhelming majority of Puerto Rican agricultural workers.29 As the 1944 season approached, Sindicato leaders claimed the allegiance of between 80 and 90 percent of the island’s sugar workers and were confident they could win any confrontation with the APA and the Federación at the ballot box or in the fields. Not surprisingly, their major demands focused on democratic unionism. First, following a strike vote of membership in public assembly, the Sindicato demanded recognition as the exclusive agent for all employees of APA members. Rivera Martínez’s threats that Federación sugar and dockworkers would strike in the event of an APA- Confederación agreement lacked conviction, and he later reversed himself, asserting “we have always held that there should not be any strike, and there will not be because we intend to live up to our agreement and keep our word not to strike during the war in a vital industry like sugar, and will fight all strike agitation.” Second, as the FederaciónAPA convenio expired at the end of 1944, the Sindicato demanded islandwide elections to determine which collective bargaining agent workers preferred for 1945, seeking the vote at employment peak early in the year to ensure maximum worker participation. But the APA refused, and the governor feared that “both sides act as though they want to strike, especially the operators.” In late February Tugwell promised to activate the Insular Labor Relations Board (ILRB) to conduct an islandwide election,

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but the APA continued to stall by claiming that in some factories the majority of workers still preferred the Federación.30 In 1944 the leading corporations in the APA, South Puerto Rico and Aguirre, attempted to rid themselves of the Confederación by rejecting the agreements of the previous year, under different pretexts. South Puerto Rico formed a company union, prohibited under the Wagner Act. Sindicato member José Rodríguez de Soto of Ensenada explained that “our members affiliated with the Confederación were discriminated against, losing several days of work each week and threatened” with being fired if they did not renounce their union and join the company union. He feared that Sindicato members would not be able to work more than one or two days per week while those in the company union would work full time, “and we know they are bringing in new workers who never worked there.” The company union, he complained, was not democratic and never held a public assembly where workers discussed issues or voted on decisions. Angry workers responded by halting work on several South Puerto Rico properties, again forcing the company to accept a Sindicato contract.31 Meanwhile in early February manager Marcelo Obén provoked a strike at the largest Aguirre landholding affiliates, Luce & Company and Manuel González, by instituting piece rates, “generally recognized as a test of the piece-work aspirations of many of the island’s growers.” Organized workers had continuously opposed piecework and waged strikes on many occasions, including in 1934, and as Sáez Corales emphasized, the Confederación “is opposed to any form of piece work. It leads to greater exploitation.” In early February Sindicato members halted operations on several colonias affiliated with Aguirre until employers relented.32 The 1944 strikes convinced producer representatives that they had little alternative to accepting Sindicato demands for an election based on the islandwide bargaining unit, and negotiations began in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the APA. Meanwhile Confederación organizers conducted an educational campaign for members throughout the island through local assemblies, meetings, and issuing reports on the radio. But the Luce & Company general manager initiated still another provocation: “Obén published a handbill [claiming] that [the] union was demanding [a] contract containing [a] clause that if members of [the] union did not pay dues in full seven days after the contract was signed he [the employer] would be compelled to discharged them.”33 Marcelo Obén, who led the violent 1942 attack that killed two unarmed workers in cold blood and in early 1944 provoked a strike over piece rates, instigated still another effort to break the Sindicato by publishing and distributing false information.

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Puerto Rican law explicitly stated that paying dues was not a requisite to good standing in any union. Obén’s actions prompted another walkout at the end of February, and by March 13 more than ten thousand workers were on strike along the south and east coasts in districts that produced for the Aguirre, Machete, Guamaní, and Caribe centrales. The number rose to fourteen thousand two days later, when employers decided to negotiate and recognize the Sindicato, accepting contract provisions similar to those of the previous year, with additional maintenance of membership and grievance clauses. To resolve local differences and negotiate local convenios, Sáez Corales visited various parts of the island, and calm soon prevailed. By the end of the 1944 season the Sindicato had local convenios with twenty of the thirty-four APA member-owned centrales.34 While the Confederación was poised to overwhelm the Federación, several troubling factors loomed on the horizon, most critically from the colonial executive who feared that any Puerto Ricans would dare to challenge the empire. While able to gain support from union leaders in the attack against the worst monopolistic tendencies in the sugar industry, Tugwell had never been comfortable with the democratic faction of the Confederación. He was particularly disturbed about their relations with the rising Populares and what he considered Muñoz Marín’s willingness to “extend a dangerous tolerance to the comunistas, forgetting that they had no direct interest in Puerto Rico, but were only using independence as a means of causing trouble for another ‘capitalist’ nation.” By early 1944 Tugwell turned openly against radical leaders in the Confederación, warning them as he had not in earlier seasons to remember their duty to support the war instead of reverting to strikes, “thus using force,” which he said he would consider a personal “betrayal.” Tugwell also criticized the labor leaders for failure to control their members, concurring with labor experts James Watson and Robert Koretz that the “workers lack experience or education in labor relations to understand their responsibilities. The history of organization in this industry has been unusual.” Tugwell preferred a top-down and compliant union organization, complaining, “there is no discipline in the movement,” while contradictorily acknowledging, “I am sure the workers could not be controlled.” He distrusted Sáez Corales’s vision of the union—autonomous, democratically run, and responsive to worker initiative.35 Throughout 1944 Tugwell was openly hostile toward the left faction of the Confederación, but Muñoz Marín and the Populares, who had gained their critical support in the 1940 elections, were unable to abandon them

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yet. During a tense moment in early 1944, Tugwell complained contradictorily that “the Confederación in acting in this extreme fashion is obviously being pushed by a group of Communist tacticians without any restraint who are dangerous in an explosive situation. The moderates are Communists too, however, so it is impossible to generalize about that. But the extremists have created the most hysterical situation I have yet seen.”36 Unwilling to recognize that tolerance of diversity of opinion was a hallmark of democracy in the union, and apparently forgetting his own anger about APA lack of adherence to legal procedures that had provoked worker uprisings in recent years, the governor now claimed that the ongoing turbulence was the result of Communists who ultimately threatened the metropolis’s political control of the colony. Colonial officials used the FBI and informants to maintain surveillance on independence-minded Puerto Ricans of varied political affiliations, justified by ostensible concern about potential violence. An FBI report on the 2nd Congress of the Movimiento Pro-Independencia (MPI) on December 10, 1944, revealed that attendees included representatives from the Nationalist and Communist Parties of Puerto Rico, the Confederación, as well as the pro-independence wing of the Populares, all of whom were seeking to make Puerto Ricans “independence conscious.” Yet the FBI continued to exaggerate the influence of the participant organizations while assuming that they threatened the social fabric and security of the United States. It feared the Partido Nacionalista, which, it claimed, “since its inception to date has consistently advocated the outright overthrow of the US Government and the establishment of Puerto Rican independence through any means necessary including recourse to arms and revolution.” It similarly misrepresented the Confederación, whose leaders and members expressed a wide range of political persuasions, as “a Communist dominated labor organization which functions on an extensive scale in various sections of the island.” While the FBI acknowledged that the PRCP was small numerically, it was “said to be carrying considerable weight through its activities in the CGT [and] is desirous of aiding in the establishment of independence in Puerto Rico and in keeping it in its program, it prefers that a Communist regime be set up on the Island.” It also claimed that the union newspaper, Voz de la Confederación, was “controlled by high-ranking [Communist Party] functionaries on the island.” Sáez Corales led a small group of union volunteers who produced the union newspaper, and he sympathized and worked with other parties, including the PN and many individual Populares, toward independence. Yet many informants acknowledged that Sáez Corales and other PRCP members

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consistently opposed violence or the resort to arms and steered both the independence and labor movements toward peaceful and electoral democratic strategies.37 Government fear of Communist influence had less to do with violence than the challenge to control of the colony. Yet the Populares were not yet willing to move against Confederación leaders, and Tugwell was upset because “Muñoz Marín would take no action. He was fascinated by what he called the ‘selflessness’ of the leaders I complained of—which meant he was taken in by the parade they made of poverty.” But Tugwell was not accurately reading the wily Muñoz Marín, who was stalling because his party needed the Confederación leadership to win the November 1944 elections, as the labor leaders were able to influence Puerto Rico’s largest group of voters—workers in the sugar industry. The party’s patience “was translated electorally into a sweeping victory,” with seventeen of nineteen seats in the Senate and thirty-six of thirty-nine in the Lower Chamber. Once this was accomplished, Muñoz Marín was willing to follow the governor’s directive as their interests meshed. He neither needed nor cared to maintain positive relations with any politicians or labor leaders who wanted an autonomous, pro-worker, participatory, or democratically run Confederación. By the end of 1944 the Populares, who had gained a hegemonic position in colonial politics, provoked an internal fissure in Confederación leadership that enabled the more pliant labor bureaucrats to gain control of the majority of Confederación membership and its largest union, the Sindicato. By early 1945 even the head of the colonial bureaucracy that ostensibly represented worker interests, the ILRB’s Enrique Campos del Toro, complained in public that the Confederación lacked responsible leadership.38 Meanwhile the expiration date of the APA-Federación convenio approached and both parties to the agreement attempted to forestall a democratically run election to determine who represented the workers. The APA sought to take advantage of a division stemming from the history of labor politics in the metropolis—the separation of factory and agricultural workers in the National Labor Relations Act—and convinced the National Labor Relations Board to refuse to conduct a vote because it lacked jurisdiction in agriculture. But Tugwell, in response to earlier promises to workers, activated the Insular Labor Relations Board, created in 1938, which had such authority.39 By August 1944, both the APA and the Federación openly acknowledged that the Sindicato had the overwhelming support of the island’s agricultural workers. The employer organization was willing to sign an agreement with the Sindicato for agricultural workers, but a minority of

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its members claimed that the Federación had a majority in their factories. During a January 1945 meeting, employers again conceded “that the Confederación undoubtedly controlled the membership of all the agricultural workers and in a majority of the sugar mills,” but refused to accept an islandwide convenio, claiming that between four and seven of the thirty-two factory owners “were sure that their mills were controlled by Federación membership.” The other nine factory owners not belonging to the APA were also willing to recognize the Sindicato. Bargaining from strength, the Sindicato demanded an islandwide election, and the ILRB and APA finally agreed. The long-awaited election took place on January 30, restricted to agricultural workers employed on lands affiliated with factory owners belonging to the APA. The Sindicato gained an overwhelming victory with more than 21,000 votes, while the Federación obtained only 387. On February 1, the Sindicato was “declared the sole bargaining agent for all workers in the sugar industry.”40 The results made abundantly clear why the Federación and APA had tried so long to prevent a democratic resolution to the interunion conflict. Confederación leaders immediately demanded a signed contract before February 10, and while the APA agreed to negotiate, it “refused any wage increase whatsoever.” Its response, as USDL negotiator Goldsmith observed, meant that there was “no possible chance of any agreement being reached, since it is evident that the Sugar Producers would prefer a strike at this time.” As expected, workers went on strike “primarily because the sugar producers thought they could use it to get more for their year’s crop from the Commodity Credit Corporation.” Even the Federación, which had long claimed adherence to the wartime no-strike pledge, joined the walkout, while the Puerto Rican Farmers Association, the Farm Bureau Affiliate, openly acknowledged that the strike “has brought to a complete standstill the production of sugar.”41 In contrast to previous years, the growers wanted to make it clear that workers were on strike and had stopped production. Confederación leader Ernesto Ramos Antonini charged that the producers “coldly calculated, planned and provoked the present strike in Puerto Rico without any concern for the war effort, for the hardships they were imposing on labor, or on any other factor than their own interest,” adding, that “there has not been the slightest attempt on the part of the employers to break the strike.” The Sindicato would have preferred to avoid a work stoppage that would force tens of thousands of workers, primarily union members and their families, to face hunger and suffering, intensified by wartime shortages of imported beans, rice, and cornmeal.

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Lacking employer opposition, the strike spread to sections of the island unaffected by labor battles of previous years. A general strike soon threatened as workers at the government-owned glass plant also halted production, joined by employees of the government-operated cement mill and cork factory.42 Sugar producers made no efforts to resume production immediately since they had nothing to lose—sugar content would not begin to drop until late March and would remain high through the start of the rainy season in early June. Instead they requested a congressional investigation of the strike by the House Committee on Insular Affairs, hoping to obtain data justifying a higher annual subsidy from the Commodity Credit Corporation. The early March hearings recommended higher prices, and the War Food Administration promptly raised the subsidy to fifty-five cents per one hundred pounds, enough to allow very generous increases for factory owners and growers, and wage hikes of twenty-three cents per day for field workers and three cents per hour for factory workers, which ended the strike.43 On March 22, the Sindicato signed a convenio as the exclusive bargaining agent for all factory and field workers employed by APA members and affiliates, which included preferential union shop and maintenance of membership without a check-off. Most other clauses in the convenio had been resolved by Confederación-led strikes in recent years. It made piecework entirely voluntary, ensured safe working conditions, and required employer-provided housing to be clean and in good repair. Employers could fire workers only for just cause and disputes would be resolved by mediation. An estimated 140,000 to 150,000 workers in the industry who participated in the strike, including many not employed by APA members, received the wage benefits of the convenio.44 It marked the high point of the Confederación and the last major work stoppage in the Puerto Rican sugar industry.

A “Sordid Conflict”: Factionalism, the CIO, and the United Packinghouse Workers of America Even before the 1945 general strike began, the decisive labor struggles in Puerto Rico were shifting from the fields to the offices and backrooms frequented by politicians and labor union representatives. The highlight of these struggles involved the dismemberment of the Confederación and the simultaneous taming of agricultural unionism. Strike activity declined

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while personal conflicts intensified. According to historian Juan GiustiCordero, this “increasingly sordid conflict between the leadership of the various sugar unions . . . overshadowed the struggle with either the sugar corporations or the Puerto Rican government.” Observers and participants alike have attributed the internecine warfare to different factors not necessarily in contradiction with each other. Giusti argues that Puerto Rican social relations were not conducive to strong worker organizations because the lives of “many of the field laborers maintained major peasant dimensions.” Unions were top-heavy and organizationally weak because workers had not been sufficiently proletarianized to induce them to participate in an active and sustained manner. Another explanation focuses on the Populares, particularly an autocratic Luís Muñoz Marín who threatened anyone who disagreed with him, particularly labor militants, to “cooperate or I’ll smash you like cockroaches.”45 Still another view emphasizes that organized labor in Puerto Rico was unable to overcome colonial domination. Each perspective offers valuable insights whose importance can be better understood through a closer examination of details of the struggles that determined the fate of agricultural labor unionism on the island. The decline of the Confederación occurred in three successive stages. The first was its initial fissure in 1945. The second was the merger between the CIO and the largest Confederación faction, which included the Sindicato, and took place in 1949. The final stage was the merger of the Sindicato into the Packinghouse two years later. The first partition took place during a raucous three- day Confederación convention that began, not coincidentally, only one day after the signing of the 1945 convenio. While many involved at the time suggest that Muñoz Marín and the Populares were at the center of the dispute, it is clear that Tugwell was constantly exerting pressure on the party to act. Tugwell sought to tame the Confederación by obtaining an affiliation with the CIO, from the metropolis. Meanwhile, Muñoz Marín recognized the need to tread lightly until after the elections in November 1944, but that immediately afterwards, he could begin to encourage the factional split. While there were recognized differences within the Confederación early in 1944, both sides were adamant about maintaining good relations with the party. The first faction, led by Francisco Colón Gordiany, sought autonomy from the party, as its members had seen how Federación affiliation with the Partido Socialista had done little to advance the interests of Puerto Rican workers. Colón Gordiany was clear that he did not seek to create a schism or to form a political party opposing Muñoz Marín,

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“whom he eulogized,” but he opposed “having the Confederación General de Trabajadores controlled by any political faction or politicians.” He and Juan Sáez Corales became leaders of the Confederación General de Trabajadores-Auténtica, or Auténtica, which gained the support of a majority of the island’s industrial workers, particularly in the region around San Juan.46 The other faction, calling itself the Confederación General de Trabajadores- Gubernamental, or Gubernamental, headed by Ramón Barreto Pérez and Ernesto Ramos Antonini, sought intimate relations with and were willing to subordinate their organization to the Populares. The two quickly became party leaders, with Ramos Antonini chosen as the speaker of the Insular House and Barreto Pérez elected a senator. Their ascent demonstrated that union leaders could become influential politically if they paid a higher allegiance to the Populares than to the labor movement, rewarded by salaried government positions, following the path of their Federación predecessors in the Coalición government. Many contemporary observers pointed to Muñoz Marín’s personal intervention as responsible for the split in the Confederación. Asked about the cause of the rift at the time, Muñoz Marín responded, “I do not want to make any comment except to congratulate my dear friend and companion Ramón Barreto Pérez on his election to the Presidency of the Confederación,” but then charged that the split was caused by Communist efforts to gain control of the organization. More significantly, Muñoz Marín’s actions were consistent with two longer-range goals of metropolitan authorities. First, they converted the largest labor organization on the island into little more than an appendage of the party, committed to engage in “blind collaborationism with the government.” Prior to the November 1944 elections, Confederación unions had struck frequently, usually supported by the Populares, but after March 1945, Gubernamental strategy was predicated on “labor peace with employers” and would not challenge Popular industrial policy. Muñoz Marín’s six-year plan articulated in 1945 promoted private industrialization and favored investors from the United States who produced for consumers in the metropolis, not Puerto Rico, and lured employers by emphasizing the colony’s low wages and labor peace. The rival Auténtica favored a model of economic development based on the material needs of the people of Puerto Rico, and its politics were rooted in independence, which was also a plank of the Populares’ platform in their early years, but which Muñoz Marín abandoned as he began to collaborate more closely with Tugwell. Individual labor leaders who cooperated with the party could expect personal rewards. Ramos Antonini, already a prominent politician, lived very com-

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fortably, and as Tugwell observed, owned “probably the most fantastic house . . . in Puerto Rico.” Sáez Corales, who refused to subordinate himself, lived humbly while he criticized Ramos Antonini as “chief of a squad of opportunists who had invaded the Confederación General de Trabajadores in search of government increases and public posts,” but who “will never be able to clean the stain of being personally and directly responsible for the level of confusion and division currently prevailing in the labor movement.”47 The dismemberment of the Confederación contributed to a second goal of metropolitan authorities by weakening a potential base for the national liberation movement in Puerto Rico. Adherents for maintaining the empire, including Tugwell, were concerned that an autonomous labor movement might be “thrown entirely on the side of independence.” Following a strong statement by the governor to the Insular Legislature in February 1945, “Muñoz Marín surrendered to [the governor’s] . . . warnings against independence.” The Populares promptly sent a commission to Washington to test the sentiments of Congress, after which it purged its own leadership to ensure that it was thoroughly “hostile to independence.”48 Metropolitan authorities, and henceforth the Populares, intensified attacks on individuals and organizations they perceived as unwilling to collaborate, particularly those seeking an autonomous and unified Puerto Rican labor movement or political independence. Less than two months after the sugar strike ended, they had Sáez Corales drafted into the army, although he was already thirty years old. He recognized the significance of being forced to join the army at the time, writing that, “[i]t was necessary to separate from the labor movement one of the men who was unwilling to be corrupted. It was necessary to accomplish with the fewest obstacles possible the total dismemberment of the Confederación. That was how, as a result of political manipulation, that I was inducted into the army.” As a member of the Puerto Rican Communist Party, his voice did not emanate from Moscow, evident in his leadership of continuously striking workers in the early 1940s. Sáez Corales was honorably discharged as a sergeant on May 28, 1946, but although he did not realize it at the time, the split in the Confederación was irreparable. He had been offered the position of secretary-general of the Auténtica faction prior to his induction into the army, and upon returning to Puerto Rico he was offered that same office by Gubernamental. On both occasions he made his own acceptance conditional on the unity of both wings, which was denied. So he attempted an alternative path to unity, promoting the Comité

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Pro-Unidad de la Confederación, which became the Unidad General de Trabajadores, or Unidad, in September 1947. Immediately he was elected its secretary-general. In hindsight he asserted that he had erred by rejecting leadership positions in the two older Confederación factions and by failing to engage in sufficient discussion or educational efforts among rank-and-file union members before creating the Unidad, “since that resulted in still another division in the labor movement.” He also criticized the Taft-Hartley Amendment to the National Labor Relations Act as still another colonial imposition on Puerto Rico, and he renounced his position as Unidad secretary general when the organization complied with the act in 1951.49 But he would not be silenced, and red-baiting attacks against him did not cease, nor would efforts to tame organized labor in general. The next stage in the “sordid conflict” was the direct absorption of the largest faction of the Confederación, Gubernamental, into the metropolitan labor movement, this time the CIO. In the early 1940s, memories of CIO militancy were still fresh in the minds of Puerto Rican labor leaders, but Confederación inquiries into possible affiliation with the metropolitan labor organization received no formal response. Coincidentally, the initial formal request to join the CIO came from the Gubernamental faction in April 1945, less than a month after the general strike in sugar ended, immediately following the initial split in the Confederación. The request to affiliate was not made by union representatives but “had actually come from Governor Tugwell from Puerto Rico and the United States Department of Interior.” As CIO officials acknowledged, the governor and Interior officials sought the merger “because they regarded the CIO as a stabilizing force in the Puerto Rican labor situation which they described as strike-ridden and extremely unpredictable.” Tugwell even encouraged Muñoz Marín to replace comunistas with “genuinely Puerto Rican leaders,” assuming that he knew better than worker representatives what was in their best interests, and that communists could not be genuinely Puerto Rican. Fearing the comunistas who sought independence, the governor sought out the assistance of the CIO, in effect to subordinate the Confederación as the AFL had subordinated the Federación, with control in the hands of labor officials in the metropolis. So he intervened personally, as he wrote: “I hoped we might get the CIO to unbend and extend a helping hand.”50 Anticommunist elements in the highest echelons of the CIO were already in the ascendancy and willing to adhere to administration foreign policy directives in exchange for the grant of a labor confederation, a seemingly effortless way to expand their membership base.

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The metropolitan government and the colonial governor continued to work to rid the Confederación of its autonomist sympathizers and ensure its subordination into the CIO, with assistance from the leading comprador cacique of the island, Muñoz Marín. Tugwell was explicit in his concern about “controlling disturbances” in the colony that might lead to independence, while the Department of Interior was interested in protecting its own economic interests in the sugar factories it operated on the island. He also recognized that CIO leaders “had to be extremely diplomatic in order not to evoke a ‘big-stick impression,’” so they waited until December 1949 to issue a charter to the Gubernamental faction, by then a “decaying economist federation” beholden to the dictates of the party rather than the workers it claimed to represent.51 The CIO took control of Gubernamental and its Sindicato affiliate at a high point in the twentieth-century history of the international politics of decolonization, and as the United States was facing rising criticism throughout the world and in the United Nations for not releasing Puerto Rico from its colonial yoke. Congress sought to evade critics when it proposed elections on the political status of Puerto Rico in 1950, as independentista (pro-independence) sympathizers of earlier years had been mostly compromised or repressed. Not surprisingly, the election outcome favored Estado Libre Asociado (Associated Free State), a term misleadingly translated as “commonwealth,” whose clear intent was to evoke a comparison of the relationship of the British government with former colonies including Canada, which unlike Puerto Rico had gained membership in the United Nations. At this moment the ostensibly more progressive wing of the labor movement of the United States, the CIO, at the urging of metropolitan and colonial officials, colonized the Gubernamental faction and the Sindicato. The next step would be to place them under control of the United Packinghouse Workers of America and in the hands of Anglo officials from the continent. The CIO sent David Sternback to Puerto Rico in late 1950 to represent its interests; he was soon joined by Alex Summers as director of the Sugar Division of the Packinghouse. Neither of them had experience in agriculture, nor were they capable of grasping the complexity of Puerto Rico’s labor movement or the antagonisms exacerbated by the CIO and Packinghouse takeovers of a once-autonomous labor movement. Furthermore, they were shortsighted, incompetent, and often crudely racist in their treatment of Puerto Ricans and Latinos from the continental United States. Summers complained that “no matter what you do for these people [Puerto Ricans] there is just no sense of appreciation.

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They still believe we are Santa Claus.” Possessing a very limited command of Spanish, he berated a group of bilingual organizers: “You seem to forget that I am the boss here in Puerto Rico, because I represent the International. How in the hell can you speak in that damn language when all of you understand and speak English?,” and ordered them never again to speak Spanish in his presence.52 Such blatant cultural imperialism and insensitivity increased tensions and provoked revolts by local unions. Later in 1950 another split in the Confederación took place when Tomás Méndez Mejía and Carlos Baez, who controlled the huge Guánica local of the Sindicato, challenged the Confederación- CIO, formerly Gubernamental, for control, but failed and were expelled. They immediately formed the Organización Obrera Insular, the Organización, and affiliated with the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) of the AFL, which claimed to represent sugar workers on the island and challenged the Confederación. The Puerto Rican Labor Relations Board accepted an Organización request to resolve the dispute through the ballot box. Despite the support of the Populares and the former Gubernamental leadership, and the widespread acknowledgement that the Organización was riddled with corruption, the CIO union won only a hairline victory in the 1951 representation elections, by a vote of 10,337 to 10,271. Sternback blamed the near disaster, as well as internal dissension, on Puerto Rican union leaders. CIO officials in the metropolis had accepted the position, which had earlier been posed by Tugwell, that the fault lay with the old Confederación, which he claimed was “disorganized, undisciplined and poorly led,” to further justify their takeover and placement of the Sindicato into a metropolitan union, the Packinghouse.53 The CIO justified its own action as proper on two grounds. First, the Packinghouse had organized a number of local unions in sugar processing plants in the continental United States, and some workers in those plants also worked in neighboring cane fields. Second, the CIO had recently granted the Packinghouse jurisdiction over agricultural workers in the United States after it expelled the Food, Tobacco and Allied Workers (FTA), successor to the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), for Communist influence. Yet the Packinghouse had not engaged in prior organizing among Puerto Ricans or among agricultural workers. After Sindicato members accepted the fait accompli and voted to affiliate, they soon received a Packinghouse charter, with a modest name change, the Sindicato Azucarero de Trabajadores de Puerto Rico. The Packinghouse takeover of the Sindicato was the most significant accomplishment by the Packinghouse during its history

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in Puerto Rico, and it soon signed a two-year islandwide agreement with the APA. By late 1953, the union claimed 107 locals on the island, all but 12 in the sugar industry.54 As the largest representative of unionized sugar workers in Puerto Rico, it was able to accomplish little more than consolidate local unions already in existence—in other words, to organize the organized. The CIO and Packinghouse representatives from the metropolis blamed internal divisions in Puerto Rico on personalities. Alex Summers, head of the Sugar Division of the Packinghouse claimed that local labor leaders made challenges “primarily because some of the plums didn’t fall in their laps, as they had expected, upon the formation of our union on the island.” Yet the arrogant Anglo organizers failed to seek out Puerto Rican union leaders and demeaned even those loyal to the Packinghouse. Their incompetence provoked greater dissension and divisions, which the APA gleefully cultivated. A wave of local strikes broke out in 1952 and 1953, largely involving open raiding by rival organizations.55 The two labor representatives from the continent could not even work cooperatively with each other. Sternback lamented, “I hardly expected Alex to turn out to be as insecure and as much of a hack as events have proven him.” He also chided Summers for his “preoccupation with his prerogative as head of the local office,” his inability to speak Spanish, and “a rather arrogant attitude towards staff members that is far from acceptable in this culture.” Summers retorted that “it seems if he is not Captain he don’t wanna play.” Both were remarkably ignorant of Puerto Rican culture and of relations of power in the sugar industry. By 1953 Packinghouse President Ralph Helstein criticized Summers about his “disorganization, and the difficulty of developing a long-range perspective,” including a failure after three years in Puerto Rico to have learned such basics as the need to organize agricultural workers through each sugar central and to know which colonos were associated with each factory.56 Contributing to the factionalism, the Puerto Rican Labor Board (PRLB) in 1953 ended the “Globe Doctrine,” which heretofore had assumed the “global” unity of the sugar industry for collective bargaining purposes. It allowed unions to challenge the two decades–long policy of islandwide bargaining with the APA. The PRLB decision further divided the labor movement as it encouraged more frequent election challenges, compelled unions to bargain in the middle or near the end of the harvest when employers were less concerned about crop loss and finding replacement workers, and permitted smaller unions to choose targets selectively.57

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On the heels of the PRLB decision, in late 1953 the Packinghouse sent George Aguilera, a Mexican American, as director on assignment and a transitional figure to the first Puerto Rican president of the Sindicato, Armando Sánchez, who was elected the following year. Aguilera paid greater attention to the historic autonomy of local unions and their sense of isolation, which had allowed employers to foment divisions by paying off independent local leaders. He worked more closely with Puerto Rican unionists and countered company propaganda through union-sponsored radio programs, newspapers, press releases, and advertisements, by removing incompetent local leaders, and through grassroots organizing.58 Aguilera considered Sternback and Summers responsible for many of the Packinghouse’s difficulties because of their top- down management strategies, their failure to devote energy and time to organizing workers and keeping them abreast of events, and their racism. Directing criticism at both, Aguilera wrote: “it has been a custom here that some leaders think they can act as they please, never taking in consideration the wishes of the members.” He complained that Sternback wanted to make people believe “he is the only one to direct every move, so he can justify his time here, because the only thing he does is play politics, not coming to the office but once a week.” He also disagreed strongly with Sternback’s willingness to make deals to quiet disaffected leaders, arguing that it “seems we should not make any kind of deals where you have to sell the people like a flock of sheep that certainly would hurt our prestige before every worker in Puerto Rico . . . he is losing pretty near every group he had in Puerto Rico, because he likes to associate with big shots.” Furthermore, he criticized Sternback’s racist attitude that anyone who doesn’t have “real white skin, is not supposed to have any brains, for that reason he takes for granted that he is superior to all of us [Latinos].”59 The state of the union did not improve when Sánchez took over as Sindicato president, for he was also a Populares elected representative whose party loyalty superseded his defense of workers’ interests. During the longshore strike of early 1956, he voted for a bill introduced by Muñoz Marín permitting the governor to seize the docks, a strikebreaking action. He and his union remained silent on a metropolitan-imposed requirement that Puerto Rico could only ship raw sugar instead of encouraging the construction of refineries in Puerto Rico, which would have generated more employment and income locally. In 1956 he opposed a strike by factory workers in Centrales Cortada, Aguirre, and Machete who demanded the minimum wage enjoyed by workers in the continental United States. Instead he tried to convince strikers to accept the lower wage rate

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set for Puerto Rico by metropolitan authorities. Neither he nor any other Sindicato representatives participated in any of the three hearings held on the island that year to raise the minimum wage, nor did they mobilize public demonstrations or other efforts to demand increases, while employers remained united in opposition. He even refused to support legislation increasing Puerto Rico’s minimum wage to parity with the continental United States, and one critic justifiably charged that he functioned “as a mouthpiece for colonial government policies in adopting a position against the interests of workers by opposing an increase of the minimum wage to $1 per hour.”60 Like Muñoz Marín, Sindicato President Sánchez was a willing accomplice for continental employers in maintaining inferior standards for Puerto Ricans and their continued economic and political subordination. Meanwhile the Packinghouse had consolidated its hold as the largest but not uncontested voice of Puerto Rican sugarcane workers, and for the next decade claimed to represent between thirty-five thousand and forty thousand agricultural workers and an additional ten thousand in the sugar factories. This compared with about fifteen thousand each in the rival Federación and in the independent unions that were strongest on the eastern part of the island.61 Dismemberment, division, and complacency distinguished the final major phase of agricultural unionism that had begun with the phenomenal expansion of the sugar industry at the turn of the century.

Economic Development, Machines, and Migration Following the U.S. conquest, sugar industry modernization, mechanization, and rising production were accompanied by a sharp increase in employment. Between 1899 and the mid-1930s, the yield per acre in Puerto Rico quadrupled while acreage planted in sugar tripled. The massive investments contributed to an exponential expansion of the rural working class during the first three decades of the twentieth century, as tens of thousands of workers were lured to the cane fields. But as wages fell during the Great Depression, workers revolted and critics drew attention to negative aspects of the industry. Reformers and politicians including Tugwell and Muñoz Marín joined the attack on the absentee sugar corporations, railing against “feudalism” or lack of “modernization” in the sugar industry. Yet the criticisms misinterpreted the widespread technical introductions of the early decades of the century. As late as 1950 economist

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Harvey Perloff concluded that sugar production in Puerto Rico “is, on the average, relatively intensive and efficient,” with a per acre yield higher than any areas supplying the United States except Hawai‘i, where cane growing was much more intensive, investments in production greater, and labor costs much higher.62 In the decade following the end of World War II, Puerto Rican sugar workers had to confront changes involving not only labor politics, but also government economic development projects and employer implementation of mechanical and chemical inputs that altered production, to their detriment. Researchers, metropolitan officials, and Populares leaders increasingly complained that the island’s agriculture and its labor unions impeded economic development. A report by the United States Committee on Agriculture contrasted the “remarkable development of industrialization, recreation, and construction on the Island and the sugar industry’s growing inability to compete for labor with the newer industries.” Many contemporaries placed blame on the huge agricultural labor reserve, claiming that competitors in settings with labor shortages were compelled to adopt mechanical and other technical inputs more rapidly. Puerto Rican Secretary of Labor Fernando Sierra Berdecia asserted that the island “finds itself in a primitive stage of agricultural development which hinders it from paying wages adequate to the living necessities of our workers.” He frequently referred to “primitivism in agriculture” as a problem, while simultaneously observing with pride that the manufacturing phase of sugar was highly advanced and that Puerto Rican sugar processing factories compared with the most efficient anywhere in the world.63 It was inconsistent to argue that low wages and slow mechanization in agriculture stemmed from a large labor reserve without recognizing that a similar abundance of low-paid workers should have hindered the technologically advanced factories. But it was consistent with decisions by the beneficiaries of economic colonialism throughout the world to depict colonial workers, particularly in agriculture, as inferior, primitive, backward, and responsible for the lack of progress, their own low wages, and terrible conditions of employment. In Puerto Rico, as in many other locations, they claimed that the way out of the dilemma involved intensified economic development and industrialization. During World War II the colonial state initiated an economic development plan based on government-controlled industrialization projects that would produce for local consumption. In 1942 it created the Puerto Rican Development Company (Fomento) to establish industries offering high employment while meeting basic local needs, including cement,

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paperboard, glass container, and shoe factories, as well as a cotton textile mill. Its critical agrarian component articulated two principal goals— breaking domination by foreign sugar companies and redistributing land to agregados. Through the 1941 Land Law, the government sought to break up control of lands held by corporate affiliates of the centrales, in contravention of the 500-Acre Law, and allot them as smaller farms to individual landholders or to the Puerto Rican Land Authority. In 1945 it established the Puerto Rican Agricultural Company to deal with land and available labor more systematically. But the policies led to conflict, and disagreements over agrarian reform continued. The effort to reduce direct control by centrales was a success, as the portion of cane produced from properties they owned or controlled fell from 63 percent in 1934 to 25 percent in 1950, while the number of colonos increased sharply.64 While these reforms reversed the earlier policy favoring foreign agricultural corporations, they barely made a dent on the goal of eliminating landless rural workers, and the overwhelming majority of agregados became wage laborers in Puerto Rico or migrated to the continental United States in search of jobs. The Puerto Rican government’s six-year plan articulated in 1945 marked a change from the earlier economic plan, emphasizing the nowfamiliar scheme of privatization driven by investors from the continent producing consumer goods for the U.S. market. The planners justified the change in focus on the grounds that industrial employment offered much higher wages than agriculture, while avoiding explanation of why they altered the plans of the early 1940s aimed at creating autonomous producers and food self-sufficiency for the island. In 1947 Fomento emphasized as its priority to “create a hospitable environment” for investors, to enable them to “pile up tax-free profits” greater than they could obtain in the United States, through tax breaks, technical services, special loans, the free use of buildings, and a pliable and abundant source of cheap labor. Yet business writer David Loehing acknowledged that the high profit margin “results primarily from the low wages prevailing on the island.”65 The shift away from the primacy of commercial agriculture stemmed not only from government industrial policy but also from the outcomes of struggles over agricultural mechanization. Despite the purge of the Confederación, workers did not accept agricultural mechanization policies without protest, and the Sindicato did not adopt an official position on the issue. Opposition against the labor-displacing inputs was most intense in the late 1940s when local union leaders still had a greater degree of autonomy. A highlight of organized protest was a parade and dem-

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onstration in front of the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, in February 1950, led by Sáez Corales and the Unidad. Thousands of agricultural workers demanded that the government limit job loss and establish new industrialization and public works programs and reduce favoritism toward metropolitan producers that would reduce the high levels of unemployment. But Governor Muñoz Marín responded: “It is impossible to hinder technological progress for an industry that must compete with other producing areas.”66 As he posed it, there was no alternative to the economic model imposed on behalf of metropolitan investors. Sáez Corales was highly critical of the political context of mechanization, and he railed against the Populares and the Packinghouse, whose president, Ralph Helstein, openly accepted the association of machines with progress and the arguments of contemporary modernizers that “mechanization of agriculture in Puerto Rico, as elsewhere, is not only inevitable but desirable if the standards of living are to be raised.” In perfect agreement with Populares’ arguments, Helstein asserted in 1961 that conditions for field workers would not improve as long as agriculture continued its “almost feudal path, of failing to modernize.” To ensure that its members received their share of the benefits of mechanization and obtained employment in other sectors of the economy, Packinghouse officials tried to enhance their political influence through close relations with the Populares. Given the continuing high levels of unemployment and declining real wages in Puerto Rican agriculture throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the strategy failed miserably.67 Lost in the contemporary debate was the long and uneven story of mechanization that accompanied the expansion of commercial agriculture in Puerto Rico. In the nineteenth century, many changes in sugarcane processing were taking place, most notably the shift from trapiches (oxen-powered mills) to ingenios (steam-powered mills). But in the final decades of the century the industry languished. In the immediate aftermath of the conquest capitalists from the United States invested in Puerto Rico “to modernize and to commercialize agriculture,” highlighted by the introduction of centrales (huge processing factories) to replace the ingenios. The industry received incalculable assistance from government investments in infrastructure, including power plants and a railroad system that expanded from 185 miles in 1899 to 1,000 miles by 1935. Government also financed the construction of an elaborate irrigation system that allowed rapid expansion of production, particularly in the arid south, and later of a highway system that permitted trucks to replace trains to haul cane to the factories and raw sugar to the ports for export.68 While the

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government justified the infrastructural investments and the accompanying provision of cheap hydroelectric power as components of modernization and efficiency, the investments immediately offered opportunities for absentee investors to acquire massive landholdings and obtain extremely high profits, a classic model of export-induced economic colonialism. Government-sponsored education and research further propelled industrial expansion following the creation of the Department of Agriculture and Labor in 1917, which introduced formal agricultural instruction in schools and promoted research at the University of Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station. The researchers developed new diseaseresistant and higher-yielding cane varieties, more efficient methods of land preparation and conservation, cultivation and furrowing, planting systems, fertilizers, and higher rates of sugar extraction from cane. The adoption of inventions from the continental United States further contributed to this expansion, including tractors that permitted mechanization in plowing and furrowing operations in the 1930s.69 It signified public investment in research and education and promotion of modernization in the service of economic colonialism. In the aftermath of World War II, three aspects of agricultural mechanization that profoundly affected workers attracted great attention: mechanical loading, herbicides and pesticides, and harvesting machines. Examining cases of worker opposition can shed greater light on debates over the role that workers and unions played in mechanization and the fate of the industry. The introduction of machines that loaded cut cane into wagons and trucks resulted in massive job losses between the late 1940s and the 1960s, accompanied by worker complaints and occasional work stoppages. A major strike by Sindicato members at the massive Luce & Company properties in the Juana Díaz district beginning on January 27, 1947, specifically addressed job loss caused by burnt cane and mechanical loaders. It was resolved by mediation, in which the two issues were treated separately. The employer preferred to burn cane at harvest because it increased sugar content. Typically the fields were burnt and then harvested, permissible in the contract if workers received time and a half, since the task was dangerous as the fields were often still smoldering. But the company sought to increase profits even more by altering the work process, ordering workers to first cut the unburnt cane and then burn it while it lay on the ground. This would have reduced employer expenses by eliminating the cost of dumpers and loaders as well as the extra half-time pay for cutting burnt cane.

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The mediator agreed with the union that the change in the work process was contrary to custom and contract and ruled against the employer.70 The more contentious issue for the strikers involved mechanical loaders, which the union opposed but which the company claimed the right to use, since the issue was not mentioned in the contract. Each mechanical loader required six men to operate but displaced twenty-two human loaders and dumpers, and the colonia required three machine loaders, meaning that sixty-six men would lose their jobs. The union contended that if accepted, the company would introduce the machines on three other colonias and displace an additional two thousand workers, further reduce the working season, and nullify recent wage increases. Muñoz Marín was drawn into the dispute and claimed that he could not consistently request that corporations stop using machines, nor could he “be a party to the blocking of progress particularly since the company offers to employ the displaced men in other jobs.” By siding with the employer, Muñoz Marín weakened workers’ resolve, and in mediation the union agreed not to oppose the use of mechanical loaders. He made it clear that as the Populares’ hold on power intensified, it would support the pro-mechanization ideology of the colonial economic order, as well as the politics of its beneficiaries. However, since the machines had not yet been perfected, they were introduced only slowly and used for about 25 percent of Puerto Rican cane production by the end of the 1950s. With further refinements their utilization skyrocketed to 69 percent in 1968, yet by then employers faced little overt opposition, as the union had been tamed.71 Another worker concern was the increasing application of chemical herbicides and pesticides, primarily during soil preparation. On June 16, 1948, Sindicato members struck over the issue at the San José Sugar Cane and Coffee Plantations in Barrio Florida, Barceloneta. Two hundred sixty men refused to work for three days when the company introduced a “weed killer solution” that would displace seventy-five workers. They also feared, according to USDL mediator Charles Goldsmith, that they “might be poisoned by these materials. . . . They told me that if this product of the Devil could kill a weed, it could more easily kill a man. I assured them the manufacturers GUARANTEED ‘as per their label’ that the material was harmless to humans.” Goldsmith found a middle ground between workers’ fears of the devil in the poison and employer dreams of better living through chemistry. The parties agreed that the weed killer could be applied on rattoon cane (cane harvested in the second and subsequent seasons after initial planting and harvest), but all other cultiva-

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tion would be done by hand. No workers would be discharged or laid off because of the weed killer, and they would share available employment by interchanging tasks throughout the season. Management was so confident of the guarantee on the label that it agreed to pay doctor bills for any worker made ill or injured by its application. This compromise was typical of dispute resolution over the issue, including a strike in July 1948 involving workers in the Salinas area employed by Aguirre Sugar Corporation and Luce & Company, in which the weed killer could be applied in rattoon cane and on steep hillside locations.72 In some settings where machines and pesticides offered fewer benefits to employers, worker opposition might be more effective, including the Yabucoa Valley, where the influential Roig family operated Central Roig. Much of the terrain was swampy, while frequent heavy rains reduced the effectiveness of mechanical and chemical inputs. Furthermore, the local independent Unión de Trabajadores Industriales y Agrícolas de Yabucoa, less constricted by leaders compromised by ties to politicians, strongly opposed the use of pesticides. Roig workers in 1954 complained that pesticide applications were unhealthy and devastated employment and voted against working with them. In addition, because the employer had less to gain than on the drier southern coast, workers found it easier to convince Roig to refrain from using them.73 The issue attracting the greatest attention in the mechanization debate involved the introduction of machine harvesters following years of experiments by researchers at the University of Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Station who were collaborating with the APA. In late January and early February 1947, two hundred Sindicato members struck Luce & Company properties at Colonia Amelia at Juana Díaz over the introduction of mechanical harvesters and convinced the employer to stop using them. But the machines became more effective, growers used them more frequently, and worker complaints continued. In 1954 members of Sindicato Locals 847 and 801 began protesting about job losses resulting from the introduction of cane-cutting machines by Luce & Company in Santa Isabel and finally struck over the issue two years later. In order to prevent the work stoppage from spreading, management quickly accepted arbitration, where the parties agreed to negotiate on terms and conditions of machine operation locally. In April 1957 another strike broke out on properties affiliated with Central Aguirre in Barrio Jauca, led by seasonal and migrant workers, who at least in theory should have been less conscious politically and not as inclined to stop working as full-time wage workers. But the contract favored the growers, and the strikers failed

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to halt the machines. Nevertheless workers continued to protest, and in March 1958 members of the independent Obreros Unidos de Loíza struck properties affiliated with Central Canóvanas over mechanization, with strong support from the union. By contrast, in February 1964 workers affiliated with the Packinghouse in Colonia Grande in Caguas staged a strike against the introduction of harvesting machines, but top union leaders labeled it a wildcat and refused to offer support.74 Despite ineffective worker opposition and a compliant Packinghouse leadership, mechanical harvesters were introduced to Puerto Rico slowly. While mechanization of harvest operations in the Puerto Rican sugar industry tended to lag behind other producing areas of the United States, the above cases suggest a systematic logic to mechanization and to the success of worker resistance. First, machine harvesters were most viable and first applied on the southern coastal lowland where the most profitable estates were located. The fields were larger and the terrain not as rugged, with lower amounts of rainfall and swampy areas and fewer colonos, each of which tended to make machines and chemicals less attractive. While workers were better organized and protested more frequently here than elsewhere, their efforts had little impact on the pace of mechanization. Second, worker complaints typically were local, focused on the immediate impact of specific job-displacing technologies, the lack of new jobs to replace workers eliminated by machines and chemicals, and the failure of employers to offer higher wages for new jobs as promised. This reflects both the relative strength of specific union locals and the lack of systematic attention to the issue because top Packinghouse representatives had confidence in the colonial economic model. Third, Populares officials were vigorous and uncritical proponents of the model and with few exceptions refused to support workers who sought to protect themselves against job loss stemming from mechanization. Meanwhile the party’s promises of alternative employment in urban industry did not compensate for lost jobs in the cane fields. Top labor officials followed the lead of the Populares, and their willingness to challenge the party weakened over time. The Packinghouse was even less supportive of local union autonomy than its predecessors and castigated autonomous worker actions as wildcats. Finally, opposition to mechanization was more successful in settings where the Sindicato was less influential, particularly among independent union leaders not as beholden to top officials of the colonial state disinclined to challenge the hegemonic ideology that equated machines with progress. Meanwhile, the failure of Puerto Rican development plans to provide

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sufficient urban industrial employment led to debates about overpopulation and whether to initiate a formal program of labor emigration to the continental United States. While Puerto Ricans had been migrating without the intervention of the state since the early years of the century, discussion of systematic plans intensified with the onset of the Great Depression. Metropolitan officials, including the secretary of the interior, shared the opinion that Puerto Rican overpopulation was a very serious problem. In 1937, sugar tycoon and APA leader Esteban Bird considered the main challenge the island’s unions faced to be the “problem of surplus labor.” Federación leader Prudencio Rivera Martínez agreed that “prevailing low standards of living, widespread unemployment, and social and economic maladjustments in Puerto Rico are largely the result of a rapidly growing population on an island utterly devoid of industries, particularly of the heavy type.”75 A minority of New Deal progressives including Felix Cohen challenged the view that “the basic economic problem of Puerto Rico is a problem of overpopulation and limited resources.” Cohen argued that the island, employing current agricultural methods, “could produce each year more than twice as much food as it could possibly consume. . . . The real problem . . . is the problem of shifting from a colonial, agricultural, low-income economy to a diversified, commercial, industrial economy in which income is high because the productivity of the worker is high.” He contended that large-scale emigration would actually be a drain on the Puerto Rican economy. But the economic development plan that he preferred, which emphasized local control and production oriented toward the needs of the Puerto Rican population, was quickly abandoned. Colonial officials were beginning to hedge as early as 1942, when the Puerto Rican commissioner of labor wrote, “we do not believe in mass emigration as a remedy to tackle our problem of unemployment. It would be simply evading the problem, not solving it,” although he offered to facilitate the movement of people desiring to leave of their own accord.76 Malthusian fears intensified and were embedded in Muñoz Marín’s “Six-Year Industrialization and Economic Plan” of 1945. By 1947 Resident Commissioner Antonio Fernós Isern asserted that large-scale migration from what he considered an overcrowded Puerto Rico “may give the island an opportunity to recover economically and build a secure way of life.” That year the Puerto Rican legislature created the Bureau of Employment and Migration (also referred to as the Migration Division) within the Department of Labor and opened an office in New York City. It claimed that it would protect Puerto Ricans who had been migrating to

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the continental United States for half a century “spontaneously without any kind of direction or regulation” because of high unemployment on the island.77 Ultimately, metropolitan planners and colonial government officials agreed that migration could serve as an escape valve. The first director of the Migration Division, Clarence Senior, in an article entitled “Puerto Rico IS Overpopulated,” argued that “industrialization of colonial areas and the diversification of their agricultural production is undoubtedly one of the most urgent matters on the world’s economic agenda.” Consistent with the colonial economic policy adopted by Fomento, he argued that “people are not a source of wealth unless they can be put to work.” He deemed the island’s residents incapable of generating wealth to support themselves, justifying continued U.S. control of the colony and its workers. But a critical Felix Cohen recalled that Malthus opposed the French Revolution and observed that “it has been customary for upholders of vested interests to blame all social evils on the unfortunate proclivity of poor people to have more children than their lords and masters need.” As large landholdings were being broken up, “the slogans of Malthus have become a battle cry for all defenders of an out-worn colonial order.” Cohen argued that the island faced a “problem of colonialism. . . . This economy was created not by Puerto Ricans but by absentee landowners and absentee rulers, who had no interest in developing the human potentialities of the Puerto Rican people.”78 But Cohen’s challenge to colonialism was not a majority view even among progressive New Dealers, and Puerto Rico’s postwar economic development scheme quickly shifted to attract absentee investors. The island’s transition from commercial agriculture to urban industrial production, still intended for export to the metropolis, did not break the pattern of colonial economic domination, predicated upon instability for low-wage Puerto Rican workers. As sugar production passed its peak after the early 1950s, many politicians, agricultural employers, and their allies adopted a contrary argument that emigration was draining the island of workers and debilitating its sugar industry. Already in 1953, “employers were complaining of a lack of workers to harvest the crop,” and a Farm Placement program was established for the island. Growers demanded a curtailment of Puerto Rican migration or importation of still-lower-wage workers from elsewhere in the Caribbean. In 1956, the APA requested a temporary cessation of migration to the continental United States on the grounds that “work on cutting and storing cane in different sections of the island is seriously threatened.” The PRDL quickly agreed to stop recruitment to

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the continent during sugar and coffee harvests. Accepting this complaint literally, some later observers have suggested that “emigration was probably far more important for the collapse of Puerto Rican sugar production than may be believed today: contemporaries were sharply aware of its impact.”79 In the context of the generations-long cries of labor shortage by growers in the continental United States, such complaints cannot be considered compelling without additional evidence. In fact, many contemporaries challenged growers’ arguments, pointing out that “the misery of the agricultural worker in sugar forces him to migrate or go to seek other places to earn a living. His low earnings are made even less given the high cost of living.” The well-documented trends of declining incomes and shorter working seasons further buttress the argument that migration stemmed more from labor surplus than shortage. Actions by labor unions offer further evidence that Puerto Rican agriculture did not suffer from a labor shortage. Local labor leaders consistently tried to obtain as much work as possible for the greatest number of people and rotate them because of the lengthening tiempo muerto; to obtain bonuses for completing the harvest more quickly; and to receive company assistance to compensate for longer postharvest unemployment and underemployment. In addition, despite the bleak future, many workers were reluctant to leave the island, as a 1958 South Puerto Rico (Guánica) case reveals. The company arranged with the Shade Tobacco Growers of Connecticut to send 106 workers during tiempo muerto, but only 44 wanted to go, and the majority of that group did not complete the contract period but returned to the island, so the company dropped the project.80 Some observers have posited a contrary argument that an “overabundance” of labor was the key factor responsible for the decline of sugar production in the 1950s and 1960s.81 The argument links worker efforts to deter mechanization and stave off rising unemployment with the slow rate at which employers introduced some new machinery. But it fails to account for the ease with which employers in other sectors of the economy, including sugar factories, were able to introduce machinery, whether or not workers protested. The argument is another effort to blame workers for the decline of the industry. More compelling explanations focus on conscious decisions by government, including enforcement of the long- evaded 500-Acre Law intent on restricting the size of corporation landholdings. The argument acknowledges that Puerto Rican sugar capitalists could not survive without government largesse and widespread evasion of the law. Yet by the

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moment of peak production in the early 1950s, government critics had already been active for a decade in reducing its blatant political favoritism toward the sugar corporations. Furthermore, in years following the peak, the government offered growers many opportunities to increase production by lifting quotas and increasing demand. Finally, after the federal government decided to sever diplomatic relations and trade with Cuba, its largest supplier of sugar, not only did the producers of Puerto Rico fail to respond to the challenge, but in the 1960s sugar production plummeted. Sugar corporation decisions reflect their lack of interest in maintaining a vibrant industry. They were slow to adopt mechanical and chemical inputs or sustain research on high-yielding cane varieties. Also, there was an increase in waste arriving at sugar centrales, which included straw, roots, dirt, and rocks that damaged machinery and delayed processing. While employers commonly blamed workers for being careless, the difficulties stemmed from a sharp decline of investment in management to oversee field production. A related factor was that the proportion of rattoon cane doubled over a fifteen-year period, and in rattoon, yields decline each year following planting the first year. In combination these factors point to the continuing rapid increase in colonos, hastened by government efforts to apply the 500-Acre Law forcing centrales and their affiliates to give up large-scale landholdings. Small colonos lacked the necessary resources to invest in frequent plantings, purchase chemical inputs and new equipment, adopt new cane varieties, or hire field managers, all of which would have resulted in higher yields and greater production. Instead they hoped to gain modest profits despite lower yields, because they invested less in production. Still another factor linked to government involved a sharp decline in research by the UPR Agricultural Experiment Station, which in the 1920s had rescued the industry from mosaic and other diseases. Sugar industry expert José Acosta Velarde observed that “most of the progress of cane is the creation of new varieties” that have higher yields and are able to withstand diseases. Almost all research in Puerto Rico was conducted by the Experiment Station, not corporations or grower associations. But by 1954 the four major U.S. companies responsible for more than 60 percent of the island’s cane twenty years earlier were engaged primarily in land speculation.82 The rise and continued presence of the absentee sugar corporations had been predicated on government support. As state interest and assistance shifted to other ventures, the corporations lost interest in the industry. Absentee investors supported by government largesse had made fabulous profits for several decades, but by the 1940s Puerto Rican sugar-

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cane production was vastly overextended. As Miguel Lugo López then observed, plantings stretched far beyond the highly productive sections along the coast and interior valleys into the uplands, where they displaced crops more appropriate for those areas: with pastures confined, in most cases, to the poorest and most rugged hill lands, that should be in forests. These pastures, now so limited in extent, are grossly mismanaged, overgrazing being very common. As a result of these conditions erosion, as might be expected, has become a major consideration.

Yields were declining in many locations due to a “rapid and serious silting of reservoirs. Moreover, flood hazard is on the increase. Over 40 percent of the Island has been subjected to what is rated as severe erosion.” The cycle of expansion and fabulous profits had passed prior to peak production, but without continued investment in research a crisis in the industry loomed on the horizon. Once the absentee corporations had mined the land and lost favor with the government, they left, and as they departed, Puerto Rican small farmers had the opportunity to gain a stronger foothold. But they lacked sufficient influence in the metropolis to obtain renewed public investment that might have rescued the industry.83 Meanwhile workers had even less influence on decisions involving sugar production. Saddled with a complacent leadership they struggled erratically and in vain to protect themselves from the devastating consequences of new mechanical and chemical applications or from the decline of the industry. While Packinghouse officials articulated concern about compensation for workers who lost their jobs, in practice they acted in unison with the colonial government and the Populares, who had written off Puerto Rican agriculture.84 Harvest mechanization accelerated in the 1960s while sugar output plummeted, along with jobs. Employment in the agricultural phase of production, estimated at about 124,000 in 1934, declined gradually to about 95,000 by 1960, then fell again by more than half in the next eight years.85 When the Fomento promise of employment through “modernization” failed to materialize, labor department officials directed tens of thousands of unemployed agricultural workers to jobs in the continental United States. The project focused on two distinct settings—urban industries, most importantly in New York City; and agriculture along the Atlantic Coast. In 1945, fee-charging private agencies began systematic recruitment

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for agricultural jobs, but worker complaints about mistreatment gained widespread public attention and compelled the colonial government to take action. The insular Department of Labor established a Migration Division, responsible for Puerto Rican workers in the continental United States. A counterpart to the Mexican Labor Program, the agricultural worker program established in 1948 employed tens of thousands of workers in the metropolis. Colonial representatives of the Migration Division cooperated with employers and were responsible for contract compliance.86 The recruitment focused primarily on sugarcane workers unemployed during tiempo muerto, and as part of the Annual Farm Worker Program of the USDL it aimed at providing year-round employment by shifting workers to different job settings. Workers were employed in the island’s sugar industry primarily between January and May, so they were available between late spring and late fall when demand on the Atlantic seaboard peaked. In the first year of the program, nearly five thousand Puerto Rican men under contract came to the continental United States, increasing to an annual peak of nearly twenty-three thousand in the late 1950s before starting a gradual decline that continued over the next two decades. The program was accompanied by a much larger informal migration of workers, often recruited illegally by employers who sought to avoid contract stipulations and to hire other family members whose employment was prohibited by the contracts.87 Populares officials were motivated to provide jobs for Puerto Ricans, claiming that as U.S. citizens they were more deserving than Mexican braceros, consistent with stated USDL policy preferences. In practice, there was little geographic overlap as the Caribbean workers concentrated along the Atlantic Coast, Mexicans in the Midwest and Southwest. The Puerto Rican program shared many features with its Mexican counterpart, including the exclusive hiring of adult men and a requirement that the USDL certify need. Similarly, grower associations rather than individual growers were the employers and responsible for negotiations with government agencies, recruiting, hiring, and even screening workers for reliability and experience in agriculture. Worker contracts guaranteed either the prevailing local wage or a specific minimum, whichever was higher, with provisions for housing, health, and worker compensation, 160 hours of employment every four weeks, and protection against discrimination based on race, color, creed, or membership in a labor organization. Unlike Mexican contract workers, Puerto Ricans were expected to pay for their own transportation plus a processing fee charged by the

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growers’ association, and they were not guaranteed lodging and food if work was unavailable. The PRDL was a party to the contracts, which made it responsible for their enforcement.88 The Puerto Rican and Mexican programs had another similarity in that growers in both successfully violated contract terms with impunity and engaged in systematic abuses involving wages, working conditions, housing, and firing workers without cause. New Jersey grower agent William G. Tourette even acknowledged that his growers’ association made a profit on the importation of Puerto Ricans and maintained an informal blacklist. Key to the program’s continuation was employers’ ability to restrict collective input from workers. Grower agent Neil Moore asserted that employers preferred Puerto Ricans to African Americans because the former had no power to bargain over wages or terms of employment and, not unexpectedly, they worked harder.89 Growers found Puerto Rican officials as amenable as those from Mexico to cooperation in preventing collective worker actions. The Grower Associations, the most important of which was Garden State Service Cooperative Association (GSSCA) of New Jersey, even claimed that collective bargaining existed because the Association itself negotiated worker contracts with the PRDL. In one contentious 1960 meeting, the PRDL objected to a grower demand of 77 cents per hour, asserting that the USDL had already set the minimum at 80 cents. But the GSSCA appealed to USDL chief James P. Mitchell, asserting, “we do not believe it was your intention to deny employers the right to bargain collectively for workers through union agreements or through their elected representatives” and that they had negotiated a 77 cent rate the previous year with PRDL chief Fernando Sierra Berdecia.90 As if Sierra and the PRDL were the elected representatives of workers, employers invoked the mantra of collective bargaining to support their demands. It further demonstrated how growers, in collusion with agents of the metropolitan and colonial states, instituted and maintained a colonized labor force subject to inferior wages and working conditions, able to prevent workers from creating an institutional mechanism to defend their interests. Citizenship did not protect Puerto Rican seasonal workers in the continental United States any more effectively than the binational agreement defended Mexican citizens. While the colonial state failed Puerto Rican migrant workers’ interests, initiatives from the organized labor movement were similarly abysmal. Packinghouse representatives acknowledged that Puerto Rican agricultural workers along the Atlantic Coast were “union-minded” and that

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a large portion of them belonged to the Sindicato. Yet Packinghouse officials failed to initiate even a token campaign to organize or represent them in the continental United States. In fact, the National Farm Labor Union was more interested. In 1950 it approached the PRDL for permission to sign authorization cards to represent them while they worked in the continental United States, asserting that affiliation with the NFLU would not interfere with their membership in the Federación, also an AFL affiliate. But Labor Secretary Sierra Berdecia dismissed the NFLU request on the grounds that he could not get involved in a jurisdictional dispute, since the majority of agricultural workers in Puerto Rico at the time were represented by the Confederación- CIO and not the Federación-AFL, yet no laws barred workers from belonging to more than one labor union. In 1959, in the aftermath of the AFL- CIO merger, the renamed National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), claiming to represent agricultural workers throughout the continental United States, produced a plan in conjunction with the Butcher Workmen to obtain assistance from the PRDL to prevent employer associations from breaking up groups of union members and dispersing them when assigning them to jobs, again without success. For union-minded Puerto Rican agricultural workers on the Atlantic coast, the PRDL was their only representative in collective bargaining and their only institutional protector. Yet by the late 1970s when the migration program was in sharp decline, the colonial Labor Department had not yet taken a single employer to court for violating contract terms.91 The protection it offered as a justification for initiating the migration program three decades earlier remained a paper formality.

Conclusion As the largest segment of voters and wage earners in Puerto Rico, agricultural workers were instrumental to the realignments of the early 1940s that made possible the rise of the Populares and the Confederación. At the urging of the colonial governor, Muñoz Marín and other party officials demonstrated how they could be useful to the metropolitan government and contribute to a model of economic development. Once the Populares won the overwhelming majority in the 1944 elections, he could exert “personal and autocratic rule” to eliminate the metropolis’s greatest fears—independentistas and an autonomous labor movement. For this he was praised by U.S. investors, military strategists, academics, and the media for making Puerto Rico a “showcase of democracy.” Yet as labor

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activist Sebastián López asserted critically, for Muñoz Marín, “democracy is simply the right of people to vote for government every four years and nothing more.” A more accurate vision, as David Loehwing of Barron’s acknowledged, involved converting the island “into a show window for American free enterprise.”92 Echoing planners in the metropolis and concerned with neither the failure of local agriculture to meet subsistence needs nor the continued colonial exploitation, Muñoz Marín portrayed the island’s economic development plan as the “transformation of a backward political and economic area into a leading one.”93 New Dealers and Populares leaders blamed absentee landlords and ultimately the island’s allegedly backward agriculture for the colonial crisis. Yet, through the 1940s the Puerto Rican sugar industry was profitable and generally competitive with producers in the U.S. market. Its failure to adopt the most advanced production techniques dates only from the rise of Popular hegemony. As the large sugar corporations shifted their investments to other areas, smaller growers held on but were unable to gain the goodwill of politicians. The industry soon collapsed as government favoritism turned to other continental industries that produced for the metropolitan market, with new subsidies, tax breaks, and cheap labor disciplined by colonial regulations and compliant labor representatives. The metropolitan and colonial state planners were determined to eliminate any threat an autonomous labor movement might pose to the regime of private enterprise. Within days of the March 1945 Sindicato victory over the Federación, the Confederación had been partitioned into two warring factions, and within weeks the metropolitan government drafted Secretary- General Juan Sáez Corales into the military. Many observers criticized Communist leaders in the United States as toadies of Moscow for adhering to the wartime no-strike pledge, but failed to criticize unions affiliated with the AFL and CIO for abiding by the same pledge, or to acknowledge that Puerto Rican leaders were defying those dictates. Throughout the war Sáez Corales and other Confederación representatives led Puerto Rican agricultural workers through continuous strike waves, unwilling to sacrifice their interests to foreign corporations accruing windfall profits. While Sáez Corales did not seek to antagonize the Populares, he was concerned that organized labor “should not be the tail of any political party.” His greater fear was the political and economic subordination of Puerto Rico to the United States, and he lamented that while the labor movement throughout Latin America “discusses the colonial problem of Puerto Rico,” labor representatives on the island re-

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mained silent. He asserted that “we have the responsibility because we are the workers who most directly suffer the consequences of colonial exploitation.”94 Labor unions from the United States played an important role, he argued, as both the AFL and the CIO “have come intervening and are intervening in the life of the Puerto Rican labor movement.” Rather than offering fraternal relations based on solidarity, mutual respect, and assistance, their “intervention is based on the proposal of controlling the Puerto Rican labor movement, to submit it to that of the United States . . . [and] resolving the problems of employers who exploit our workers,” rather than the problems of workers exploited by employers.95 In effect, the metropolitan labor movement helped make the island an employers’ paradise and an early model for future third-world economic development programs. The CIO and the Packinghouse, which had gained a progressive reputation on the continent, played a major role in the colonization of organized agricultural workers in Puerto Rico. The representatives they sent to take control of the sugar industry provoked worker resentment, exhibiting domineering and racist behavior, and they preferred to cultivate close relations with the political establishment while failing to strengthen the position of workers or improve their lives. By 1956 Packinghouse President Helstein acknowledged, “we do not have the power to make the kind of gains by strike action that we should” yet the Packinghouse had taken over a union with a militant past that during the war had constantly waged strikes and achieved political and economic gains for workers.96 Packinghouse leadership failed to address two current issues critically important to its members: migration to the United States and mechanization. Even as the union directed its energies toward legislation on minimum wages, social security, and welfare benefits, wages and working conditions for Puerto Rican agricultural workers continued to deteriorate. Despite the unprecedented economic boom and rising wages on the island, real earnings for its sugar workers, adjusted for a cost of living substantially higher than the continental United States, fell from 37.4 cents per hour in 1946 to 32 cents per hour in 1955. Unemployment for male agricultural workers rose from 9.2 percent in 1947 to 14.5 percent in 1956. By 1968, the U.S. government had set minimum wage rates for sugarcane workers in Puerto Rico at 57 cents per hour, compared with the lowest rate on the continent of $1.15, reflecting the institutionalized colonial labor regime. It was acknowledged that “work in the sugar cane had been identified in the minds of many Puerto Ricans with exploitation and

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poverty. The situation worsened with the emigration of workers toward the city of San Juan and the United States.”97 Tens of thousands of workers sought agricultural employment along the Atlantic Coast or moved to New York and other cities, assisted by the PRDL, whose representatives insisted that their task was not to “peddle migrants” but rather to ensure their protection. While in a position to encourage labor unionism on the Atlantic Seaboard, the PRDL helped keep it out while failing to protect Puerto Rican workers. The governmentsupported migration program, predicated on Malthusian assumptions, accomplished little other than to export the unemployed of Puerto Rico, while compliant Packinghouse representatives did not even attempt to organize them on the continent. Puerto Rican labor officials who cooperated with the new political order, like Ramos Antonini, could expect to live in fine houses and obtain lucrative positions with the Populares. But those who struggled on behalf of an autonomous labor movement and world peace, like Sáez Corales, faced continuous harassment. In October 1950 he was jailed in Puerto Rico for promoting force and violence, “accused of obstructing public justice” during the Ponce Candy strike, but later found innocent of the charges and exonerated. In March 1954 he was accused by the Puerto Rican government of violating Law 53, La Ley de la Mordaza (the gag act), a Puerto Rican equivalent of the Smith Act. He was imprisoned again from October 20, 1954, to March 9, 1955, held practically incommunicado under a $12,000 bond. Then in 1960 both Sáez Corales and his wife, Consuelo Burgos de Sáez Pagán, were cited for contempt before the House Committee on Un-American Activities for refusing to answer questions. They charged that the United States had no jurisdiction to conduct such an investigation, since Puerto Rico lacked representation in Congress.98 The imprisonment and ongoing harassment of Sáez Corales and other labor leaders and independentistas further deflate contemporary rationalizations that Puerto Rico was not a colony. But the abysmal failure of organized labor to protect its most dedicated leaders or improve the lives of agricultural workers in a colonial setting was not predetermined, as we shall see in the case of the Longshore union workers in Hawai‘i.

CHAPTeR 3

Up from Colonialism: Hawaiian Plantation Agriculture and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union

The farm workers must be organized. The method must be found. Let the fruit be sour, the vegetable bitter until simple justice comes to the fields. The fate of the farm workers must be the concern of all who labor. For unless the farm workers can be brought up to the American standard of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the rest of us can only be the less secure. morris Watson, intErnational lonGshorEmEn’s anD WarEhoUsEmEn’s Union

Introduction While the Packinghouse union failed agricultural workers in the colony of Puerto Rico, workers in colonial Hawai‘i had a much different experience with another CIO affiliate, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union. Plantation workers in the middle of the Pacific organized and won collective bargaining contracts in the mid-1940s, and their union was still strong as the plantations closed down half a century later. Several observers have portrayed Hawai‘i as a “Great Exception” in the history of agricultural labor unionism in the United States, often attributing its success to an individual great man. In his Saturday Evening Post narrative, “Labor Moves in on Hawaii,” Frank J. Taylor asserted, “sensing the hour to strike, Jack Hall elected himself the prophet to lead Hawaii’s workers out of the wilderness of paternalism” with the support of top Longshore Union leaders in California.1 Like most other contemporary observers, Taylor disregarded plantation workers who formed the union and from whose ranks local leaders appeared, and he paid little attention to how they shaped the struggle around their daily lives, the subjects of this chapter.

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Capital and Labor in the Hawaiian Sugar Industry Hawai‘i, like Puerto Rico, was annexed to the United States in 1898, and Anglo Saxons controlled the colony’s politics and plantations even more completely than its Caribbean counterpart. European Americans in Hawai‘i already controlled the sugar industry and would soon establish an important pineapple industry that led world production for more than sixty years. The plantation economy dominated Hawai‘i in the early twentieth century, and in 1954 sugar and pineapple still accounted for 36 percent of its income.2 During World War II the sugar and pineapple plantation workers of Hawai‘i became staunch supporters of the Longshore Union, able to gain the only lasting victories for agricultural unionism in the nation during their generation. Sugarcane was by far the more important of the two industries, and from its modest beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century it soon became the center of economic and political life of the islands. Unlike either

Cities, towns, and sugar plantations in Hawai‘i, 1949. Reproduced by permission of the Hawaiian Agricultural Research Center from Sugar in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, 1949), pp. 40–41.

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the continental United States or Puerto Rico, where independent farming preceded the appearance of modern commercial agriculture, sugar plantations in Hawai‘i quickly overran former forests and pastures. Following the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, sugar production escalated, and in the 1890s, as economist James Shoemaker has suggested, the sugar trade “was the primary element leading to annexation.” Sugar production took place in two different climate zones, the rainfallabundant northeastern Hamakua coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i, and irrigated settings on Maui, O‘ahu, and Kaua‘i.3 The Big Five Factors (corporations), four of which were originally merchant houses formed in the nineteenth century, invested not only in sugar but also in pineapple, retail, transportation, public utilities, newspapers, banks, insurance companies, and newspapers. They owned or leased practically all Hawai‘i’s sugar lands, monopolized shipping, and supplied merchandise, building materials, paint, dry goods, hardware, and food to their employees. With their control of canneries, sugar processing factories, irrigation companies, steamship lines, and farm equipment manufacturers, the Big Five “virtually owned the islands” before Hawai‘i became a state in 1959. In 1946 they controlled 96.5 percent of sugar production. The Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA), formed in 1895, coordinated many Big Five functions, primary of which were to formulate a general labor program including worker recruitment and setting wages, to research production and the adoption of labor-saving equipment, and to represent the industry’s interests politically. In 1940, the HSPA represented thirty-six of the thirty-eight plantations located on the four Hawaiian Islands that produced sugar. They were linked closely to the Republican Party, which dominated both houses of the legislature from 1900 until 1944.4 The rural villages where more than 95 percent of plantation workers lived were company towns built, owned, and controlled by employers. Each town typically had single-family houses or older dormitory structures where many single men lived, along with company stores, hospitals, schools, community club houses, movie houses, cemeteries, and recreational facilities that included baseball and football fields, tennis courts, cinder tracks, and gymnasia, and provided municipal services including fire and police stations as well as water and electrical systems. Larger towns often had independent grocery stores and butcher shops, tailor shops, and shoemakers, all beholden to the goodwill of the company. The town sites often included the company sugar-processing factory, central management offices, and repair shops for field and factory equipment.

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Surrounding each town were the numerous fields into which each plantation was divided, extending to neighboring plantation lands. Every working day, early in the morning, workers were taken by truck to the field where they worked. As Shoemaker observed in 1939, “anyone on any part of the plantation is a trespasser unless he has the permission of the management to be there. This is one of the primary reasons why labor organization, as such, has little opportunity to obtain a foothold in the sugar industry.”5 Influenced by a relatively even climate and an isolation that made labor importation costly, sugar production in Hawai‘i became a year-round operation. At the seasonal peak in October or November, employment typically averaged only 7 percent to 12 percent more than the low point in December. During the slower winter period, company employees worked on machinery repairs, building and painting houses and offices, and maintenance of roads, irrigation ditches, and railways. In the 1930s and 1940s, prior to unionization, working days were longer than in Puerto Rico, but much shorter than in locations farther from the equator, typically averaging ten or eleven hours depending on daylight. Management closely coordinated operations to ensure a steady flow of sugar for about ten months during the year. Once harvested, cane was transported to the local factory to be processed into raw sugar, of which about two-thirds was sent to the industry’s cooperatively owned refinery in Crockett, California, the remainder to refineries in Texas or the East Coast to become white sugar. As economist Curtis Aller noted, it was a “specialized and complex agricultural system that is akin to the mass production industries of Detroit,” then touted as the sine qua non of industrial manufacturing.6 Sugar production in Hawai‘i could be considered a model for agricultural Fordism in the modern era. For labor-intensive field operations, Hawaiian plantation owners recruited workers from around the world, starting with native Hawaiians in the earliest years of the industry. They lured Chinese in the late nineteenth century along with small groups of Europeans, but particularly Portuguese in the 1870s and 1880s. Coinciding with the explosive growth of sugar production in the 1890s, they engaged in a massive importation of Japanese workers, overwhelmingly males. Fearing the rising international power of a non-European nation, they halted recruitment of workers from Japan, except for women joining their husbands. But they had an alternative waiting in the wings. Following the War of 1898, they turned to the new colonies, initially recruiting a modest number of Puerto Ricans, but once the conquest of the Philippines had been secured, en-

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gaged in large-scale recruitment of its men, peaking between 1906 and 1931. But migration from the Philippines tailed off immediately afterward and actually reversed during the Great Depression. Employers conducted a brief but important final mass recruitment in 1946. Men from the Philippines were the last of the workers recruited for the plantations, a colonial labor force at the bottom of Hawai‘i’s economic and racial hierarchy for much of the twentieth century. To prevent plantation workers from organizing, employers pitted different nationalities against each other, even creating rivalries between the two largest groups from the Philippines, residents of the Visayan and Ilocos Islands.7 Despite their recent roots, from the moment of their arrival, plantation workers in Hawai‘i maintained stable residences and a majority became permanent inhabitants of the islands. Rapidly increasing production compelled employers to continue recruitment, and the number of workers rose through the early decades of the century. The HSPA calculated that employment in the industry rose from a monthly average of about 20,000 in 1892 to 42,000 in 1902, 46,000 in 1922, a peak of about 55,000 in 1932, and declining to about 46,000 by 1938. If one includes workers’ families, in 1939 there were about 102,000 residents on sugar plantations, or about 24 percent of Hawai‘i’s population, falling to about 65,000, or 14 percent, by 1953. In 1940, the field labor force in sugar was about 50 percent Filipino, 32 percent Japanese, and about 3 percent each of Hawaiians and Anglo-Saxons, with the remainder composed primarily of Puerto Ricans, Chinese, and Koreans. In 1943, more than 78 percent of Japanese male employees were married and living with families on the plantations, compared with only 23 percent of Filipino men. Single men were most likely to reside in older dormitories, while married families lived in plantation houses, which averaged slightly fewer than five members per dwelling. As labor recruitment from Asia subsided, the proportion of second-generation citizens employed on the plantations increased quickly, from only about one-eighth in 1930 to nearly three-eighths by 1938, reaching a majority by the early 1940s. Rates of U.S. citizenship differed sharply by national background, calculated in 1946 at 100 percent of Anglo-Saxons, 98.8 percent of Portuguese, 69.1 percent of Japanese, but only 1.8 percent of Filipinos, although the vast majority had resided in Hawai‘i for more than twenty years.8 Whether or not plantation workers were citizens, they lacked an effective institutional voice, and Hawaiian planters controlled the labor regime more effectively than their counterparts in colonial Puerto Rico. The plantation system that the Big Five created in Hawai‘i was sharply

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hierarchical, with clear occupational class lines reinforced by race. Haoles (Anglo-Saxon whites) represented a ruling class of owners, managers, and supervisors. At the top, the families of the Big Five who owned the plantations and much else in Hawai‘i had enormous control, and all were Caucasians. A second level consisted of top management that through the 1940s was also composed of haoles. It was headed by the plantation manager, who through the early decades of the twentieth century “was virtually king within his own domain,” functioning as final local authority on matters dealing with production, community facilities, and perquisites (nonwage benefits, particularly housing, fuel, water, medical care, garden plots and recreational facilities), and even as an extra-legal judge on minor crimes and misdemeanors. Managers occupied “large and comfortable homes, surrounded by beautiful lawns and gardens.” At the lowest level of management were field overseers, known as lunas, often the “lesser white” Portuguese and other European immigrants. The position of the luna offered a means of earlier entry for Chinese, and in the 1930s and 1940s of Japanese, into management, and comparable benefits were afforded to a small group of Mexican Americans as a result of the bracero program. As field boss for working crews, the luna commonly was portrayed as an arbitrary and cruel figure and a focal point of class tensions. Given the arbitrary nature of wage determinations, the capricious allocation of perquisites, and the absence of systematic opportunities for worker input or grievances, there was a “fairly widespread” abuse of power, abetted by the lunas, on the plantations.9 The field production and labor process involved approximately twoyear periods between planting and harvesting, and the even climate permitted growers to stagger plantings to maintain fairly constant production and labor inputs. The range of tasks involving soil preparation, planting, weeding, insect control, and harvesting (which included burning the fields to destroy blades near the ground, cutting, piling, and loading cane) were performed by gangs of men varying in size from three to fifteen men, occasionally more, depending on tasks and the temperament of workers. In Hawai‘i, gangs often specialized in a single operation, moving to different fields on the plantation as they completed their tasks. The luna, who announced the pay rate according to soil conditions, topography, and the type of cane, supervised each gang. Prior to unionization, plantation workers received several methods of payment, sometimes by the day, but more often by short-term piece or longer-term task work (ukupan). Employers also devised incentives to induce employees to work harder, including a bonus to the gang that cut the most cane per man-day during

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harvesting season. As Shoemaker observed in 1939, “The basis on which piecework rates are determined is arbitrary, informal and distinctly more variable than in other industries. . . . It seems inevitable that the plantation laborers will eventually demand either more standardized rates of pay or recognized plantation labor organizations to represent their interests relative to the formulation of plantation wage policies.”10 In 1939, field labor represented 71 percent of all work on plantations, and the most labor-intensive tasks were harvesting, machine operation, and cultivation. Of the total amount of field labor at Ola‘a plantation, near Puna, in 1946, about 45.6 percent involved cane cutting, 20.9 percent machine operation, 17 percent cultivating, 10.2 percent loading, and 6.3 percent planting.11 As in Puerto Rico, women and children had comparatively limited roles in Hawai‘i’s cane field operations. In 1939, about 6 percent of paid employees on sugar plantations were women, while the employment of minors ranged from 4.5 percent to 12 percent depending on the time of the year, working primarily on Saturdays and during summer vacation. Hawaiian authorities enforced the mandatory school attendance law for children under age sixteen in commercial agriculture much more rigorously than their counterparts in Puerto Rico or anywhere in the continental United States. Women and children were employed primarily in weeding (cultivating) and in loading, where they picked up stalks of cane that fell off railroad cars or trucks. Women who worked in the fields occasionally brought their babies and built small cane huts to shelter them. Most plantation women’s labor took place in town and involved family reproductive tasks, sewing, cooking, and planting and tending household gardens, while some took in laundry from single men or set up other small business operations to earn cash income for their families.12 There was a group of small farmers in the Hawaiian sugar industry referred to as adherent planters. Most were plantation employees who made an agreement to grow cane “adherent” to a specific large plantation. While some adherent planters were little more than long-term cultivators, others had a greater degree of freedom. Their contracts stipulated that they would grow a specific acreage on land they leased or rented, and that they would hire only workers over the age of fourteen except family members. They were useful to the plantation by working smaller areas often isolated from the main plantation fields and in deep ravines or small river valleys that were difficult to access, typically in nonirrigated settings. There were about 3,500 adherent planters in 1937, responsible for about 10 percent of cane produced. Only 39 percent performed all the

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field labor for which they were responsible by themselves, while the rest hired laborers, mostly part-time. By 1962 there were only 949 adherent planters, the majority on the island of Hawai‘i, with an average cane holding of 1.77 acres, and they were responsible for about 7 percent of total production.13 In Hawai‘i, independent farmers were not of great importance politically and played a negligible role in labor unionism, in contrast to those in Puerto Rico and most of the continental United States. Even with the coming of the Great Depression, in Hawai‘i a labor glut comparable to that of the continental United States did not develop. Consequently, during the early 1930s, average wages fell to only 92 percent of their peak level of the late 1920s, recovered to 100 percent by 1935, and reached 120 percent by 1938. By contrast, in the continental United States, the 1932 wages for agriculture fell to about 50 percent of their late-1920s peak level and reached only 70 percent by 1938.14 Hawaiian workers received higher average wages and had steadier employment (over 250 days) per year than in any other agricultural region of the United States. In 1937 the typical adult male plantation worker in Hawai‘i earned an average of $546, plus an estimated 48 cents per day in perquisites. The perquisite system was complicated and the subject of great disagreement because of the arbitrary nature of granting housing and other benefits as well as difficulties in calculating the value of housing, fuel, water, garden space, medical attention, and recreational facilities for each worker. At the same time Louisiana sugarcane harvesters averaged $1.60 per day or $200–$250 per year without added benefits. In 1939, Puerto Rican sugarcane workers averaged $3.70 per week with 140 days of employment annually and could expect a maximum of $160 per year. Obtaining still lower earnings were betabeleros (sugar beet workers) in the Midwest and Great Plains region, where an adult worker averaged about $130 per year for seasonal work without perquisites, plus an added annual family income of about $51 outside the beet fields.15 Even prior to unionization, plantation workers in Hawai‘i earned higher wages, worked a longer season, and had more secure housing and benefits than in Puerto Rico or any part of the continental United States. On the other hand, the lines of authority and racial and occupational class antagonisms were much clearer in Hawai‘i. The owners and top management inevitably were haoles, while field workers invariably were not. A study of Hawaiian plantations in 1938 reported monthly earnings by race: for Anglo-Saxons $113; Portuguese $66; Japanese $54; Puerto Ricans and Filipinos $47. Hourly wages for early 1947 averaged $1.54 for

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Anglo-Saxons, $1.06 for Portuguese, 99 cents for Japanese, 92 cents for Puerto Ricans, and 86 cents for Filipinos. The Labor Report of the Ola‘a plantation for December 1946 indicated that only 11.4 percent of AngloSaxons were unskilled, compared with 62.2 percent of Portuguese, 87.7 percent of Japanese, and 96.8 percent of Filipinos. All supervisors and managers had monthly wages over $100, while no unskilled employees earned that amount. Prior to unionization, salaried employees (management) generally worked eight-hour days and forty-five-hour weeks, while field workers typically had ten-hour days and sixty-hour weeks, although the most important task of harvesting was “very demanding on the physical strength of laborers” and compelled them to take time off on occasion.16

The Pineapple Industry and Corporate Paternalism The pineapple industry, while smaller in scale than that of sugar, nonetheless played a significant role in the life of agricultural workers and labor unionism in Hawai‘i. Pineapples were exported from Hawai‘i in the 1850s, and the first plantation appeared in 1885. The Dole cannery operations, founded by a family involved in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 whose reward was to have a member, Sanford Dole, chosen as the first president of the republic, began commercial production in 1903, establishing the first large-scale pineapple operation in the world. Dole interests also provided leadership in the formation, in 1908, of the Hawaiian Pineapple Growers Association, whose initial purpose was to advertise in the continental United States, and the corporation expanded into Latin America. The island of Lana‘i, acquired by Dole interests, by 1940 had become the world’s largest pineapple plantation, where the industry “so pervaded the way of life that school days were arranged so that children were free to help with the harvest.” Unlike sugar, many major pineapple operations were branches of large packing companies in the continental United States. In 1946 there were nine canneries and twelve plantations, the number falling to six canneries and eight plantations by 1969, while pineapple acreage was about a quarter that of sugar. The industry did not enjoy tariff protection, and production fluctuated more sharply than sugar during the year. The pineapple industry lacked a central coordinating association comparable to the HSPA, although the HSPA assisted it in labor recruitment.17

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Fresh pineapple exports reached about 8 million by 1928, rose erratically to about 11 million by the late 1930s, and reached between 15 and 18 million during peak years in the 1950s and 1960s. Commercial production of canned pineapple juice and canned pineapples began in the early 1930s and rose gradually, peaking at between 28 million and 30 million cases of pineapple and juice from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Hawai‘i’s share of the world pineapple markete was 80 percent in 1940 but fell to 72 percent by 1950 and 30 percent by 1969. Production plummeted afterward, and approximately one-third of operations closed between 1972 and 1975 as companies shifted their operations to the third world.18 Pineapple plantations were located mostly on arid plateaus where land was cheap and fruit required limited but timely irrigation. Hawaiian pineapple production followed a five-year cycle, with a first crop requiring about 18 to 24 months to mature, followed by second and third “ratoon” crops, each harvested after a twelve-month wait, yielding more pineapples but smaller fruits. The cycle ended with one or two years of fallow prior to replanting. Employment was highly seasonal, concentrated during harvest peak from June to September when canneries ran continuously for six days per week on two shifts, and much smaller at other times of the year when canneries often operated a day or less each week.19 Workers in pineapple, as in sugar, were paid according to different methods—salary, hourly, and piece rates for each task. Under the piecerate system, gangs of men worked under supervision of lunas and shared earnings based on number of hours on the job or the task performed. But because work in pineapple fields tended to be less specialized than in sugar fields and workers learned skills quickly, employers typically shifted employees from one task to another rather than using specialized gangs common on the sugar plantations. Workers performed several sets of tasks during the growing cycle, which started with soil preparation. Crawler tractors plowed the soil into rows before workers entered the fields, spraying each row with fertilizer and then applying treated mulch paper to prevent weed growth, hold moisture, and attract heat. Their second set of tasks involved planting, in which they cut holes through the paper and placed a pineapple crown, slip, or “sucker,” into each hole. The third task involved another application of fertilizers and pesticides, performed by individuals with sprayers who walked through the fields until the operation was mechanized in the 1930s when spray trucks could enter the fields.20 The final and most labor-intensive set of field tasks involved harvesting

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and transporting. To harvest, hundreds of men, and occasionally a small number of women, entered the fields carrying large canvas slings, or sacks, over their shoulders. After picking the fruit and filling the sacks, they carried them to a point of concentration at the nearest road and emptied them. At that point other workers, often women and children, removed crowns from the fruit, sorted it into three different grades by size, and filled empty lug boxes. Men then stacked the boxes onto trucks or small railroad cars, from which point they were carried to nearby canneries. On the lightly populated islands of Moloka‘i and Lana‘i, fruit was transferred to barges and shipped to Honolulu for canning. Harvest mechanization experimentation in the 1930s and 1940s led to the appearance of field fruit platforms with a conveyor attached to small tractors that could operate on narrow roadways or between rows of pineapples. Workers following tractors in the fields picked the fruit and deposited it on the conveyor, while individuals on the platform filled lug boxes. At the end of the field, workers loaded the boxes onto trucks, which hauled them to the cannery.21 Pineapple production was much more seasonal than sugar production, with employment heaviest during summer harvest peak from July through September. “Regular,” or full-time, workers were employed yearround, while “non-regulars” worked during the summer. Most regular workers were men, while non-regulars included men, women, and highschool youth. Even regular workers commonly did not average forty-hour workweeks, particularly during periods of low production. Peak production in July required more than double the number of workers as during the nadir in November. The pineapple industry typically obtained workers through the HSPA, which was also responsible for importing workers for the sugar industry, and a primary reason why pineapple employment information was less detailed than for sugar plantations. With the halting of large-scale migration of Japanese men in the first decade of the twentieth century, Japanese women were permitted to join their families, and some of them joined the wage labor force, so that family labor sometimes occurred in the pineapple fields, unlike the sugar industry. Women in the fields wore wide-brimmed hats covered by netting to protect them from the sun and from sharp leaves and eyes on the fruit. They wore boots when fields were muddy, as Al Quon McGrath observed, and thus were “hardly distinguishable from men.” Hideo Kurose recalled that on many occasions families worked on a “contract system. Each family was allocated X number of acres.” The company did the planting and fertilizing, and

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the “family took care of weeding, cultivating and harvesting. The family was paid according to the pounds produced in that field.” Women working in the fields handled a range of tasks including cleaning and drying slips for planting, hoeing (hoe-hana), picking pineapples, removing the crowns, and packing pineapples into lug boxes.22 In contrast to their more limited presence in the fields, Japanese women played a major role in the canneries as regular, intermittent, and non-regular workers. As Filipinos became the majority of the plantation labor force in the 1920s, the relative importance of women in the pineapple fields declined, and by 1930 males approached 95 percent of the total. In 1938, largely unmarried Filipino men comprised about 57 percent of the total number of regular workers in the fields, while Japanese were 29 percent. Through the 1930s and 1940s the entire pineapple industry annually employed between six thousand and eight thousand “regulars,” about four thousand intermittent cannery workers, and an additional twelve thousand “seasonal” workers. Labor demands fluctuated, and during the summer peak, students on vacation and housewives were hired. During the period from 1939 to 1961, full-time equivalent employment in the pineapple industry fell modestly from about twelve thousand to ten thousand employees, about half of whom worked on the plantations.23 The sharp seasonal fluctuation in employment and large numbers of seasonal workers represented additional obstacles to labor organizing in the pineapple industry. A 1938 sample found that earnings for males on pineapple plantations averaged 33 cents per hour, compared with an average for women of only 22.2 cents. Because a greater portion of Filipinos worked for piece rates, their average earnings were identical with Japanese workers’. The hourly average earnings in pineapples were slightly higher than those for sugar, but because of greater seasonality pineapple plantation workers in 1938 averaged between $400 and $450, compared with $561 for sugar.24 Labor camps on the pineapple plantations had less obsolete and deteriorating housing than those on sugar plantations as it was a younger industry, but because much of the land was leased and operations were unstable, its poorest-quality housing was much worse, with a high portion of “primitive” sanitary facilities. The deplorable conditions were partly the result of greater instability in the pineapple industry and the lesser incentive to maintain facilities on camps often located on leased land. In older communities companies often provided shoddy maintenance, streets were narrow and dirty, and the water supply was insufficient and “not palatable for drinking.” The quality of housing facilities provoked worker unrest in many pineapple plantation camps.25

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Camp and Community Hawaiian labor camp residents lived in dreary surroundings, but commonly developed a sense of community through their shared experiences of work, school, social events, and participation in Boy Scout and Girl Scout organizations, cultural and religious groups, sports clubs, and teams for basketball, baseball, aikido, and sumo wrestling. Camps lacking indoor plumbing had a community bathhouse with separate facilities for women and men. As Shuji Seki at the Honolua camp of Maui Pineapple recalled, the warm water was soothing for people who went there “to ease their pain after working so hard picking pineapples” in the company of their neighbors and other workers. Many families had garden plots to raise fruits and vegetables and shared the harvest. Furthermore, Seki recalled, “because of the isolation of the plantation, most of the community’s daily needs were provided by the Company,” particularly through company stores that stocked most needs including clothing and imported foods, particularly canned goods, rice, and beef. They shared a dependence on their employers that often created tension.26 While company paternalism offered workers a degree of security, it also aimed at dividing workers. There were separate camps for people of different backgrounds, or housing segregated by race, and as in the sugar industry, managers segregated themselves by residence, social activities, and public facilities. As Satoki Tamamoto recalled, even at the beautiful beach at Maui Pineapple’s Honolua camp, “certain sections were reserved for the bosses” where workers and their families dared not tread.27 The segregation replicated the company towns in Mexico with sharply differentiated spaces for management and workers, reinforcing differences in national background. Even with the abundant potential for agriculture, along with garden plots and the independent truck crop and grazing industry, the workers of Hawai‘i, like those of Puerto Rico, were dependent on the continental United States for much of their food. Despite experiments in selfsufficiency, in 1947 Hawai‘i imported 60 percent of its food from the continental United States. Some observers were highly critical; a 1931 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested that “it is neither socially, industrially, nor economically wise for Hawai‘i to import such a proportion of its total food supply as it does now” because it adds to “living costs (that) will defeat the purposes of a cheap labor supply.” Yet others including labor investigator Shoemaker suggested that it was wiser economically to import food because “the mass production methods on the

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plantations provide greater productivity per man-hour. The people of Hawai‘i achieve a higher standard of living by specializing in the two basic products” and exchanging them for all their other needs including food, as only 4.5 percent of its land was devoted to nonplantation crops.28 Being dependent on imported food purchased at company stores reinforced the dependent relations that planters had established with workers. Planters acknowledged that the labor system they devised was paternalistic and justified their decision to implement it in the late nineteenth century on the grounds that they “had no other choice.” In 1944 J. P. Cooke, president of the HSPA, defended the system, stating that “when one considers the characteristics of the immigrant workers who in years past made up so large a proportion of our plantation labor force, it appears that the term paternalistic is not one to be ashamed of. Let us accept it as true.” The planters claimed that it ensured workers better housing, medical care, living standards, and schools than any other sugar-producing area in the world. Even critics acknowledged that the plantations offered excellent athletic and physical facilities, as well as houses, medical care, and other facilities to celebrate festivals and social events.29 Employers further embellished a positive image of the paternalistic plantation system through the media. In a fawning 1932 article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, “Camp Life Is Better Than That of City,” Yoichi Yoshihara claimed to live in the “little cozy camp of Keaiwa,” surrounded by tall trees, “which makes the place look like a mountain resort.” He asserted that the camp “looks neat, sanitary, wholesome and healthy,” with conditions “far above those of their city brothers.” Each house had a small plot provided to enable families to grow flowers and vegetables. In addition, camps had free running water, bathhouses, and washhouses with modern plumbing, “which brings comfort and ease to the housewives.” Workers received free medical attention from doctors and nurses, free fuel for anyone willing to do the chopping, and when electrical lights were available, the “monthly charge is low compared to cities.” When workers arrived home in the evening and on Sunday, Yoshihara asserted, the camp was full of life, and younger workers were “chattering and bursting into laughter now and then,” playing saxophones, mandolins, banjoes, ukuleles, and guitars. The company provided modern talkie movies on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday evenings, although for workers, “eating, sleeping and working come first, as most are in bed by 8:30 or 9 p.m., up by 4:30, “fresh and peppy.” In conclusion, he claimed, “we citizen laborers live in one big cooperative family correcting each other and consulting each other in time of need.”30

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The portrayal by Yoshihara was widely challenged by workers and their families, both for its accuracy and for its failure to present the seamy side of plantation paternalism. A young woman reared on the plantation vividly recalled the terrible material conditions, of unpainted houses with broken doors and windows without screens, lacking electricity, running water, or sewerage systems. According to her experience, “the plantation camps, on the whole, were filthy compared to the towns from which my friends came. Those of us whose parents worked for the plantation were regarded (with or without reason) [as] low, financially.” Plantation paternalism also offered employers the opportunity to control workers’ expression and set up strict rules on misconduct, engage in blacklists, and hire agents to act as spies to prevent labor organizing. Employers engaged in violence, perjury, and manipulation of the government and courts, particularly during strikes. Their actions broadened the already wide gulf between the overwhelmingly haole management and non-Caucasian workers. Reflecting on employer actions to control plantation workers, NLRB investigator E. J. Eagen reported in 1937: “If there is any truer picture of fascism anywhere in the world than in the Hawaiian islands, then I do not know the definition of it.”31 Yet plantation paternalism in Hawai‘i lacked the extreme degree of control and violence that fascist governments exerted, and in fact workers were able to turn some of its features to their advantage as they organized. First, the plantation camps were stable and isolated settings where workers could create spaces to develop a sense of community and achieve a degree of self-sufficiency and autonomy. Yasuki “Yasu” Arakaki, born to Japanese parents around 1918 near Hilo, reared on the island of Hawai‘i, and employed at Ola‘a Sugar Company, recalled that mothers made the most of their children’s school clothes. Plantation worker family members also hunted and fished, and most of them raised fruits and vegetables, so “food was abundant. Every worker had a garden.” Families in every community had small businesses on the side, operating truck gardens, washing clothes for others, and raising pigs. There were additional opportunities for interaction and socializing in the wide range of social, school, and sports activities that were a regular part of life. While often remote, the isolation and close-knit nature of work, family, and social life “served to make each plantation a small world in itself.”32 The spaces of community that workers and their families created in the midst of the tightly controlled working environments provided organizing opportunities for union sympathizers. Workers were familiar with management regulation of “even the most minute personal matters and

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social affairs of the employees.” It was easy for workers to grasp the rhetoric of class conflict articulated by family and friends who had joined the Longshore Union because it was part of their immediate daily experience. Nisei workers, reared in Hawai‘i and thus living the contradiction between plantation practices and the ideology of democracy, equality, and opportunity they learned in American schools, were particularly receptive. World War II had a profound impact on the men returning from the war in Europe, who found the actions of the Big Five intolerable. Longshore union member Jack Kawano recalled: “The fact that the veterans went overseas, learned about democracy, learned about freedom, those things helped” shape their consciousness and their actions. As with Mexican Americans, they had developed a clear awareness of themselves as citizens and workers and the undemocratic and unjust practices of their employers. Furthermore, unlike agricultural workers in the continental United States or Puerto Rico, their class experiences were not muddled by a large and politically influential group of independent small farmers or by the experience of constantly shifting from one job to another or from urban to rural settings. As agricultural economist J. A. Mollett observed, employer paternalism and practices aimed at exercising minute control “resulted in what appears to be an inevitable reaction—the creation of a single strong trade union” to act “as a counterforce.”33

The Coming of Labor Unionism Because of the virulent anti-Asian hostility within even the most progressive sectors of the AFL, the labor movement arrived relatively late for Hawaiian agricultural workers, whose earliest organizing experiences involved independent ethnic unions. Prior to the arrival of the Longshore Union, Hawaiian plantation workers affiliated with independent unions engaged in several large-scale strikes, the most important of which occurred in 1909, 1919–1920, 1924, and 1937. While they typically organized by ethnicity, they frequently created broader coalitions. During the 1919–1920 O‘ahu strike, Filipinos struck first and then convinced Japanese workers to join them. Planters succeeded in breaking the unified effort and ultimately destroyed the unions, but the striking workers gained wage increases and improved working conditions. As Ronald Takaki observed, the strikers had engaged in the first major interethnic working-class struggle in Hawai‘i and demonstrated a “new sense of ethnic cooperation, across ethnic boundaries.” In the 1924 strike, workers had to con-

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front employer manipulation of nationality groups and divisions within a single group. An agent of the colonial state, the labor commissioner of the Philippines, acting on behalf of employers, manipulated Ilocanos into breaking the strike of Visayans led by Pablo Manlapit. The workers also had to confront other state agents, Pedro Ponce recalled, when he and other strikers on Kaua‘i were arrested for criminal trespass after police invaded their camp at night as they slept and rounded them up, although “they had done nothing wrong.” Ponce asserted, “we suspect they paid off different people to infiltrate the camp in order to make trouble. . . . You have to understand the way it was: the plantations ran the government. The plantations determined everything. And their purpose always was to break our strike.”34 The courts played an important role in the 1937 strike led by the Vibora Luviminda, a secret society that was an outgrowth of the Filipino Labor Union, led by Pablo Manlapit. Employers defeated the strike and destroyed the union, and with help from a ruling by a corrupt judge with close ties to plantation ownership, had Manlapit and other leaders deported. The ruling was “the last in a long series of clumsily rigged antilabor trials.”35 Despite the repression, the strike was significant on many grounds. Workers negotiated higher wages and improved working conditions, they transcended ethnic divisions, and they gained the attention and support of the militant CIO Longshore Workers. Strikers’ actions challenge conclusions of many analysts that through the 1930s workers were defeated because their consciousness was limited to their own ethnic group. The more important factor was that growers controlled the government and particularly the means of violence through police forces and the court system. But labor organizing and the growing influence of the labor movement during the Great Depression were creating more opportunities for serious challenges by Hawaiian workers. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave organizers in several industries reasons for optimism. In the years following its passage, National Labor Relations Board administrators broadly followed the letter of the law in promoting labor unionism as a means of encouraging workers to exert a greater collective influence in the workplace. The law redounded in particular to the benefit of the CIO, and two of its unions expressed interest in Hawai‘i’s plantation workers, the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) and the Longshore Union. The UCAPAWA first turned to nonagricultural plantation workers, to whom it issued its first charter in 1937 at the McBryde Plantation on

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the south coast of Kaua‘i. It won an election to represent them under the NLRA in 1941. But even before the United States’ entry into World War II its interest in agricultural workers had been waning, and its later organizational efforts were halting and sporadic.36 Meanwhile the Longshore Union, fresh from victories on the West Coast, established a beachhead on Hawai‘i’s waterfront in the late 1930s. Its “one big union” strategy aimed at organizing all industries on the islands by emphasizing working-class unity and, based on earlier experiences where ethnicity divided workers, of downplaying race. It backed up its claims that it would include workers of all ethnic groups not only as members but also ensured that the different groups would be represented in its leadership. It was particularly concerned about the formation of ethnic or racial blocks that might dominate a multiracial union coalition.37 It promoted a class-based unionism that was interracial in the sense that it celebrated all groups and promoted cooperation that aimed to unite and represent workers of all backgrounds as equals. Local Longshore Union leaders already had demonstrated interest in and sympathy with organizing sugar workers in 1937 during a twomonth strike on the Pu‘unene plantation of the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company, near Kahului, Maui. Longshore Union members from the waterfront, including Jack Kawano, himself a former plantation worker from the island of Hawai‘i, approached the workers and encouraged them to join their union. Kawano, who was quickly maturing into a superb organizer and speaker, recalled that “the plantation strikers and their leaders seemed to be very interested” but that the union lacked financial resources for support, and they instead preferred to remain independent. It appeared that if the union were able to invest in the effort, agricultural workers would be eager to join.38 In August 1941 the Longshore Union signed a contract under the NLRA with the Castle & Cooke terminals without a strike, inspiring other dockworkers to organize, while it also encouraged other stevedoring companies to agree to sign agreements. Victor Weingarten of the Longshore Union observed that “sugar must be shipped, and the men who grew it were dependent upon the men who loaded it aboard ship and sailed it to the mainland,” so the waterfront workers became the base of the big union strategy on the islands.39 One waterfront worker, Jack Hall, had come to Hawai‘i in 1936 at age eighteen, married a Nisei schoolteacher, and quickly became immersed in the interracial labor politics of the island. He demonstrated integrity, competent leadership, and superior attention to detail but discour-

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aged any plantation organizing drive, as he considered the time not ripe. Hawaiian-born Longshore Union organizers strongly disagreed and were determined to organize on their own. Seraphine Robello, born in 1905 at Waialua plantation on the north shore of O‘ahu to Portuguese parents, recalled that Hall at the time “said that it was impossible to organize sugar. But finally, they came around when Mike Nagata and some of the other boys said they were going to organize sugar. And there wasn’t a thing the companies could do.” Hall became the Hawaiian regional director of the Longshore Union in 1944 and led contract negotiations, which gained him a great deal of visibility, but the task of organizing plantation workers fell overwhelmingly to Hawaiian-born Longshore Union members from the docks. Most of them had plantation work experience, and relatives and close acquaintances in the camps where they grew up. Kawano similarly emphasized that Hall argued that it was impossible to organize plantation workers. “Hall laughed at me and told me that I was taking on the impossible. So I told him: ‘we’ll see, because times change and the situation might change.’” Following Hall’s advice, Kawano first attempted to create a joint organizing committee with UCAPAWA, but UCAPAWA soon collapsed. Then in August 1941 the Longshore Union made another attempt to organize on the plantations in partnership with AFL organizers, but the effort was soon halted in its tracks when the United States entered the war, and Hawai‘i was placed under martial law.40 The military government was vigorously antiunion, suspending the NLRB, canceling union contracts, intimidating workers, and engaging in reprisals. It was particularly hostile toward plantation workers, setting policies that froze wages and locked workers to their jobs in an effort to prevent them from seeking employment in other sectors of the booming economy where wages were much higher. Economist James Shoemaker noted that many military administrators in charge of labor were “civilian employees of the plantations transferred to military payrolls” who were protecting the interests of the plantations. He observed that plantation owners “attempted to block organization by having the military and G-2 authorities threaten workers.” He concluded that military government labor policy “was in effect plantation management dictatorship over labor supported by army bayonets.” The military government clearly had a chilling effect on labor organizing, and active Longshore Union membership fell to about 900 by early 1944. But the union was able to channel worker discontent into labor union consciousness while it fought to ease military control.41 To fill higher-paying jobs in defense industries created by the war,

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employers lured thousands of European Americans from the continental United States, heightening resentment and anger among plantation workers. The demand for labor became so great that some urban employers made arrangements with plantation management to allow their employees to work off the plantations at wages of fifty-one cents per hour (including nine cents in perquisites), while the managers received sixtytwo cents per hour, an effective labor contracting function in which managers pocketed the eleven cents per hour difference for themselves. The practice “created a deep resentment and was a significant factor in the speed with which the plantations were organized in 1944.”42 Historian Edward Beechert suggests that the modern labor period “may be said to have begun when organizing was resumed in 1944 after the period of martial law,” when military controls were finally lifted and the Longshore Union formally renewed its drive to organize plantation workers. In some ways union organizers do not recall such an abrupt transition, as they had begun to organize several years earlier. In late 1943 Jack Kawano asserted that fellow Longshore Union member Bert Nakano approached him, urging that they conduct an organizational campaign among plantation workers who “desperately wanted a union.” In early 1944 Nakano was also trying to convince top Longshore Union officers in San Francisco to support the effort. The longshoremen decided to act, and they approached AFL organizers to renew the joint organizing campaign they had begun in 1941, but the AFL showed little interest. They also found that the UCAPAWA “never seemed to be interested and didn’t seem to care.” Consequently, the longshoremen’s organizing committee took sole responsibility for the effort. Kawano was optimistic, and being a former plantation employee, he “knew a few plantations and people on the plantations” and was convinced they were eager to be organized. While economist Curtis Aller suggests that the union “hurriedly improvised an organizing drive to capitalize on the evident discontent of the sugar workers,” a closer examination indicates otherwise.43 The 1943– 1944 campaign on the plantations was a direct continuation of the drive that had started in 1941, and many of its leaders were veterans from union struggles on the docks who had been in contact with agricultural workers in the previous decade, fueled by worker anger over how they were treated during the martial law period. While there was a degree of continuity between the “modern” period and its predecessor, in significant ways the campaign of 1944 led by organizers of Honolulu Local 137 marked a significant break from the past, as it involved a two-pronged strategy simultaneously focusing on indus-

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trial and electoral democracy. First, union sympathizers engaged in direct labor organizing that brought workers into the union. Second, they registered voters who would elect territorial legislators willing to support legislation ensuring collective bargaining rights for agricultural workers. The grassroots drive by Longshore Union organizing squads developed additional local leadership and increased the participation of thousands of workers in the territory’s political life.44 The Longshore Union campaign aimed at ensuring workers’ rights and democratic participation in institutional life and resulted in a political realignment in Hawai‘i. The union turned military harassment into an organizing tool as the threat of invasion by Axis powers faded. Workers and other civilians were upset about “the detailed regulation of civilian activities” and in particular “the usurpation of judicial powers and the arbitrary exercise of those powers” by military authorities. When squads led by Kawano, Nakano, and other organizers went to the island of Maui, hostile authorities had them arrested and sent to Honolulu to report to the draft board for change of status. The Longshore Union responded by filing complaints against Maui authorities for violations of union members’ civil rights. Union pressure contributed to a “critical judicial review of military infringement on civilian liberties” in March 1944, and harassment against the organizers eased.45 The union also had to contend with plantation managers who tried to counter the radical union by promoting company unionism. Yasu Arakaki, who worked for the Ola‘a Plantation on the island of Hawai‘i, recalled when Manager W. L. “Billy” Williams sought him out because he was the leader of a local “athletic club.” Williams suggested to him that “it would be nice if you could organize a union affiliated with no union and I would recognize that union and we could have collective bargaining.” Arakaki was a self-taught “organic intellectual” who referred to himself as a “graduate of Canefield College,” read widely on labor, revolution, and the law, and was highly respected by fellow workers for his intelligence and integrity. He not only declined Williams’s offer but also realized how poorly management understood the social, cultural, and political underpinnings of workers’ lives and their organizations. The “Surf Riders Athletic Club” that he led was comprised of “rejects” and “non-conformists. We had radical ideas” that were more receptive to the Longshore Union, and club members became an important element in the organizing campaign on the island of Hawai‘i.46 The Big Island, with the largest concentration of workers of the four sugar-producing islands, was key to the organizing drive. Kawano re-

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called, “when I saw the place, I knew it was ripe for organization,” and he was already well connected and a member of the military governor’s labor control board. “Every day I saw all the kinds of grievances and cases we used to handle. People were getting sick and tired of staying in the plantation. They wanted to come out and get better wages outside. . . . They were frozen on the job by the (martial) law. There was no way out except to try to improve their lot by organizing themselves into a union.” Kawano suggested that the waterfront organizers should first hold a strategy session: “We got all these guys back to the union hall and we had a seminar for about three days to show them how to approach plantation people . . . and how to storm over the Big Island in one big sweep. And when they went down there, they swept over the whole island in a matter of a few days. And we had almost all the plantations signed up.”47 Arakaki was among those who met with organizers Kawano, Amos Ignacio, Bert Nakano, and John Elias when they visited the Ola‘a plantation. He observed that “they were very clever. Kawano got hold of a few of us. We had a meeting at the Catholic gym. On the blackboard he explained to us the advantage of joining the IWLU over the AFL,” particularly because the latter was organized on a craft union basis not applicable to the industrialized plantation setting. Meanwhile, the “one big union” strategy would afford plantation workers support from Longshore Union railroad workers who hauled sugar and the dockworkers who loaded it. “The ILWU will organize everybody from top to bottom. We don’t discriminate against any trade . . . we took the bait,” Arakaki acknowledged, and he soon became president of Longshore Union Local 148. He emphasized that local workers initiated the organizing effort and that as a result, “we developed a terrific number of leaders.” Their enthusiastic reception and material support permitted the drive to continue.48 On O‘ahu, where plantation communities were not as close-knit because the island was less isolated, organizers had to devise a different strategy that involved several stages. They first went “house to house contacting the key people,” who soon became local leaders and in turn recruited workers on the plantations where they lived. With this modest but influential membership base established in local communities, Kawano and other organizers then had to “go there and agitate.” Kawano asserted that Union President Harry Bridges and other top leadership were not interested in this drive, “and it was not until they got the definite news that we were signing thousands of plantation workers that they got interested.”49 With a base on each plantation established, union activists had to im-

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plement a more tedious and time- consuming effort to win union representation elections. Arakaki stressed that the most important outside assistance did not come from California-based Longshore Union leaders, but instead from NLRB regional director Arnold Wills, who was originally from New Zealand. “He was the guy that helped us organize. He spent many nights with me at my house. He laid down the strategy during the whole year of 1944. His headquarters was at my house at Ola‘a,” Arakaki stated. Wills informed union members about crucial technical matters including how to get workers to sign up and how to win a consent election. “It all started at my house. Arnold Wills was the brain. It wasn’t [Louis] Goldblatt and it wasn’t Bridges and it wasn’t Jack Hall. It was Arnold Wills.”50 The electoral side of the campaign was conducted through the Longshore Union’s Political Action Committee (PAC), formed in July 1944 to coordinate the voter registration drive and elect candidates in the upcoming fall election who would support a “Little Wagner Act” for agricultural workers, regardless of party affiliation. As one worker who joined the union the previous year recalled, “Us guys had to organize the workers by going from house to house after work,” discussing unionism and other issues, urging them to register to vote and go to the polls. To attract otherwise less politically oriented workers and boost morale, the PAC sponsored dances on Saturday nights. In the fall elections PACendorsed candidates won sixteen of twenty- one House seats and six of eight Senate seats, and the newly elected officials immediately voted for the Hawaiian Employment Relations Act (HERA). Effective May 1945, HERA recognized collective bargaining rights for agricultural workers and ensured union recognition through cross-check elections. The legislature also passed a bill setting fifty cents per hour as the minimum wage for agricultural workers. Coupled with a law setting the maximum working week at forty-eight hours, territorial legislation stood in sharp contrast to any locations in the continental United States, where there was no pretense of workplace democracy ensuring minimum wages, maximum working hours, or collective bargaining rights for workers in agriculture.51 Although the NLRA opened the door for many CIO unions, plantation workers in Hawai‘i did not wait for the collective bargaining legislation prior to joining a union but instead organized to gain legislation while forming their own locals. By June 1945, more than 96 percent of sugar plantation workers voted in support of the Longshore Union through the new HERA, an overwhelming victory for the union. With more than twenty thousand mem-

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bers on the islands recognized by law, the elections “changed the whole future course of the organizational campaign” by compelling employers to negotiate with the union. By November the Longshore Union and the Hawaii Employers Council (HEC) had signed the first collective bargaining agreements in the history of Hawaiian agriculture, one-year contracts covering thirty-five of thirty-six sugar plantations and eleven of twelve pineapple plantations—all achieved without a strike.52 Despite the longstanding influence of the HSPA and its antiunion history, its subsequent leadership was less antagonistic than most agricultural employers in the continental United States. A number of industry leaders who were not hostile to unionism were responsible for the creation in 1943 of the HEC, which adopted a “modern” approach to personnel policies. Consistent with ideas popular among several contemporary manufacturing industries, the HEC accepted unions and collective bargaining as positive developments advantageous to both employers and workers. The HEC aimed at a more unified and collective attitude for all levels of management in order to break down the longstanding hierarchy in which top managers were sharply differentiated from those on the bottom, a relationship strongly resented by the latter. As an Ola‘a Sugar Company plantation manager reported in August 1946, “Some foremen think that we hold ‘secrets,’ from them. . . . Two of them said they wouldn’t believe what their superior said or told them. . . . Their attitude is that the top supervisors are making plans for the strike,” but that they “will not be informed ahead of time.” When the strike comes, he said, tasks assigned them “will be forced down their throat.”53 HEC policies also sought to attract the most talented union leaders into management and lessen the rift between workers and employers, while blurring the longstanding and close relationship between race and class in Hawaiian agriculture. To further unify plantation policy, the HEC also promoted industrywide bargaining and soon convinced the Longshore Union to accept it. The HEC also advocated the abolition of perquisites as early as 1945, but the strategy was bitterly disputed within management. In addition to their own internal divisions, plantation managers, in contrast to Longshore Union leadership, demonstrated simple carelessness in not paying attention to the details of the surging union movement. As union member Seraphine Robello complained, bosses commonly showed a lack of respect as they addressed workers in terms like “Hey! Come here!” rather than their names, even when both had worked in the same place for many years. R. K. Conant, cultivation superintendent for Ola‘a Plantation on June 17, 1946, suggested in an internal memo

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that it would be a good idea for foremen and overseers to know who was a union steward, yet “we don’t know who is union and who isn’t.”54 Even within the close confines of the company towns, managers had not been paying close attention to workers and did not understand the details of the union organizing campaign.

General Strike in Sugar Following the modest but important gains of the first collective bargaining contracts, the union quickly turned to the challenge of seeking parity for agricultural workers in its second contract. Its major demands included a substantial wage increase, a reduction of the workweek from forty-eight to forty hours, an end to the perquisite system, replaced by a joint union-management-administered perquisite fund, a grievance mechanism, union shop, and seniority. Discussions between Longshore Union representatives and the Plantation Negotiating Committee began in April 1946, and formal negotiations started in mid-July. Field workers’ wages at the lowest grade were 50 cents per hour excluding perquisites, having fallen sharply in relation to other sectors of the Hawaiian economy during military government. The union sought a minimum 15 cents per hour increase while employers countered with 5.5 cents.55 The critical issue, an end to the perquisite system, exposed two potentially explosive issues: poor housing conditions and the arbitrary nature of plantation management. As of 1946, only two-thirds of plantation housing had inside plumbing or bathing facilities, and community camp baths were still widespread. Most dwellings were small, overcrowded, and in need of major repairs. A Nisei woman reared on a sugar plantation in 1947 described “plantation houses, some without electricity or sewage systems, others with no screen doors or poor windows, others still unpainted and on the verge of collapse.”56 To eliminate the rural slums, repair houses, and reduce rents, the union sought to establish a jointly administered “perquisite fund” ostensibly held by the plantations. The union also attacked the perquisite system because it bred an insidious favoritism. Yasuki Arakaki emphasized that whether the system was effective was an individual matter “dependent on how much you gave to the supervisor” and other people with power. His own family raised pigs on the side and when they slaughtered one they would cut off a piece, wrap it up, and deliver it to influential individuals when no one was looking, as a bribe. When they wanted to make a room larger, a family mem-

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ber might deliver a nice large piece of meat to the carpenter, and then “we asked to enlarge the room.” In exchange for abolishing perquisites, the union sought the equivalent of about twenty cents per hour, with workers henceforth paying rent.57 Employers were divided over perquisites and considered it an issue of ongoing negotiation, but it is probable that the abolition of perquisites could not have been resolved without a confrontation. In the summer of 1946 both sides engaged in jockeying for position and public favor while expecting a strike. Employers did not consider themselves obligated to provide housing in the event of a work stoppage, but were sensitive to a threat that if a single worker were evicted the union would pressure government to provide housing, causing them great embarrassment. Consequently, the HSPA agreed not to evict workers, standard policy in many previous strikes. But the president of the Planters Association, H. A. Walker, also president of American Factors, asserted that union demands were “beyond the ability of the industry to pay” while he charged that labor leaders “have remained adamant on the viciously undemocratic union shop and other union control demands.” Meanwhile USDL investigator Shoemaker agreed with the union that employers were aware that their proposal was “unrealistic and would provoke a strike,” believing that “they would be able to destroy the union.” But the union was not intimidated and at the end of July called for a strike vote, which workers supported by a vote of 15,406 to 133, or 99 percent favoring a work stoppage.58 In preparation, workers formed a central strike strategy committee composed of representatives from all Hawaiian locals and selected Bert Nakano as chair. Several new union leaders had attended a short course in leadership and education at the California Labor School in San Francisco in 1946 conducted by Dr. Holland Roberts of the University of California, who helped them prepare a strike strategy manual. They also established a strategy committee for each island with representation from every plantation community. Committees were set up for picketing, organizing, finance, transportation, publicity, morale, a women’s corps, and a guard system to maintain discipline and keep the peace. As part of the drive that year, Robert McElrath initiated a union radio show to provide information and boost morale. In order to share the anticipated privations, local officers went off the union payroll during the strike period. The planning also involved direct education, including the printing and distribution of fifty thousand copies of a pamphlet explaining strike issues, written in English, Japanese, and Tagalog.59

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The most detailed planning involved the collection, preparation, and distribution of food, and plantation workers made arrangements with Longshore Union waterfront workers on the islands and the continental United States to ship and distribute basic imported commodities including rice, potatoes, and milk. Individual workers and families were also encouraged to stockpile food for several weeks before the anticipated strike. A relief committee in each camp set up a commissary for distributing food, sold at wholesale to those who could pay and not charging those who could not afford it, and it established a soup kitchen for each camp. Strikers also organized garden details to grow food for consumption. Finally, they formed details that returned to the natural economy, to hunt wild pigs in the mountains, to gather breadfruit, and to fish from the sea.60 Management centralized its activities through the Plantation Negotiating Committee, which created a guide for supervisors. Anticipating that the strike would shut down operations, plantation managers were informed for anyone passing through picket lines, “We can guarantee no protection to those workers who may wish to turn out.” It instructed supervisors not to take recriminatory actions or even attempt to force or persuade workers not to go out on strike, to discuss negotiations, or to express personal opinions or predict the strike outcome to the press. While management considered mass picketing unlawful, it would “take no action which could precipitate serious conflict,” but instead appeal to local authorities. The management directive suggested that “a nonchalant attitude from now on may be a better way to meet the impending strike than by giving any signs of getting prepared to fight it. Belligerency should be discouraged, for after all, this thing will be settled someday, and after it is settled, the same old gang will be around to deal with day after day after day.”61 Employers lacked a collective memory of ongoing struggle against organized workers, yet recognized that they were not easily replaceable as they had been in many earlier strikes when labor recruitment networks were still operating. Hoping to renew such recruitment in order to create a wedge among workers, the HSPA made a deal with the labor commissioner of the Philippines. Between January 14 and May 27, 1946, employers imported 5,994 Filipino men, along with 1,351 women and children, against strong protests by the union. The HSPA paid for chartered ships and medical staff, while workers repaid the cost of transportation on an installment plan, with an option to bring their wives and children. The Individual Employment Agreement guaranteed each worker employment for a period

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of three consecutive years, a minimum 250 days of employment per year, and wages and perquisites equal to those of other employees. The agreement also stipulated that if the worker performed satisfactorily, he and his family would be furnished free transportation back to Manila at the end of the contract period or in the event of incapacity by injury, sickness, or disease. The plan had many parallels to the bracero program, which also required a compliant foreign government. The union criticized the Philippine Labor Commission responsible for the workers’ welfare as “mere tools of the HSPA.” The HSPA employers hoped that the Filipino contract workers would function like braceros did in the continental United States, to dampen labor organizing. Union leaders acknowledged that the contract workers were “the weakest link in an otherwise extremely powerful union organizational structure.”62 Yet the Filipinos who arrived in 1946 did not have the same impact on agricultural Hawaiian labor unionism as did contract workers from Mexico in the continental United States. They were not isolated physically from other workers, and many had been in Hawai‘i earlier and had friends and relatives belonging to the union on the plantations where they were distributed. Unlike Mexican contract workers, both employers and union members had ample opportunities to contact the Filipino workers en route and in the camps where they resided, and the union had sufficient power so that neither employers nor the government tried to interpret the contracts as prohibiting them from joining the union. They came to Hawai‘i in ships staffed by Longshore Union members, who informed them about the organizing campaign and tried to convince them to join the union. Many of the contracted Filipinos stepped onto the docks wearing a union button, while others were quickly educated on arrival and joined the union, understanding how grower propaganda sought to play on ethnic antagonisms between themselves and Japanese workers. The point was emphasized by one of the workers recruited to Hawai‘i in 1946, Marcelino Querebin, who recalled that union members on the ship transporting him from the Philippines and workers on the plantations welcomed him and other new arrivals, who quickly developed a strong collective consciousness as workers and became enthusiastic union members. The unity and influence of the organized workers prevented employers from creating a new colonial labor system similar to the one unfolding in California and elsewhere in the continental United States at the time.63 Contrasting with the unprecedented worker harmony, sugar industry leaders were divided into three factions as they approached the antici-

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pated strike, based largely on local factors of production in the fields. The first group, nonirrigating planters operating mostly on the island of Hawai‘i, prepared to withstand a strike lasting two to three months. The second, Castle & Cooke, which used irrigation, accepted union demands to abstain from irrigating in order to avoid potential violence and maintain good working relations with employees, and was the most amenable to unionism. Finally, American Factors was provocative, willing to use supervisors to irrigate fields and seek court injunctions to prevent mass picketing. The incidents that took place during the 1944 Maui organizing drive and the most significant confrontations throughout the 1946 strike occurred on American Factors plantations.64 Although only a handful of Hawai‘i’s plantation workers had ever participated in a work stoppage, their general strike totally shut down production on the thirty-three plantations where it was called. It involved not only the estimated twenty-six thousand workers, more than 90 percent male, who belonged to the union but also their families and other residents of the communities where they lived. Organizers mobilized women in order to educate them about unionism, the just demands of their husbands and fathers, and the need for them to participate. The strikers halted all operations related to sugar production but permitted workers in essential services like power plants, dairies, hospitals, butcher shops, domestic water systems, garbage collection, plantation stores, fuel distribution systems, and electric generating plants to continue working while donating their earnings to the strike fund. Workers in the sugar factories were allowed to conduct maintenance and repairs, while managers, assistant managers, and factory superintendents were permitted to pass through picket lines.65 The decision was part of an implicit agreement in which management let workers remain in their housing in order to continue essential services and ensure there was no damage to plantation equipment or property. The vast majority of workers began the work stoppage at the end of the day on Friday, August 30, 1946, although the strike officially began the following Monday, with a Labor Day parade and rally on each island, accompanied by mass picketing. Saburo Fijisake of the Big Island strike strategy committee recalled that in the early days of the strike pickets encircled the plantations, with heavy lines at entrances, and often enough people to surround the factories, company stores, garages, and even plantation fields. Throughout plantation country, sugar production remained at a standstill as strikers formed solid walls to prevent potential scabs from

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crossing the picket line. The Ola‘a Plantation Strike Log reported that during the period from September third through the ninth, between 95 and 99 percent of the plantation’s 1,414 employees were not at work each day. Because the strike achieved its aim of halting production, the union soon ceased constant picketing and instead engaged in selected mass pickets, directed at the houses of hostile managers, lunas, and infrequent scabs, and sometimes hung them in effigy. Furthermore, a three-monthlong nationwide maritime strike directed against the Big Five began on September 5, 1946, and included Longshore Union dock workers on the major islands. It cut off the flow of most supplies, including sugar, further reducing sugar company incentives to resume production.66 Union members dealt promptly with local scabbing incidents. A case in point is R. K. Conant, Ola‘a cultivation superintendent, who reported that on September 4, when fifteen Filipino workers showed up at the Mountain View fields, a large contingent of strikers “picketed the roads leading to the part of the field where the men were working.” The strikers “spoke to the men in the Filipino [sic] language, and apparently convinced the men that they should go home.” Pickets also appeared the next day at the factory when supervisors began unloading a shipment of sugar bags, concerned that the bosses were taking their work.67 Some managers and their sympathizers tried to play up divisions among workers based on ethnic or generational differences. In one instance an inebriated Filipino luna, fertilizer foreman John Arujo, tried to provoke a fight with a worker named Magno, a plantation checker and union guard at the Iwashaki store of the Ola‘a plantation. But other workers helped prevent Magno from fighting back and convinced him not to press charges. Tensions continued, however, when Arujo’s wife returned to clean up the mess her husband had created at the store, and she gave the Filipino workers a tongue lashing “about being puppets of the Japanese,” urging them to “remember Bataan, Manila and Pearl Harbor.”68 According to a casual conversation with two Japanese strikers at Ewa plantation, near Ewa, O‘ahu, on November 10, 1946, individuals identified as Mr. T. and Mr. A. noted that workers gathered every morning at 7:30 to hear the latest developments about the strike and to receive the day’s instructions. They would picket until 10:30 a.m., and afterwards they were free to do as they wished. Mr. T. was prepared for a strike lasting half a year. Mr. A. asserted, “You have to be careful on the plantation what you say because there are plenty of stooges and plantation F.B.I.’s. . . . We

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don’t know who those stooges are, but if we ever find out, we’ll beat them up.” He observed that two Japanese men had tried to do irrigation, but “they were caught by the union workers and they had to go home naked.” He added, “I felt sorry for the men, but they should have known better.”69 Several observers pointed to generational differences that divided workers. Economist Curtis Aller argued that those of the first generation, of whom “most felt content with the ‘fatherly’ supervision of the plantation,” maintained, “deeply held . . . feelings of gratitude for the security and livelihood the plantations had given.” Aller suggested that their attitudes hindered unionism, which would not have succeeded had the older generation not been declining rapidly in numbers. In a similar vein, Professor Andrew W. Lind of the University of Hawai‘i contended that the Longshore Union broke the feelings of “strong, personal loyalty” first-generation workers had toward managers and directors and created a “barrier” between the two. In direct response to Lind, the daughter of a Japanese plantation worker enrolled in Lind’s class directly challenged the professor’s portrayal of paternalism or its hold on the older generation, based on her own experience growing up. She asserted, “If there were any change of loyalty of the laborers towards the managers it came about because of the stimulation among the Nisei . . . those of us who went to school” and studied history, health and society. She added, “We made them feel there should be no work on Sundays,” and that housing conditions should be better. But she claimed her own father, an immigrant, “joined the union as soon as he was approached,” and his decision was easy because “he remembers the hardships,” the poorly constructed and poorly maintained houses, lacking screen doors, unpainted and on the verge of collapse, without electricity or sewage systems. She recalled that during the strike, workers seldom spoke with managers, but once it ended, when managers and workers had friendly relations before the strike, they were quickly renewed, and many families again opened their holiday parties to managers “just as though nothing had happened.”70 Supervisors often had expected a greater degree of loyalty from older workers. Ola‘a cultivation supervisor C. A. L. reported that the father of J. Oishi only joined the union the week before the strike began, asserting that when union members approached and asked him to join, “he said that he felt that he was a capitalist himself so he has no reason for joining.” But the union men retorted that he was the only worker in the camp who had not joined, and even his son was an enthusiastic member. According to the superintendent, “after a few mild words about him not joining and

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maybe he would be on the wrong side of the fire, he finally gave in.”71 In the tightly knit community children could educate parents about their side on the class struggle. The distinction between haoles and others was more profound, evident in the case of one Zembrick, a factory worker and World War II veteran who wanted to enter the Ola‘a Mill on September 4 to begin work. But he was halted because “pickets were standing shoulder to shoulder and were barring everyone from the Mill.” Zembrick angrily informed the plantation manager that “he was going to report the facts of his being barred from work to Army Intelligence.” However, union busting by military authorities and the accompanying white colonizer attitude among haoles were no longer tolerated, and an angry Zembrick had to return home. Lacking the support of military and police authorities to break strikes, even management reported surprisingly little violence on plantations as workers, managers, and storekeepers tended to retain civil if constrained relations.72 The greatest tension erupted on the islands of Maui and Kaua‘i, particularly over the issue of field irrigation, as mass picketing discouraged even supervisors from challenging workers. Local magistrates issued 137 injunctions during the strike, overwhelmingly against mass picketing, of which all but 11 were overturned on appeal. Meanwhile more than four hundred union members were charged with criminal offenses under riot statute or with misdemeanors. The union attorney, recent Indiana University law school graduate Harriet Bouslog, recalled that “the acts charged as criminal were trivial picket line incidents,” reflecting the arrogance and power of the employers. In one blatant instance, Judge Phillip L. Rice issued an injunction after a private conference with officers of the Lihue Plantation Company behind closed doors. The company had not even sought the order in its petition and was not required to post bond, while the union was not permitted to state its side. Furthermore, the order posted was so vague as to be all-inclusive. There was a clear conflict of interest as family members of the judge were stockholders in the Lihue Plantation Company, and Judge Rice himself had been retained as corporation counsel for Lihue and other Big Five companies for many years, and he even had represented them at the bargaining table. A more frequent injunction aimed at reducing picket line effectiveness was represented by the Paia plantation of the of Maui Agricultural Company, which obtained a temporary restraining order that reduced to three the number of pickets per entry and exit and required picketers to wear armbands stating “Authorized Picket.” Even when employers obtained such

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injunctions, their efforts to get workers back into the fields failed. The sea change in the political environment and the presence of a modest legal apparatus consisting of one full-time attorney for the union represented a far cry from earlier plantation strikes when employers had little trouble finding sympathetic judges to curtail strikes on trumped-up charges like unlawful assembly and conspiracy.73 While older strikers recall the rough moments in 1946, compared with earlier efforts the strike machinery functioned surprisingly smoothly. Union members maintained a very effective system of food distribution, gathering, storing, and rationing, the tasks that required a majority of the striking men and women. They made arrangements with local farmers who raised chicken, cattle, and vegetables, and they “got a lot of food for the exchange of labor,” harvesting crops, mending fences, repairing buildings, cleaning farm grounds and ponds. Strikers established community kitchens at each camp to provide lunch as well as dinner, on different nights offering Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, or mixed cuisine. Women were particularly active in the strike kitchens. Food was abundant and people ate well, apart from a short supply of imported rice. Plantation stores were ordered closed unless there were no nearby markets, but there were numerous exceptions. Emigidio Cabico, a Filipino store clerk sympathetic to the cause but prohibited from joining the union because of his employment, recalled that although union members picketed the Waialua plantation store on O‘ahu where he worked, they had an arrangement to purchase goods through the back window. At Ola‘a plantation, storekeeper Fujimoto would also offer services at night.74 To keep themselves occupied and demonstrate a sense of civic responsibility, union members set up work details for community services including cleaning grounds and cutting grass at cemeteries, hospitals, playgrounds, and baseball parks. To keep workers abreast of events and keep spirits up, a Union Morale Committee met each day and news was reported daily at union headquarters from its loudspeaker. Men and women also kept busy distributing flyers and brochures as part of the ongoing union educational campaign aimed at tightening the ranks and warning of the handful of “finks and scabs” in their midst. Workers occasionally left the plantation to attend sympathy parades and rallies in nearby cities and towns in search of broader support. Life on the plantations was otherwise calm, and children paid little attention to pickets they passed on their way to school. As Hawai‘i regional director Jack Hall observed during the strike, “The high degree of solidarity and discipline among the strikers is little short of amazing.”75

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In their efforts to gain outside support, workers experienced class and racial divisions that tended to parallel those on the plantation, as “there was quite a tendency among the non-haole ethnic groups to sympathize with the strikers, and to support them with money contributions and encouragement,” with “a somewhat corresponding tendency among the haoles to support the owners and managers.” In addition to support from labor organizations including the Committee on Maritime Unity, the Longshore Union found allies in some church groups, including the Social Action Committee of the Honolulu Council of Churches and the Ministerial Union of Honolulu. The latter criticized employers for refusing to negotiate or compromise and being unwilling to alter the “pattern for social and economic life, especially in the plantation communities, (that) has been set by management.” Al Quon McGrath, a social worker at the time volunteering for the union and active in strike kitchens and union education programs, recalled that there was “no doubt in my mind” that “the coming back of the Japanese from the war in Europe provided, perhaps, a much better climate in which to get at least some community sympathy.” As a result, small business owners, particularly non-haole, contributed substantial amounts of money and food in support of the strikers. Equally important, police authorities, including the Honolulu Police Department, remained neutral.76 Strikers also became actively involved in electoral politics. The union’s PAC was able to coordinate an intense educational effort that registered a record number of voters. With Republicans increasingly hostile to workers, the link between Democrats and non-haole workers intensified. Republican Central Committee chair Roy A. Vitousek issued a statement on behalf of the party that condemned the PAC as “a pressure group purely and simply. It indulges in tactics that closely resemble those used by the Communists and other subversive elements trying to overturn the American form of government. It uses pressure, it uses halftruths and untruths and double talk. P.A.C. is not democratic.” When Republican candidates visited the Ewa plantation during the fall, more than a thousand workers staged a counterdemonstration headed by a brass band composed of union members. In the November 5, 1946, election, the Longshore Union endorsed fourteen of the fifteen Democrats who were elected, helping the party to break Republican control of the legislature, which dated from the turn of the century.77 Conservative elements threw their energies against the strike, including newspapers, radio stations, and several community organizations and

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church groups. While they engaged in red-baiting, it was not a critical feature of their strategy. One of the most intense attacks came not from leaders in sugar, but from their allies in the pineapple industry. Henry White, president of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, attacked the PAC and its political program, which he claimed aimed at “the destruction of the system of free enterprise as we know it in America.” The Elks Education Committee Against Un-Americanism attacked the Longshore Union, asserting that it was un-American and communistic to join a union, to which President Bridges responded directly after the victory: “If that’s Communism, that’s what the Longshore Union stands for and we’ll have more of it.”78 Meanwhile, the ostensible union allies in the AFL were also at the forefront of the red-baiting campaign against the Longshore Union, suggesting that racial fears of haole skilled workers overrode ostensible sentiments of class solidarity. John Owens, territorial representative of the AFL, issued a formal policy statement: We cannot and do not sympathize with the ulterior motives and misleading propaganda that is being disseminated to the sugar workers of the Territory by the imported ILWU leadership. . . . Not to advance the cause of democracy and Americanism, but instead to undermine, weaken and ultimately destroy the very system of government which guarantees these freedoms. The political activities in recent months of the CIO-PAC calls for notice to be taken of the alleged strength of this Communistic-controlled section of the CIO.79

But the AFL lacked any base of support among Hawai‘i’s plantation workers, and its red-baiting was not successful, in effect demonstrating that they were being used as stooges of the Big Five. Meanwhile, the commercial press, led by the Honolulu Advertiser, engaged in consistent and bitter attacks on the union. It capped fear-laden editorials with claims that because of the strike, “Hawaii is face to face with death.” It portrayed the PAC as an outsider transported from the continental United States intent on capturing government and controlling public schools, and whose success would result in “all Hawaii being driven to destruction.” It portrayed the strike as simple “mob violence which prevents other men from doing the work they themselves refuse to do.” It also asserted that the strike had brought “loss and hunger and sorrow” to the workers of Hawai‘i. While the Advertiser claimed that it did

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not seek to “bust” unions, it complained that the Wagner Act was lopsided against management and in favor of labor. The Advertiser was willing to accept unions headed by “responsible persons,” but claimed that the Longshore Union supported “the doctrine of rule or ruin, long familiar of application in the dictatorial nations, Communist or Fascist, of Europe and Asia.”80 The Advertiser portrayed labor unionism in Hawai‘i from a longer historical perspective that harked back to the days of the early European American bearers of progress and civilization in an editorial claiming that in the nineteenth century “pioneers came westward across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii,” at the behest of King Kamehameha I. They were “men and women of dauntless courage and high purpose. They brought the Word of God with its precept of constructive life. They gave Hawai‘i inspired leadership and forthright example of the dignity of labor. . . . Barren plains became fertile lands.” Clearly provoking class antagonisms, the editorial added that in recent years a second wave of pioneers from the continental United States arrived, who by contrast did not teach “Christian tolerance that holds to the brotherhood of man, not the liberty of the individual to make his own decisions and to abide by them when they do no harm to another. Their creed sets up the artificial standards of class . . . the nurturing of class- consciousness and hatreds; the fostering of racial animosities through the pretext of prohibiting them; the dictatorial principle that an individual cannot work without their permission. . . . They are not builders, these unbidden newcomers. They are pioneers of destruction.” In response to such hostile editorials and glaring misstatements of fact, Longshore Union leadership called for a boycott of the Advertiser and asked union members to cancel subscriptions. Furthermore, the efforts at red-baiting did not meet an enthusiastic reception. As Seraphine Robello, an elected picket captain during the strike, recalled, “There was quite a bit of talk that the ILWU was communist-dominated. I didn’t believe that. It was never in my mind they belong to the Communist Party or they were trying to destroy the sugar industry and stuff like that.”81 Union preparation and continued attention to detail as well as broad worker participation were invaluable assets to the strikers’ cause. Even after more than two months without gainful wage employment, only a handful of workers crossed picket lines at any plantation. Critical to the success of the strike, Yasu Arakaki noted, was that “we mobilized all the manpower from the entire community,” reorganized the work process,

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and ensured that workers understood their own stake in the union. The workers had gained control of their communities and proven they could sustain themselves indefinitely outside the wage economy. As Arakaki observed, “When the strike was over the workers didn’t want to go back to work. They were having a ball.”82 The pressure of the strikers was having an impact, and planters returned to the negotiating table “primarily at the insistence of one agency, Castle & Cooke,” the corporation least hostile to unionism throughout the strike. It threatened to break industry ranks and settle, concerned that the Ewa plantation would soon lose its entire crop without irrigation. A final break in the impasse occurred as a result of politics in the metropolis, when the federal government decided to increase the sugar subsidy to producers. Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes was aware that the HEC was engaged in “a war of attrition and public hysteria and starvation” but would recommend a subsidy payment in a low-key manner in order not to ruffle feathers. The higher subsidy helped settle the strike and permitted the industry to save face.83 Even during final negotiations, the commercial press continued to criticize union outsiders, yet only one non-Hawaiian was on the negotiating committee, Longshore Union secretary Louis Goldblatt. He served along with one local haole, Jack Hall, and six local non-haole union leaders, William Paia, Justo de la Cruz, Amos Ignacio, Yasuki Arakaki, Felix Tugadi, and Harry Shigimutsu. Once they reached an agreement with the employer committee, they referred it to a secret ballot referendum in the languages used throughout the strike, English, Japanese, Tagalog, and Ilocano, and members approved it overwhelmingly.84 The contract settlement included a wage increase averaging 25 cents per hour and 37.5 cents for overtime, with an hourly minimum of 66.5 cents. The most contentious feature of the contracts, the abolition of the perquisite system, ended the “age-old paternalism and favoritism that has been part of plantation life.” The combined wage increase and perquisite conversion boosted workers’ incomes to an average of 30 cents per hour higher than before the strike, but from which they would have to pay rent. With the abolition of the perquisite system, union members took on the responsibility for a number of social functions and recreational activities.85 The contract included several other very significant features, including a nondiscrimination policy, a formal grievance procedure, increased sickness and vacation allowances (six to nine days), and a gradual transferal

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of medical and dental perquisites to a group medical plan, sickness allowances, seniority preferences, pensions, and severance pay.86 The introduction of hiring halls further stabilized the labor force while making the union more effective. The introduction of severance pay and reduction of the workweek from forty- eight to forty hours had significant consequences in easing the impact of mechanization on future worker displacement. While the contract failed to obtain a union shop, it included a clause providing union security, which the union considered “one of the cornerstone issues of the strike,” by protecting jobs for members. Nonunion workers were required to pay either union dues or an equivalent amount to charity. According to official union policy, the issue was not forcing unwilling workers into the union: “we don’t push people around who won’t join, but we don’t hesitate to say how we feel. . . . Anyone who is willing to work under the agreement should pay his share of negotiating it, enforcing it and maintaining the union that got it.” The contract also failed to include supervisors in the bargaining unit, and the employers’ version of a job classification system was “forced on the workers” but soon proven unworkable and altered in the subsequent contract negotiations in 1948. The 1946 agreement covered approximately twenty-eight thousand workers, a victory that union secretary Louis Goldblatt considered an “outstanding example of the tremendous racial unity and solidarity developed by the workers in this strike.”87 Union member Seraphine Robello discussed the significance of the events of 1946: “I think management was really trying to test the union’s strength. Check what kind of a union we had and how we could hold up.” He considered it the most important event in the history of labor relations in Hawaiian plantation agriculture, asserting, “Nobody can tell me if it wasn’t for the union here in the plantations we’d be making the same pay, same working conditions, and fringe benefits we are having now.”88 Earlier hostility between lunas and field workers was abated, and there was a greater degree of civility on both sides. Workers felt less pressured to complete their tasks, Emigidio Cabico recalled: “as long as you work and don’t sleep on the job, you don’t have to hustle up like it used to be. . . . It’s better than working long hours and you getting free firewood and kerosene. It’s better to work short hours and high pay, you don’t mind to pay the house rent or water every month.” Meanwhile, the HSPA agreed in 1947 that labor relations on the plantations were excellent, which “confirms the wisdom of the plantation managers in their conduct of employee relations while the strike was on.”89

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Conclusion Some observers accepted the assessment by journalist Frank Taylor that union success was the result of a great man. According to Taylor, Jack Hall gained the backing of Japanese workers, “who have been sold the idea that an invisible iron curtain limits their advancement . . . [and] forced not only a union that follows its leaders blindly but a CIO Political Action Committee that was able to capture the lower house of the Territorial Legislature.” Yet a closer examination indicates a much different campaign, in which workers pushed top union leadership. The workers agreed with newspaper editor and former unionist Koji Ariyoshi that “the movement developed people.”90 The labor movement succeeded in Hawaiian agriculture because union sympathizers were able to turn several features of corporation paternalism and the “Fordist” industrial plantation complex to their advantage. The sharp class division between workers in the fields and management, reinforced by race, was much more sharply drawn than in contemporary urban factories. The very dominance and control by large, centralized plantations precluded the presence of a significant number of independent small sugar farmers in Hawai‘i that would have blurred class differences between owners of the means of production and workers, and made class-based arguments by organizers more compelling. The plantationbased company towns were much more isolated and less differentiated than urban settings, and bosses’ inattention made it easier for workers to turn them into communities, emphasizing union citizenship and pride of belonging. The “one big union” strategy incorporated noncitizen workers who were permanent residents in the communities, had democratic rights and responsibilities within the union, and were ensured of representation even in leadership. It aimed at enhancing democracy by gaining control of institutions through mass participation, expanding worker rights, electing responsive representatives, and obtaining sympathetic legislation. The campaign was strongly class-based while it reconfigured understandings of race and class in Hawai‘i to workers’ advantage. It also had a significant gender content, organizing women for the strike and enabling them to take responsibility not only for carrying on the tasks of reproduction under difficult circumstances but also to demonstrate solidarity at public events, particularly on the picket lines. It stymied employer efforts to exploit differences in citizenship and immigration status and prevented growers’ creation of a new colonial labor force using the weak Philippine government, a failed effort aimed at breaking worker solidarity through

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the mass 1946 importation of Filipinos. Union members also organized workers as voters to obtain sympathetic representatives and favorable legislation that would prohibit employers from interfering with organizing or from breaking their unity. The 1946 sugar strike was the most successful strike in the history of agricultural labor in the United States, and the union’s popularity and influence was further enhanced by the November 1946 election, in which thirty-five PAC-endorsed candidates entered the territorial legislature. As a result of the realignment of 1944–1946, electoral politics in Hawai‘i turned more pro-union while the rest of the nation was turning antilabor, electing a Congress that would soon enact the repressive Taft-Hartley legislation that put a brake on labor organizing throughout the United States. Yet even in victory, as allies recognized, the union had “not had time to consolidate itself fully” before it faced a new wave of attacks and challenges from organized agriculture and its allies.91

CHAPTeR 4

Challenges and Survival: Sustaining Agricultural Unionism in Hawai‘i

About me, what I did in organizing labor, I think that anybody could have also done it if that individual was in the same position I was. I don’t think the man makes much difference. I think the situation makes the man. jack kaWano, 1978

The Longshore Union stood out for its ability to survive as a militant and effective union representing agricultural workers after World War II, maintaining the allegiance of its members. Several observers attribute its success to Hawaiian exceptionalism, pointing in particular to enlightened employers willing to maintain good relations with the union. In this chapter I challenge that view and contend instead that employers were not exceptional, and that the union survived because a determined membership was strong enough to withstand repeated attacks. I will examine conflicts between employers and the union first through three major strikes—two in pineapple and one in sugar, accompanied by employer-led red-baiting and efforts to create union rivalries. Finally, I will examine still another employer challenge—mechanization of field labor tasks.

Cold War in the Fields The first strike in the pineapple industry took place in 1947, and the union did not fare well. One popular current explanation for the defeat was that the union had become overconfident after its victory the previous year, was caught unprepared, and expected an easy victory. A closer examination, however, reveals that union leaders were not eager to confront pineapple industry leaders. They had several reasons for being reluctant. First

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Sugar workers demonstrate at Ola‘a during the 1946 strike. Reproduced by permission of the ILWU Library.

Demonstrators supporting the 1946 strike. Reproduced by permission of the ILWU Library.

ILWU leader Pedro de la Cruz on Lana‘i during the 1951 pineapple strike. Reproduced by permission of the ILWU Library.

was the presence of a hard-line faction led by HAPCO (Dole), which rejected the more cooperative strategy of the HEC. In addition to refusing to offer a wage increase above ten cents per hour, HAPCO executives sought to break up consolidated bargaining, or pattern bargaining, which provided a uniform contract throughout the industry, as the HEC preferred. Managers at the ferociously antiunion Maui Pineapple Company led a campaign of spying, coercion, and intimidation of employees and red-baiting of Longshore Union leadership. They installed barbedwire fences to close off camps to outsiders and set up lookout platforms to observe union sympathizers on the inside. Maui Pineapple hostility

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A 1958 sugar strike soup kitchen. Reproduced by permission of the ILWU Library.

was so effective that it prevented its agricultural employees from obtaining union contracts until workers struck successfully in 1959.1 The hardliners even challenged workers’ right to strike, despite the NLRA and HERA protection, and threatened that “unless action is taken to prevent them, everybody will suffer.” Pro-employer editorials and advertisements claimed that wages in the territory’s canneries and fields were higher than in any state of the union, yet even pineapple industry spokesman Randolph Crossley acknowledged that three states had higher wages for fruit packing than Hawai‘i. In one advertisement the industry rejected the union’s demand for higher wages and repeated: “Take our word for it, the ten cents is IT. That is all there can be. . . . The ten cents is our best offer and it is our FINAL offer.”2 HAPCO leadership even threatened to establish runaway operations. On July 9, 1947, only two days before the strike began, in a public statement from Havana, company vice president Boyd MacNaughton discussed plans to set up pineapple operations in Cuba because of labor troubles in Hawai‘i. He asserted that “the actual or threatened disruption of production and shipping recently experienced have further emphasized the need for diversifying the locale of our operations.” Yet if MacNaughton had expected to avoid unionism or the Longshore Union in Cuba, he would have been disappointed. The island had an influential and vigorous labor movement. In September 1946, Cuban leaders along with Harry Bridges

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had initiated an effort promoting unity among sugarcane workers by inviting labor representatives from the United States, Cuba, and Puerto Rico to attend a conference in Havana.3 MacNaughton’s threat to establish runaway plantations was premature, yet it foreshadowed policies the industry would adopt a generation later that would displace thousands of agricultural workers and most operations in Hawai‘i. A second factor that made the union reluctant to strike involved the intensification of the Cold War, which emboldened pineapple industry leaders. Employers inundated the airwaves and newspapers with articles, editorials, and advertisements calling for the union to refrain from striking while urging other businesses and employees to “demand that the Longshore Union accept industry’s offer.” A Chamber of Commerce and Retail Board–sponsored advertisement attacked union leaders for sponsoring mass picketing, intimidating workers, and “preaching of hatred and contempt for employers.” Meanwhile industry leaders courted the less militant, anti-Communist Teamsters Union, taking advantage of a May 1947 internal dispute in which the Longshore Union suspended the president of its Pineapple Local 152, Robert Mookini Sr., for malfeasance and misfeasance in office. Immediately, Arthur Rutledge of the AFL Hawaiian Joint Council of Teamsters offered Mookini a position as organizer. Employers sided with the Teamsters and publicized the rift through articles and advertisements attacking the Longshore Union for promoting class warfare.4 Red-baiting and employer support of Teamster raiding of a more militant and democratic union occurred frequently and, while not always successful, accounts for a significant portion of the Teamsters’ postwar expansion in the United States. In Hawai‘i, the Teamsters joined other AFL unionists and growers in anti-Communist attacks. Arthur Rutledge and local AFL representative John Owens challenged the Longshore Union, asserting that they were “determined to and shall educate the public and workers of Hawai‘i by every means within its power, including civic organizations. We will show that your organization is Communistically controlled.” Meanwhile Mookini, using language indistinguishable from that of employers, charged that his former union did not understand workers’ best interests: “Pay increases alone mean nothing, but the ILWU can think of nothing else.” Mookini portrayed himself as the Hawaiian-born savior of plantation workers: “it’s time that Hawaiian workers throw off the yoke of false mainland leadership which is endeavoring to wreck the territory’s basic industry.” Riding the crest of the rising anti-Red tide, he bemoaned the “Communist-controlled ILWU leadership that is dragging

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Hawai‘i down. These men claim to be Americans but they are insidious Red Agents.” Finally he challenged his rivals’ claims to be democratic, asserting, “I will take this fight against the ILWU Communists to every island if necessary. There will never be such a thing as secret voting as long as they are in the islands.”5 In response to Mookini’s charges, a correspondent from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin observed the May 1947 balloting by Longshore Union pineapple workers at the HAPCO (Dole), CPC, and LML plants on Maui to determine whether they wanted to strike. He reported that union stewards distributed ballots to workers, who acted freely and marked them “wherever they pleased in the auditorium or in the hallway, then dropped them into one of three large ballot boxes in the doorway on their way out.” The membership voted to authorize the strike, as recommended by union leadership, by a 4-to-1 margin.6 The vote demonstrated the spuriousness of Mookini’s charges and workers’ rejection of the opportunistic red-baiting campaign. A third factor the union confronted in 1947 was the greater seasonality of the workforce in pineapple, enabling employers to manipulate structural distinctions between regular (full-time) versus seasonal or part-time workers, the latter ineligible to join the union. Seasonal workers, who were mostly students and housewives, comprised about 50 percent of the peak workforce. Divisions were intensified by gender in the canneries, where most full-time workers were men working in warehouse maintenance or as machine operators or supervisors, while most seasonal workers were women trimmers and packers employed part-time during the summer. But the union also confronted another rift in pineapple, where it had been less successful signing up members, and only about 70 percent of eligible workers had joined.7 In their effort to weaken the union, in early 1947 employers recruited a record number of women and children for seasonal jobs and potential strikebreaking. With the strike approaching in early July, as part of their media campaign they sent a group of six hundred girls and boys to visit the governor, armed with a petition expressing alarm about “the harmful effects the pineapple strike is going to have on the community,” family budgets, and security, even claiming that it would “greatly increase juvenile delinquency.” In their media effort they also discovered or created women’s organizations ostensibly opposed to the union. A group calling itself the Business and Professional Women of Hawaii requested that citizens of Hawai‘i assist in the pineapple harvest in the event of a strike. Meanwhile a new Honolulu-based group, We, the Women of Hawaii, ap-

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peared in the press after passing a resolution stating, “there is evident a concerted drive by Moscow to create chaos and economic depression in the United States and this drive follows a pattern in Hawai‘i by periodic strangulation of business by strikes.” When several recent recruits to the organization discovered that We, the Women of Hawaii was a tool of the pineapple industry, they expressed dismay and disapproval. One woman condemned the resolution as “disgraceful,” while another criticized its “anti-labor attitude which may wreck this organization.” A third woman wrote that she was “ashamed to be a member of this organization or even consider this resolution” attacking the union.8 A final reason the Longshore Union was reluctant to strike was because it had a less compelling case in pineapple than it had in sugar the previous year. Pineapple contracts already included a uniform job classification system and wage scales, and had abolished the perquisite system, a key issue in 1946.9 The evidence indicates that the union had fewer incentives to seek a strike and sought to avoid it, but that industry leaders were stronger, and eager to force a showdown. In preparation for the conflict it feared it could not avoid, the Longshore Union Territorial Council, headed by Jack Kawano, formed a “lockout strategy committee” to improve communication and set up food collection centers. But the effort was hindered by the increasingly shrill charges of “communist influence,” and workers obtained much less assistance from allies than they had the previous year.10 The colonial state also played a role when in late June three federal cabinet members requested that the Longshore Union delay the strike for two additional weeks to permit a mediator from the USDL an opportunity to resolve the impasse. Both sides accepted the mediator, Nathan P. Feinsinger, who arrived on July 7 without preconditions. The union recognized that the delay was “working extremely unfair hardship on our union and accrues benefit to employers,” permitting them to complete about 20 percent of harvesting and canning operations and add thousands of additional nonunion seasonal employees to the workforce.11 Not surprisingly, Feinsinger’s mediation failed because employers refused to budge on their initial offer of a ten-cent wage increase, and workers finally walked out on July 11. The strike was most effective on the islands of Kaua‘i, Lana‘i, Moloka‘i, and Maui, where workers shut down production on six of ten plantations and four of six canneries. The proemployer Honolulu Advertiser claimed that union success was due to negligence by police, who were “either unable or unwilling to afford protection to authorized people entering or leaving premises.” Meanwhile Hawaii’s

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industrial leaders appealed to Governor Oren E. Long and turned to the courts. On the second day of the strike HAPCO and Calpack successfully petitioned Territorial Judge Wilson C. Moore to issue a temporary restraining order prohibiting mass picketing at any of their fields, camps, canneries, or receiving piers, on the grounds that the union was violating territorial conspiracy and anti-riot statutes.12 On Lana‘i, strikers completely halted field operations for the first two days, while on Maui they kept the canneries closed for the duration of the strike. Employers on those islands obtained a restraining order from Judge Cable Wirtz, who indicted eighteen union supporters for rioting and unlawful assembly at Lana‘i City and Kaumalapau, Lana‘i, in another blow to the strikers. Union lawyers challenged the judge’s eligibility to sit and the validity of the ruling, claiming that the jury he chaired, composed overwhelmingly of the “employer class,” did not represent a cross section of Hawaii’s population, deprived women of the right to serve, and required that jurors understand and speak English, all in violation of the United States Constitution.13 But the union complaint did not sway the judge or the jury, and the ruling stood. Strikers faced even greater obstacles on O‘ahu, which had the largest concentration of canneries and where employers had a sympathetic police apparatus and the largest labor reserve. On the first day strikers interrupted about two-thirds of cannery and plantation operations, but nonunion seasonal employees soon trickled through picket lines in the presence of armed police. In HAPCO fields near Wahiawa, police arrested 93 pickets for obstructing a public highway and took them to Honolulu in navy shore patrol wagons, police vehicles, and an army troop carrier. At the Wahiawa plantation, HAPCO president Harry A. White courted press attention by leading company officials and their families into the fields in buses “under heavy Police escort.” White also touted “the new mammoth fruit picking machines,” which he claimed offered strike insurance, although they were not yet effective. The harvested fruit arrived at the Iwilei plant under police escort.14 O‘ahu police arrested more than one hundred strikers and constantly cajoled them to return to work, all along blaming the union for their woes. Policemen made improper arrests and engaged in brutality, and one seized and opened a camera to expose photos of his fellow officers clubbing a woman. The aggressive police actions contrasted with police handling of the sugar strike, in which employers had maintained a lower profile and observers marveled at the minimum violence and infrequent police or judicial interference. By the fifth day of the pineapple strike,

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most canneries and all but three plantations were approaching normal production. Union leaders decided to call off the work stoppage.15 It was clear that they had not sought a confrontation and were not overconfident about its outcome. It was an overwhelming victory for pineapple employers, who gained all they sought with minimal losses. The union accepted employers’ initial ten-cent-per-hour wage offer and union check-off in conformance with recent Taft-Hartley legislation requiring employees to sign authorization forms to permit the deduction of union dues. Employers also forced an end to uniform bargaining on pineapple operations throughout the islands, which allowed employers to set different rates but also set the stage for the 1951 pineapple strike on Lana‘i.16 The outcome in 1947 suggests that factors commonly considered crucial to the success of the Longshore Union—union control of the docks, employer inability to recruit foreign workers, or the “one big union” strategy—were not by themselves decisive. Contingent factors were also important, particularly the union’s inability to deal with the seasonal workforce. Yet even among full-time workers, almost one-third had not joined, a failure among unionists to organize effectively. Meanwhile, pineapple employers had prepared for an aggressive campaign and took advantage of the recent escalation of the Cold War to intensify public opinion against the union. Finally, employers gained the sympathy of state officials, even those inclined to be sympathetic to labor. Roy E. James, Pacific Coast Branch head of the Department of the Interior, complimented Nathan Feinsinger of the Mediation Service for the “great job” he performed to bring the two sides together. Yet the only significant accomplishment of mediation was to delay the strike, to the advantage of employers.17 For the Longshore Union, the defeat in 1947 had a “catalytic influence” in prompting a consolidation of all pineapple locals into “One Big Union,” Local 142, which improved coordination. Afterward union attorneys appealed the punitive district court rulings, and Judge J. Frank McLaughlin overturned territorial conspiracy and riot statutes used to halt picketing. He ruled that they were “indefinite and uncertain,” that tests to determine them were “subjective and vague” and placed too great an emphasis on peace as distinguished from the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of assembly. McLaughlin concluded, “Federal rights are exercisable as fully in company towns and villages as elsewhere,” and declared the conspiracy and rioting statutes “void and unconstitutional.”18

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Meanwhile, red-baiting against union leadership intensified, and in 1948 Amos Ignacio, former president of Longshore Union Local 142, bolted and immediately formed the Union of Hawaiian Agricultural Workers, aimed at gaining a foothold in the sugar industry. While Ignacio claimed that his primary motivation was opposition to Communist leadership in the Longshore Union, historian Edward Beechert considered his motivation personal bitterness at being demoted from local president and past elected territorial representative to vice president of the consolidated local. But Ignacio’s move involved more than personalities, and he could not have gained much attention without employers who played up the division in the commercial press. There was abundant evidence that employers encouraged and financed Ignacio’s effort.19 In the short run Ignacio’s challenge forced the Longshore Union to expend a substantial amount of energy and time that the union otherwise would have devoted to a proposed general strike in the sugar, pineapple, and longshore industries that year. But the union did beat back Ignacio’s challenge, the final major effort by potential union rivals to wrest control of Hawaiian agricultural workers from the Longshore Union. Employers finally realized the futility and heavy expense of fronting organizations to destroy the popular, influential, and democratically run union. But employers continued to feed the anti- Communist hysteria as it spread throughout the labor movement in the United States. The Longshore Union was a major target and soon faced the prospect of either ousting members or being expelled from the CIO. It remained true to its principles and leadership and opted to sever ties from mainstream organized labor in 1949 and was expelled from the CIO the following year. The attacks continued, and in 1950 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) visited Hawai‘i, citing Jack Hall and six other Longshore Union members with contempt for refusal to testify. Ongoing HUAC pressure did convince one local Longshore Union leader, Jack Kawano, to appear and recant his former party ties in 1953. Although he was no longer a Communist, he testified that his motives had been pure when he joined the organization in 1937, “because some individual Communists were willing to assist me in organizing the Waterfront Union. . . . No civic or community organization showed any signs of willingness to assist in our organizing efforts. . . . They led me to believe the Communist Party was primarily to promote the best interests of the workingman.” Even in recanting, Kawano acknowledged that the Communist Party expressed greater dedication to the interests of working people than any

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other organization in the territory and that without its support, an effective union could not have been established. That same year Jack Hall and the six other Hawaiian union members who had defied the HUAC investigators were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government of the United States. But union attorneys immediately appealed, and in 1958 the United States Supreme Court overturned the earlier decision on the grounds that their constitutional rights had been violated.20 The Longshore Union and its leaders were vindicated. Labor relations scholar Curtis Aller suggests that while the antiCommunist attacks hurt the union at the time, it “weathered the storm and meanwhile created a stronger internal structure,” in part through consolidating its locals by the mid-1950s. Historian Edward Beechert concluded that the red-baiting “campaign had little direct effect on the union,” although it was forced to refocus its efforts to its own defense, and that the attacks had eroded some of the union’s earlier popular support. One leader of the national anti- Communist purge, liberal columnist Paul Jacobs, later considered his actions a mistake, and he lamented the unwillingness of organized labor and its liberal sympathizers to stand up to red-baiting. Jacobs viewed the result as highly damaging because it left top labor leadership in the hands of short-sighted, nonintellectual bureaucrats who lacked the vision to prevent the long-term decline of the labor movement. In later years even Jack Kawano had second thoughts about his decision to testify before the HUAC and assessed the Communists’ contribution in Hawai‘i more positively: “what I did in labor, organizing and whatnot, the record will show what I had done. But I must admit I was able to do this is because maybe I’d learned something from the Communists, so some credit [has] got to go to them.” It was the only union of the era to establish and maintain a vigorous presence on behalf of agricultural workers in the United States, and by the end of the 1950s “the suspicion of leftwing sympathies of ILWU leaders apparently has been all but eliminated as an issue at bargaining tables.”21 The anti- Communist attacks weakened the Longshore Union in the short term, contributed to its defeat in the 1947 strike, and cost it many dedicated members. Perhaps more importantly, the attacks hindered its efforts to solidify potential alliances it had initiated in 1946 that might have resulted in more concerted organizational efforts on behalf of agricultural labor unionism in the 1950s. In the long term it demonstrated that a union could withstand the anti- Communist purge if it had committed members, a democratic structure, and an established institutional political base, factors that were critical in its ability to consolidate its presence.

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Consolidating Plantation Unionism At the height of the Cold War in 1950 workers on the “the pineapple island,” Lana‘i, surprised Longshore Union leaders and employers alike by rejecting a renewal of the collective bargaining agreement by a vote of 618–33. They produced more than half of all HAPCO pineapples on the company’s fifteen-thousand-acre plantation that dominated the island. Lana‘i workers, overwhelmingly Filipinos, were angered that the contract permitted lower wages for them than workers on other islands, which HAPCO justified by lower living costs. They demanded a raise of four additional cents per hour to reach parity, a revised job classification system, changes in seniority, and that the employer show burden of proof in disciplinary cases.22 Takeo Furike, president of Local 152 of the Longshore Workers Union, emphasized that the primary issue was not economic. He noted that the wage increase Lana‘i workers sought totaled no more than $250 per day, “a microscopic amount when compared with the millions already lost by the company and the losses that the company will continue to suffer as the strike continues.” Rather, workers were especially concerned over dual wages, the most blatant evidence of anti-Filipino racism by HAPCO officials. Local union leader Pedro de la Cruz asserted that workers were upset about the “color line” between whites and nonwhites in plantation housing. They also worried about job security, as layoffs during the previous five years had cut employment on the island in half, while insensitive HAPCO management hired outsiders for skilled tasks like carpentry and painting previously performed by company employees, and it adopted mechanization in an arbitrary and unilateral manner. Lana‘i workers also demanded a seniority system that determined layoffs based on length of service with the company. Yet HAPCO officials were unwilling to listen to complaints and arrogantly claimed that “this company has never had a grievance go to arbitration,” unconcerned about provoking another strike.23 On February 27, 1951, when eight hundred Lana‘i workers struck, HAPCO officials claimed they were willing to sacrifice the entire crop “in the best long range interests of the company.” The island had a tightly knit population of three thousand, two-thirds of them pineapple workers and their families, and the strike shook “its entire economy.”24 In preparation, workers had already sent “bumming committees” to solicit foodstuffs and cash from other Longshore Union members. Once the strike began they instituted the familiar soup kitchens to provide lunch

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and supper, and prepared lunches for schoolchildren. Plantation Housing Ltd., which maintained plantation dwellings and collected rent, reported that by the end of April, more than half its tenants were delinquent in payments, by an average of three to four months. Business slumped as the local bowling alley, pool hall, and movie house restricted operations, while the halting of production reduced shipping, forced a sharp increase in the price of imported items, and reduced sales at the island’s four grocery stores. Meanwhile, the union provided entertainment and other diversions including free movies, organized “occasional picketing to sustain morale,” and in July called for a nationwide boycott of Dole products.25 The Lana‘i strikers in 1951 were in a favorable position compared with pineapple workers in 1947, as they had forged a workers’ community with a shared consciousness based on work experiences in the pineapple fields, life on a company island, and union membership. With support from other union members and allies they turned the island’s isolation to their advantage by preventing the company from importing strikebreakers. Furthermore, they did not have to confront an interventionist police or hostile courts. As Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Lawrence Nakatsuka observed, “there has been no strike violence of any sort.” Lastly, they articulated their major concerns very clearly—systematic discrimination against Filipino workers demonstrated by dual wages, unequal housing, and poor treatment by bosses, all reflecting class divisions sharply reinforced by race. The demands for wage parity and respect from bosses resonated among union members and other potential allies. The decision to strike further demonstrated local autonomy within the union and accommodation by the top leaders to rank-and-file demands. Hall and Bridges would have preferred to avoid the strike but promptly accepted and supported the wishes of the workers of Lana‘i.26 Meanwhile the commercial press again sided with employers, portraying the Dole family and the pineapple industry as “pioneers” who brought progress to a formerly uninhabited island. It also criticized the Longshore Union and the Communist Party for interfering with freedom of travel by blocking the importation of scabs while it complained that the strike was “being used as a weapon to destroy Hawaii’s economy.” A September 3 editorial in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin claimed that although they held out for more than six months, “there is no evidence that the strikers can win.” Yet two weeks later, on September 18, the pineapple workers emerged victorious, their 203-day strike the longest in the islands’ history. It demonstrated that disciplined workers could assert their independence and dignity to defeat a powerful adversary on a company-owned island.27

Challenges and Survival 159

The Lana‘i workers gained parity through a restoration of pattern bargaining, or setting identical standards throughout the industry, which had been lost in the 1947 strike. They also won a union security clause requiring nonunion workers either to pay dues or contribute an equivalent amount to charity. The contract included seniority provisions, a “first step in protecting the workers from the erosion of mechanization.” Finally, the union gained a program for inexpensive housing and comprehensive medical coverage for family members. The victory also marked the first time in a strike union that members consciously adopted an ethnic strategy to accompany the longstanding union focus on class. The ultimate concern was equal treatment and dignity for Filipinos, for decades a colonized workforce lacking citizenship rights and who had long been particularly exploited.28 It was a further step toward building interracial unionism, but there were still a number of unresolved issues, and the plantation workers recognized that they would have to face their employers one more time. A final major confrontation in Hawaiian agriculture took place in 1958, which, according to Beechert, was “perhaps the most decisive” strike in Hawai‘i, and many workers agree that it was critical. Beechert suggests that the Big Five provoked it for obscure reasons, while workers took credit for the confrontation, suggesting that they had earlier considered confronting employers but were not yet ready to dare. For them the key issue was respect for having attained skills, recognized in the form of higher wages for learning to operate new equipment employers had been introducing as a result of “their intensive mechanization program.” The workers again prepared in advance, and when they struck they adopted familiar tactics including soup kitchens and organizing support from allies. As unionist Tony Bise recalled, “we had a lot of help from the outside. We went around and worked on farms. In return, they gave us vegetables.” Others went fishing and shared the catch with fellow strikers. They also sought the goodwill of the public and the media. With an abundance of spare time, strikers volunteered to work on public improvement projects to enhance the appearance of local communities. They also maintained irrigation systems to minimize crop loss. By demonstrating congeniality and concern for the survival of the industry, union members gained greater respect from employers. The HEC recognized this and even declared that union leadership in Hawai‘i was “more responsible than it is on most parts of the mainland.” In the end, workers gained the job classifications they sought, and the union obtained a secure foothold for agricultural labor unionism in Hawai‘i. As striker Tom Foy later recalled, “as a result of the

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1958 strike we became a mature union,” at the moment Hawaii’s formal colonial status was ending.29 By the late 1960s, regular plantation employees had also gained job security and stability, including eight paid holidays annually; paid vacations ranging from one to three weeks; a medical, hospital, surgical, and dental plan for families; plus pensions. They were entitled to group life insurance, long-term disability insurance, and a separation allowance of eight days per year for individuals who wished to retire early, easing the impact of job displacement caused by rapid mechanization.30

Modernization and Mechanization Popular understandings of agricultural modernization and mechanization in mid-twentieth-century Hawai‘i contrasted sharply with those in Puerto Rico, where union leaders agreed with politicians and even sugar industry representatives that agricultural technology was primitive. In Hawai‘i union and industry leaders considered production techniques on the islands to be the most advanced in the world and a factor in making higher living standards for workers possible, although labor leaders considered unionization to have played a greater role than the machines. Union leaders also agreed that continued mechanization was necessary to ensure that Hawai‘i stay ahead of competition but pressured employers to ensure that workers share in the benefits of mechanization through higher wages and living standards, as well as job security. Union participation in decisions linked to mechanization had no parallel in U.S. agriculture, a fact that permits an examination of two issues widely discussed in debates on modernization and mechanization: the deskilling thesis posited by Harry Braverman and the popular view that unionization hastens mechanization. In a 1948 report, labor analyst Teddy Kreps concluded that deskilling had been taking place in Hawaiian agriculture for decades, that the classification system then current did not adequately account for workers’ skills, and that their pay was not adjusted for increased productivity. He also contended that mechanization, in conjunction with rising population and unemployment, led to an “increasing competition for jobs [which] has resulted in a feeling of insecurity in the workers making possible the enforcement of speed-up by the employers.” Kreps suggested that employers increased insecurity by refusing to hire workers over age thirtyfive or men with families, showing favoritism toward younger workers,

Challenges and Survival 161

and laying off or dismissing older workers, very few of whom received the pensions to which they were ostensibly entitled. His analysis was consistent with the broad outlines of the Braverman thesis. Economist Curtis Aller concurred in general, suggesting that prior to World War II there had been an abundance of alien workers to perform manual labor on the plantations, while “mechanization was in part a response to the drying up of these resources.”31 Meanwhile sociologists James Geschwender and Rhonda Levine challenge the central thrust of the Braverman argument as inapplicable to Hawai‘i. They disagree that capitalists introduced rationalization (mechanization) primarily to increase control over the labor process and reduce capital costs or that mechanization inevitably leads to deskilling and degradation of labor. They argue that Braverman unduly focuses on rationalization from the perspective of capital and on its technical features, while underplaying class struggle. Because labor was cheap and plentiful during the Great Depression, they contend that mechanization was delayed until after the 1946 strike when capitalists “struck back by rationalizing production in the sugar industry.” Unionization “drove up the cost of labor” and stimulated a “rationalization” of production.32 Yet assumptions that agricultural mechanization was not proceeding rapidly prior to the union challenge lack substance. Labor costs in Hawai‘i were high and labor importation was expensive throughout the twentieth century, providing industry a greater incentive to “rationalize” than any other sugar-producing area serving the United States. In fact, during the period from 1872 to 1938 raw sugar production on the islands increased 110 times while the size of the workforce rose only 11 times. Mechanization accelerated immediately afterward; journalist Frank Taylor observed: “during the war (when workers deserted agriculture for high-paying defense jobs) plantation managers turned to machines to replace men.” As HSPA President H. A. Walker noted, the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i were already the most mechanized in the world prior to the 1946 strike. Yet rationalization alone was not sufficient for the industry to survive. As in the case of sugarcane in Puerto Rico and sugar beets in the continental United States, without tariff protection and quotas, the “Hawaiian sugar industry would quickly disappear in the face of unrestricted entry of cheaper Cuban sugar,” which “has long determined the strategy of the industry.”33 The Hawaiian sugar industry had long been in the forefront of mechanical and technical inputs on its plantations. The HSPA established its first research center in 1895, and it was well financed and technically

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advanced, implementing findings on plant diseases, insect threats, fertilization, irrigation, and production techniques. Hawaiian planters gained a reputation for quickly adopting the latest innovations. During a particularly intense phase of mechanization in the 1920s and 1930s, experiment station research made possible changes in production that altered the work process. New types of fertilizers were developed that could be dissolved in irrigation water, altering a task formerly performed by hand. Researchers also developed higher-yielding varieties of cane that were blight- and pest-resistant, contributing to an intensification of the work process. For land preparation, diesel-powered Caterpillar tractors with four to six disc plows replaced hand labor. Planting machines were introduced, replacing hand planting. Cultivation for weed control by hand ended with the introduction of crawler tractors with disc plows, which in the early 1930s were replaced by larger diesel vehicles. Loading was mechanized in the 1920s and 1930s, as mechanical crane loaders picked up cane and placed it in cars. Two men operating one crane could replace thirty-five men loading by hand, which was “very hard work.”34 Hauling cane from the fields was mechanized through a series of technical changes aimed at reducing human labor. At the beginning of the century, workers laid portable tracks in the fields that permitted the use of cars pulled by mules and later by steam locomotives, tractor trains, or cableways. Then in the later 1930s, trucks developed sufficient traction to operate in fields, eliminating the labor required to lay temporary track.35 Cane cutting, the most labor-intensive task, was also mechanized in stages. Experiments in mechanical harvesting in the mid-1930s adapted the “grab harvest” system first applied in Louisiana, in which mechanical claws pulled cane by its roots and loaded it directly onto railway cars. It reduced hand labor in several tasks, including cutting, piling, and loading, but could only operate in dry conditions, and the machine-harvested cane required extensive cleaning. In addition, the machines removed roots, and so they eliminated “ratoon” cane, or harvesting in subsequent years without replanting, thus requiring added costs for planting. Researchers continued to search for a “more perfect” harvester.36 Labor shortages during World War II induced industry leaders to adopt labor-reducing techniques based on experiments involving diesel oil emulsion herbicides, propagation of new seedling canes, and disease-resistant varieties that were “in some respects unsatisfactory.” As Chauncy B. Wightman of the HSPA observed in 1945, “mechanization, itself does not always decrease costs . . . mechanical harvesting costs more

Challenges and Survival 163

per ton than hand harvesting.” While recognizing inadequacies, HSPA president H. A. Walker reported that worker-days on sugar plantations had fallen from 11.1 million in 1936 to 7.1 million in 1945, with production fairly stable. Furthermore, mechanization had been “sharply retarded by the war because new equipment could not be purchased.”37 Mechanization in the immediate postwar period would have accelerated sharply independently of the union. As expected, researchers intensified their experiments, including preemergence weed spray formulas and seed germination techniques. They used new chemical fertilizers such as the hormone CADE24 and 2- 4-D, and later weedkilling chemicals like 2,4,5-T and oil sprays. By the early 1950s the application of fertilizers by furrow tractor or airplane gained popularity. In combination, the new techniques further reduced the demand for hand weeding and hoeing gangs, intensified the pace of work, and increased yields. Mechanical harvesting further accelerated following successful experimentation with a cane cutter for nonirrigated fields designed by the HSPA in 1950. A one-row cutter-windrower, it also replaced the push rake. Improvements in design took place rapidly, and by 1954 harvest mechanization had reached 60 percent, and it quickly became practically universal.38 In Hawai‘i the rate of mechanization for the two most labor-intensive phases of production, cultivation and harvesting, tended to take place concurrently, permitting the declining labor force to continue working practically year-round. This contrasted sharply with conditions in Puerto Rico, where harvest mechanization lagged behind cultivation and intensified seasonal unemployment. Mechanization also played a critical role in the history of the Hawaiian pineapple industry. Production soared following the perfection in 1909 by Dole employee Henry Ginaca of the Ginaca Machine, which could peel, size, and core pineapples. In effect the machine made juice and canned pineapples commercially viable, as fruit plantings in Hawai‘i rose from about 5,000 acres in 1909 to 47,000 acres in 1920. In 1914, the Hawai‘i Pineapple Packers Association allied with the HSPA to continue scientific research, and in 1923 the predecessor to the Pineapple Research Institute established its own experiment station. Researchers tested more-efficient uses of fertilizer, mulch paper, soil fumigants, selective breeding to improve varieties, contour planting, and pest control for diseases including mealy bug, pineapple wilt, and heart rot. Later research on soil preparation included fumigation to combat nematodes and other root patho-

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gens prior to planting, using a tear gas, chloropicrin, and a petroleum byproduct, D.D., and insect control using heavy applications of DDT.39 Weeding initially involved men with mules pulling cultivators between rows, followed by thinning, in which workers with hoes removed unwanted pineapple plants. After WWII chemical sprays made from an emulsion of diesel oil and sodium pentachlorophenate were introduced. In the early 1950s growers introduced boom sprayers attached to trucks that were able to apply chemicals on newly planted fields to stop weeds from growing “before they get a start.” According to one account, the industry considered chemical weed killers “probably the biggest cost saving operation of all.”40 Pineapple harvest mechanization equipment had been tested for several years, was functional by 1944, and soon entered general use. Researchers designed a field fruit carrier consisting of a truck with a boom suspended over the rows of fruit, each unit accompanied by crews of six to ten workers who followed the machine between the rows. Workers picked the ripe fruit, removed the crown, and then placed the fruit on a conveyor belt that carried it into a bin on the truck. The machines were equipped with electric lights to increase hours of operation into the night. In sum, they reduced the demand for pickers, who no longer had to fill sacks with pineapples or carry them to the end of each row to be loaded, eliminated the need for lug boxes, and sharply reduced the labor required for loading and unloading fruit.41 Employment in the Hawaiian sugarcane fields was about fifty-five thousand workers in 1900, or 61 percent of all the persons employed in the territory. The number of sugar plantation workers remained fairly steady for about three decades, as the sharp increase in production was counterbalanced by mechanical and chemical inputs, and about fifty-four thousand workers were employed in 1934. Field employment fell steadily afterwards, to about forty-five thousand in 1939; twenty-eight thousand in 1946; thirteen thousand in 1963; and nine thousand by 1968, while production remained fairly constant.42 Mechanization had made the industry possible, and its continued application reduced total employment long before the outbreak of World War II or the first union contracts. Employment in the cane fields fell by about twenty-six thousand workers in the dozen years prior to the strike of 1946. Given employer motivation and capacity to continue mechanizing, employment would have declined rapidly without the pressure of a militant union, as it did elsewhere in the United States where workers

Challenges and Survival 165

were not unionized. Mechanization took place most slowly in Puerto Rico, where sugarcane workers were also unionized, yet where wages and production declined the fastest among sugar-producing regions that served the United States. Longshore Union strategy aimed at offsetting the most severe shocks of declining employment for members. Its earliest strikes eliminated work on Saturdays, and average worker-days per year fell from 283 in 1947 to 248 in 1954. By 1948 the union was focusing on declining employment and the potential labor surplus. Rather than attacking mechanization specifically, which it considered necessary for the survival of the industry, it sought a “fair and equitable” job security plan for current workers. The union negotiated higher wages, early retirement benefits, and lump cash payoffs to workers who wished to return to the Philippines prior to mandatory retirement age, as well as free medicine, medical care, and industrywide pensions for retirees. It also negotiated with employers to plan layoffs in conjunction with retirements, so that few workers involuntarily lost their jobs.43 Mechanization was an important issue for Lana‘i pineapple workers in the 1951 strike, and they gained a more equitable union security clause and retirement program. Afterward employer representatives would confer with worker representatives on issues involving mechanization that affected employment. Ola‘a plantation management acknowledged in 1954 that the layoff problem “has been discussed with officers of your Union,” as worker committees examined all phases of operations and all employees had opportunities to locate and accept other jobs.44 Pressure from organized workers also led to increased severance pay, early retirement, and travel allowances. While the pressure of organized workers hastened research and application of mechanization in Hawaiian agriculture, it also minimized its most severe impact on those employed. The union explicitly addressed deskilling, which as Teddy Kreps confirmed, had been taking place long before the first union contracts. It was a concern in several strikes that addressed an unjust classification system. As the union increased its influence, it reversed the longstanding trend on Hawaiian plantations toward deskilling, demanding and obtaining changes in the system of job classification. It sought to eliminate the most physically taxing tasks like cane cutting and manual loading while increasing compensation for the expanding number of tasks involving machines that could be defined as skilled, such as driving trucks and operating tractors, cranes, and bulldozers.45

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Further demonstrating the union’s ability to confront deskilling was its success in linking higher wages to productivity gains. During the period between 1947 and 1956, productivity in U.S. manufacturing increased at an annual average of 3.7 percent, compared with 9.4 percent in Hawaiian sugar. Despite higher wages, the cost of producing sugar per one hundred pounds in the latter year was $1.45 in Hawai‘i, versus $2.22 in Puerto Rico, where labor input was 12.56 worker- days per ton versus 2.63 in Hawai‘i.46 As a result of unionization, material conditions improved markedly for Hawaiian plantation workers. Between 1939 and 1954 average annual earnings for full-time employees on sugar plantations rose from $688 to $3,148; for pineapple plantation workers from $923 to $3,164, which compared favorably with average increases in private industry during the same period from $923 to $3,134. Using all civilian industries in Hawai‘i as a base, wages rose proportionately on sugar plantations from 68 percent to 93 percent, and pineapple plantations from 91 percent to 93 percent. Meanwhile, during the period from 1946 to 1965, wages for sugarcane field workers in Hawai‘i increased 2.8 times as fast as in Florida, 3.3 times as in Louisiana, 4 times as fast as those of sugar beet workers, and 7 times as fast as the cane field workers of Puerto Rico.47 The wage data further confirms the disastrous impact of the colonization of the Puerto Rican labor movement by the Packinghouse Union, which could not contain wage declines to levels comparable to those of unorganized sugarcane workers in Louisiana or even migrant workers entirely lacking local political representation or an organized presence in the sugar beet industry. The case of Hawai‘i further suggests that there was no structural reason apart from the lack of effective unions and the limitations of democracy to account for why wages and working conditions for agricultural workers were so much lower everywhere else in the country. The Longshore Union successfully protected union members but could not stave off the decline in employment. According to the HSPA, the total number of jobs in the sugar industry fell between 1947 and 1957 from 22,743 to 13,781. Pineapple plantation employment between 1955 and 1968 remained fairly steady at between 5,600 and 6,000, although less than one-third were regular workers. But in the 1970s pineapple employment plummeted as the largest corporations, Dole and Del Monte, sharply reduced operations in Hawai‘i, establishing the runaway plantations in low-wage settings that HAPCO had threatened in 1947, in locations euphemistically referred to as foreign subsidiaries in the Philippines and Thailand.48

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Conclusion A shifting national and international political environment coupled with a determined and hostile pineapple industry leadership, rather than overconfidence by the Longshore Union, accounts primarily for the union defeat in the 1947 strike. Employers aggressively engaged in a “political counterattack using red baiting as its main weapon.” The Longshore Union had to act defensively to maintain its presence in agriculture, expending time, energy, resources, and political influence. Geschwender and Levine suggest that the attacks forced the Longshore Union to shift from a radical and militant union to a more traditional “bread-and-butter” organization.49 The shift can also be attributed to two additional factors in which organized workers played important parts. One was a blurring of racial lines between haoles and non-haoles that had reinforced the sharp class divisions in the earliest years of the union’s struggles. A second involved union successes in blurring class lines through job reclassifications, so that the sharp reduction in employment took place primarily among workers considered unskilled, reinforced by a significant though smaller increase in skilled and management positions that allowed aging union members a degree of upward mobility. The shift in job classifications was consistent with goals articulated by one segment of capital, the HEC, in attenuating class conflict, while it contributed further to the apparent increase in mutual respect between union and management. Furthermore, the defeat in the pineapple strike of 1947 did not spell disaster for pineapple workers, nor did the seasonal nature of the industry doom them to suffer from substantially lower wages and working conditions than employees in other industries. Through the union they were able to continue articulating their own interests as workers—striking, voting, and soon closing the gap in living standards between themselves and workers in other industries. The case of Hawai‘i further demonstrates the fallacy of arguments that agricultural workers in the United States are destined to suffer lives of deprivation and poverty. But it also demonstrates that unionism alone does not ensure improvements for members, for Hawai‘i stands in sharp contrast to Puerto Rico, where conditions deteriorated sharply despite an active and politically connected union. Two of the critical differences between the island settings were an effective union democracy within the Longshore Union and its ability to affect decisions pertaining to mechanization that involved workers. The case of the Longshore Union also demonstrates the fallacy of AFL and CIO participation in Communist witch-hunting at the onset

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of the Cold War. Mainstream labor leaders cleansed their organizations of potential Communists and many non- Communist radicals, and they drove the Longshore Union out of the CIO because it refused to submit. Yet the halfhearted efforts by top AFL and CIO leadership on behalf of agricultural unionism paled in comparison with the Longshore Union in Hawai‘i, which functioned effectively outside the labor mainstream. The AFL and CIO were blinded by anti- Communist hysteria while agricultural workers suffered, even in California, where organized labor made its greatest investment, and to which we now turn.

CHAPTeR 5

Marked in the Annals of the Labor Movement: The National Farm Labor Union, Organized Labor, and the DiGiorgio Strike

A struggle took place that will be marked in the annals of the labor movement. hank hasiWar, national Farm labor Union

Unionists had long been attracted to California agriculture because it was home to the largest farmworker population in the nation and offered the greatest potential for members. In the late 1940s there were more than 150,000 full-time agricultural workers in the state, and twice that number during harvest. The numbers underscore Carey McWilliams’s view that it was a “great exception,” an observation still popular among academics and unionists and used to justify the disproportionate attention they have devoted to the state.1 For many years the assumption of California as the exception has been the basis of strategies considering it the key to organizing and the necessary base for agricultural unionism in the United States. I argue that this view is flawed, as it fails to consider the complexity and geographic interconnectedness of agriculture and agricultural labor on a national and international level, or to consider other possibilities such as Puerto Rico and Hawai‘i, where unions made greater inroads with fewer resources. I now turn to the National Farm Labor Union (the Farm Laborers), formerly the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (the Tenant Farmers), and its major organizing campaign in California between 1947 and 1952. Admitted into the AFL in 1946, the union gained unprecedented support from allies in organized labor yet achieved few immediate results. In this chapter I will discuss assessments of the fate of the union and then examine its earlier relations with organized labor, its initial preparations in California, and finally, its longest and most determined strike, conducted against the DiGiorgio Corporation between October 1947 and May 1950.

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The lack of immediate victories, particularly collective bargaining contracts, have shaped scholarly assessments of the Farm Laborers. One view, adopted from hindsight, considered the endeavor hopeless, emphasizing structural factors in the political environment and the workforce. Robert Tomasek, for instance, considered the Farm Laborers “doomed to weakness” because of seasonal employment and poverty, making it virtually impossible for workers to create a stable organization or attract sufficiently powerful and committed allies. J. Craig Jenkins addressed limitations of the union itself, which he argued lacked adequate leadership, failed to mobilize available resources, and adopted flawed strategies beginning with DiGiorgio, which involved “an orthodox industrial union approach.” Dick Meister and Anne Loftis focused on its weak position politically despite greater support from organized labor and other allies than any predecessors. Adherents of this interpretation emphasized that the union was unable to mobilize resources to support strikers, which forced many dedicated members to depart, making it easier for growers to hire nonunion replacements. They add that Farm Laborers’ leaders in California were outsiders unable to sustain themselves when aid from labor and other allies dwindled. Their conclusion is consistent with Tomasek’s—that the union in general and the DiGiorgio strike in particular were “doomed from the start.”2 A contrary interpretation posits that the union fared comparatively well and that its ultimate defeat was not preordained. Ken Blum and Richard Boyden argue that the Farm Laborers’ leadership was competent; that the union gained substantial support from urban liberal groups, the church, and organized labor, from which it cultivated widespread favorable publicity; and that its DiGiorgio boycott was better organized than the first NFWA effort that contributed to the 1966 Schenley contract. Historian Donald Grubbs contends that the union was well prepared and innovative but that DiGiorgio and the Associated Farmers were more experienced and able to devise a strategy to “lead corporation farming in general to as smashing a triumph as possible over organized labor.” Grubbs noted that many union tactics were later successful for the UFW, including the use of loudspeakers to lure nonstriking workers from the fields, soup kitchens, and car caravans. Both were committed to hiring halls and nonviolence; they gained allies from within the labor movement, churches, and urban liberal groups; and cultivated favorable publicity in the media. Both engaged in educational and informational activities to obtain resources, support for boycotts, and publicity; and both conducted

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voter registration drives and campaigned for candidates to support union agendas. Grubbs concludes that although the Farm Laborers failed, as a “prelude to Chavez” the experience was critical in paving the way for later UFW successes.3 Some observers have emphasized that the key was the balance of power held by the state. Linda and Theo Majka contend that the union was simply too weak to counter California growers politically and consequently was overwhelmed. Ernesto Galarza was less pessimistic about the early phase of the union’s California history, detailing many occasions when the union was on the verge of victory but betrayed by politicians and agency administrators who consciously misinterpreted rules, regulations, and laws.4 Galarza and other Farm Labor leaders’ philosophy was rooted in the Socialist Party from which the Southern Tenant Farmers Union emerged. It viewed the state as a potentially positive force that could be pressured to advance democracy and the interests of working people.

On the Fringe of the Labor Movement The Tenant Farmers appeared in 1934, inspired by a visit of Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas to Arkansas. The union was independent of organized labor, explicitly nonviolent, anticapitalist, and interracial, and advocated a strong civil rights agenda to halt gross violations of workers’ rights by growers and law enforcement officials. Union leaders considered workers’ poverty and seasonal employment insurmountable obstacles to sustaining the organization on membership dues alone and therefore created the National Sharecroppers Fund (NSF) to cultivate financial and political support while maintaining autonomy.5 The union was a product of the Great Depression, when “organizers were as plentiful as mosquitoes,” and gained an initial membership base among tenants, sharecroppers, and wage earners working on cotton plantations in Arkansas. It had critical support from local Protestant ministers who became vigorous union advocates and local leaders, and it soon spread to neighboring states. Initially, union leaders focused on protecting the interests of rural people displaced by agricultural mechanization in cotton, particularly because of tractors, which landowners used to prepare and cultivate the soil and eliminate the need for large numbers of workers for much of the season. Rather than making annual contracts

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with tenants or sharecroppers, growers could hire workers for wages to perform the short-term tasks of cotton chopping and harvesting.6 Consequently, thousands of tenants and sharecroppers became wage workers and in the process lost the security of year-round housing and garden plots. The fate of tenantry was further determined by struggles over the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1934. Congress enacted the legislation to drive up the price of cotton by encouraging producers to withdraw land from production and offering them benefit payments as compensation. But the AAA definition of who was a producer and thus entitled to the payments became the subject of bitter disagreement. The Tenant Farmers argued that sharecroppers and tenants who worked the land were producers and deserved a share of the payments. But landowners convinced administrators to determine that all the money should go to them, whether or not they worked the land. Owners quickly eliminated sharecroppers and tenants and forced the union to shift its attention to wage workers. In 1937 the Tenant Farmers merged with the recently formed United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) of the CIO, joining the ranks of organized labor. However, former Tenant Farmers leaders clashed with UCAPAWA President Donald Henderson. They claimed that Henderson failed to keep promises. They also disagreed with Henderson on whom to organize, and following a costly and largely unsuccessful campaign in agriculture between 1937 and 1939, Henderson decided to focus primarily on cannery and packinghouse workers, to the consternation of the former Tenant Farmers leaders. On the level of philosophy, the Tenant Farmers claimed to be upset by “deep ideological differences” stemming from UCAPAWA’s acceptance of Joseph Stalin’s “corrupted” ideals of revolutionary socialism. Yet they opposed Henderson and the Communist Party members primarily for what they considered counterrevolutionary practices, namely Stalin’s violent purges, and UCAPAWA favoritism toward industrial workers in the canneries at the expense of more exploited agricultural workers. Tensions reached a climax in early 1939 when Henderson attempted to oust the agricultural leaders, who instead bolted and reorganized the Tenant Farmers, again independent of organized labor. Bitter memories of this short and turbulent period influenced the union’s later antagonism toward Communists in left-leaning CIO unions, particularly toward UCAPAWA’s successor, the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and

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Allied Workers of America (FTA). The Tenant Farmers emerged from the split severely weakened, as locals collapsed and members departed. Even allies feared for its future, and by 1941 union stalwart Oren Stephens acknowledged, “The fire is gone and even the embers are fading.”7 But resilient leaders plunged into World War II labor politics and initiated a bold campaign they hoped would revive the union. In response to growers’ claims of a nationwide agricultural worker shortage, they proposed an alternative to the wartime government-sponsored contract labor programs with Mexico and the Caribbean. They offered to help mobilize the vast underemployed rural labor force of the South to meet seasonal demands for the fields and canneries of the North, East, and West. They would assist federal officials by sending workers to a centralized location like the union headquarters in Memphis to sign contracts and direct workers to jobs. In contrast to the foreign worker programs, the Memphis-based union hiring hall would not cost taxpayers, it would be cheaper for employers, and it would reduce seasonal unemployment for United States citizens. It would also enable the union to expand its membership base. In 1942 the Tenant Farmers and the War Manpower Commission (WMC) coordinated a successful experimental plan that sent about two thousand union members to jobs in the Southwest and Florida.8 The American Farm Bureau Federation, however, fervently opposed the plan and coordinated grower efforts to eliminate it, “determined that farmworkers should not become unionized as a result of the war emergency.” In 1943 the Farm Bureau successfully pushed through the Pace Amendment to Public Law 45, the legislation that enacted the Bracero Program. The amendment prohibited the federal government from providing transportation for domestic farmworkers out of any county in the United States without written authorization from the local agricultural extension agent, an individual with close ties to influential growers. It also prohibited the federal government from setting wages for U.S. citizens, although PL 45 permitted government to determine wages for foreign workers under contract. In Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama, states with high rural unemployment, agents from the Farm Bureau–dominated State Employment Services convinced local authorities to interpret the legislation in a way that would allow them to jail union representatives for “interfering with labor” if they encouraged workers to depart for the Memphis hiring hall. Although the union protested that such a restriction on workers’ freedom of movement was unconstitutional and a form of peonage, neither the WMC nor the Department of Justice challenged

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the Farm Bureau. By 1948 the Arkansas State Employment Service even ruled that the union itself was an employment agent and required it to secure a license before directing workers to jobs out of state. Union President H. L. Mitchell complained that the Farm Bureau campaign “effectively ended the union’s program of cooperation with government agencies in providing its members with temporary work out of the South.” The Farm Bureau victory also bolstered its argument that there was a shortage of available domestic workers and a need to expand the Mexican Farm Labor Program, the initiative that introduced hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to U.S. farmers.9 Undaunted, Tenant Farmers leaders, in cooperation with their closest ally in the labor movement, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen (AMCBW) of the AFL, demonstrated that their hiring hall was effective. They set up a program with Leon Schacter, AMCBW Local 68 business manager, which sent more than twelve thousand Tenant Farmers members to seasonal jobs in unionized canneries in the mid-Atlantic states as well as the massive Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, with whom the AMCBW won a union contract in 1943. The seasonal workers gained dual union membership in the Tenant Farmers and the AMCBW, and about two-thirds of those employed in agriculture in the program worked under the AMCBW union contract. While the agricultural workers did not have to strike to gain union recognition, President John Seabrook of Seabrook Farms acknowledged: “They had the organization, there was no doubt about it. I think or thought that if Mr. [Henry] Ford couldn’t beat them, we couldn’t either. Since then I will say I don’t think we have suffered any from it.”10 The Tenant Farmers’ relationship with the AMCBW also helped it regain entry into the ranks of organized labor. In 1939 it established informal ties with the short-lived Farm Workers Association, soon renamed the Farm Workers Allied Union of America (FWAUA), an independent union created by Lillian Monroe in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Officials of the AFL state affiliate, the California State Federation of Labor (CSFL), were sympathetic to an FWAUA petition for affiliation and optimistic that a combined Tenant Farmers–FWAUA could become a stable AFL union. While the FWAUA soon collapsed, Tenant Farmers’ interest in joining the ranks of organized labor continued. Despite an unsuccessful 1940 petition for affiliation with the AFL, it persisted in seeking to belong to either of the major labor federations. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and future president of the

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CIO, enthusiastically supported a request by the Tenant Farmers, but the CIO ultimately turned it down on the grounds that the FTA already had jurisdiction over the nation’s agricultural workers.11 In 1946, the year the Tenant Farmers became the National Farm Labor Union, the AFL “was persuaded to accept the NFLU as one of its affiliated national unions.” Federation leaders were particularly impressed by its close relationship with the AMCBW and their cooperative hiring hall program during the war. In accepting the Farm Laborers the AFL was not motivated by a desire “to outflank the CIO,” whose efforts to attract the hearts and minds of farmworkers barely extended beyond occasional rhetorical flourish, particularly after it expelled the FTA for Communist ties in 1949.12 Rather, it responded to the AMCBW–Tenant Farmers request with the hope that the great enthusiasm to organize during the Great Depression would be renewed after the war. The AFL asserted that granting a charter to the Farm Laborers “marks one of the most significant steps in [its] growth and development,” and it envisioned a “vigorous organizational campaign” in every major agricultural region of the nation. Federation President William Green asserted in a February 1947 radio address to the union’s national convention that “potentially your union can be the largest in our country. We are ready to help you reach that goal.” The union agreed that AFL organizational machinery was “the most valuable asset the NFLU could secure in building a nationwide organization of farm labor.”13 It acted as a national union and adherent of organized labor more consistently than any immediate predecessors or successors, including the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the United Farm Workers, whose efforts beyond California were limited. The Farm Laborers’ legislative agenda focused on national rather than state-level issues that impacted rural working people, including the resettlement of former tenants and sharecroppers onto small farms and the creation of rural health and housing facilities. In 1947 it moved its headquarters from Memphis to Washington, D.C., symbolizing its national presence and focus. Yet it obtained few successes in legislation, in contrast to its counterparts in Puerto Rico and Hawai‘i, whose local electoral presence loomed large. Politicians in Congress understood that they would not pay a price for failing a union whose members’ votes and campaign contributions were unlikely to affect elections. The union could not even effectively influence top labor federation leaders, who continually compromised their support for national legislation on behalf of agricul-

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tural workers. Mitchell acknowledged that the farmworker in the continental United States is “not likely to be included under any of these [proposed labor] laws until he is organized.”14 The union sought a wide geographical reach but managed to establish only shallow local roots. In May 1945 it claimed five thousand paid and forty-five thousand enrolled members. By 1947, after it established a death benefit program, its paid membership reached fifteen thousand, about 70 percent of whom worked on plantations in the mid-South, with most of the others based in Florida and other East Coast states. During the Farm Laborers phase of its history, union organizing focused primarily on California, home to more farmworkers than any other state and site of the nation’s largest farm labor struggles in the 1930s. But it started the campaign without a local membership base and without organizers familiar with its rural communities, and it was beholden to the AFL for support, publicity, and direction.15 The AFL initially assigned two full-time organizers for the California campaign, Hank Hasiwar and Bill Becker, both connected with the Socialist Party. Hasiwar, who headed the effort, was a former business agent for the AFL International Union of Operating Engineers and the UAW in New Jersey prior to World War II. Becker had been involved in Socialist Party organizing in the New York area and the presidential campaigns of Norman Thomas. Neither had experience organizing workers in agriculture, and they did not have a preconceived plan. At first they maintained a low profile and proceeded largely by trial and error. After Ernesto Galarza attended a Farm Laborers Convention in late 1947, urging the union to pay more attention to Mexican workers, he was invited to join the union the following year.16 Galarza, who had spent much of his life in California, had worked in agriculture and was familiar with many aspects of the industry in the state. All three organizers shared a vision consistent with the broad social democratic outlook of the Socialist Party, but each was an independent thinker and did not adhere to a party line. Hasiwar and Becker soon realized that what they had learned from the writings of John Steinbeck, Carey McWilliams, and Stuart Jamieson was becoming quickly outdated. Through experience and the meticulous research conducted by Galarza after he arrived, they continued to adapt and experiment as they attempted to organize workers of different backgrounds, in a wide range of crops, and under constantly shifting social relations. The Anglo American arrivals from the upper South, on whom organizers had pinned their earliest strategic ideas, were being replaced by a heterogeneous group of workers of African, Asian (particularly Fili-

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pino), and Mexican backgrounds, who tended to cluster around specific crops produced in given sections of the state.

Geography, Social Relations, and Union Organizing Union organizers began by making contacts with local AFL affiliates and seeking out leaders among agricultural workers as the core of more than twenty different locals they established in the state.17 They soon identified four promising agricultural sections—the citrus-producing zone centered in Orange County, the San Gabriel Valley west of Los Angeles, and Ventura County; the vegetable-producing section along the Central Coast including the Salinas and Santa María Valleys; the diverse crop region of the Central Valley; and the winter vegetable- and fruit-growing Imperial Valley along the Mexican border. They based their campaign on their analysis of the potential for union building in each of the four regions. The citrus industry in the late 1940s employed more than ten thousand agricultural workers in Southern California, where many could obtain relatively steady jobs for much of the year. Valencia orange harvest lasted from late spring through fall, while lemons and Navel oranges matured between December and May, and in combination permitted individuals up to ten months’ annual employment. According to New York Times Reporter Gladwin Hill, many people found that employment in the groves while “not especially lucrative, is not unduly harsh.”18 Commercial citrus production in California began in the late nineteenth century, and it took off during World War I and the 1920s when employers lured thousands of Mexican immigrants, who soon dominated the harvest labor force, and encouraged them to settle permanently. While local packinghouse owners and the Sunkist cooperative exerted a great degree of power and control throughout the citrus region, it paled compared with their counterparts from the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association. The citrus groves were not plantations, they were not isolated, and workers were able to move into private houses in nearby communities as the rapidly expanding suburban world was encroaching upon the orchards.19 Sunkist and local packinghouses dominated employment relations, controlling production decisions, wages, and working conditions. They commonly arranged for transportation in trucks or buses, although workers increasingly drove or carpooled directly to nearby orchards. Workers established permanent residences near the groves and packing-

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Cities, towns, and major agricultural areas of California, 1947. From Preliminary Survey of Major Areas Requiring Outside Agricultural Labor, Extension Farm Labor Circular 38 (September 1947), inside back cover. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Labor Program, extension Service.

houses, shared neighborhoods, attended the same schools, and participated in local institutions. In comparison with other sections of the state, their stability of employment, local attachments, and Mexican immigrant ethnic dominance offered a potential for solidarity conducive to union organization. On the other hand, the increasingly diverse economy and sprawling suburbs offered alternate employment opportunities and complicated their consciousness as citrus workers. Furthermore, because

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employees received orders at times from Sunkist officials, packinghouse managers, and grove owners, as well as their immediate overseers, they often had difficulty pinpointing the enemy on the other side of the class struggle. Some observers have attributed the citrus region’s comparative labor tranquility to California’s exceptional geography, culture, or political economy, but a closer examination suggests that labor peace stemmed more from contingent historical circumstances. There had been earlier citrus harvest strikes in Southern California, although as Gilbert González suggests, labor organizing seemed to halt in the aftermath of the Orange County strike of 1936. Yet labor unrest heated up again in late January 1941, and this time organized labor joined the fray. More than fifteen hundred lemon pickers struck the massive Teague Ranch in Ventura County. By the second week of February more than four thousand grove and packing workers were involved, and at its peak more than six thousand people were on strike. The AFL granted strikers a charter as Local 22342 of the Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union, and they even gained support from then–Federation Secretary George Meany. Some growers agreed to wage increases and temporary contracts, but the majority banded together using long-familiar tactics including shutting off utilities, evicting workers from company-owned shacks, and recruiting strikebreakers from among local Junior College students and “some starving Okies.” The strike dragged on inconclusively until the end of harvest in May.20 Concerned about future unrest, citrus industry leaders quickly seized upon the war as an opportunity to secure contract workers and replace the resident harvest labor force. In late 1941 employers formed the Orange County Farmers Incorporated, with the explicit interest of recruiting Mexican braceros, and similar organizations quickly appeared throughout the region. Sunkist was a leading early proponent of the Mexican Labor Program and utilized the contract workers as the core of a new harvest labor force, housed in company-owned or -controlled camps. Employers were required to first seek out local workers, but inevitably growers complained that they were not desirable, while braceros “learned fast—they wanted to learn.” The tactic of hiring braceros quickly spread throughout the industry, permitting employers to gain unprecedented control over workers and to isolate them from local residents while preventing them from joining unions under threat of deportation.21 By 1950 Ellis Coman, manager of the Agricultural Producers Labor Committee (APLC), claimed that citrus growers “prefer domestic labor”

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but acknowledged that they relied almost exclusively on seasonal workers from Mexico. Coman also revealed another reason for grower infatuation with the contract labor program when he threatened hypocritically that if burdened by government “red tape,” namely that if negotiators from the United States failed to reach an agreement with Mexican authorities satisfactory to citrus growers, “we will use the wetbacks.” In practice citrus growers shifted between documented and undocumented Mexican workers during the late 1940s and early 1950s as they engaged in the shell game popularly known as the “drying-out process,” or “legalization” of undocumented workers. Coman even bragged about the ease of the procedure before Congressional representatives: “we put them (undocumented workers) on a truck and take them down there. They are physically put across the border and not very far, I will admit, but nevertheless they are put across the border and brought back and put under contract.” Employers’ brazen actions were possible because of sympathetic political allies, none more prominent than Richard Nixon, representing the 12th Congressional District of Southern California. In 1949 the rising politician complained to the commissioner of immigration and was quickly assured that Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) “agents had been instructed to stop snatching (undocumented) Mexican nationals” from southern California citrus ranches.22 The Farm Laborers developed few informed contacts, largely because local labor unions were comparatively weak and agricultural labor activism had ceased long before the union had arrived. When Ernesto Galarza visited the area in 1948, he acknowledged a lack of familiarity with the industry and its workers, reporting, “there is a complicated kind of crossmigration of farm workers right in the citrus belt which we will have to study closely some day. I’m of the opinion that such a study would point to better organizational approaches than those that have been followed in the past year.”23 During its California campaign the union made no concerted organizing effort among citrus industry workers. Turning to the Central Coast, particularly in the “Salad Bowl” of the Salinas Valley, the union was attracted to resident and nonlocal Mexicans, Anglos, and Filipinos who worked in asparagus and lettuce harvesting from April through September and carrot topping from June to January. Several thousand more worked seasonally in sugar beet topping, apple harvesting, and other tasks during the late summer and early fall employment peak. The organizers’ primary focus was a group of about five thousand Filipinos, mostly single men who migrated within the state during the year and worked in crews for long periods, traveling together in their

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own cars and staying in camp bunkhouses or cabins provided by growers or labor contractors. Many of them considered Stockton or Delano as their home during seasonal breaks in employment. Their common experience contributed to a sense of camaraderie and consciousness as workers. This was conducive to collective action and unionism. They conducted labor actions when conditions were favorable, including a notable lettuce strike in 1943 and another in asparagus in 1948 led by the FTA. Philip Veracruz, a farmworker and resident of Delano labor camps since 1943 and later a UFW leader, testified in 1950 that the Farm Laborers had a local chapter but that Filipinos were “afraid to join the union because of the fear of being evicted from their camps.” In 1947 the union began organizing them during the lettuce harvest, with support from the Salinas Central Trades and Labor Council, but it soon found conditions in the nearby Central Valley more enticing.24 The Central Valley between the San Joaquin River and Bakersfield had the most intense agricultural production and largest concentration of workers in the state. Its corporation-based commercial agriculture blossomed in the aftermath of World War I with the completion of a series of massive government-financed irrigation projects, further enhanced by a flourishing public-supported research program at the University of California. By the 1940s the Central Valley was among the nation’s top producers of several labor-intensive crops, headed by cotton, grapes, and tree fruits including peaches, apricots, plums, and oranges, as well as potatoes and tomatoes. To attract workers local employers recruited from diverse labor pools and offered comparatively high wages. During the 1920s they lured Mexican immigrants and induced them to settle in nearby cities and towns, often alongside working-class Anglo Americans and Filipinos. Even as the Great Depression intensified and many Mexicans left the state, the scale of agriculture expanded, so employers turned to areas of high unemployment, in particular the upper South, in search of rural Anglo Americans and smaller numbers of African Americans displaced by the disruption of cotton tenantry.25 The union organizers decided to focus on the Central Valley. They were especially attracted to the large and increasingly stable Anglo American population, who were less susceptible to legal attacks and easier to bring into the electoral arena. Furthermore, they would be more acceptable to powerful labor union allies than workers of color, and the organizers recognized that support from the labor establishment was necessary for the campaign.26 The unionists were attentive to the seasonal nature of production and

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peak periods of employment in the Valley. The first high point lasted from April through June, highlighted by chopping of cotton and harvesting of potatoes and Valencia oranges. A second and greater concentration occurred during July and August, marked by the harvest of tree fruits, early tomatoes, hay, and grain. The final and largest peak took place in late summer and fall, highlighted by the grape and cotton harvests.27 The organizers faced a powerful local agricultural establishment experienced in union challenges. During previous struggles growers had devised schemes to keep workers divided and insecure. They manipulated ethnic and racial differences, maintained segregated housing, recruited from new labor pools, and experimented with production to alter the work process. They also kept workers on the defensive through crop organizations and committees that were closely tied to the local political establishment, police forces, and courts controlled by friends or relatives. The organizers’ initial strategy was also influenced by the works of academics and popular writers who concentrated on the so-called “Dust Bowl migrants,” Anglo American families from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas who arrived en masse in the aftermath of the San Joaquin Valley cotton strike of 1933 to displace resident Mexican immigrants and their families. They soon understood that change was a constant feature of agriculture, as the workers from the upper South were being replaced by new groups of workers, increasingly of Mexican origin.28 People familiar with local agriculture were documenting the changes. The Migrant Ministry, a coalition of Protestant church groups that established projects to deal with migrant workers throughout the United States, estimated that in 1940 between 80 and 90 percent of farmworkers in the Central Valley were European Americans, but that employers were already starting to turn to workers from Mexico. Migrant Minister A. S. Moore reported in 1939 that only five of the twenty largest camps for migrant workers in Merced County were for Mexicans, but by 1942 they all were. Moore predicted that the signing of the International Labor Agreement between the United States and Mexico in 1942 “will mean, of course, that soon the migrant picture will revert to what it was before the stream of dust bowl people started coming.”29 While his prediction was accurate, the shift took place more gradually than he expected. Farm Labor organizers in 1947 were still focused on U.S. citizens, who had long struggled with growers over control of housing. During the Great Depression, as migration to California accelerated, growers and labor contractors had established new private camps consisting of bunkhouses, tents, and shacks. The dwellings were so appalling and generated

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such intense public criticism that federal officials were forced to respond. Led by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, they began erecting migrant labor camps of plain but sturdy cabins for individual families. John Steinbeck had observed, somewhat optimistically, that government camps offered “free spaces” for workers’ self- expression and permitted unhindered entry and exit of union sympathizers. One observer noted that the government camps “made it possible for a small fraction of the migratory army to remain in one place, to establish some kind of community life, to begin to educate their children—to hope—at least, for a life of comparative stability and human dignity.”30 But public interest in the fate of agricultural workers waned as the U.S. entry into World War II approached. Growers and their allies attacked the government camps and soon succeeded in cutting off public funding. The government sold or leased them to large landowners, who quickly raised rents, eliminated community facilities, kept out union sympathizers, and increasingly refused to rent to families, who brought greater stability than single workers. Galarza observed in the late 1940s that many old camps that had been vacant reappeared and that “the old line contractors who also ran the [private] camps are figuring to come back into the money now that the government camps seem to be on the skids.” Mike Soto, a married farmworker from Salinas, testified in 1950 that although he could get jobs with contractors he knew, most of them preferred single men.31 Grower efforts to regain control over housing aimed at increasing political vulnerability and instability—thus the favored migrant, seasonal, single, and noncitizen workers. But migrant workers continued to seek stability and settle, and former migrants clustered on the fringes of the valley’s larger cities and towns, segregated from middle-class districts. Settlements in the Fresno area consisted mostly of one-room shacks with outdoor toilets. These included Sunset Gardens, a predominantly white community, and Jericho, a largely black neighborhood. One observer noted that “the walls of Jericho are the slopes of the city dump that burns and smolders and stinks within a hundred yards of the camp.” Each day buses and trucks came to Sunset Gardens, Jerico, and similar neighborhoods to transport workers to nearby fields.32 Organizers consistently sought out settled workers as the core of union locals through which they hoped to organize migrant workers afterwards. Their efforts were complicated by a range of local factors, including varying conditions of housing, segregation, and patterns of social organization, as evident in the neighboring Central Valley communities of Wasco,

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Dinuba, and Arvin. In Wasco, the cotton and potato corporations offered little steady employment in early winter until February, when they started hiring a small number of workers to prepare the land, drive tractors, and cut potatoes for seed. From late April through mid-July, during potato harvest they lured more workers, including a small number of migrants. In the late 1940s they started using a mechanical digger that sharply reduced the demand for workers. One man operated the machine to cut potatoes and place them on the ground, followed by several men with sacks attached to a broad belt around their waists who filled the sacks by hand, carried them to the end of each row, and unloaded them onto a truck that hauled them to the packing shed, where women washed and graded them. A lull followed potato harvest when workers either sought jobs elsewhere or remained unemployed until cotton harvest, which peaked between September and November. Following the completion of the first massive irrigation projects during World War I, the cotton harvest offered more employment in Wasco and the Central Valley than any other crop. Men, women, and children filled the long canvas bags and dragged them to the end of the field to be weighed, dumped into trucks, and hauled to the gin. As in the case of potatoes, at the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s growers introduced mechanical harvesters, altering work patterns and sharply reducing employment.33 The Anglo American, African American, and Mexican workers of Wasco represented an objective but not a conscious class, according to sociologist Walter Goldschmidt, as many divisions separated them in their daily lives. Anglo Americans rarely attended churches and seldom participated in local social activities that might enhance their sense of solidarity. Furthermore, because of race privilege, they had more opportunities for individual upward mobility than resident Mexicans or African Americans. For European Americans, Goldschmidt concluded, “union organization fails to unify the farm labor group, particularly in Wasco, because the workers are not willing to identify themselves as laborers.” Among African American and Mexican workers he found little evidence of close social ties but “no friction or ill feeling” between them. They were not sharply segregated from each other residentially and even shared many public spaces, including bars and liquor stores. Blacks had their own churches, while Mexicans were segregated in the Catholic Church, potential spaces for enhancing a collective consciousness.34 Meanwhile, attitudes among the overwhelmingly European American middle class heightened race and class tensions as bosses, professionals, and leaders of the business community demeaned farmworkers, particu-

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larly those of African and Mexican background. Goldschmidt noted that African Americans in particular “must maintain a respectful attitude and their occasional failure to do so is the subject of ill-feeling among the whites.” Even outsiders from whom sympathies might be expected expressed denigrating attitudes, including a Wasco priest who asserted, “Mexicans are children of nature and do not take their religion very seriously. They have a kind of inferiority complex and feel they are looked down upon” by the dominant race.35 Separate geographic, social, and cultural spaces that limited options for upward mobility simultaneously offered more opportunities for African Americans and Mexicans to develop a consciousness as workers conducive to labor organizing, but Anglo Americans were still the majority of the local farm labor force. The union’s task was further complicated by distinct local social formations in neighboring towns dominated by the same industry, as in the grape-growing communities of Dinuba and Arvin. Dinuba was comparatively stable, dominated politically by independent Anglo growers, and lacked the sharp class and racial cleavages of Arvin, which was controlled by the DiGiorgio family corporation. Arvin exhibited several features of a company town, including tight corporation control of politics and police, and much worker housing. The sharp class divisions that restricted worker freedom of movement and expression were offset by structural conditions conducive to developing worker consciousness and possibilities for organization.

Confrontation at DiGiorgio The size and visibility of DiGiorgio Corporation holdings as well as conscious company practices contributed to strikes at the Arvin Ranch prior to the arrival of the Farm Laborers. In 1939 workers affiliated with the UCAPAWA walked off the job during pear harvest in July and again during grape harvest in August and September. On both occasions the company leaned on the state, particularly law enforcement officials, to intimidate and assault workers and weaken striker morale. Ultimately the company played on racial divisions by recruiting Filipino and Japanese workers to replace the predominantly European American workforce. Again in the late summer of 1941, during the grape harvest, workers not affiliated with a union struck the company and obtained a wage increase of five cents per hour.36 Six year later the Farm Laborers decided to focus on DiGiorgio fol-

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lowing months of planning and organizing in the area. The union called a strike on October 1, 1947, that gained nationwide visibility and support. The strike lasted more than two and a half years and became “the longest sustained effort of its kind in the history of American agriculture.”37 Union organizers arrived in California in 1946 and after investigating other locations turned to the Central Valley in the spring of 1947. They first focused on its northern section because workers there were longer settled and because of strong support from local labor unions. This convinced the CSFL to assign organizer Curt Hyans full-time to the effort. The Farm Laborers formed locals in the peach-growing district around Marysville and the asparagus district around Stockton, but both collapsed when growers fired union sympathizers. In June it shifted to the south, initiating a campaign in eastern Kern County. The union organized on a ranch-by-ranch basis, according to Hasiwar, “as we would do a factory and to look to build labor support around it before we go in, before we make our move.” The Kern County Central Labor Council (CLC) established a Farm Labor Organizing Committee with representatives from Teamsters, Butcher Workers, and Winery Worker locals. Union organizers also approached workers harvesting fruit around Exeter and Farmersville, but with little success. They fared better at the Zaninovich fruit ranch, where workers established a local, struck, and picketed, but after a week the effort fizzled when the employer intimidated and fired workers.38 The organizers found a much more receptive response at DiGiorgio’s Earle Fruit ranch in Arvin. They received the help of former Oklahoman Bob Whatley, a one-time company employee and union volunteer organizer. Workers were eager to organize and confront Joseph DiGiorgio, a Sicilian immigrant who had built a massive agricultural empire through astute farming practices and political contacts that allowed him access to cheap land, water, and workers. He was the largest grower in the region, controlling more than twenty-two thousand acres, over half consisting of the massive Arvin ranch, which produced grapes, plums, pears, asparagus, potatoes, and other vegetables. The property included a winery.39 Unionism spread quickly among the company’s full-time employees. A majority were former small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers from Oklahoma and Arkansas who had settled in working-class and slum districts around Arvin and neighboring towns including Lamont, Delano, Shafter, and Bakersfield. The company also hired “sizeable concentrations of families of Mexican ancestry who have worked in the crops for years” but refused to employ African Americans. At harvest peak, it added a diverse group of seasonal and migratory workers who occupied company

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housing and nearby camps. When the Farm Laborers’ drive began, DiGiorgio employed about 1,100 full-time Anglo Americans, 200 Mexican Americans, and a smaller number of Filipinos and Japanese, along with about 130 braceros under contract.40 Union organizers attracted members by emphasizing company practices that provoked worker discontent, including setting wages below prevailing local rates; workdays ranging from twelve to sixteen hours, sometimes seven days per week; and requiring irrigators to work twelve-hour days but receive pay for only eleven hours. DiGiorgio required employees to report and wait for several hours before starting, transported them in unsafe and overloaded vehicles, and sent them home without pay when jobs were not available. It often gouged workers for “services” and offered no provisions for seniority or employment security, while company foremen hired and fired people at will.41 DiGiorgio manipulated ethnic distinctions and latent rivalries by creating separate Mexican American and European American crews, setting different wage scales for specific tasks based on ethnicity, and reinforcing racial divisions in housing. European American managers lived in attractive homes in middle-class residential districts, while workers resided in segregated neighborhoods with few amenities, often on the urban fringe and in small towns, or in segregated worker colonies and labor camps where they occupied shacks, trailers, and tents on wooden platforms. While standards for plumbing in general were not particularly high, facilities at camps for DiGiorgio workers had a particularly unsavory reputation. According to one report, “within sight of DiGiorgio’s huge new winery, tent colonies, dilapidated trailer camps, ditch bank settlements and full-blown vineyard ghettoes dot the landscape. They stand out like ugly rips in the smooth green baize of crops that cover the valley.”42 Hasiwar recalled, “we began calling meetings all over,” behind the nearby Smokehouse Café, later in workers’ houses, at labor camps, and in the Arvin community center built under the Works Progress Administration. By early July more than 850 company employees had joined the union while an additional 128 ranch workers joined its ally, Teamsters Local 87. Organizers had little difficulty attracting non-Anglo Americans, including a group of Filipinos who signed membership cards but departed when the asparagus harvest ended. Although DiGiorgio circulated rumors among Mexico-born and Mexican American workers that they were prohibited from joining the union, Hasiwar noted, “we did fairly good with the Mexicans.” He received assistance from his future brotherin-law, Luís De Anda, and his future wife, Delphina. Hasiwar noted that

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Mexican Americans at DiGiorgio initially hesitated to join, not because of aversion to unions or strikes, but because of their memories in the 1930s when the “Okies scabbed on them.”43 Following a strategy the Tenant Farmers used during the Great Depression, the union consciously downplayed ethnic distinctions while emphasizing commonality of interests and shared consciousness as workers. Hoping to stem further loss of members due to the widespread company firings of union sympathizers, on September 22 the Farm Laborers approached DiGiorgio to request negotiations for a collective bargaining contract. The union also sought a raise of ten cents per hour for field workers, a grievance committee, and the rehiring of members fired for union sympathies. It did not demand a closed shop, union check-off, or control of hiring. DiGiorgio responded by firing more workers. He was not concerned that his actions were likely to provoke a strike. By the end of the month, union sympathizers agreed that it was time to act. Hasiwar asserted, “strikes are precipitated by the workers in such a fashion that unless action is taken the entire program may be impaired for what they may term a want of courage.” DiGiorgio had forced the union’s hand, and at its September 30 meeting at the Weedpatch Grange Hall, with about 750 members in attendance, Hasiwar recalled, “everybody voted to strike.” The union portrayed the strike as a watershed of major historical proportions. As Hasiwar claimed, “a struggle took place that will be marked in the annals of the labor movement.”44 The strike had two major stages. The first, continuing through July 1948, was animated and massive, with thousands of direct participants. It started in the fields and expanded into a nationwide boycott. A second phase involved protracted maneuvering outside the fields, with fewer direct participants. It lasted until the union called off the struggle in May 1950, and it involved mostly political and legal maneuvering.45 On the first day of the strike, pickets surrounded the huge ranch and convinced everybody to halt production, and at least 1,100 DiGiorgio employees, including the 130 braceros, completely shut down the grape harvest. Hasiwar was enthusiastic: “[W]hen we struck the ranch, it was total. Nobody went to work.”46 The union quickly gained support from allies to provide food and clothing for local strikers and their families, promote labor education, and enhance solidarity. It set up a strikers’ kitchen operated by the women’s committee, supported by the DiGiorgio Strike Relief Committee set up by the Kern County CLC. Weekly union meetings at the Arvin Community Hall brought together entire families, educated workers, and encour-

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aged broad participation while resolving day care issues. Union leaders acknowledged that the meetings were “a long way from being what they ought to be both from an educational and organizational standpoint,” but that boys and girls followed discussions and debates intently, learning more about the strike and labor unionism. When Galarza joined the union as director of education in the spring of 1948, he introduced a slide projector into the programs, a strategy he considered effective, as he acknowledged, “our people haven’t been to enough Hollywood movies to be greatly spoiled for good educational shows.”47 Consistent with its earlier history as a union of small farmers and tenants as well as wage earners, the union sought to attract support from small agricultural producers. It was not a mistaken strategy and did not seek to be interclass, but instead emphasized commonalities between small farmers and farm laborers, both of whom worked the land and were exploited by large corporations. Sympathetic small farmers included Bertha Rankin, who donated a plot of land where union members constructed a Community House, a free space that DiGiorgio could not control, where individuals of all ethnic backgrounds, permanent residents and seasonal workers alike, attended meetings, shared meals, and participated in recreational activities. It was particularly important because DiGiorgio had experience keeping union sympathizers off company property, evicting strikers from company-controlled dwellings, and was a leader in the campaign to eliminate government-controlled labor camps.48 Conditions were sharply different than in Hawai‘i, where less experienced employers paid little attention to workers who used recreational centers, mess halls, and sports facilities to build their union. DiGiorgio had guidance from the Associated Farmers (AF), originally formed to quell worker uprisings in the Central Valley during the Great Depression. On the first day of the strike, AF president Robert Schmeiser came to company headquarters, and from that day forward he “used to come down and visit” the Arvin ranch regularly in his blue Cadillac to help coordinate activities. The AF also “played a very strong role” in producing antiunion propaganda through the Special Citizens Committee Investigating DiGiorgio Farms, composed of leading growers and representatives of the Farm Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis, and the Rotary Clubs. The Committee published a pamphlet for nationwide distribution, A Community Aroused, which challenged union claims that wages and working conditions were terrible and denied that a strike existed at DiGiorgio.49 The corporation also found allies among local agents of the state, in-

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cluding a sympathetic County Board of Supervisors that hastily passed a resolution to prohibit strikers’ use of loudspeakers on the picket line. Its language was nearly identical to ordinances in which local and state courts had ruled unconstitutional restrictions on individual freedom of speech during earlier strikes. The resolution, however, served immediate company interests in removing another union weapon while draining it of precious resources by forcing a court challenge. Meanwhile county sheriffs and deputies made wholesale arrests, jailing more than five hundred strikers on trumped-up charges while setting bail at $50, the legal maximum. Local law enforcement was also derelict in its handling of the most extreme act of violence instigated by union supporters, when four strikers were found guilty of a misdemeanor for cutting down some DiGiorgio fruit trees. They were held on bail of $15,000 each, an amount that was reduced on appeal to $250. Furthermore, in late October DiGiorgio obtained a local court order permitting him to evict strikers from companyowned cottages and bunkhouses. It even gained the support of local Health Department officials, who ordered union members to stop bringing coffee and sandwiches to people on the picket line, citing code violations.50 Employer strategy aimed at wearing down the union by tying up its legal department, draining its strike fund, and driving union supporters away. Although some evicted strikers moved into the homes of neighbors, others were compelled to depart and were lost to the union cause. The protagonists also carried on the struggle through the media. Local English language radio stations, criticized by Kern County Labor Council President Fred West as “most reactionary,” were overwhelmingly sympathetic to DiGiorgio. To present its side the union had to purchase radio time using funds donated by local union members, who also telephoned the stations to talk to reporters informally and request that they be heard on the air. The labor press sided with the union, which also fared well in the tiny Spanish-speaking media, as Delphina De Anda kept workers informed of events on her morning Spanish language radio program in Bakersfield.51 Major commercial media, including the Los Angeles Times and the influential Hearst newspapers of the state, overwhelmingly supported DiGiorgio and regularly denounced the union. In the nearest city, the biweekly Bakersfield Press was somewhat more favorable to the strikers, but the much larger, daily Bakersfield Californian functioned as a mouthpiece of the company, provoking union members to picket its offices in protest of its unbalanced and inaccurate coverage of events. Union Local 218 President James Price, for instance, criticized a Californian account of an

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arrest of several union members as a “falsehood. The paper won’t print our viewpoint, but represented the boys as guilty. It is supposed to be a free press and it should print both sides.”52 DiGiorgio, on the other hand, claimed publicly that there was no strike, a deceit widely repeated by the Associated Farmers, who asserted that only “strangers are on the picket line.” DiGiorgio co-owner W. B. Camp inaccurately charged that George Meany and Walter Reuther had “planted an organizational goon squad” and that “not one single worker on our farm joined the picket line.” The company found mouthpieces among federal government officials like Assistant Secretary of Labor Charles T. Brannan, who referred to the “alleged” strike at DiGiorgio.53 Despite its dominance in media outlets, DiGiorgio was unable to recruit a significant number of strikebreakers from the local labor reserve in the San Joaquin Valley, estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000 potential workers. As of November 4, more than five weeks after the strike began, fewer than a dozen local residents were working in the fields, along with a crew of about 60 undocumented Mexican strikebreakers. In the packing sheds where the company normally employed 600 people, it could attract only about 125, and many were inexperienced youth working in violation of labor laws. Overcoming company influence on agencies of local government and the media, the union had gained the sympathy and overwhelming support of working people in the Central Valley who refused to scab.54 To find workers DiGiorgio turned to more distant locations, particularly El Paso, the gateway to the Mexican interior. It used state Farm Labor Offices, placed advertisements in newspapers and the radio without mentioning the strike, falsely promising prospective employees hot and cold running water and permanent year-round jobs. DiGiorgio also hired John Reed, former labor commissioner for the State of Texas, and his agent, Joe Silva, as labor contractors to recruit and transport a group of more than two hundred Mexican Americans and undocumented Mexicans from El Paso to prune grape vines and plum trees. The new arrivals only learned that they were being used as strikebreakers the morning they awoke on DiGiorgio property. Strikers soon convinced most of them to depart, and the union obtained warrants for the arrest of Reed and Silva for violating the Byrnes Act, which prohibited labor recruitment under false pretenses, but the union lacked the influence to compel the state to punish the lawbreakers.55 The union continued with its challenges. In the spring of 1949 it convinced the California Department of Employment to refuse certifica-

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tion of braceros to work at DiGiorgio. Corporation Vice President B. G. Barton charged that the decision represented an unwarranted and “clear breach” of contract, implying that it was not bound to the terms of the Mexican Labor Contract that prohibited braceros from working for employers being struck. Meanwhile the AF complained that if union pickets could be used to remove Mexican contract workers, “who will then do the stoop labor? American workers won’t.”56 The complaint implicitly acknowledged that the union had organized DiGiorgio employees, halted production, and convinced local workers not to scab, which compelled the company to turn to the Mexican border for replacements. Barton had adopted an increasingly popular grower strategy stereotyping farm labor in the dominant popular culture as an occupation not appropriate for “Americans,” in other words, European Americans. The corporation was anticipating a demographic shift not yet evident to many contemporaries, even in organized labor. The struggle over state power reached the federal level, particularly agencies of the U.S. Departments of Labor and Agriculture, which had been staffed with many individuals sympathetic to farmworkers and unions in the 1930s. But a decade later administrators’ attitudes and policies had shifted markedly. On the first day of the strike the USDL forced a crew of braceros supporting the walkout to return to their jobs under threat of deportation, and during the course of the strike it rejected or delayed numerous requests from both the union and the Mexican embassy to remove them. Prominent figures in the national media, including NBC reporter Chet Huntley and journalist Harry Flannery, criticized the federal government for forcing the workers to break the strike. Workers Defense League (WDL) Secretary Rowland Watts complained to Secretary of State George Marshall that “keeping Mexicans at the ranch as strikebreakers under the threat of deportation constitutes a particularly vicious type of peonage.” Constant pressure finally forced the USDL to remove them on November 10, but by then the grape harvest was nearly complete.57 As union pressure made hiring contract workers more difficult, DiGiorgio turned to undocumented Mexican workers. The union treated them as scabs and called on the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport them. Between 1947 and 1949 the INS raided DiGiorgio nineteen times, arresting and removing 315 undocumented workers, although many later returned under a different name. By recruiting Mexican citizens, isolating Anglo and Mexican workers from each other, and trying to convince workers of Mexican origin that they were not welcome in the

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labor movement, DiGiorgio sought not only to obtain more workers but also attempted “to introduce a racial element in the situation and thus to divide the strikers.”58 In January 1948 the union sought to turn the conflict into a “crusade” in organized labor by calling for a boycott of all DiGiorgio products, which the AFL placed on its “Do Not Patronize” list. The CSFL and its Los Angeles affiliates, particularly locals of the Teamsters, Retail Clerks, and Winery Workers, played important roles. Teamsters Local 187 sought to block the flow of wine from the Clovis plant of Italian Swiss Colony, picketing rail cars and persuading truck drivers not to supply the company. Union members followed trucks to the Los Angeles Safeway warehouse and the company-owned New York Fruit Auction, its main outlet for fresh fruit in the nation, gaining support from local Teamsters who refused to handle DiGiorgio products they classified as Hot Cargo. Even after national union President Dave Beck caved in to pressure and made a deal with grower groups who threatened to submit hot cargo legislation, many local Teamsters still refused to unload DiGiorgio products.59 The Farm Laborers cultivated support from church, student, and progressive organizations, and DiGiorgio responded by switching labels, as it did on other occasions, including the UFWOC boycott in the late 1960s. The boycott was most effective where union support was strongest, particularly in cities on the West Coast. Researcher Ken Blum suggests that it was “more comprehensive and better executed” than the grape boycott of late 1965 and 1966 that contributed to the first NFWA contract with Schenley.60 In the spring of 1948 the Hollywood Film Council, representing AFL unions in motion pictures, produced a twenty-minute documentary film, Poverty in the Valley of Plenty, which revealed abysmal working and housing conditions in the San Joaquin Valley. The sympathetic presentation cast union members to speak on their own behalf, effectively refuting the company claim that they were not on strike. Union sympathizers presented the documentary to audiences nationwide, particularly members of unions as well as liberal and religious organizations, to gain additional moral and financial support. Cash contributions from organized labor alone exceeded $250,000 during the course of the strike.61 The Farm Laborers even reached out to unionists in Mexico, aware of constraints faced by labor unions beholden to the Mexican government in the mainstream Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), many of whose officials benefited personally from the Bracero Program. While limited in opportunities to work with CTM affiliates, the union estab-

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lished a positive relationship with the independent Confederación Proletaria Nacional de México (CPN). In October 1947 the CPN denounced both governments for collaborating in the hiring of Mexican citizens as strikebreakers while it demanded that any future international agreement explicitly recognize the right of contract workers to join trade unions in the United States. The CPN in 1948 created an affiliate for braceros in the United States, the Alianza de Braceros, USA, whose members automatically received Farm Laborers membership cards.62 The Farm Laborers took to heart the admonition of workers to unite across borders, and union efforts to garner support from organized labor nationally and internationally far exceeded those of any of its predecessors in the continental United States. The union also gained support from influential public figures, including a support group formed in the spring of 1948, the National Citizens Committee to Aid the DiGiorgio Strikers. Members included the Rev. John Hayes Holmes of the Community Church of New York, Rowland Watts of the Workers Defense League, author John Dos Passos, Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party, and Mike Masaoka of the Japanese American Citizens League. Church leaders throughout the nation also became involved, and a group of Los Angeles Protestant ministers, headed by the Reverend Owen Geer, Southern California chair of the Methodist Commission on Social Action, visited Arvin to talk with DiGiorgio employees. The ministers found that the Special Citizens Committee Investigating DiGiorgio Farms was a front for the Associated Farmers, that DiGiorgio had made many false claims, that company employees overwhelmingly supported the union, and that at the start of the strike they had totally shut down production at the Arvin ranch.63 Frustrated by early union successes, DiGiorgio soon responded with violence, which had not been a significant issue earlier. Four months into the strike, Hasiwar acknowledged that the only important civil liberties issue that the union faced involved local ordinances enacted by Kern County officials. Company violence began in early 1948 in response to an open request by the union for assistance from the state’s labor movement. Members of the CSFL and local union allies responded enthusiastically, sponsoring a “Friendship Caravan” of automobiles carrying food, supplies, and funds that traveled simultaneously from Eureka and San Diego to Bakersfield, where they held a parade and rally. DiGiorgio tried to disrupt the caravan by hauling paid strikebreakers in a company truck to provoke a fight, but the state Highway Patrol blocked them. On February 6 about five hundred cars filled with union enthusiasts held

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the planned rally and brought a new surge of enthusiasm to the strikers. An optimistic President H. L. Mitchell called the Friendship Caravan “the most significant demonstration of the unity of organized industrial workers with agricultural labor ever to occur in the United States.”64 The following day DiGiorgio officials, led by personnel manager Bob Kelly, general manager Max Newman, and farm equipment manager Walt Palladino, led an attack of about forty paid goons, including ex-convicts from San Quentin, armed with tire irons and clubs, on a union picket line. The attackers hospitalized union members George Oslin, Ray Copland, and Lawrence Williams, whose injuries ranged from a broken jaw and fractured skull to lacerations on the face and internal wounds. Eyewitnesses testified that the DiGiorgio bosses had provoked the fight, beating and kicking peaceful strikers, while local sheriffs on the scene “conveniently” disappeared. In an interview immediately following the incident, Joseph DiGiorgio responded, “I don’t want to see any bloodshed, but we don’t intend to take their lies and insults any longer.” The assault provoked a crowd of nearly one thousand union members and supporters, armed with clubs and guns, to publicly confront the armed scabs and local sheriff and deputies who protected them. Although union leaders restrained the crowd, Hasiwar considered this event a turning point against the union, when many younger workers who disagreed with the union’s commitment to nonviolence began to drift away.65 The Farm Laborers also responded to the attack on civil liberties by moving away from the primary focus in the fields to address the rights of farmworkers in general. Ultimately it involved the legitimacy of agricultural unionism in the United States, an issue left unresolved by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The main protagonists were the American Federation of Labor and the American Farm Bureau Federation. Should agricultural workers in the United States have the right to organize without facing employer intimidation and violence? Should agricultural employers be compelled to accept collective bargaining on terms equivalent to those of industrial employers? The violence also afforded the union an opportunity to appoint Ernesto Galarza to the position of director of research and education in March 1948. It was funded by a grant from the Robert Marshall Civil Liberties Trust of New York and the AFL, with a focus on civil rights issues involving Mexican Americans in the Southwest. The treatment of Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers at DiGiorgio offered ample justification for the appointment. Some observers suggest that Galarza was not an ideal choice because he had no union experience and little in

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common with farmworkers, “beyond sharing their language and ethnic background.” A closer look, however, indicates otherwise. Galarza was born in Nayarit, Mexico, at age six came to California, and with his family worked several years in fruits, vegetables, and cotton, spending winters in the slums of Los Angeles. Public school teachers soon recognized his brilliance and helped him secure scholarships to obtain a BA at Occidental College, an MA in Mexican history at Stanford, and a PhD in economics from Columbia University. Between 1936 and 1946 he was a labor representative for the Pan American Union and worked directly with the U.S. government and organized labor in Latin America. In appointing Galarza, the union recognized a greater need for educating workers and the public, including the need to overcome racial antagonisms.66 But most importantly, the presence of Galarza—Mexican in origin, California-bred, and rooted in agriculture—reflected a profound shift in union awareness, strategy, and leadership. The union was coming to terms with the rapidly changing demographic composition of the agricultural labor force in the state—and the individual who best understood the changes. The focus on civil liberties was timely as DiGiorgio provoked another incident shortly after union allies conducted a second relief caravan in April, donating more than one hundred tons of food and clothing and almost thirteen thousand dollars in cash. On May 1 a carload of armed thugs staged a drive-by of a meeting of a union strike committee, spraying union headquarters with bullets. One shot struck James Price, president of union Local 218, in the head and wounded him critically, but the DiGiorgio company doctor refused assistance. Price survived but was disabled for the remainder of his life. The widespread publicity and pressure compelled California Governor Earl Warren to condemn the assassination attempt and call for an investigation, yet no punishment materialized.67 The Farm Laborers’ inability to stem repeated violent employer actions contrasted with its contemporaries’ experiences in the Caribbean and the Pacific. In Hawai‘i the Longshore Union had enough political influence to restrain local police, sheriffs, and private thugs from declaring open season on workers. A weaker but still influential Confederación in Puerto Rico could not prevent the highly publicized company-led attacks on peaceful strikers at Central Aguirre during the 1942 strike; however, while not punished, the attacks were widely condemned by organized labor and influential political leaders in Puerto Rico and were not repeated. A second important civil rights issue involved the right of agricultural workers to inclusion under collective bargaining and related labor

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laws. DiGiorgio vehemently refused to concede that farmworkers had rights equal to those of other workers, hiding behind the longstanding claim of ‘agricultural exceptionalism,” or an expectation of special treatment under the law. The AF, the Farm Bureau, and other grower groups sought to divert attention from the legal inconsistencies by portraying Joseph DiGiorgio positively, as an exceptionally successful family farmer, the best agricultural employer in the state, and a kindly and paternalistic individual who “had built up work” for people in need. DiGiorgio himself claimed that the unionization of farm labor was “impractical and impossible,” and agreed with New York Governor (and 1948 Republican Party presidential candidate) John Dewey that “the farmers of the United States are irrevocably opposed to the unionization of farmworkers as this is a means of collecting union fees without any benefits to the workers.” He insisted that he would never permit unionization “as long as the employees themselves oppose such a move” but hypocritically prohibited workers a venue to express their opinions freely.68 He could paternalistically claim to know what was best for workers only in a setting where they lacked basic labor rights, underscoring the sham of democracy for farmworkers in the continental United States, even compared with the colonies of Puerto Rico and Hawai‘i. A related issue involved red-baiting of the union and its sympathizers. AF President Robert Schmeiser charged that the union was “using Communist front groups” to manipulate the state AFL. DiGiorgio claimed: “[W]e know that all this agitation is Communist-inspired by subversive elements,” which he used as a pretext to request that the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities (the Tenney Committee) investigate the strike. The Tenney Committee began its hearings in February 1948, only three days after company goons had attacked union picket lines. State Representative Hugh Burns emphasized that the committee was not concerned about company-directed violence, civil rights, or even about the accuracy of competing claims about the strike. Rather, he asserted, “we are interested in determining if the farm labor trouble is Communist-inspired, as Joseph DiGiorgio and others have charged.” DiGiorgio testified that the union was engaged in “obvious Communist maneuvers” to foment unrest and violence in order to force unionization, and again denied that a strike existed. California Republican Congressional Representative Alfred J. Elliot charged, “here is a case where communistic activities are connected with a program of picketing of the DiGiorgio farms.” DiGiorgio allies also attacked the National Sharecroppers Fund as a “Communist-front Organization” and advised H. L.

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Mitchell to sever his connection to the organization. While the Tenney Committee concluded that the union was “embarrassed by Communist efforts to inject Communists into the strike,” in the end it gave the union “a clean bill of health,” an implicit acknowledgement that DiGiorgio’s charges were false.69 Yet Farm Labor leaders went beyond the defensive posture adopted by many radical unions during the Cold War. Union President H. L. Mitchell was determined to “fight fire with fire” by portraying the union as “firmly anti-communist.” The union prohibited Communists from becoming members even before it was required by AFL policy, and during the 1948 presidential campaign Mitchell openly attacked Progressive Party leader Henry Wallace, the only major candidate to express interest and support for the DiGiorgio strikers. Recalling that as secretary of agriculture in the 1930s Wallace had failed to protect Tenant Farmers members from being evicted from their dwellings during strikes, Mitchell asserted that it was too late for him to be converted and that his union refused “to be made a political football by an apostle of Joe Stalin.”70 The anti-Communist position stemmed from the union’s earlier history and relations with the UCAPAWA. Antagonisms continued in 1945 when the FTA had tried to prevent Tenant Farmers members from being sent to jobs at the Campbell Soup Company in New Jersey under union contract. In California, FTA organizers had been active before the Farm Laborers arrived and had established membership and collective bargaining contracts in several canneries. The rivalry soon reached into the Central Valley, when in the spring of 1948 the FTA supported a strike called by Filipinos cutting asparagus near Stockton, and its organizers quickly moved into Kern County, distributing union leaflets in the DiGiorgio strike zone encouraging workers to join the FTA. Hasiwar fumed: “This is the usual cheap brand of Commie tactics and an indication of what they will resort to on orders from the Kremlin. . . . If the Commies think they’re going to move in on the DiGiorgio strike they got another think [sic] coming. Our people won’t have anything to do with them and they better not come near us.”71 Even after the FTA was ousted from organized labor over the issue of Communism, tensions did not abate, yet the CIO was slow to make any concerted effort to support farmworker organizing on the continent. Galarza had not participated in clashes between Tenant Farmers and UCAPAWA leaders in the late 1930s and he was not passionate about the issue. In 1951 he even criticized the folly of labor leaders in the United States for their harsh attacks on communism internationally because “we

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never delivered a program” abroad to improve workers’ social and economic welfare. He concluded that in the international arena, “our record is so pathetic I hardly know what to add to it by way of comment. The commies have a wide margin on us.”72 DiGiorgio failed in red-baiting the union, but as the struggle shifted from the fields to the offices, halls, and back rooms of state agencies, the company continued on the offensive. It devoted abundant resources to three important confrontations that helped determine the outcome of the struggle—lawsuits over public screenings of the film Poverty in the Valley of Plenty; an injunction based on the Taft-Hartley Act to halt the union boycott; and a U.S. Congressional Committee to investigate the strike. DiGiorgio sued Paramount Pictures, the union, and the Central Labor Council of California on November 11, 1949, for libel based on contents allegedly included in the documentary. Union attorney Alexander Schullman considered the suit a nuisance as there was nothing libelous in the film, arguing that “if a stiff resistance was indicated, they might drop the suit.” He warned, however, that “if a fight is not indicated, a new weapon has been placed in the hands of a major business.” But legal support depended entirely on the AFL, which was unwilling to pay for the defense effort. The federation caved in without a fight and agreed to corporation demands that the Farm Laborers and Hollywood Film Council never again show the film and do everything possible to ensure that any other third parties destroy all copies.73 This was a major defeat for the union and marked the beginning of a retreat by the AFL in its postwar support for farmworker organizing. The decision came back to haunt organized labor and successors of the Farm Laborers in later years. A second battle, the injunction, was resolved largely behind closed doors. It involved the DiGiorgio effort to apply the Taft-Hartley Amendment to agriculture. In November 1947 the Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce, acting on behalf of DiGiorgio through Republican U.S. Representative Alfred Elliot, sought the injunction against union pickets. The chamber claimed that union picketing violated the recently passed legislation, which prohibited striking one employer for the purpose of forcing another to recognize a labor organization, and it prohibited secondary boycotts. The NLRB took the case to court on behalf of DiGiorgio, seeking an injunction to prohibit the secondary boycott, effective July 1948. Federal District Court Judge Pierson Hall granted the injunction, ruling that the regional director of the NLRB had “reasonable cause” to believe that Taft-Hartley was being violated and that it was mandatory for the court to consider the evidence sufficient to prohibit the secondary

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boycott, disallowing the union from securing help from other unions by refusing to handle DiGiorgio products.74 The decision was based on highly flawed legal grounds, as union attorneys argued, since nothing in Taft-Hartley or any state law prevented picketing an employer or a wholly owned subsidiary for refusing to recognize a union. Furthermore, Taft-Hartley on its face was not applicable under any circumstances to the strike and boycott against DiGiorgio. The Taft-Hartley Act was an amendment to the NLRA, which specifically “shall not include any individual employed as an agricultural laborer.” Union attorney Alexander H. Schullman challenged the District Court ruling as a violation of its civil rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, a case of “outright class legislation, depriving agricultural workers of any protection under the law” but applying penalties preventing them from exercising their rights as citizens. On appeal union attorneys were able to get the injunction vacated in June 1951, but nearly two years had passed and the strike was over.75 A third Farm Laborers–DiGiorgio confrontation outside the fields involved public hearings on the strike by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor on November 12 and 13, 1949, in Bakersfield, conducted at the request of both the corporation and the union. DiGiorgio tried to submit a report that inaccurately claimed that the union had embezzled strike funds and that the motion picture Poverty in the Valley of Plenty was filled with misrepresentations. Taking the spotlight in attacking the union was the rising political star Richard Nixon, whom Hasiwar described as “a vicious bastard.” The DiGiorgio piece, with its inaccurate claims and outright falsehoods, did not appear in the official subcommittee report. Nevertheless the company was able to make it look official, with assistance from the law partner of a DiGiorgio family member, Representative Thomas Werdel. Although Werdel was not a member of the subcommittee and not entitled to sign the official report, he represented the local district and was allowed the courtesy of submitting anything he wished into the appendix of the Congressional Record, where it appeared. DiGiorgio could misrepresent it as an official report and send its contents to grower and media groups throughout the nation, who treated it as news. Forensic evidence later revealed that the document, attributed to Werdel, had actually been written on a typewriter in the San Francisco offices of the DiGiorgio Corporation. When Galarza approached the chair of the committee, Cleveland Bailey, to ask about the document, he recalled that Bailey responded: “I am shocked. There is no report. There was no meeting. We didn’t even discuss it in committee.”

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Yet even top labor leaders failed to challenge the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and falsifications in the document. Galarza lamented that “everybody believed it. Our friends in the labor movement believed it. And that was the beginning of the end of the strike. We had to call it off two weeks after that.”76

Conclusion The Farm Laborers’ confrontation with DiGiorgio stood out in “the annals of the labor movement” as the largest and most tenacious agricultural labor strike in the continental United States of the mid-twentieth century. Accounts suggesting that the union chose to focus on DiGiorgio first because it was “king of the roost” or considered it the “key to the successful organization of farm labor throughout the state of California” do not stand up to closer scrutiny.77 Rather, union strategy during the California campaign unfolded in a trial-and-error process aimed at building a statewide organization. The DiGiorgio strike marked the first major collision between the Farm Laborers and organized agriculture in California and a clear-cut victory for the corporation. In retrospect strike leaders considered the union close to victory on several occasions and attributed the defeats to unforeseen outcomes. Union President H. L. Mitchell focused on three particular factors—company violence, strikebreakers, and the Taft-Hartley injunctions. The escalation of corporation-led violence marked an important turning point in the strike that the union could not counteract. It was part of an ongoing DiGiorgio “attempt to wipe out union leadership” and drive away union members. Regarding strikebreakers, the union had been extremely successful in convincing local workers not to cross picket lines, but it could not prevent the company from recruiting from long distances and in violation of the law. Mitchell blamed the federal government for failing to adhere to the letter of the International Agreement in permitting DiGiorgio to hire Mexican contract and undocumented workers as strikebreakers, without whom the company would have been forced to negotiate with the union. Mitchell was also convinced that conscious misinterpretation and misapplication of law by the NLRB and federal courts, particularly of the Taft-Hartley Act, broke the back of labor support for the boycott.78 While Hasiwar agreed with Mitchell, he was less optimistic in hindsight, pointing to the pervasive reach and seemingly limitless resources

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of the corporation. He noted that the company tapped phones in hotels where he stayed, and that “even the maids were being paid by DiGiorgio. They searched the wastebaskets every day.” Less pessimistic, Galarza concluded that despite the corporation’s power, “we had them on the ropes for thirty months. And we broke for reasons that were completely unforeseen,” particularly the Taft-Hartley ruling that was later overturned and company success in misrepresenting the findings of the Congressional subcommittee.79 It is clear that the union did not go after the big corporation in order to establish a beachhead in the state, and it did not consider a victory at DiGiorgio critical to its ultimate success or failure in California. Hasiwar acknowledged that the union would have preferred to continue organizing quietly but that the corporation provoked the strike by continuing to fire union members. Furthermore, despite the decisive corporation victory, the union was prepared to enter neighboring fields, optimistic that allies in organized labor would accept new challenges.

CHAPTeR 6

From Factory to Industrial Area: Areawide Organizing in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys

The record is clear—farmworkers have tried again and again to build a union. They have never stopped, despite the terrific odds always against them. h. l. mitchEll, national Farm labor Union

As the National Farm Labor Union strike at the Arvin ranch bogged down, organizers again shifted tactics. Through their experience at DiGiorgio they realized that going after another “rural factory” would continue to drain dwindling resources and not reach many workers. They determined instead to focus on a broader geographical area consisting of clusters of large ranches that produced a single crop, enabling them to reach thousands of workers while forcing organized agriculture to expend more resources.1 In this chapter I will examine the Farm Laborers’ areawide organizing in California, further demonstrating that union organizers did not adopt traditional organizing strategies and that they did not consider their cause hopeless. Rather, I argue that they were constantly experimenting as they became more sophisticated in their understanding of California agriculture, and that their organizing approach was unusual within organized labor. Their areawide organizing involved taking into account shifting trends in social and productive relations in agriculture, organizing internationally, and acting consciously to strengthen organized labor in both the United States and Mexico. While their vision was broad geographically, they acted locally, attentive in particular to productive and demographic trends in the sites of their areawide drives—cotton and tomatoes in the San Joaquin Valley and melons in the Imperial Valley.

eviction of DiGiorgio workers, June 1948. Courtesy of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

On the line: ernesto Galarza, director of research and education, National Farm Labor Union AFL. Courtesy of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

Other labor unions gave aid to the DiGiorgio strike: food caravans of trucks and cars were mobilized. Courtesy of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

National convention (NFLU) delegates, Fresno, California, 1950. Courtesy of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.

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Cotton and Machines Commercial agricultural production expanded rapidly following the completion of the first sections of the publicly funded Central Valley irrigation system on the eve of World War I. The cotton industry was at the forefront, employing more than one hundred thousand workers during harvest by the late 1940s. A handful of large corporate growers controlled local cotton production, politics, and labor relations through the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Labor Bureau (ALB). They set prevailing wages and maintained grower discipline.2 The ALB and other organizations also maintained control over workers by recruiting from diverse and ever-shifting labor pools. During the first wave of expansion prior to the Great Depression, cotton growers sought primarily Mexican immigrants and their children. Stunned by worker militancy in the 1933 San Joaquin Valley cotton strike, they immediately turned to U.S. citizens from the upper South. But they soon began to shift again to new labor pools. By the late 1940s U.S. citizens of Mexican origin approached 40 percent of cotton harvest workers in the San Joaquin Valley, almost equal to the number of Anglo Americans, the remainder primarily African Americans. By constantly employing new groups to keep workers divided and on the defensive, the growers sought to hold down wages, prevent them from establishing solid roots, and undermine their unions.3 In the late 1940s and early 1950s, some cotton growers sought exclusively European Americans, others turned to Mexicans and/or African Americans, while many were only concerned that none challenge their authority. W. L. Frick, president of the California Cotton Cooperative Association and member of the ALB, asserted that “the employment of agricultural labor—and that is restricted to so-called white people, which I employ practically entirely. . . . [I consider] twenty-five to thirty percent of that group to be my social equals,” and, like other growers, he held nonwhite people in still lower esteem.4 Cotton fields and camps during harvest time were a highly segregated patchwork of Anglos, Mexican immigrants, Mexican Americans, and African Americans. They contrasted with those in Hawai‘i, where segregated camps and work crews did not preclude constant interethnic contacts. Despite the divisions, many workers maintained pro-union sympathies and continued to engage in strikes and skirmishes, attracting Farm Laborers organizers, who quickly found workers in the Valley eager to form new locals. In the spring of 1948, when the union was still engaged

From Factory to Industrial Area 207

with DiGiorgio, another group of workers chopping cotton struck and, with modest union support, successfully prevented labor contractors from reducing wages.5 Again during the fall harvest, they kept growers from lowering the prevailing rate of $3.00 per hundred pounds. The worker actions of 1948 foreshadowed much larger confrontations the following year. On receiving reports that the Mexican government was willing to negotiate bracero contracts for the cotton harvest in 1949, the ALB decreed a reduction in wages for picking to $2.50 per hundred pounds. The decision galled workers because federal government price supports for cotton had not changed, and many considered it a clear provocation against the union.6 Employers further goaded workers by openly brandishing a new weapon against possible strikes—the mechanical cotton harvester, betraying the vision of the designers of a popular early machine prototype, John and Mack Rust. The Rust brothers, however, understood the possibilities for the machines to serve an antiworker strategy: . . . in our present economic order, technological advance no longer makes for the welfare of all the people, but tends to increase our insecurity. When these machines begin moving into the cotton fields, they will of necessity steadily crowd the sharecroppers and other hand pickers off the cotton land. Consequently unless some adjustment is made to rehabilitate these people they will simply be added to the ranks of the unemployed.

The Rust Brothers had hoped to divert profits from the machines to protect living standards for cotton farmers remaining on the land, educate workers for alternative jobs, and prepare the nation for a system of “production-for-use” rather than for profit.7 The researchers who developed commercially viable harvest machines and the growers who used them, however, wanted short-term profit and for them the elimination of harvest workers was a top priority. Because California enjoyed favorable conditions for the application of machine harvesters, their widescale use occurred earlier than other major cotton-producing sections of the country. Central Valley growers first started using the International Harvesters in the fall of 1947. By the end of the following year the machines helped them gather 10 percent of the state’s cotton crop. Employers quickly realized the potential of applying their new technology to the struggle, and before harvest commenced in the summer of 1949 they drove their mechanical pickers through rural

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slums in the cotton-growing areas of the Tulare Lake bottom to intimidate workers. According to a National Council of Churches report, “growers threatened to use machines exclusively and said they would not meet the demand for $3.00 a hundred pounds.” The AFL News wrote that “big farm operators have mobilized all mechanical cotton pickers in California and are touring working-class districts of various towns and cities, hoping to impress the striking cotton pickers with the idea that unless they accept the wage cuts the farmers will use the machines to pick the 1949 crop.” It was clear that “the machines are being used not as laborsaving devices to bring about a higher standard of living, but to reduce wages and the number of jobs on the farms.”8 But cotton production was still expanding and employers only had enough machines to harvest 20 percent of the crop in 1949. Also, workers were unwilling to back down. Mexican American residents around Delano and Bakersfield initiated a spontaneous strike on September 12, and union leaders quickly formulated a more detailed plan to expand the walkout from Tulare into Kern and Fresno Counties. They focused on the largest and most heavily government-subsidized operations, including J. G. Boswell, Crockett, Gambogy, and Sayler Farms. Strikers formed caravans reaching four hundred to five hundred automobiles carrying from fifteen hundred to two thousand workers, stopping at ranch gates to picket and lure workers out of the fields. When growers moved workers to isolated sections of their massive holdings, the union hired a pilot flying a small airplane to drop informational strike leaflets from above.9 The Farm Laborers consciously countered segregationist grower policies with interracial picket lines and car caravans. According to the union, the strikers included a roughly equal number of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and European Americans. More than thirty thousand cotton workers participated. The scale and diversity contrasted with the single “factory farm,” DiGiorgio, which had slightly more than eleven hundred strikers, of whom more than 80 percent were European Americans. In the cotton strike, one report noted, “Negro, white and Mexican American cooperated in smooth solidarity. Every jalopy on the roads of the Central Valley had members of all three groups.” The evidence suggests that while the cotton industry employed a more diverse workforce, the union nevertheless had greater success attracting workers of African and Mexican origin. This was consistent with arguments that they demonstrated a greater propensity toward collective action than their Anglo American counterparts.10 The union also confronted unsympathetic elements in local govern-

From Factory to Industrial Area 209

ment, including police and county sheriffs who used verbal threats, violence, and questionable application of the law to break up car caravans, arrest picketers, and evict strikers from labor camps. The workers were not unwilling to lodge their own challenges. Member Bob Whatley challenged county ordinances prohibiting loudspeakers on the picket line when he read the First Amendment of the Constitution with amplification to provoke an arrest that gained widespread public attention and sympathy for the union cause. Union attorneys also challenged ordinances limiting the size of car caravans to a maximum of three automobiles and complained of sheriff violence as infringements on individuals’ constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and speech. They contended that the ban on loudspeakers was an unequal application of the law, as sheriffs did not prevent labor recruiters from using them to lure workers residing in government-owned migrant camps. Union lawyers demonstrated that the California Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional nearly identical earlier ordinances to quell union collective actions. Employers cared less about precedent and more about breaking the strike by overwhelming the union with superior resources. Like most growers, W. L. Frick expressed contempt for workers’ basic legal rights, claiming that employers were not “required to recognize farm labor unions. . . . It has always been a mystery to farmers why those people [labor union members] were permitted to go out and intimidate the people who were working on our ranches.”11 The union also challenged a Mexican government that was increasingly compliant to the wishes of the largest growers. As one organizer observed, “there hasn’t been a big strike involving Mexicans in which the Consuls didn’t show up [at] some time to split the ranks of the workers and often to stooge for the Associated Farmers.” During the cotton strike, the union had to confront the head of the consulate at Calexico, Elías Colunga, “to keep him shut up.” DiGiorgio had been able to use braceros, but during the cotton strike union organizers managed to meet with the consul and convince him to stay quiet, and he “didn’t peep.”12 The union worked to gain support from AFL allies and segments of the heterogeneous local middle class. Several small merchants sensitive to the purchasing power of their largest block of customers continued to offer credit. The union was particularly attentive to small farmers who grew cotton, consistent with its understanding that they often had more in common with farm workers than growers. Small farmers who worked their own lands realized that their own labor could not compete with large corporations that were subsidized to hire foreigners. Small farmers were particularly important because they could break the united ranks

210 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

of growers. The union hoped to persuade small farmers to hire workers supplied by the union hall and thereby save recruitment expenses. It convinced about fifty small farmers to buck the ALB and the Associated Farmers by accepting its wage demands and its workers. A sympathetic Beth Biderman of the National Sharecroppers Fund observed that “with unexpected courage,” small farmers “stood staunchly behind the workers and were the first to announce that they would pay the $3 wage” demanded by the union. The 1949 cotton strike further demonstrates that, contrary to some critics’ statements, the union strategy of appealing to small farmers was not mistaken.13 By September 21, nine days after the confrontation began, the strike had reduced cotton production in the Valley by half and soon convinced large cotton growers on the west side of the Valley to negotiate a settlement through the State Mediation and Conciliation Service. On September 28 the two sides agreed that the three-dollar rate of the previous year would be paid to all harvest workers in the area. The union also agreed not to publicize the terms of the agreement, “in order to save the Associated Farmers’ faces.” While the union neither sought nor obtained a collective bargaining contract, it calculated that the cotton strikers of the San Joaquin Valley had won an additional 6 million dollars in wages for the season.14 For the Farm Laborers it was the first time that Mexican Americans were the critical group, having first provoked the strike and then convinced the union to extend it throughout the Valley. A number of older Mexican workers were reluctant to join the strike, fearing a repeat of the 1930s when they were betrayed by union organizers. But, as Galarza concluded, “the Delano Mexicans, where we have worked most intensively, showed up best of all. They swung the strike at one point.”15 The 1949 cotton strike was the first for twenty- one-year-old César Chávez, then residing in Delano, where his wife, Helen, and her family had roots. He was picking in the Corcoran area, which had a very active group of union enthusiasts. But his recollections were not particularly vivid as he recalled, “I think” the strike took place in 1948. Chávez later criticized union leadership for its lack of organization and failure to adequately control events. He was saddened that all the workers had not walked out and that many were frightened into going back to work, but he acknowledged that “since I was just a worker I didn’t know what was happening up on top.” He did not realize that local workers had taken the initiative and that union organizers followed their lead and were vividly aware of their own limitations and lack of resources. Nor did he real-

From Factory to Industrial Area 211

ize that it was the first experience in which the union leadership dealt with thousands of workers on many different ranches. For the union, the main issue was not to obtain a collective bargaining contract, but to gain enough visibility to attract members and develop new leadership. As H. L. Mitchell noted, “out of the DiGiorgio strike we developed a number of leaders and they proved their worth as organizers during the cotton pickers’ strike.” The cotton strike enabled the union to mobilize an additional twenty volunteer organizers, with a potential for at least two hundred more, and many became union activists. As Mitchell noted of the volunteers, “these men are the only ones who can do the job. A successful organizer, experienced in industrial organization will require three to six months to unlearn what he already knows and adapt to this new field of farm labor organization.”16 Through their recent experiences, the Farm Laborers had devised a new strategy and attracted enthusiastic support, new members, and new leaders. Furthermore, the 1949 cotton strike whetted workers’ appetites. They were encouraged also by the outbreak of the Korean War the following year, which led to labor shortages and rising incomes nationwide. Hoping to prevent wage increases and preparing for a possible confrontation, growers intensified recruitment, attracting an estimated 110,000 workers for the cotton harvest, an increase of 10,000 over the previous year. At the same time they advanced harvest mechanization. The ALB set a harvest rate at $3.00 per hundred pounds, identical with the agreement of the previous year. But the union demanded an increase to $4.00 and again called a strike. Workers joined, setting up picket lines and car caravans while growers retaliated, with assistance from local judges and law enforcement officials. At the instigation of the Associated Farmers, sheriffs in Kings and Fresno Counties arrested fourteen union pickets for violation of antinoise ordinances. The California State Federation of Labor provided legal support and union attorneys filed suit in the San Francisco Superior Court against local law enforcement officers, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, and the Associated Farmers for interfering with peaceful picketing. Focusing on violations of workers’ civil liberties, attorneys for the union soon had the ordinances declared unconstitutional. Most importantly, the strikers had shut down the flow of replacement workers and pressured growers to accept the intervention of the State Mediation and Conciliation Service. On October 30, the parties settled on a $3.50 minimum per hundred pounds, an increase of 50 cents over the previous year.17 Despite the wage victory, the union was less euphoric than in 1949,

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for thousands of workers were again stranded at the end of the season and obliged to turn to county welfare departments’ surplus food distribution programs, which “undoubtedly kept many from starving.” In the longer run, prospects for continued organizing were even bleaker as cotton harvest mechanization in the San Joaquin Valley reached 50 percent in 1950, and increased again the following year. Employer demand for harvest workers fell from about one hundred thousand in 1949 to roughly sixty-five thousand the following year, and declined again by half in 1951.18 Using machine harvesters as replacements, growers eliminated the vast majority of workers and reduced the possibility of mass strikes in cotton, forcing the union to turn to new fields.

Tomatoes While labor requirements in California cotton plummeted, demand in the tomato harvest skyrocketed. Commercial tomato production, in earlier decades concentrated in the eastern and midwestern states, during the 1940s rose most rapidly in California, which soon became the nation’s leader. In the immediate postwar years of this expansion, the state’s growers turned primarily to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Available in abundant numbers, the workers felt the pinch of wartime inflation, which ate away at wages that had remained stagnant for several years at twelve cents per thirty-three-pound box. They were ready to challenge employers over pay and over monies siphoned off by labor contractors, who received a fee from growers to pay wages, and money from workers for “services,” to which they added costs for housing and a portion of workers’ “bonuses” they never returned. Contractors profited from abuses including short weights on tomatoes, forced purchases of goods at inflated prices, and vice and gambling concessions. Workers sought to eliminate labor contractors and obtain a wage increase of six cents per box.19 The union called a strike in mid-September against twenty of the largest contractors around Tracy, where support was strongest. Contractors retaliated with evictions, replacing strikers with more than seven hundred undocumented Mexican workers. Strikers set up car caravans, picketed fields and canneries, and shut down production in several locations. They gained support from several local unions and a number of local Catholic priests, including the Rev. Thomas McCullough, whom Galarza introduced to the farm labor movement. Father McCullough belonged to the Spanish Mission Band of the Bishopric of San Francisco,

From Factory to Industrial Area 213

assigned to serve as “priests to the poor” and conduct masses in labor camps. In later years a strong supporter of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and the UFW, Father McCullough recalled that at Tracy, “they invited us to read portions of papal encyclicals indicating their moral right to organize, because many were concerned about the moral right to cause this trouble” of striking. As Father McCullough recalled, it “was the first time I heard the word huelga.”20 The tomato strike again reminded the union that growers could replace local residents by turning to the massive pool of undocumented Mexican workers, precisely when the national media was intensifying coverage of the “wetback” problem. Seeking to protect members from being replaced, the union turned to the state to comply with regulations that gave preference to domestic workers. When local immigration officials claimed to be too busy to remove the foreign workers from struck fields, the union appealed to their superiors in Washington, D.C., whose attention it attracted with help from allies in the media. Through the AFL and Frank Edwards’s radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System, the union informed a national public about government collaboration with growers who hired undocumented workers to break a strike of U.S. citizens. Riding a wave of Korean War xenophobia, the pressure compelled the INS to remove the foreign workers, and contractors quickly came to terms with the union. After three weeks, the strikers had compelled contractors to accept its demand and raised the wages of more than thirty-five hundred tomato pickers to eighteen cents per box.21 Like the cotton strike, the tomato strike was another short-lived victory for the workers. But unlike cotton, mechanical harvesters were not a concern, for researchers were still another decade from developing commercially viable machines. Rather, the issue was the rapid increase in recruitment of workers from Mexico. The tomato industry was in the forefront of the Farm Bureau–led agricultural alliance that pressured Congress to renew and expand the Mexican Contract Labor Program in 1951 through Public Law 78. A compliant Mexican government agreed, ostensibly because the contracts would afford protection unavailable to undocumented workers. As political pressure against the so-called “wetback menace” intensified, tomato growers shifted to braceros. The Tracy tomato strike helped convince union leaders to make the issue of grower replacement of citizens by foreign workers its central organizational concern, and to take a stand in the Imperial Valley, home of the state’s winter vegetable and fruit industries and the “gateway of illegal and contract labor” into the state.22

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Imperial Valley Showdown Wiser from recent battles, union organizers intensified their presence in the Imperial Valley, fearing that if they did not take a stand, California and the nation could become a “trade union Sahara.”23 They hoped to establish a stable membership base from among local workers and obtain collective bargaining contracts, based on their understanding of local production and class relations. Agricultural activities in the Imperial Valley were most intense in the winter and spring when there was little work elsewhere in the state. The first of two peak periods of labor demand occurred between midDecember and mid-March, highlighted by carrot, lettuce, and pea harvesting and packing. A second phase of intense production began in late spring and continued into early summer, marked by the harvest of melons, tomatoes, table grapes, hay, and alfalfa.24 Organizers were particularly interested in fresh crops that had to be harvested quickly and frequently, where growers were vulnerable to work stoppages. Union strategy focused on how to deal with different groups in the local social formation, particularly its principal adversaries, largely absentee Anglo American corporation farmers, grower-shippers, bankers, brokers, and commission men who controlled production and shipment of fresh produce sent to major markets throughout the nation. This top group also controlled the five-hundred-member Imperial Valley Farmers Association (IVFA), which determined labor policy, with assistance from labor contractors and government officials, particularly the United States Employment Service (USES) of the Department of Labor. The union attempted to pressure the USES to return to the original mission of the Labor Department, namely to advocate for the welfare of workers, rather than acting on behalf of large growers. The Director of the California State Employment Service (CSES), Glenn Brockway, had played an important role in permitting the continued employment of braceros during the recent DiGiorgio strike. Galarza fumed, “Brockway’s crooked double cross is one for the books. It’s just too bad we are under wraps on using it publicly.” The IVFA had close links to the U.S. embassy, headed by William O’Dwyer, a former mayor of New York City whose brother Frank O’Dwyer was a co-owner of O’Dwyer & Mets, a leading grower and dominant voice in the IVFA. Ambassador O’Dwyer interpreted government policies regarding the employment of foreign workers and would play a crucial role in the coming showdown.25 A second important group consisted of local small farmers, a majority

From Factory to Industrial Area 215

of them Anglo Americans, plus smaller numbers of Hindus from India and Filipinos who held land mostly along the perimeter of the Valley. They were highly dependent on local bankers, growers, and shippers, and had little influence in the IVFA or on its labor policies. But consistent with earlier Tenant Farmers philosophy, the union sought alliances of mutual benefit that might also create a wedge in grower unity. A third group was the ethnically diverse professional and business class, which included labor contractors who were primarily of Mexican origin. While they were closely tied and generally sympathetic to large growers, the union realized that some businesspeople shared interests in common with agricultural workers who were often their most important clients. Support from even a small number might be of incalculable value during a strike. The final group, comprising more than 90 percent of the economically active population of the Valley, consisted of workers, a majority of Mexican origin, a much higher proportion than in central and northern sections of the state. The largest segment was employed in agriculture, and 90 percent of these were of Mexican origin. The union estimated that in 1950 about seven thousand were U.S. citizens or legal residents. During harvest peak in March 1950, agricultural employers also hired about five thousand braceros and six thousand undocumented Mexican workers, as well as about five thousand to six thousand nonresident seasonal workers, primarily citizens of Mexican origin from Texas and other parts of California.26 In its conflict with the union, the grower and shipper group assumed that it could maintain the sympathy of middle-class elements while preventing solidarity among workers. Local residents were mostly Mexican immigrants who had arrived in the area in the 1920s, along with a larger cohort of their children, of whom most were born and reared in the United States. During the winter and spring they worked in the Imperial Valley, while at other times many sought seasonal employment elsewhere in the state. A small number of local workers were considered skilled, largely Anglo Americans and African Americans who operated tractors, hay bailers, and other machinery or worked in the packing sheds. In the Imperial Valley the nonagricultural working class was comparatively small and their labor unions not as influential as in the San Joaquin Valley, but the union considered their support crucial.27 A majority of local agricultural workers lived in small cities and towns in segregated neighborhoods “across the tracks,” slum districts lacking paved or lit streets, hospitals, fire stations, parks, and swimming pools.

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They formed the core of fledgling locals in El Centro, Coachella, Brawley, Calipatria, Westmoreland, and Holtville. But they were losing their jobs as employers turned to workers from Mexico. During World War II the first braceros entered, hired by the IVFA, formed in compliance with the requirements of the international agreement that individual growers could not be employers. After the war growers turned increasingly toward Mexicans without documents, who were readily available, required little paperwork, and were even more vulnerable than braceros. Union member Jacinto Cota of Brawley observed that growers were engaged in systematic and determined efforts to force out domestic workers. He recalled that in the late 1930s and early 1940s there had been steady work for local residents but that since the end of the war growers were driving them away, even ordering row foremen to “bawl people out and act tough. That is because nationals and wets [sic] are scared to talk back.”28 Growers also preferred foreign workers because they could claim that the IVFA or labor contractors were the employers and responsible for poor wages, working conditions, and housing. Worker camps in the Imperial Valley varied widely in quality. Some of the larger ones had modern buildings, central mess halls, sanitary and toilet facilities, and recreational buildings, but most lacked basic comforts and were isolated. Camps for braceros generally were considered better than others because they were required to meet formal standards enforced by government inspectors, but those requirements commonly were not met, in violation of the International Agreement. Employers could avoid other contract terms with impunity. As union member Joaquín López of Brawley complained, foremen were dismissing local workers because they “can do anything that they want” with braceros, who were “afraid to stand up for their rights” for fear of losing their jobs.29 Yet the precarious legal status of Mexicans without documents made them even more attractive to employers, who could threaten arrest and deportation if they complained. Their housing was the worst, consisting of the most ramshackle camps or flimsy huts, makeshift dwellings hidden in isolated settings along irrigation canals, in the desert brush and sand hills, and even in caves, yet not far from places they could meet labor contractors who offered work.30 But their visibility to outsiders increased with their numbers, generating rising public criticism over housing, wages, working conditions, labor contractors, and the negative impact of their presence on citizen employment. As the union intensified pressure against hiring them, growers increasingly found braceros preferable. In either case employers could augment the labor reserve, displace local resi-

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dents, and make it more difficult for workers to establish a collective voice and an institutional presence. Informed representatives of organized labor became increasingly critical of growers. In April 1951, AFL organizer E. C. de la Baca, writing from Raymondville, Texas, charged that the agricultural industry was engaged in “a conspiracy to discourage local citizen labor in order that they may obtain cheap labor across the border.” He hoped to bring the issue into the public and political arena and counteract growers’ whimpering about the vulnerability of American farmers and threats that “if Washington won’t permit them to obtain labor from across the border, the Valley will go into bankruptcy.” Union leaders including those of the Farm Laborers countered with an appeal to an Americanism that focused on the rights of domestic workers and their jobs. Baca pointed out that there was an abundant supply of local residents that growers were forcing into migratory labor: “Right now, you can see truck after truck on the highway loaded with farm workers going up north to work.” By 1950 in counties along the international border only about one-third of agricultural workers were local residents, although they had comprised the overwhelming majority only a decade earlier.31 The union drive in the Imperial Valley became the most important postwar effort within organized labor to save jobs for domestic workers. The union drew attention to collaboration between growers and government officials, particularly from the California State Employment Service, which administered the Bracero Program. CSES actions violated the international agreement mandating that growers offer available jobs to citizens prior to certifying foreign workers. In 1950 Southern California citrus growers claimed a worker shortage and requested twelve hundred braceros from the CSES, while the union demanded that local workers be hired first. As a test case, the union arranged with the CSES to send seventy local residents to jobs in the groves, still another effort to implement its hiring hall strategy. But the Citrus Growers Association refused to hire them, claiming that they were unfit.32 Leading grower organizations stood united under John V. Newman, head of the California State Board of Agriculture, a prominent figure in the California Farm Bureau, and a director of the Ventura County Citrus Committee. He was joined by William Tolbert of the Ventura County Citrus Committee, who emphatically but inaccurately claimed that the union demand for representation in the Bracero Program was “in direct violation of the Taft-Hartley law,” which did not apply to agriculture. Employer organizations including the San Joaquin Agricultural Labor

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Bureau, the Agricultural Producers Labor Committee (citrus), and the Associated Farmers also pressured the CSES to reject the union plan. They found an ally in Don McCoy, director of the Agricultural Department of the California State Chamber of Commerce, who charged that it was an effort to “foist unionization” on agriculture. Growers also justified their refusal to hire citizen workers with racial stereotyping, an editorial noted, by claiming “they couldn’t take Negro workers because the bunks they had fitted only Mexicans. They couldn’t take white workers because they doubted if they knew how to pick fruit. They only wanted workers from old Mexico who never saw an orange grove.”33 The union drive in the Imperial Valley intensified in early 1951 with an attack on leader growers Maggio and O’Dwyer & Mets, for employing undocumented workers to harvest carrots. Although growers claimed that the $4 per day wage they paid undocumented workers amounted to an average of 50 cents per hour, employers typically demanded eleven-hour workdays. Employers and labor contractors had created a labor surplus to drive domestic workers’ wages down. They also made questionable deductions and charged inflated prices for goods. Union members revealed paychecks as low as 75 cents to $1.25 for an eight-hour day and weekly paychecks ranging from $3 to $18 each week, while one worker who earned $47 on piece rates received a paycheck recording no take-home pay.34 The union also filed complaints against employers who hired undocumented workers, one of which led to a January 1951 INS raid on the O’Dwyer & Mets Wintergarden ranch near El Centro, which found that 300 of 380 workers harvesting carrots were undocumented. They were working alongside braceros in the field in contravention of the International Agreement, which prohibited mixed crews in fields where contract workers were employed. Union leaders demanded that IVFA permission to employ the braceros be immediately revoked, but again government officials failed to comply with the law. When asked by local reporters why he hired undocumented workers when Mexican Americans were available, Frank O’Dwyer cynically responded: “they all look alike to me.” His partner, Keith Mets, president of the IVFA, also claimed that there was a shortage of workers and “we can’t get them anywhere else.” Mets also added racist justifications to account for grower abuses: “every now and then you hear about some Mexican being underpaid. But it’s always some Filipino or Hindu farmer who does it. The Americans [i.e., whites] don’t.” Union pressure did result in the cancellation of bracero contracts in carrot topping for Maggio as well as for O’Dwyer & Mets.35 While continuing to expose grower-government collaboration, the

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union exerted most of its efforts to organizing workers directly. It adopted a broad educational strategy that addressed citizenship training, political rights, counseling, and strike action. In contrast to the cotton and tomato strikes, it sought legally binding collective bargaining agreements in which workers could better protect their individual and collective interests. Union support within government included a promise from Robert Creasy, assistant secretary of labor in charge of importing braceros, that all contract workers would be withdrawn from each ranch the union picketed in the event of a strike.36 Finally, the Farm Laborers cultivated assistance from organized labor and other potential allies. The union sought publicity leading to legislation on social and political concerns ranging from labor rights to curbing inappropriate government collaboration with corporations. It also wanted to prevent the displacement of domestic workers from their jobs, which it considered a threat to the entire labor movement. By the end of the 1940s it observed that Imperial Valley employers were hiring thousands of undocumented workers in more than thirty-five nonagricultural trades and service occupations under conditions that made it virtually impossible for them to join unions. The union also obtained promises from small business owners dependent on farmworker trade that they would continue to offer credit in the event of a strike, aware that foreign workers isolated in labor camps and bound to labor contractors were poor customers.37 Union organizers also turned to the Mexican labor movement. They had earlier established links and continued to work with the Alianza Nacional de Braceros de México (ANBM, the National Alliance of Mexican Braceros) of the CNP. Equally as significant, they also obtained support from within Mexico’s labor mainstream in the CTM, the Unión de Trabajadores Agrícolas del Valle de Mexicali (UTAVM, the Mexicali Valley Agricultural Workers Union). Top CTM officials often voiced rhetorical support for international labor solidarity but in practice commonly collaborated with the Mexican government on labor matters, including the bracero program. But in the Imperial Valley, the Farm Laborers and their allies across the border agreed that local workers be given first job preferences in the United States. They also demanded that braceros only be employed after a determination of need in public hearings in which the union participated, and that undocumented workers not be allowed to enter the country. Because of their weak legal protections, growers constantly manipulated them to the detriment of labor unity. The union insisted on equal pay and employment conditions for all workers based on a scale negotiated between the union and employers. The labor allies

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also accepted a transfer of membership between the Farm Laborers and Mexican unions and together organized both sides of the international border.38 The Farm Laborers’ leadership also headed to the Mexican capital to seek a voice in negotiations over the renewal of the Bracero Program in February 1951, and to broaden the international labor alliance. But Galarza and the U.S. trade union representative, Frank Noakes, were kept out of negotiations involving representatives from the two governments and U.S. growers. Galarza and Noakes then accepted an invitation to speak before a meeting of Mexican workers to explain the position of organized labor in the United States and to find greater common ground. However, before the meeting took place, police from the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE; Foreign Relations Secretariat) arrested several of the Mexican unionists, who “were told the order [for the arrest] came from the committee negotiating the agreement in consultation with the American delegation.” The police agreed to release them only if they consented to canceling the scheduled meeting with Galarza and Noakes.39 Thus the compliant Mexican government was willing to use its police forces to prevent international organization of agricultural workers. The Farm Laborers union did not have a faulty vision regarding the organization of Mexican workers, as it established institutional relationships at the local, regional, and national levels of organized labor in Mexico. But it faced the political, economic, and police power of a collaborationist Mexican state that had subordinated itself to corporation capital and its allied government agencies in the United States. At the local and regional levels, the Farm Laborers were more successful. The inter-union agreements for transfer of membership yielded positive results when about three hundred of the braceros who belonged to the Mexicali union or the Alianza were placed in several work crews in the Imperial Valley. As members of the Farm Laborers Union, they could organize other braceros from within and demand that employers meet with delegates and comply with worker contracts. They could refuse to work in crews with undocumented workers and threaten court action against the IVFA if contract terms were not met. Most importantly, in the event of a strike they could encourage people in their crews to join them in walking out. In addition, the Mexicali union leader Ignacio Márquez led a campaign along the Mexican side of the border to organize braceros and other Mexican union members to convince undocumented workers from entering the strike zone. However, in April 1951 Mexican police arrested him in Hermosillo, Sonora. He was released through the interven-

From Factory to Industrial Area 221

tion of the Farm Laborers and their allies. Galarza recognized “that close cooperation with United States labor by Latin American workers is going to draw the fire of the stooges that the Rockefeller-Clayton-AndersonMiller crowd have down there.” Although the U.S. corporations could count on compliant Mexican officials, independent unionists and even local members of Mexico’s labor mainstream continued to patrol the border. Despite the intense opposition from above, the union had achieved an impressive success in limiting the entry of undocumented strikebreakers from Mexico.40 But as the confrontation between the Farm Laborers and Imperial Valley growers intensified, the AFL appeared to be backpedaling in its support for the union. Galarza complained that the “AFL leadership is not accustomed to this type of fundamental handling of a situation,” involving publicity, legislation, lobbying, and international pressure to offset the union’s financial and political weakness. The highly visible and openly confrontational union approach ruffled feathers, particularly between employers and AFL unions that were comfortable with businesslike relations and political log-rolling that compromised the interests of farmworkers and the disenfranchised. C. J. “Neil” Haggerty, chair of the CSFL, demanded that calling a strike could only “be done under the advice and approval of the Central Labor Council in that district,” and he refused a Farm Laborers’ request to set aside a fund for bail money in case strikers were arrested. Haggerty also pressured the union to obtain approval for its actions from Teamster West Coast Regional Director David Beck. Galarza lamented, “I am sure he has traded us for a deal on the hot cargo bill which the corporations introduced” and that threatened Teamster power. Then in May 1951, just as the union was on the verge of declaring a major strike in cantaloupes, the State Federation of Labor cut support for the Farm Laborers, firing several organizers and cutting off the $500-per-month contribution it had heretofore provided. At one point the union had nine full-time paid organizers in California, but by early June the number had been reduced to only two. Haggerty’s actions reinforced Galarza’s fear that the CSFL was “giving us a general dumping.”41 Hasiwar was also upset that the AFL “has taken such an uncompromising stand on legislation for the farm workers,” reasoning that because of intense opposition, it would be impossible to pass any amendment to include farmworkers in the National Labor Relations Act in the foreseeable future or to enact a law fining employers for hiring undocumented workers. Rather, it blocked the introduction of the proposed legislation. The AFL hierarchy even refused to support a law ensuring that

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all workers, including Mexicans under contract or without documents, have the explicit right to organize without impediments. Farm Laborers’ leaders were distraught with the AFL positions, which reeked of collaboration with employers and failed to enhance a broader worker consciousness or promote labor solidarity.42 Furthermore, the Farm Laborers, led by Galarza, adamantly opposed surrendering in the Imperial Valley without a strike, since it would then be necessary to “go through the entire cycle all over again” of building up membership and support. If the union pulled out without a fight, he feared: We will not be able to reactivate the valley. The rank and file leadership will have even less of a base and it will be discouraged. In addition it will prove to the AF that their fundamental strategy will work all over the state. . . . I am for being thrown out of Imperial so long as we make it clear that it wasn’t the NFLU that threw in the sponge.

He was clearly disappointed with labor allies, suggesting “we could do it better with a little foresight, understanding and guts from the [labor] movement. We will do it any way without them.” Nevertheless, the union gained endorsements from national, statewide, and local unions before it struck.43 The union had much greater success organizing local farmworkers. Prior to its concerted drive in December 1950, it claimed only three hundred members in the Imperial Valley, and locals were “flat on their backs.” But union members, many of whom had participated in recent Farm Laborers’ struggles in the San Joaquin Valley, formed volunteer organizing teams that held conversations, house gatherings, and thriceweekly regular chapter meetings. African American, Mexican, and Filipino workers developed a trust in each other “to the point where splitting of ranks on racial issues is improbable.” However, the fault lines were not over race or a lack of interracial unity, since at least 90 percent of workers were of Mexican origin. Most informed workers were sympathetic with the union. The critical issue was whether the union could break the united front in the IVFA and compel government officials in the United States and Mexico to adhere to the letter of the law. Local organizing was a success, and by the final week of May the union claimed a membership of between five thousand and six thousand in the Valley, including several hundred women, and support that numbered twice that amount.44 The Farm Laborers decided to challenge growers during the relatively

From Factory to Industrial Area 223

high-paying melon harvest, where experienced crews of domestic workers could earn a dollar or more per hour on piece rates. But as organizing intensified, employers dismissed hundreds of union members and hired foreign workers at a flat rate of seventy cents per hour. Union members voted to strike the IVFA if growers refused to negotiate. On May 24, the day after the American Fruit Company, an IVFA member, discharged several crews of U.S. citizens for refusal to repudiate the union, the entire workforce walked out. The strike was directed against the IVFA, employer of all braceros in the Valley. It spread quickly and was promptly recognized by the California State Mediation and Conciliation Service.45 According to the language of the International Agreement, every bracero working for the employer, the IVFA, should have been removed immediately from the strike zone. Union demands included preferential hiring of domestic workers, a guaranteed twenty-five cents per crate or one dollar per hour, rehiring of fired members, a halt to employment of undocumented workers, recognition of the union as bargaining agent for all workers, and a collective bargaining contract. It also demanded elimination of various abuses— commissaries controlled by contractors and foremen who compelled workers to purchase goods at inflated prices, charging for such “services” as cashing checks and providing rides into town on company trucks. Organizer Curt Hyans observed that labor contractors and foremen preferred foreign workers because the abusive practices benefited them personally and “because the local people will not tolerate this exploitation.”46 Strikers picketed ranches and key spots on main highways, loading points in towns, packing houses, the IVFA offices, depots where braceros were dispatched, and border-crossing points. They hoped to inform undocumented workers about the strike and to convince them not to enter the strike zone. In Calexico, “Mexican girls piled onto some trucks and refused to let ranch owners load Mexican workers.” Meanwhile members of the Unión de Trabajadores Agrícolas del Valle de Mexicali patrolled the Mexican side of the border to stop scabs.47 For the Farm Laborers and their allies on both sides of the border, the most important issue was international class solidarity. The Farm Laborers gained support from several local politicians and favorable attention from media allies. El Centro Mayor George Bucklin, also a correspondent for the Associated Press, led an effort among local reporters to write accounts favorable to the union. In the national press sympathetic reporters included Ernest Brasher of the Los Angeles Daily News and Gladwin Hill of the New York Times, who also produced a

224 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

series of articles on undocumented workers favorable to the union’s point of view. Meanwhile pro-union radio stations in Mexico broadcast news about the strike to discourage scabs while local Mexican consular officials agreed to support union efforts to prevent the IVFA from recruiting undocumented workers as strikebreakers. Galarza considered it the most favorable moment for agricultural labor unionism in the Imperial Valley in a generation.48 The AFL hierarchy and its affiliates, including the CSFL, the Imperial Valley Central Labor Council, and most AFL unions, finally endorsed the strike, with particularly strong support from the machinists, culinary workers, and the Hollywood Film Council. However, the Farm Laborers failed to gain cooperation from the Joint Council of Teamsters, which immediately declared it a ‘wildcat’ action. Yet many Teamster members defied orders to cross picket lines from David Beck, which Galarza criticized as “the most severe finking blow that our Union has yet received from a sister union.” Meanwhile the CIO maintained a low profile, and its affiliates closest to agriculture, including the Packinghouse workers, did not support the strike. Also, some Anglo fruit tramps, often former members of UCAPAWA or its successor, the FTA, “refused to honor the picket line” of Mexican American workers.49 On the first day of the strike more than five thousand workers, or 90 percent of the total, stayed away from work while picketers kept out potential strikebreakers. During the first three weeks melon shipments from the Imperial Valley fell to only about 60 percent of expected levels. The strike-induced shortage forced a sharp increase in the market price to nineteen cents per pound, three times the normal level, a bonanza for growers able to get melons out of the Valley, encouraging several to meet union wage demands in hopes of convincing workers to return. But the strikers were determined “to gain more fundamental objectives involving their personal and collective dignity and worth as workers and citizens” through collective bargaining agreements.50 Growers quickly counterattacked, refusing an offer by the California Mediation and Conciliation Service to negotiate with the union. IVFA leaders attempted a red-baiting smear campaign, but most leaders in the political and labor mainstream recognized that the Farm Laborers did not have ties to the Communist Party. Some employers also tried to goad workers into fights, but union rank and file “refused to fall for provocation to violence.” Growers decided to seek replacements and turned to the state to help them obtain undocumented workers and braceros.51 Local police and sheriffs rounded up hundreds of undocumented

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workers residing in nearby cities and towns and escorted them through picket lines, but most quickly abandoned their jobs. Union pickets on both sides of the border had been able to convince a majority of Mexican workers not to scab, and for those who were uncooperative, some pickets invoked the California Citizens Arrest Act to make citizens’ arrests before turning them over to the INS for deportation. Hasiwar recalled, “I arrested them all, drivers and strike breakers.” In the first eleven days of the walkout, strikers brought more than twelve hundred undocumented workers into custody.52 But local law enforcement turned on union members. At Calexico when a group of thirteen women farmworkers and organizer Carl Lara tried to turn back a busload of undocumented workers headed for the melon fields, they were arrested and held in jail for three hours. In another case police sat by and watched while an IVFA field boss ordered the driver of a bus loaded with undocumented workers to run over unionist William Swearingen, and as he lay on the ground, to “kill the s.o.b.” The driver refused. Despite the provocations, pickets remained on detail twenty-four hours per day, checking for holes in wire fences, in the underbrush, tules, and arroyos, along canals, on the highways, and in towns. Before turning workers over to the Border Patrol, strikers talked with them about unions and the strike while offering sandwiches and coffee. One union member who participated in the arrests, Juanita García of Brawley, a harvest worker and packer who also migrated north in the summer, found that many “were living in caves and on the ditches and we took them to the border patrol.” Reflecting on government administrators’ subordination to growers in defiance of the law, she observed, “it looks like the big companies in agriculture are running the United States.” Union attorneys filed suit against the U.S. Department of Labor for failing to enforce immigration law and demanded removal of all undocumented workers.53 Union success at blocking the entry of thousands of undocumented workers compelled growers to turn to Mexican contract workers. The Farm Laborers were prepared, and on the first day of the strike, in response to pressure from organized workers in its own country, the Mexican government submitted a note to U.S. Ambassador William O’Dwyer requesting that braceros be removed from the strike zone immediately. O’Dwyer, who was responsible for delivering the note to USES officials, instead took no action. The union quickly protested the failure to remove braceros from the strike zone as a violation of Article 32 of the International Agreement. The New York Post on June 11 reported that Ambassador O’Dwyer claimed that he misplaced the Mexican government note for

226 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

almost three weeks, “in the confusion of his embassy’s moving.” It also reported that California Republican Representative Phillips, a leader of the Associated Farmers, had “boasted that O’Dwyer had given his assurance that the Mexicans would not be removed until the strike was broken.” The action was a clear conflict of interest, since the delay directly benefited his brother Frank O’Dwyer, co-owner of O’Dwyer & Mets, whose ranch was being struck. Furthermore, James Bryant of the California Department of Employment accepted a claim by Frank O’Dwyer that only 105 workers in the Imperial Valley were on strike rather than making an independent investigation, and on May 31 he refused to certify that a strike existed.54 Meanwhile B. A. Harrigan, the Imperial Valley agricultural commissioner, ordered the transfer of forty-eight hundred braceros approved for Southern California to the melon harvest. It was another conflict of interest since Harrigan was an Imperial Valley rancher and the Secretary of the IVFA, and the law prohibited the negotiation or implementation of contracts by public officials who might obtain a personal benefit from them. In still another conflict of interest, the local Mexican consular official in Calexico in charge of contracting, Alfonso Guerra, was the brotherin-law of the Harrigan employee in charge of hiring workers. Guerra’s superior, the head of the Calexico office of the Mexican consulate, Elías Colunga, long subservient to the interests of Imperial Valley growers, had again approved the use of braceros as strikebreakers. Union members picketed his office to compel him to demand that the U.S. government withdraw braceros from the strike zone, but to no avail.55 The Mexican government was “in a ‘delicate’ position,” trying to balance countervailing pressure from unionists who demanded the removal of scabs from the strike zone, and much more influential growers, who wanted strikebreakers. The heavy hand of Ambassador O’Dwyer loomed large on Mexican government officials, who did not seem particularly concerned that citizens of their nation were breaking a strike. Informed of events by Galarza, who was in Mexico City, union allies in the Mexican labor movement promptly staged public demonstrations to force action. The pressure soon compelled Mexican consular officials to demand that braceros be removed from the strike zone, and that any renewed International Agreement include explicit language to penalize employers who hired undocumented workers.56 But the announcement had little bearing on the outcome of the strike. That role belonged to U.S. Secretary of Labor Maurice J. Tobin, who ultimately determined whether the braceros would be permitted to work in the strike zone. Tobin, a former Boston mayor, and “undoubtedly the

From Factory to Industrial Area 227

most political person to occupy the post of Secretary of Labor,” had recently met with Southern California growers and top Democratic Party leaders before he permitted seventy-five hundred nationals to enter the state. When the union called the strike, it immediately demanded that the braceros be removed, but Tobin stalled, claiming that his subordinate, James Bryant, director of the California Bureau of Employment, had refused to certify the strike. As grower pressure intensified, Tobin also demanded that there be a demonstrated walkout by U.S. citizen workers at each ranch prior to removing them, a contravention of Article 32, according to which the legal employer was the IVFA, not individual ranchers. Tobin further demanded union membership rolls, which had no bearing on whether there was a strike in the fields. But the union refused to release them, fearing with good reason that the secretary would turn them over to growers who could then fire and blackball union members; they lacked legal protection from being fired without cause.57 Tobin’s demands also emboldened employer representatives, who abruptly halted negotiations to resolve the strike. Farm Laborers attorneys threatened suits against Tobin and Assistant Secretary of Labor Robert Creasy for nonenforcement of Articles 32 and 23 and sought an injunction to remove the braceros from the Imperial Valley. Union pressure finally convinced Tobin on June 8 to declare the existence of a labor dispute, and pursuant to Article 32 he ordered the Mexican contract workers removed from farms in the area “in which the said dispute is of such a nature as to result in workers leaving their jobs to go on strike.” Rather than following the letter of the law and remove all braceros under IVFA contract, Tobin ordered USDL administrator Frank P. Graham to declare that the employment and removal of braceros was an administrative rather than a manpower issue, indicating that he still had no intention of removing the braceros. He made his decision contingent on first allowing individual growers to testify whether or not their ranches were on strike. Not surprisingly, they all claimed that none of their employees had walked out. Galarza scathingly criticized Tobin as “America’s number 1 strikebreaker.”58 On June 12, USDL investigators met with hundreds of workers who signed sworn affidavits that they were employed on various IVFAaffiliated ranches immediately prior to the strike. But the following day the California Department of Employment made a contorted decision that, because of a severe shortage of melon harvesters, it would grant the grower request for braceros. Thus it refused to accept testimony and widespread evidence that the shortage of nearly five thousand workers in

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the Imperial Valley melon harvest was due to a massive strike. Instead it accepted grower claims that their ranches were not on strike. Department of Employment chief James Bryant also accepted racist grower claims that in the Imperial Valley Mexicans were appropriate stoop laborers in agriculture while whites were not. In justifying a recent local certification of braceros to CSFL head C. J. Haggerty, Bryant wrote: “I think you will agree with me that white labor cannot work in the stoop labor and contend with the heat that prevails in that particular location. Mexican labor has always been used in harvesting agricultural crops in this area.”59 On June 21, the day the Department of Labor formally certified the strike for only three Imperial Valley growers, the five thousand braceros started entering the melon fields through picket lines of striking Mexican Americans. Growers including O’Dwyer & Mets were able to get their cantaloupes harvested and shipped out of the Valley. Unable to block growers’ collusion with Mexican and U.S. government officials, the union called off the strike on June 25. It marked the effective defeat of the union’s largest and most important drive in Southern California. H. L. Mitchell wrote: “we would have won, had it not been for the government breaking the strike. We all felt that way. . . . The only thing lacking was an honest Secretary of Labor.”60

Conclusion The Farm Laborers’ Imperial Valley strike demonstrated that since entering California, the union could force growers to offer higher wages. It had developed a core of local leaders and again had earned the allegiance of thousands of workers. It gained the support of an important segment of the mainstream public and even convinced the conservative Brawley and Imperial Valley newspapers to report both grower and union sides of the strike. It also found sympathizers among small farmers and local business owners concerned about the displacement of domestic workers by large corporate owners who controlled the IVFA and the Farm Bureau. But in the history of the union, the melon strike marked a critical defeat from which it was unable to recover. It would no longer conduct its massive areawide drives, and a few months later it halted direct worker organizing in the state. The union could not counter the power of government agencies in the United States and their collaborators in Mexico. With the renewal and expansion of the Bracero Program in 1951, the Mexican state was even more

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openly subordinated to U.S. corporation interests than before. The Mexican government permitted the entry on a massive scale of its own citizens as a colonized labor force, isolated in camps from the general population and employed by growers to drive wages down and block international labor solidarity. But the union was most frustrated with the top leadership of organized labor, in both the AFL and the CIO. By July, Neil Haggerty opposed continued CSFL financial support for the union, which prompted reduced assistance from sympathizers, including the Garment Workers; the Paper, Pulp & Sulphite Workers; the Meat Cutters; and even the National Sharecroppers Fund. Although Hasiwar soon departed for the sugarcane fields of Louisiana, the union still claimed nearly ten thousand dues-paying and more than fifty thousand enrolled members.61 Support from organized labor had plummeted despite the rapid increase in union membership in the state. The division in organized labor reveals a critical lack of vision at the top that enabled growers and their allies to provoke and widen rifts among workers. The strike also indicates how employers were able to continually shift workers and keep them unstable, and how race was not a critical issue among workers in the Imperial Valley, where the overwhelming majority were of Mexican origin. Growers manipulated and divided them on the basis of residence, citizenship, and contract status. During the 1930s settled Mexican immigrants and their children, most born and reared in the United States, were beginning to form a stable workforce. With the outbreak of World War II, employers quickly took advantage of the International Labor Agreement to bring in braceros. But as the war wound down, they sought to replace both U.S. citizens and braceros with undocumented workers, who had fewer means to protect themselves from exploitation and abuse. Facing the rising wave of Korean War xenophobia in 1950 and 1951, growers became increasingly vulnerable to criticism for hiring undocumented workers, which culminated in “Operation Wetback” in 1953. In the Imperial Valley they realized that the union could block the regular flow of undocumented workers, at least temporarily, so they intensified their efforts to renew and expand the Bracero Program. Employers’ ability to hire new groups of foreign workers in the Imperial Valley affected the entire state, as domestic workers were either compelled to drop out of agriculture or migrate to the Central, Salinas, and Santa Maria Valleys, or to the Pacific Northwest, where many eventually settled. Growers transformed the agricultural labor force, which in the central sections of the state in the early 1940s was about 70 percent European American, the remainder divided among African American,

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Mexican American, and Filipino workers. By 1960 it was at most one-third European American, about half Mexican American, 10 percent braceros, with most of the remainder African American and Filipino. Meanwhile in Southern California, both in the citrus zone and in the Imperial Valley, at least 80 percent of agricultural workers were not U.S. citizens. By the end of the Farm Laborers’ campaign in California, several trends that had begun a decade earlier were becoming clear, with profound implications for agricultural labor unionism. First, large growers were increasingly able to hire single males, particularly braceros, whom they prohibited in practice from joining unions. Second, they were uprooting domestic workers. Consequently farm workers became increasingly difficult to organize because they were on the move and had few opportunities to establish a collective memory; to join collective efforts to resist lower wages, speedups in work, and deteriorating housing and working conditions; or to influence the manner in which employers introduced machine harvesters, chemical inputs, and short-handled hoes. Growers had displaced domestic workers and weakened the possibility for the union to create a stable base of support in the state.62 As agricultural union leaders had feared, the Imperial Valley had become a Sahara of trade unionism.

Retrospective and Prospectus: The Labor Movement and Agricultural Workers

God Almighty made the valley For a land of milk and honey But a corporation’s got it For to turn it into money ErnEsto Galarza

Agricultural workers’ struggles to gain recognition and a place in the institutional life of the nation reveal severe defects and limitations in the nation’s democracy. They faced constant opposition from well-organized employers and experienced many defeats. In victories that advanced a democratic agenda, they confronted corporate employers and their allies who continued to maneuver to limit working people’s influence and participation in the political arena. Agricultural workers’ efforts were also confounded by governments that were most often inclined to side with the powerful and rich against democratic principles and that promoted domestic and foreign policy agendas in conflict with the interests of working people. Lastly, they had to deal with organized labor, representing union leaders and unions whose short-term interests frequently conflicted with broader democratic principles and unity with agricultural workers. A compelling need exists to conduct a great deal more investigation on the shortcomings of democracy, particularly among workers and minority populations. We also need to examine organized labor and its shortcomings with a view to creating an inclusive movement for all working people, and not simply seek a return to moments of glory in the past when unions were more powerful but not inclusive, including the middle of the twentieth century. Based on indicators including union density, collective bargaining con-

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tracts, and influence in the electoral arena, the 1950s marked a high point for organized labor in the United States. Yet for agricultural workers it was a time of utter failure by top labor leadership. While many unionists could claim that agricultural workers were not interested in organizing or that the structure of the industry was not conducive to unions, their own limited vision and actions offered more compelling evidence for the dismal record. Their efforts to organize agricultural workers or even to promote a democratic agenda were miniscule, contradictory, and riddled with divisions, even in the few settings where they were most active— Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i, and California. In the first half of the twentieth century the mainstream of organized labor established a presence among agricultural workers only in Puerto Rico, although the island was a colony of the United States with a massive labor reserve. The Federación Libre de Trabajadores joined the AFL in 1901 and maintained a dominant place in Puerto Rican labor politics through the end of the 1930s. The Federación accepted the rule of the United States and the colonial status of Puerto Rico largely because it represented an improvement over Spanish rule; authorities of the military occupation of 1898 to 1900 recognized in principle that workers had the right to form unions, and leaders of the American Federation of Labor were supportive and offered affiliation. Federación labor politics involved maneuvering within the constrictions of the island’s colonial status by seeking support from the metropolitan government and the AFL, which it considered benefactors and protectors against hostile employers and representatives of the middle-class Puerto Rican political parties. Early in the century militant Federación leaders conducted more sustained agricultural campaigns than unions anywhere in the continental United States. Federación leaders demonstrated interest in agricultural workers from the moment they affiliated with the AFL. Their interest peaked beginning in 1915 when they united with the Partido Socialista and began a fiveyear campaign marked by massive strikes involving tens of thousands of sugarcane workers annually, forming dozens of local affiliates of the AFL Agricultural Workers Union. The strikes did not achieve union recognition, for the sugarcane corporations, with support from local middle-class politicians and a determined antilabor governor, Arthur Yager, were able to use the law and island police to the advantage of the employers. But the strikers’ determined pressure combined with rising sugar prices to enable workers to obtain short-term wage increases.1 The militancy began to decline at the end of World War I, when the

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metropolitan government turned to the AFL, which willingly served as a conservative and restraining force on more radical unions and unionists in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico. The trend accelerated in the early 1920s, as Federación support for strikes in agriculture subsided. By 1922 the Socialistas, in a bid for political power, joined with the Republicanos, ostensible class enemies, to form the Coalición. For a decade Socialista electoral influence expanded as votes from agricultural workers increased, and by 1932 the Coalición came to power. The reward for the Federación came the following year when, without a strike, it negotiated its first of several annual islandwide collective bargaining convenios with the Sugar Producers. But the contract accepted a decline in real wages from the previous year, it lacked an enforcement mechanism, and it did not require worker consultation or approval. Workers were angry, and in protest they spontaneously staged a strike that reached massive proportions by February 1934. Federación and Socialista officials immediately joined employers in opposition, and strikers turned for leadership to Pedro Albizu Campos. The Nacionalista leader was supportive, but more focused on the independence struggle than the class struggle, convinced that the people of Puerto Rico could only gain just rewards for their labor by severing the colonial relationship with the United States. Metropolitan authorities harassed and imprisoned Albizu Campos, and the Federación continued to sign weak annual convenios, while sugarcane workers watched from the sidelines. Federación affiliation with the Socialistas in Puerto Rico demonstrates that the presence of an active labor party does not ensure a collective voice for workers, let alone a democratic outcome. Widespread dissatisfaction with Puerto Rico’s political and labor leadership contributed to party and union realignments shortly before World War II. The newly formed Partido Popular Democrático initially advocated for political independence. The militant Confederación General de Trabajadores, which attracted workers of diverse political tendencies, also favored independence and autonomy from political parties. Agricultural workers quickly joined the Confederación affiliate, the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Azucarera, en masse. They frightened colonial sugar producers into signing the first-ever multi-year contract with the Federación, which the Confederación considered invalid. Sindicato members, in defiance of organized labor’s wartime no-strike pledge, conducted massive strikes each year from 1941 to 1945, which the sympathetic colonial governor, closely allied with the top leadership of the Populares, refused to repress. But the colonial courts sided with the AFL

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and refused to overturn the convenio, despite overwhelming worker support for the Sindicato. Worker militancy nevertheless did lead to recognition of the rising influence of the Confederación and improvements in working conditions and wages, which reached par with Hawai‘i’s for the first and only time in the century. The Populares openly campaigned for the votes of sugar workers, whose support they needed to gain political hegemony. Once in power following the November 1944 election victory, Muñoz Marín openly betrayed the party’s anticolonial promise and followed the wishes of Tugwell by conducting an immediate purge of Confederación radicals. He soon helped turn over the Sindicato to the CIO and its affiliate, the Packinghouse union. The actions severely divided organized labor in Puerto Rico. Leaders of both the Populares and the Packinghouse promoted labor peace and a discourse of modernization that portrayed the colony as backward. Meanwhile incomes and conditions for Puerto Rican agricultural workers declined even more sharply than for their unorganized counterparts in California, and sugar production shifted to lowerwage settings of the world more rapidly than any other sugar-producing setting in the U.S. sphere of influence, including high-wage Hawai‘i. Puerto Rican workers were guinea pigs for economic colonial experiments, including the Fomento project, a model for U.S. investors to employ cheap and poorly protected labor in third-world locations for manufacturing operations that produced for the metropolitan market. Simultaneously, Manos a la Obra (Operation Bootstrap) sent surplus Puerto Rican labor to low-wage agricultural and urban industrial jobs in the continental United States. Puerto Rican workers were enveloped in a colonial political and economic project in which metropolitan investors controlled the pace and nature of investment, industrialization, and migration, with collaboration from island elites. Although the major labor confederations from the metropolis maintained a presence among sugar workers and had written contracts with the leading sugar producers for decades, Puerto Rican agricultural workers fared much worse than their counterparts in Hawai‘i or California. The presence of both the AFL and the CIO buttressed a colonial order that offered few benefits and little voice for agricultural workers. Like Puerto Rico, Hawai‘i became a colony of the United States in 1898, but under much different circumstances that included a sharply different labor movement. The haole growers who overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy faced only sporadic challenges from agricultural workers for nearly half a century following annexation. Lacking a sufficient labor re-

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serve, employers had to recruit from abroad, and in the 1890s they preferred to tap the Japanese labor pool. But Japan soon proved itself a formidable competitor internationally, powerful enough to reject European imperialists’ constructions of Caucasian superiority. Following the War of 1898, employers turned to the newly available colonial labor pools from Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and soon decided on the latter as the preferred new recruits. Lacking citizenship status, Issei and Filipino plantation workers were excluded from formal participation in electoral politics, enabling haole growers to maintain control of government through the Republican Party, largely unchallenged until the 1940s. Furthermore, because the AFL was hostile to Asians and unwilling to make a sustained organizing effort, Hawaiian agricultural workers could only form unstable and short-lived ethnic unions. The arrival of the radical Longshore union in the late 1930s marked a watershed. After organizing the docks, its members moved onto the sugar plantations, in effect seeking to create one big union throughout the islands. They were stymied temporarily by World War II, the declaration of martial law, and the implementation of a viciously antilabor government. But because agricultural employers could not find replacements, instead of locking Japanese workers in concentration camps as in the continental United States, they kept them working, demonstrating the hypocrisy of the internment policy. As the war wound down and military controls were lifted in Hawai‘i, Longshore unionists reignited the campaign. Workers smarting from abuses under martial law, particularly the Nisei reared in plantation communities and schooled in the precepts of democracy, many of them World War II veterans who fought against fascism and Nazism in Europe, eagerly responded to entreaties by relatives, friends, and former neighbors working on the docks. Unlike Puerto Rico, where employers had long been enmeshed in a turbulent web of labor and electoral politics, in Hawai‘i employers could take their control over Japanese and Filipino workers much more for granted, facing only occasional worker uprisings. They were not prepared for the coming of age of Nisei, who as citizens of the United States by birth and amenable to the Longshore Political Action Committee campaign, quickly gained a place in the institutional life of Hawai‘i. Thousands of them voted for the first time in the 1944 and 1946 elections, a moment of realignments that soon led to sympathetic legislation for agricultural labor unionism and to the ouster of the Republican Party from its longstanding political dominance. After months of organizing and education, sugar workers surprised

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employers by their unity in the strike of 1946. They maintained morale, promoted union culture, subsisted without suffering, and won a lasting victory. Workers in the pineapple industry faced greater obstacles because of greater seasonality of employment and large numbers of more vulnerable Filipino immigrants, many of them women. But the pineapple workers soon recognized that even lack of U.S. citizenship was not a decisive impediment. Supported by a democratic union, they demonstrated a remarkable militancy that gained them an institutional presence on the islands. Even when they could not vote in elections, they had a voice in the union, which represented them and their interests. Furthermore, the Longshore union steadfastly defended its members from red-baiting attacks that devastated unions elsewhere, and ultimately demonstrated that it did not need the labor mainstream to survive. As the Longshore union literature observed, agricultural workers in Hawai‘i “emerged from a quasi-colonial situation to full industrial citizenship with wages and fringe benefits comparable to those enjoyed by workers in non-agricultural industries.”2 It was a citizenship based in the United States. Workers lacked a collective historical memory of Hawai‘i prior to the overthrow of the monarchy and annexation to the United States. Their past was in Asia, to which many did return, but their present and future were in the United States, where they forged a place of their own. Through their union they gained access to Hawai‘i’s institutional life, and collectively they forged a trajectory closer to that of European immigrants than those of colonized Puerto Ricans or of Mexican agricultural workers in the continental United States. In California, with its much more complex social formation and varied rural and urban interests, agricultural unionists faced a more difficult challenge. Farm Labor union leaders nevertheless were optimistic at the end of World War II when they first convinced the AFL to support the largest and most sustained agricultural organizing campaign in the continental United States to date. Growers, however, were able to displace European American and Mexican American unionists and hire more vulnerable foreign workers. Farm Labor leaders realized that they could not successfully organize domestic workers as long as governments permitted growers to recruit foreign citizens barred from becoming union members. The union defeat in the Imperial Valley on June 25, 1951, accompanied a greater loss—failure to eliminate the Bracero Program. On July 12, 1951, President Harry Truman signed the Ellender Bill, PL 78, which made the program a permanent, institutionalized feature of agriculture in the United States. It permitted the U.S. government to engage in uni-

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lateral recruitment on behalf of growers any time the Mexican government refused to come to terms. The “strong arm tactics” the U.S. government had been using irregularly in disagreements over labor recruitment with Mexico in the late 1940s had now become institutionalized, “setting the tone for future agreements between the two nations.”3 Facing these major defeats, AFL leadership immediately decided to halt its support for the struggle in the fields until a later date. Critics have referred to the system growers devised, highlighted by the permanent Bracero Program, as indentured labor or “imported colonialism,” due to its similarities with labor regimes that occurred in political colonies in other parts of the world.4 The Bracero Program was accompanied by a discursive subordination of Mexicans by European Americans at a time when political and economic pressures were producing everwidening material gaps between the United States and Mexico. Features common to braceros and workers in formal colonial labor regimes included physical isolation from the local population; lack of freedom to bargain over conditions of employment or wages, change employers, or join unions; and negotiation of terms of employment by collaborationist elites from the subordinated state. The peak years of the Bracero Program between 1951 and 1959, in many respects the high point of organized labor in the United States during the twentieth century, marked a nadir for agricultural worker organizing in the continental United States. Frustrated Agricultural Worker leaders in California soon called off all direct organizing, aware that growers could replace workers at will and in accordance with the law. The feeble framework for agricultural labor unionism was reinforced by changes in institutional leadership marked by the 1952 election victories of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States, George Meany of the AFL, and Walter Reuther of the CIO. The Eisenhower victory was important for several reasons. First, the president was a moderate Republican sensitive to the power of organized labor, and as Agricultural Worker leaders recognized, his choice of Martin P. Durkin, a Democrat, as secretary of labor, would make him less open to attacks by labor leaders than had he chosen a Republican, or even the more corrupt Maurice J. Tobin, his predecessor. Less than a year into his term, Durkin resigned and was replaced by James P. Mitchell, who gained a reputation as being sympathetic to migrant workers and legislation on their behalf. Second, the Eisenhower administration could play on Cold War xenophobia to attack undocumented workers, a strategy accepted uncritically by many labor leaders, but which permitted the

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administration to increase the importation of Mexican braceros as replacements.5 Promoting public hysteria capped by “Operation Wetback” further allowed the U.S. government to express an increasing arrogance toward Mexico that undermined surviving remnants of the Good Neighbor Program. While Agricultural Worker unionists criticized the hiring of braceros and undocumented workers for its deleterious effects on domestic workers, the media discourse and the actions of the administration, reinforced by many labor leaders, were directed against Mexicans as individual people and Mexico as a nation, reinforcing cultural imperial conceit. Meany and Reuther embodied perspectives of the major wings of organized labor, each with problematic consequences for unionism in agriculture. The AFL, as a federation of loosely affiliated individual unions, each responsible for its own jurisdiction, assumed that an already selfsupporting membership would sustain the bulk of the effort in any organizing campaign. The model was not conducive to agriculture, which lacked an established membership base to fund and support any new campaign, and would have to rely on voluntary and often whimsical support from union allies and other sympathizers. The AFL was further problematic because its membership was composed largely of skilled white urban workers whose craft exclusiveness treated unions as entitlements rather than as part of a movement aimed at promoting the unity, well-being, and empowerment of all working people. Furthermore, the AFL wing of the labor movement rarely challenged dominant societal constructions of race, class, and Americanism, or the serious limitations of democracy. It was informed by linear notions of progress that considered agricultural workers from Mexico as a backward group laden with preindustrial baggage in a modernizing and urbanizing society. AFL unions also shared a widespread view that agricultural workers represented a pool of cheap labor that threatened standards for organized craft and industrial workers and could be dealt with by two distinct alternatives—inclusion or exclusion. Inclusion was consistent with the counsel of Karl Marx for the workers of the world to unite, at least to protect their own jobs, a strategy adopted by unions in many parts of the world. But the AFL hierarchy in the 1950s tended strongly toward exclusion, reinforcing the widespread business unionism rampant within the federation that saw little profit in organizing low-wage workers with unstable jobs. Meany faced criticism for holding back labor unionism and adopting

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the attitude of a stodgy white building tradesman hostile to labor militancy and to minorities. Yet during his long tenure as an officer in the AFL, his behavior shifted over the issue of whether and how to support the organization of agricultural workers. As secretary-treasurer of the AFL in 1941, he paid very close attention to the strike of lemon workers in Ventura County and assisted them in chartering an AFL local and securing financial and moral support. Yet his memory was not consistent about his role in the strike or its importance. In 1969 he claimed that it was entirely justified, as the workers “finally rebelled against the inhuman conditions that prevailed.” Yet he also claimed that the AFL provided support based on his recommendations that they were migratory workers who needed relief and assistance in returning to Mexico, although they were longtime California residents. He concluded, “we didn’t try to unionize them.” The following year César Chávez recalled that in recent conversations Meany had expressed a great deal of enthusiasm over the strike, and that workers’ militancy motivated him personally to assist in chartering the union and convincing the AFL to provide financial support. The second view is further sustained by Meany’s 1941 report in the AFL Federationist, in which he was committed to support the strikers and their demand for union recognition in order to end what he considered “peonage in California.”6 His enthusiasm waned in the aftermath of defeat and the realization that victories in agriculture would not come easily. Meany had had a particularly poor relationship with the leadership of the Tenant Farmers union and its successors. In a 1948 speech to the Farm Labor union convention, the then AFL secretary-treasurer reportedly stated: “I don’t believe that the farm workers of this country can be unionized. I don’t believe any of you want to be unionized.” At this moment, a high point of AFL grassroots support for the DiGiorgio strike and national boycott, he helped deflate enthusiasm for farm labor unionism. H. L. Mitchell complained that he was “a hard man to deal with at all times.”7 As Meany assumed the AFL presidency in 1952, the Agricultural Workers union slid even farther into the backwaters of organized labor, and he withdrew support for direct organizing in California. The union retreated to Louisiana, conducting a campaign aimed at small strawberry farmers, consistent with its longstanding goal of redirecting the struggle in agriculture by organizing all who labored in the fields against the common corporate oppressor. Galarza argued in 1954 that small farmers and small businessmen “are themselves duped by the corporation farm interests extended into every organ of economic and political life.” In

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Louisiana the union also conducted a campaign among African American workers in the sugarcane industry, which failed to gain substantial AFL backing. In the aftermath of the sugar industry defeat, Meany even refused to challenge Louisiana employers’ efforts to enact destructive rightto-work legislation, on the grounds of “economic expediency.” Mitchell angrily charged that Meany had concluded that “organizing agricultural workers is not a profitable undertaking (when) the expenditure of $1 does not bring back $2 in immediate returns. . . . [From Meany] I get the impression that sink or swim—it is Mitchell’s problem.”8 Mitchell’s lament was consistent with the longstanding AFL position of individual unions as freestanding units responsible for their own turf and business. When Reuther became president of the CIO, many labor sympathizers had greater expectations because he portrayed himself as closer to the downtrodden and more progressive politically than Meany. Reuther frequently spoke of the need to organize the unorganized, and the CIO organizing committee model had been successful in many previously unorganized industries in the late 1930s and 1940s. But Reuther was laden with contradictions and he was criticized for opportunism and a failure to match his rhetoric in practice, also evident in the history of the CIO.9 Before he took the helm of the CIO, the Food, Tobacco and Allied Workers of America, successor to UCAPAWA, had engaged in some minor actions in agriculture after World War II, one bright spot being its ability to attract a group of Filipinos who worked seasonally in the Central Valley around Stockton and who remained loyal to unionism. But the FTA suffered from constant red-baiting attacks, and Reuther was as fervently anti-Communist as Meany and supported its expulsion in 1950. Without support from the CIO, the union was too weak to survive, and a few of its remnants composed of packing shed workers survived as freestanding locals within the CIO. Reuther also sympathized with the expulsion of the Longshore Workers for Communist influence, but the latter survived comfortably outside the orbit of organized labor. By not standing up to the witch hunting, both the Reuther and Meany wings of the labor movement failed the cause of agricultural workers. On assuming the CIO presidency, Reuther took no immediate action, evident in the 1952 Program for Action for farmworkers, which emphasized three major areas of concern. First, the CIO would seek legislation and vigilant administrative procedures to improve the terms of employment, recruitment, and living conditions of farmworkers, and to fill jobs “insofar as possible by US citizens.” Second, it urged that organized labor strive to keep unauthorized entrants out of the country. Third, it would

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work to improve programs aimed at recruiting foreign labor, in effect to make the colonial labor program more efficient. It made no commitment to worker empowerment or campaigns among agricultural workers. Reuther’s Program for Action feebly concluded: “we are attempting to organize farm workers where the situation seems favorable.”10 Not surprisingly, during his years as CIO president the situation did not seem particularly favorable. As CIO president, Reuther failed to soothe bitter memories stemming from internal union disputes of the late 1930s and early 1940s in Puerto Rico and California. On the island colony, the Packinghouse union was involved in its high-handed absorption of the Sindicato and its incompetent leaders failed the cause of local agricultural workers. In California, memories of the earlier dispute between the Tenant Farmers and UCAPAWA continued to impede efforts at unity between AFL and CIO unionists. With discussions for the 1955 merger nearing fruition, Reuther agreed to support a modest organizing effort in California agriculture in which the Packinghouse absorbed remnants of the lettuce shed worker locals assigned to the CIO after the FTA collapsed. Owners were mechanizing lettuce harvesting and transferring packing operations from the sheds to the fields, which offered them a pretext to replace union members with braceros. As the Packinghouse union moved into the fields, Mitchell felt threatened. A friend of the Agricultural Workers union, Gardner Jackson, observed that under those conditions Galarza and Mitchell were unwilling to work with Packinghouse organizers because they “distrust their methods, their lack of knowledge of the forces involved, and in the case of some individuals involved, their objectives.” Mitchell directed his earlier enmity against the UCAPAWA and FTA toward the Packinghouse but it did nothing to save his union.11 As the incipient farmworker movement unfolded at the end of the 1950s, the Agricultural Workers were isolated and marginalized. As a 1955 League for Industrial Democracy report observed, Reuther was long on paternalistic concern and short on action toward farmworkers. It criticized the paltry efforts on behalf of agricultural workers by CIO unionists and asserted that “their actions suggest they were more impelled by sympathy than by deliberate and determined policy to bring farm workers within the orbit of prevailing national labor standards.” Rather than promoting a campaign aimed at a democratic outcome to empower farmworkers, the CIO position helped set the stage for a new discourse focusing on their powerlessness, the theme of numerous studies, reports, and Congressional hearings in the 1960s and 1970s. In retrospect,

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CIO efforts on behalf of agricultural workers were miniscule, and merited not even a sentence in the monumental study of its history by Robert Zieger.12 Yet an important segment of former AFL and CIO unionists continued to exert pressure, and the organizing committee model was adopted in the campaign that finally emerged on behalf of the unified AFL- CIO in 1959 as the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). The AWOC campaign was highly flawed and excluded the most experienced, dedicated, and visionary agricultural labor organizers of the era from its top leadership. Although it stumbled, the AWOC survived, its brightest spot being the group of Filipinos, many former FTA members, who launched an important movement in the grape industry when they struck in the Coachella Valley in the spring of 1965 and soon lured the independent National Farm Workers Association to join them. The movement took off, and Reuther immediately took center stage, attracting nationwide attention when he visited Delano near the end of the year. Even Meany soon came on board, again changing his attitude about the capabilities of agricultural workers, and this time the AFL- CIO under his leadership offered unprecedented support. The drive in California marked a new wave of struggles with widespread participation from organized labor, inspiring the dreams of yet another generation of working people.

Notes

Introduction The introduction epigraph is taken from Galarza, Farm Workers, 2. 1. U.S. Department of War and Magoon, Reports on the Law of Civil Government, 25; Williams, Roots of the Modern American Empire, xvi–xvii; Kiernan, America, The New Imperialism, xv. 2. Graebner, “The Mexican American War,” 405–426; Kiernan, America, The New Imperialism, 22; Harlow, California Conquered, xv, suggests that both New Mexico and California were “the predetermined prize.” On Bear Flaggers and related spying operations, see U.S. Congress, Senate, California Claims, 1; Caruso, Mexican Spy Company. 3. Among important works documenting the unfolding and characteristics of anti-Mexican sentiment in the late nineteenth–century Southwest include, Pitt, Decline, 148–166; Monroy, Thrown Among Strangers, 173–176, 189–191, 205–219; DeLeón, They Called Them Greasers; Rosenbaum, Mexicano Resistance, 7 and passim. The most virulent anti-Mexican attitudes among European Americans in the late nineteenth–century Southwest were in Texas, due in large part to the intensity of conflict in the 1830s and 1840s, but also because it was the major recipient of migration from Mexico to the United States during the late nineteenth century. DeLeón and Stewart, Tejanos, 15, observe that the Mexican-origin population of Texas increased from between 13,900 and 23,200 in 1850 to 165,000 by 1900. On the unfolding of a racial hierarchy in California following the conquest, see especially Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines. 4. Hart, Empire and Revolution, 9 ff.; González and Fernández, “Empire and the Origins,” 35–36. 5. Aguirre, Informal Empire, 70–85, demonstrates how the obsession to possess an exoticized Mexican past became intertwined with the imperial rivalry between the British and the United States; González and Fernández, “Empire and the Origins,” 38. 6. Hart, Empire and Revolution, 71 ff.; González, Culture of Empire, 15 ff. 7. Taylor, A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community, 35–36; Meyers Forge of

244 Notes to Pages 5–9

Progress, 6–8, 31–33, 128–131; Clark, Cotton Goods, 27, 30; Clark, Mexican Labor, 467–471. 8. González and Fernández, “Empire and the Origins,” 22; Barrera, Race and Class, 39–50, defined a colonial labor system as one where “the labor force is segmented along ethnic and/or racial lines, and one or more of the segments is systematically maintained in a subordinate position,” whose critical aspects include labor repression, dual wages, occupational stratification, a reserve labor force and role as buffers during difficult economic times. His discussion was based on contemporary literature on internal colonialism of the 1970s, which paid little heed to the international context of subordination that looms large in literature on classic colonialism and neocolonialism. 9. McWilliams, Factories, 103–133; Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines, 153 ff.; Esch and Roediger, “One Symptom,” 1–34. 10. Parker, Casual Laborer, 61 ff.; Jamieson, Labor Unionism, 59 ff.; Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 76 ff. 11. Nelson-Cisneros, “UCAPAWA and Chicanos,” 453–477, and “UCAPAWA Organizing Activities in Texas,” 71–84; Weber, Dark Sweat, 180–199; Healy and Isserman, California Red, 65–79; Jamieson, Labor Unionism, 17, 164 ff. 12. Rutter, “The Sugar Question,” 61. 13. Crowell, “The Sugar Situation,” 606–607; Rutter, “The Sugar Question,” 49–50; Crampton, “The Opportunity,” 277. 14. Merry, Colonizing Hawai‘i, 43–44, suggests that the native population declined from roughly 700,000 in 1780 to 40,000 by 1890. Burlin, Imperial Maine and Hawai‘i, 7; G. Trousseau to J. H. Blount, May 16, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 995. 15. James H. Blount to Walter Q. Gresham, July 17, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 572; H. L. Severance to Mr. Daniel Webster, March 11, 1861, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 90; Merry, Colonizing Hawai‘i, 93–95; Chinen, Great Mahele, 25 ff. 16. Spreckles, “Future of the Sandwich Islands,” 289–291; Rutter, “The Sugar Question,” 61; James H. Blount to Walter Q. Gresham, July 17, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 570. 17. John L. Stevens to Mr. Blaine, June 26, 1890, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 320; H. L. Severance, Consul- General, “Sugar Estates,” U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 259; James H. Blount to Walter Q. Gresham, July 17, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 571–572. Plantation manager C. B. Wells testified that recent legislation increasing terms of imprisonment for refusing to work was vastly more efficient than simply levying fines, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 1000. 18. Austin, “Our Trade,” 378; G. Trousseau to J. H. Blount, May 16, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 995. 19. Interview William Blaisdell, April 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 709; Merry, Colonizing Hawai‘i, 97, 140, 207, 209, 215–218; Beechert, “Patterns,” 50. 20. Statement William Blaisdell, May 9, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 709; Interview C. B. Wells, May 15, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 998.

Notes to Pages 10–18 245

21. M. Stevens to Mr. Foster, November 20, 1892, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 188. 22. John F. Colburn to James H. Blount, April 15, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 496. 23. W. Q. Gresham to Grover Cleveland, October 18, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 462; William H. Cornwall to James H. Blount, April 24, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 501; Interview of Mr. [F. W.] Wundenberg, June 5, 1893, and Blount to Gresham, July 17, 1893, and Interview Claus Spreckles, June 5, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 563, 599, 976, 979; William H. Cornwall to James H. Blount, April 24, 1893, and Interview C. B. Wells, May 15, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 493, 1000. 24. Duus, The Japanese Conspiracy, 15; Colby, International Year Book 1898, 389–390; “Problem of the Philippines”; Fiske, “If The Philippines”; Garrigan, “Hawaii’s Struggle,” 28–29, 226; Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, 152. 25. Spreckles, “The Future,” 28. 26. “Porto-Rican Laborers,” 1053; U.S. Senate, Report of the Commissioner, 25–33. 27. Blount to Gresham, July 17, 1893, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 601; Hawaiian Board of Immigration, 1892 Labor Contract, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 981–982; Takaki, Strangers, 169; Beechert, Working in Hawaii, 131–132. 28. While slavery formally continued in Cuba until 1886, slave combatants on both sides were automatically freed, and the wars of 1868–1880 inspired thousands of additional desertions, rendered the institution practically moribund, and hastened final abolition legislation. 29. Harris, “Some Economic Aspects,” 436; Zanetti and García, Sugar and Railroads, 196–197. 30. Bergad, “Coffee,” 98; “Trade of Puerto Rico.” 31. Mitchell, “The Census, 281; Rutter, “The Sugar Question,” 76; Wilson, “Porto Rico,” 231–233; Alexander, “Porto Rico,” 407. 32. Quintero Rivera, “Background,” 105–108; Colby, International Year Book 1900, 740; Ames, Labor Conditions, 379, 386, 391–393, 414; Ames, “Conditions,” 84; Colby, International Year Book 1899, 683. 33. Ames, Labor Conditions, 379, 413–414; Colby, International Year Book 1901, 641. 34. “Puerto Rico’s Commerce”; Atkins, Sixty Years, 144, 175. 35. “Fields For Our Trade”; Harris, “Some Economic Aspects,” 436; Pérez, Insurgent Cuba, 143; Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba, 3. 36. Colby, International Year Book 1899, 248; Harris, “Some Economic Aspects,” 436, 440; Colby, International Year Book 1898, 239. 37. Quintero Rivera, “Background,” 108, and Conflictos, 293–294; “Senor E. M. Hostos”; Bosch, Hostos el sembrador, 161 ff.; Vega, Memoirs, 72–79. 38. Pérez, War of 1898, 10; “Spain’s Outlook Darkens”; Pérez, Cuba Between Empires, xvii–xviii. Pérez suggests that four broad interpretations have appeared in literature addressing the U.S. motive for the war. First was that it was accidental and that the United States stumbled into it. A contrary position was that it was

246 Notes to Pages 18–23

planned, or even contrived, by warmongers like Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root, or by big business interests. A third view was that it reflected popular democratic sentiment, either in favor of the Cuban independence movement, or contradictorily that popular sentiment led the nation into a senseless war. A fourth view, widely held by most Cuban historians and by Pérez himself was that the United States got involved only to prevent an imminent Cuban victory. 39. “Hannis Taylor on Cuba”; Trask, War With Spain, 73–78; Powers, “The War,” 173. 40. “Quoted from Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, 151; U.S. Congress, Congressional Record 1898, 4062; Powers, “The War,” 174; “Puerto Rico Much Disturbed”; “Future War Operations.” 41. “Sampson to Strike”; “War in Earnest”; Trask, War with Spain, 341; Roosevelt and Lodge, Selections, I: 299–300. 42. “Spain Preparing”; “Get Puerto Rico”; Trask, War with Spain, 75. Relying on Miles’s own accounts, subsequent authors have praised or criticized Miles for altering plans at the last minute regarding the location of the landing, as he stated that the original plans were for Fajardo. Yet the press seemed to think otherwise, and a clear line of evidence demonstrates that in the aftermath of the failure of the bombardment of San Juan, that the focus would be on the south coast, in the vicinity of Ponce, and not surprisingly the area with the greatest potential for new foreign investment in sugarcane. Shortly before the invasion the press continuously reported where the invasion would take place, and while some critics suggest that it was a deceptive move, the press information was accurate. Had Spain been capable or willing to defend Puerto Rico, it would have sent in more than a token defense of the region. See: Matos Bernier and Miles, “The War With Spain,” 129; “To Invade Puerto Rico”; “Embarking for Puerto Rico.” 43. “Address to the Puerto Ricans”; “Puerto Rico Much Disturbed”; “Ready to Renounce.” 44. Caban, Constructing, 4, 16; “Puerto Rico May Revolt”; Fiske, “Puerto Rico as a Permanent Possession.” 45. Quoted from Walters, Joseph Benson Foraker, 151; U.S., Treaty of Peace Between the United States and Spain; Powers, “The War,” 175. 46. “Fields for Our Trade”; Wilson, “Porto Rico,” 220; Crampton, “The Opportunity,” 277; Caban, Constructing, 2, 8. 47. Caban, Constructing, 2; Winthrop, “Industrial Progress,” 113–114; Dietz, Economic History, 83–86; González, Culture of Empire, 129; “Island of Puerto Rico”; Hamm, Porto Rico, 28–29. 48. “Island of Puerto Rico”; “Puerto Rico May Revolt”; Wilson, “Porto Rico,” 222, 223. 49. Alexander, “Porto Rico,” 406; Davis quoted in Colby, International Year Book 1899, 683. 50. Caban, Constructing, 8.

Notes to Pages 25–31 247

Chapter 1 The chapter epigraph is taken from Capetillo and Ferrer, Luisa Capetillo, 64. 1. Padilla, “A los oficiales”; AFL, Memorandum in regard to the Agricultural Strikes of Porto Rico, April 30, 1918, NA, RG 280, file 33/995a. 2. Statements by Philip C. Hanna and Ricardo Nadal, in U.S. Special Commissioner, Report on the Island, 780, 69; Blanshard, “Puerto Rico Moves,” 52. 3. Caroline Ware, Report of OPA visit to Puerto Rico, June 9, 1945, FDR, CW, Box 134, folder Puerto Rico General Correspondence; Lugo López, “A Study,” 43; Crane, “La vivienda,” 2; Statement Dudley Smith, U.S. House, Investigation Political, V, 503. 4. Weyl, Labor Conditions, 772; Moreno Fraginals, “Plantation Economies,” 197; Puerto Rico, Sugar Central, I: 19–26; Diffie, Porto Rico, 50, 45; Puerto Rico, Sugar Central, 19–24; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 60. 5. Puerto Rico, Sugar Central, 36; Acosta, Santa Juana, 30–31; Crist, “Sugar Cane,” 180–183; Moreno Fraginals, “Plantation Economies,” 214–215; Statement José Acosta Velarde, U.S. House, Investigation Political, V, 700. 6. Statement Antonio Luchetti, U.S. House, Investigation Political, V, 644; José Acosta Velarde to Rexford Tugwell, July 7, 1943, in U.S. House, Investigation Political, Appendix, 281; Descartes, Organization, 15. 7. Puerto Rico, Sugar Central, 36; Robert B. Watson, Field Visit to Puerto Rico June 6 to July 3, 1934, FDR, HH, Box 59, folder Puerto Rico—Field Reports; Robert W. Clairborne to Mr. Pat Drewry, May 11, 1939, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder wages & hours law. 8. Requa, Sugar Lifts, 7; Crist, “Sugar Cane,” 471; Tugwell, Puerto Rican Papers, 308; Statement Antonio Luchetti, U.S. House, Investigation Political, V, 645. 9. The position of the agregado, the nonlandowning rural worker in Puerto Rico, declined from the nineteenth century. According to Laird Bergad (“Coffee,” 88–96), about 80 percent of agregados in the Lares district in the 1840s had access to land, the percentage declining to less than 40 by 1898. By the early twentieth century the term agregado in Puerto Rico referred to a day laborer. Lugo López, “A Study,” 33; Moreno Fraginals, “Plantation Economies,” 225; Crist, “Sugar Cane,” 182; Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 94–102. 10. Puerto Rico, Sugar Central, 3. 11. Scarano, “El colonato,” 145, 155–160; Ayala, American Sugar Kingdom, 139– 145; Ayala and Bergad, “Rural Puerto Rico,” 65–94; Solá, “El Colonato,” 2–5; José E. de Guzmán to Ralph Helstein, November 16, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 5; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 65; Statement Ramon Ramos Casellas, U.S. House, Investigation Political, XI, 868–870; Bird, Report, 76; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 133–135; Moreno Fraginals, “Plantation Economies,” 187–190, 212–213; Puerto Rico, Sugar Central, 72. 12. U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 398; Otis E. Mulliken, “Agricultural Labor in the Sugar Industry,” WHS, UPWA, Box 506, folder 4; Bergad, “Agrarian History,” 77, 79. 13. Ware, Report of OPA Visit; Statement Everett B. Wilson, U.S. House, Investigation Political, XIII, 1127.

248 Notes to Pages 32–41

14. Pérez, Living Conditions, 13, 17; Tugwell, Diary March 15, 1941, FDR, RGT, Box 32, folder Diary November 1939–December 1941. 15. Ramos, La Muerte, 55 ff., 12–14; Uttley, “Land utilization,” 149. Loida Figueroa describes the geography of class tensions in a Puerto Rican company town during the 1940s in her novel Arenales. In addition to the company towns for Aguirre, Silén includes Aguada, Arecibo, Barceloneta, Fajardo, Guánica, Humacao, Juncos, Loíza, Naguabo, Toa Baja, Vega Alta, and Yabucoa, in Apuntes, 81–82. 16. Vázquez- Orlandi, (El Insolito), 12–14, 19–23; W. J. Lowrie to Charles Hartzell, April 18, 1904, AGPR, OG, Box 258, folio 1890; Ramos, La Muerte, 14, 21, 176–186. 17. Torregrosa, “Rehabilitation,” 11, 13, 61–64; Mulliken, “Agricultural Labor”; Ware, Report of OPA Visit; Hanson, “Living Conditions,” 804–805; Marcus, Labor Conditions, 31–32. 18. Uttley, “Land utilization,” 72, 81–83, 132–133; Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 747 ff.; Statement Elmer Ellsworth, U.S. House, Investigation Political, III, 356– 347; Ramos, La Muerte, 18, 332–333. 19. Ware, Report of OPA Visit; Pérez, Living Conditions, 85. 20. Ramos, La Muerte, 90, 332–333. 21. Uttley, “Land utilization,” 70; Juan Sáez Corales, Comentarios Obreros, November 6, 1955, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 1; Ramos, La Muerte, 232–233. 22. Ramos, La Muerte, 233. 23. Ware, Report of OPA Visit; Torregrosa, “Rehabilitation,” 55–57. 24. Hamm, Porto Rico, 69; Blanshard, “Puerto Rico Moves,” 51; UPWA, “Supplement to Officer’s Report,” July 1952, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 2; Ralph Helstein to International Executive Board, February 16, 1956, WHS, UPWA, Box 540, folder 1. 25. Mintz, “Culture History,” 250; Mulliken, “Agricultural Labor.” 26. García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 94. 27. Hamm, Porto Rico, 137–138. 28. Uttley, “Land utilization,” 78–79; Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 958–961. 29. Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo,” 124; Berson, Marching, 60–61; Capetillo, A Nation, xv; Silvestrini, “Women as Workers,” 61–62. 30. Uttley, “Land utilization,” 83; Juan Sáez Corales, untitled autobiography, April 23, 1955, CEP, JC Reel 21; Silvestrini, “Women as Workers,” 62. 31. Hanson, “Living Conditions,” 801; Ramos, La Muerte, 333, 13, 91; Puerto Rico Minimum Wage Board, Sugar Cane, 58, 116; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 916– 919; Crane, “La vivienda,” 3; Mintz, “Culture History,” 244. 32. Buitrago Ortiz, Esperanza, 13–15, 182; Marcus, Labor Conditions, 32–33; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 414–417, 791, 802–813, 819, 823–825, 828–829, 839–841, 855; U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 304. 33. Gayer, Sugar Economy, 66, 135, 182; Clark, Porto Rico, 23; Dudley Smith, Handbook on the Puerto Rican Sugar Industry, n.d., WHS, UPWA, Box 541, folder 4; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1010–1014. 34. Free Federation of Laborers, “Economic and Social Conditions of Puerto Rico,” August 9, 1940, NA, RG 126, Box 824, folder Free Federation of Labor; U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 306. 35. Weyl, Labor Conditions, 770, 754; Acosta, Santa Juana, 92; Vázquez-

Notes to Pages 41–51 249

Orlandi (El Insolito), 17; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 219; Mintz, “Culture History,” 248; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 963–964. 36. Toro, Historia Económica, 147; Hanson, “Living Conditions,” 788, 793; “Labor and Industrial Conditions,” 28; U.S. House, Investigation Political, XIV, 1203–1204. 37. Puerto Rico Governor, Annual Report 1942, NA, RG 126, Box 975; Gilmore, Puerto Rico Sugar Manual, 6; Hanson, “Living Conditions,” 800–801, 804–805, 807; López, Labor Problem in Puerto Rico, 4. 38. Crane, “La vivienda,” 3–4; Hanson and Pérez, Incomes and Expenditures, 16; “The Housing Problem,” 30–31; Bird, Report, 43; Puerto Rico Governor, Annual Report 1942. 39. Watson, Field Visit; Bird, Report, 11. 40. Capetillo, A Nation, xvii–xviii; Valle-Ferrer, “Luisa Capetillo”; 19–22, 33, 39. 41. Silén, Apuntes, 66–67; García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 45; Berson, Marching, 60; Santiago Iglesias to Samuel Gompers, May 22, 1905, WHS, AFL, SG, Reel 60. 42. García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 59; Valle-Ferrer, Luisa Capetillo, 39–40. 43. Hewitt, “Luisa Capetillo,” 124; Capetillo and Ramos, Amor y anarquía, 77. 44. U.S. Congress, Senate, Labor Conditions, 11037, 11128, 11150; Arthur Yager to Thurston Ballard, June 19, 1915, FHS, AY, folder 6; Bird Carmona, A lima, 66, 78; Arthur Yager to F. T. Maxwell, February 19, 1915, FHS, AY, folder 33. 45. Dávila Santiago, Teatro Obrero, 236 ff.; F. C. Roberts to Frank Morrison, February 23, 1916, and Samuel Gompers to Woodrow Wilson, March 16, 1916, and Arthur Yager to Woodrow Wilson, March 29, 1916, FHS, AY, folder 68; Prudencio Rivera Martínez to Federationist, April 3, 1917, WHS, AFL, SG, Reel 83; Valle-Ferrer, Luisa Capetillo, 55; Alvarez-Trujillo, “Sugar,” 73; García-Muñiz, “The South,” 520 ff. 46. Alvarez-Trujillo, “Sugar,” 73; Porto Rico Department of Agriculture and Labor, Strikes, 1–27; García-Muñiz, “The South,” 585; Marcus, Labor Conditions, 18–21, 29; Iglesias to Gompers, April 6, 1918, WHS, AFL, SG, Reel 94; AFL, Memorandum; R. Humkins, Porto Rico Sugar: Reference to National War Labor Board, June 10, 1918, NA, RG 280, file 33/995a; Ramos, La Muerte, 95–96. 47. Findlay, Imposing Decency, 164; Vega, Memoirs, 102–103. 48. Yager to Gompers, March 27, 1918, WHS, AFL, SG, Reel 93; Capetillo and Ferrer, Luisa Capetillo, 80–81, 308–310; “Cargos presentados.” 49. Bernabe, “Prehistory,” 133–140. 50. Knowles, “Unionism,” 318; “The Housing Problem,” 34; U.S. House, Investigation Political, XIX, 1876; “Derecho de Asociación,” Noticias de Trabajo 3 (November 1944), n.p., FDR, CW, folder Puerto Rico—labor. 51. Iglesias Pantín, “The Socialist Party,” 213, 215; Silén, Apuntes, 85; GuistiCordero, “Labor,” 1102; García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 82–83, 102. 52. Santiago Iglesias, “Statement on Conditions of Labor of Porto Rico and In Relation to The Elections Held November 4, 1924,” CDO, SIP, Box 42, folder 20; García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 104–105; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1102. 53. Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 487, 504; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 67; Solá, “El Colonato,” chapter 3.

250 Notes to Pages 51–56

54. Bernabe, “Prehistory,” 123, 222; Tugwell, Puerto Rican Papers, 328; Acosta, Santa Juana, 68. 55. Puerto Rico Mediation and Conciliation Service, Annual Report 1932– 1933, and Puerto Rico Commissioner of Labor, Annual Report 1932–33, NA, RG 126, Box 992, folder Puerto Rico Department of Labor Annual Reports; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 222–223; Donald J. O’Connor, Fifty Years of Labor Organization in Puerto Rico: Document No. 6, January 28, 1949, NA, RG 126, Box 923, folder labor legislation. 56. James R. Watson and Robert F. Koretz, Recapitulation of Sugar Situation in Puerto Rico, June 23, 1944, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder labor-wages sugar industry PR collective bargaining contracts; Nogueras Rivera, Contratación colectiva, 5; Franciso Paz Granela, Memorandum February 16, 1943, U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 522. 57. USDA Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Proceedings, Sugarcane Purchases and Wage Rates, San Juan, November 30, 1937, NA, RG 126, Box 890, folder Sugar legislation Puerto Rico; Watson, Field Visit; Puerto Rico Mediation and Conciliation Service, Annual Report 1932–33; López Ruyol, El abc; Taller de Formación Política, Huelga en la caña. 58. Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Third Annual Report, 1934, NA, RG 126, Box 992, folder Puerto Rico Department of Labor Annual Reports; Silvestrini, Los trabajadores Puertorriqueños, 66. 59. Silén, Apuntes, 93; Dietz, Economic History, 182–185; García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 102–105; “Puerto Ricans Urge”; “Labor Rift”; Silvestrini, Los trabajadores Puertorriqueños, 68. 60. García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 106–110; Silén, Apuntes, 95; Christopulos, “The Politics,” 144–145; Juan Santos Rivera, Albizu Campos Patriota Que el Imperialismo Yanqui Mata a Plazos, (n.d. 1945), CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 4. 61. Silvestrini, Los trabajadores Puertorriqueños, 71; Bernabe, “Prehistory,” 202; Juan Santos Rivera, Puerto Rico: Ayer, Hoy y Mañana, February 19, 1944, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 4; Muñoz Marín, Memorias, 63–64; Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Third Annual Report. 62. R. A. Veve to Rafael Alonso Torres, December 20, 1934, and Statement José Pesquera, Conference on the Labor Terms for the 1934–36 Crop, December 21, 1934, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder Labor-wages-sugar industry Puerto Rico collective bargaining agreements; Gilmore, Puerto Rican Sugar Manual, 63. 63. Mulliken, “Agricultural Labor”; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 178; “The 1940 Collective,” 199–201; Agreement Between the Laborers of the Free Federation of Puerto Rico and the Employers of the Sugar Industry of Puerto Rico, February 4, 1936, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder Labor-wages-sugar-Puerto Rico. 64. Puerto Rico Governor, Annual Report 1935 and Annual Report 1936–1937, NA, RG 126, Box 974, folder Puerto Rico Reports Annual Governor; “Villamil dice”; Puerto Rico Commissioner of Labor, Annual Report 1936–1937, NA, RG 126, Box 992, folder Report Annual-Labor. 65. Puerto Rico Governor, Annual Report 1935; Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Annual Report 1940, NA RG 126, Box 993, folder Puerto Rico Annual Report Labor; Gilmore, Puerto Rico Sugar Manual, 64–65; Knowles, “Unionism,” 323; Valdés, Al Norte, 43–44.

Notes to Pages 56–67 251

66. U.S. House. Investigation Political, XIX, 1876; “The Sugar Industry,” 108. 67. Mulliken, “Agricultural Labor.” 68. “Andrews Replaces”; Clairborne to Drewry. 69. “Puerto Rico Strike.” 70. López, “The Labor Problem,” 4; Paz Granela, Memorandum, 523; Statement A. Rafael Alonso Torres, USDA, Proceedings Sugarcane Purchase and Wage Rates, San Juan, November 30, 1937, NA, RG 126, Box 890, folder Sugar Legislation Puerto Rico. 71. Taller de Formación Política, No estamos pidiendo el cielo; Francisco Orlandi Bairan to Harold L. Ickes, February 11, 1939, NA, RG 126, Box 920, folder labor general; Puerto Ricans in the Trade Union Movement, n.d., CEP, JC Reel 21. Chapter 2 The chapter epigraph is taken from Zorilla, Secretario de Trabajo, 2. 1. “The Sugar Industry,” 105, 109; U.S. House Investigation Political, V, 503, 513; Perloff, Puerto Rico’s, 260; “U.S. Unions.” 2. Blanshard, “Puerto Rico Moves,” 51. 3. Knowles, “Unionism,” 319–320; Manuel Pérez, “A Brief Analysis of Labor Problems in Puerto Rico,” in U.S. House, Investigation Political, XII, 1104; López Ruyol, El abc, 120–122. 4. Sáez Corales, Informe III Congreso. 5. Sáez Corales, Untitled autobiography, April 23, 1955, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 1; Sáez Corales interview. 6. Ibid. 7. López Ruyol, El abc, 122; Santos Rivera, Puerto Rico; Mejías, Condiciones, 80–81. 8. Puerto Rico Minimum Wage Board, The Sugar Cane Industry, 121. 9. Gilmore, Puerto Rico Sugar Manual 1940–41, 63–65; Hanson and Pérez, Incomes, 13; Sáez Corales, Comentarios, 10 julio 1955. CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 1. 10. Tugwell, Stricken, 221; Quintero Rivera, Workers’ Struggle, 114. 11. Tugwell, Stricken, 167; Puerto Rico Mediation and Conciliation Service, Annual Report 1940–41, FDR, VF, folder: Mediation and Conciliation Service commission annual report; News Summary, February 13, 1941, and July 26, 1941, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder wages sugar industry; Sáez Corales refers to El Imparcial Thursday Feb 16, “Nogueras favorce se prescriba el uso del derecho de la huelga,” Comentarios, February 19, 1956, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 3. 12. Tugwell, Stricken, 222. 13. Puerto Rico Minimum Wage Board, Sugar Cane Industry, 11; “Economic and Social Conditions of Puerto Rico,” August 9, 1940, NA, RG 126, Box 824, folder Free Federation of Labor; Puerto Rico Minimum Wage Board, Sugar Cane Industry, 41, 45; Tugwell to Ickes, February 9, 1942, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder: laborstrikes; “Sugar Laborers’ Wages”; Statement Dudley Smith, U.S. House, Condition, 17; Sáez Corales, Comentarios, July 10, 1955, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 1. 14. Tugwell to Ickes, February 17, 1942, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder: laborstrikes; Puerto Rico, Sugar Cane Industry, 45; Antonio P. Silva to Tugwell, AGPR,

252 Notes to Pages 67–74

OG, Box 408; Statement Manuel Gonzales Quinones, U.S. House, Investigation Political, XI, 1007. 15. Tugwell Memoirs January 29, 1942, FDR, RGT, Box 33, folder Tugwell Memoirs 1942; Tugwell Diary, February 18, 1944, FDR, RGT, Box 33, folder Diary January–March 1944; F.A. Potts to Tugwell, January 30, 1942, AGPR, OG, Box 408. 16. “The Government is Accused of Fomenting the Strike,” translated from El Mundo, January 24, 1942, and P. Rivera Martínez to William Green, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder labor-strikes. 17. Statement Manuel Gonzales Quiñones, U.S. House, Investigation Political, XI, 994. 18. “Puerto Rico Striker”; M. J. Obén to Tugwell, January 30, 1942, AGPR, OG, Box 408. 19. Pedro Santana to Commissioner of Labor, February 5, 1942, AGPR, OG, Box 408; Statement Justo Sánchez, Excerpts First Annual National Discrimination Conference, October 30–November 1, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 5; “Puerto Rico Striker.” 20. Tugwell to Ickes, February 17, 1942; Lebrón Ortiz, “Protest Against the Verdict in the Case of Obén,” El Mundo, September 22, 1942, in U.S. House, Investigation Political, Appendix, 6747; FBI, LMM, Section 3, 36. 21. Tugwell to Ickes, February 17, 1942. 22. “Truce Ends”; Tugwell to Ickes, February 9, 1942, and February 17, 1942. 23. Tugwell to Ickes, February 9, 1942; Puerto Rico Minimum Wage Board, Sugar Cane Industry, 13–17, 54. At the time Puerto Rico cane cutters received a minimum of $1.80, compared with a minimum of $1.60 to $2.00 in Hawai‘i. 24. Sáez Corales, Untitled autobiography. 25. “Goldsmith media en huelga de la ‘Plazuela,’” El Mundo, April 20, 1942; “Soller’s Workers Get Food Acreage,” Puerto Rico World Journal, April 29, 1942; “Obreros Piden Tierras Para Sembrar Frutos,” El Mundo, April 24, 1942; “Ceden 30 Cuerdas Tierras Obreros,” El Imparcial, May 1, 1942; Clark, Porto Rico, 489. 26. Statement Gonzales Quiñones, U.S. House, Investigation Political, XI, 1007; Rivera Martínez to Green, February 23, 1944, AGPR, OG, Box 408. 27. Statement Augusto Soltero, U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 264–265; Statement Gabriel Soler, U.S. House, Investigation Political, V, 471. 28. Henry Hirshberg to B. W. Thoron, January 11, 1943, NA, RG 126, Box 942, folder labor wages Puerto Rico; Puerto Rico, Forty-Third Annual Report of the Governor 1943, RG 126, Box 975; Mediation Report, NA, RG 280, Box 940, file 300/2547; Mediation Reports, NA, RG 280, Box 901, file 300/393, and Box 902, file 300/480. 29. Tugwell to Thoron, undated around February 18, 1944, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder labor wages; Wage Agreement, Local Union of Workers of Sugar Industry of Guánica (Confederación General de Trabajadores), February 13, 1943, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder labor wages. 30. Tugwell to Ben, January 11, 1944, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder labor sugar; Watson and Koretz, “Recapitulation,” June 23, 1944, NA, RG 126, Box 942, folder labor wages; Rivera Martínez to William Green, February 23, 1944, NA, RG 280,

Notes to Pages 74–82 253

file 302/420; Tugwell to Thoron, undated approximately February 18, 1944; Watson and Koretz, “Recapitulation.” 31. Santiago to Goldsmith, in Report South Puerto Rico Sugar Co., Guánica, January 21, 1944, NA, RG 280, file 442/8. 32. “Conciliators Take Hand”; “Cane Workers”; “Imposición”; Reports Colonia Esperanza, Rovira, Theresa, Roig, Carmen, Algarrobo, NA, RG 280, files 442/266–268, 442/297, and 442/311–314. [The colonias included Carmen, Theresa, Esperanza, Rovira, Olimpia, Algarrobo, Elías Godreau, Vicente Usera T. Olivares, Luís Antonio Ortiz, and José Velez.] 33. “CGT Leaders Rush.” 34. “CGT Leaders Rush”; Ramírez Brau to Tugwell, March 15, 1944, AGPR, OG, Box 408; “Se suspende”; Hirshberg to Boyer, March 28, 1944, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder labor-strikes; Watson and Koretz, “Recapitulation.” 35. Tugwell, Diary, January 28 and February 19, 1944; Tugwell, Stricken Land, 568; Watson and Koretz, “Recapitulation.” 36. Tugwell, Diary, February 18, 1944. 37. “Pro-Independence Movement,” December 8, 1944, in J. Edgar Hoover to Hopkins, FDR, HH, Box 59, folder FBI Reports, Puerto Rico. 38. FBI, LMM, Section 3, 106; García and Quintero Rivera, Desafío, 124–125; Tugwell to Fortas, December 15, 1944, NA, RG 126, Box 924, folder labor wages; “Model.” 39. Statement Tugwell, U.S. House, Condition, 178–179. 40. Report on Confederación General de Trabajadores–APA Dispute, NA, RG 280, file 452/447. 4500 votes were challenged and 50 were void. 41. Statement Tugwell, U.S. House, Condition, 180; Report on Confederación General de Trabajadores–APA Dispute; Tugwell, Diary, February 10, 1945, FDR, RGT, Box 34, Diary January–June 1945; Statement Tugwell and Resolution PR Farmers Association, U.S. House, Condition, 180, 4; “Walk-out”; Antonio Roig to Piñero, February 14, 1945, NA, RG 126, Box 921, folder labor- strikes. 42. Statement Ernesto Ramos Antonini, U.S. House, Condition, 224–225; “Model”; Stevenson, “Strike Cripples”; Sebastián López, “Posición Nuestra,” January 2, 1946, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 4. 43. Statement Earl B. Wilson, U.S. House, Condition, 55; Roig to Piñero, February 14, 1945; Tugwell Diary, March 14, 1945; “Piñero sigue.” 44. Convenio Colectivo APA y CGT, March 22, 1945, NA, RG 280, file 452/447; Puerto Rico, Forty-Fifth Annual Report of the Governor 1945, NA, RG 126, Box 977. 45. Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 1070–1071; Quoted in “U.S. Unions in Puerto Rico,” 8; See FBI, LMM, Section 3, 149. 46. FBI, LMM, Section 3, 146; J. Santos Rivera, “Posición de personas y grupos,” April 21, 1945, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 4. 47. López, “Posición Nuestra”; Tugwell Diary, March 27, 1945; “Puerto Ricans in the Trade Union Movement,” n.d., CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 8; El Mundo, March 27, 1945 in FBI, LMM, Section 3, 133; Santos Rivera, “Posición de Personas”; López Ruyol, El abc, 127; Sáez Corales, Comentarios, November 13, 1955, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 2; Tugwell, Diary, December 30, 1945, FDR, RGT, Box 34, folder Diary July–December 1945; Sáez Corales, Untitled autobiography.

254 Notes to Pages 82–88

48. FBI, LMM, Section 3, 86, 123, 142, and 157. 49. FBI, LMM, Section 3, 184; Sáez Corales, Untitled autobiography; “Sáez Corales define.” 50. CIO Committee on Latin-American Affairs, Minutes April 12, 1945, WHS, UPWA, Box 296, folder 1; Tugwell, Stricken Land, 568. 51. CIO Committee Minutes April 12, 1945; C. A. McPeak to John V. Riffe, November 1, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 539, folder 2; “U.S. Unions,” 9; Tugwell, Stricken Land, 568–569. 52. UPWA, Supplement to Officers’ Report, July 1952, and David Sternback to Ralph Helstein, February 13, 1952, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 2; Alex Summers, Résumé of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 3; Summers to Helstein, February 25, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 4; George Aguilera, Weekly Report, December 8, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 96, folder 3. 53. Summers, Résumé; David Sternback to Luís Muñoz Marín, April 6, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 4; Tugwell, Stricken Land, 167. 54. Summers, Résumé; Knowles, “Unionism,” 320–321; McPeak to Riffe, November 1, 1954; Sternback to Muñoz Marín, April 6, 1953; Remarks by George Aguilera, May 4, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 539, folder 1. 55. Alex Summers, Report on Puerto Rico, April 22, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 4; George Aguilera, Weekly Report, December 8, 1953; “Negotiations of APA,” October 24, 1952, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 3; Helstein to International Executive Board, February 16, 1956, WHS, UPWA, Box 540, folder 1; Summers to Helstein, January 6, February 26, and April 15, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 4. 56. Sternback to Helstein, January 6, 1953, Summers to Helstein, February 9, 1953, and Helstein to Summers, February 27, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 4. 57. Sternback to Muñoz Marín, April 6, 1953; Sergio Kulian Baez to Carlos Quiros, October 31, 1952, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 3. 58. Report on Puerto Rican Sugar Workers Convention, August 9, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 359, folder 9; Helstein to International Executive Board, February 16, 1956; George Aguilera, Weekly Report, February 1 and 16, April 19, and October 11, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 539, folder 2. 59. George Aguilera, Weekly Report, December 8, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 96, folder 3; George Aguilera, Weekly Reports, December 27, 1953; February 23, 1954; April 19, 1954; and January 10, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 539, folder 1. 60. Helstein to International Executive Board, April 19, 1956; Sáez Corales, Comentario, November 27, 1955, February 12, 1956, and December 4, 1955. 61. Aguilera to Helstein, November 19, 1954 and Helstein, Report on Puerto Rico, January 28, 1955, WHS, UPWA, Box 539, folder 3. Among the independent regional unions in the east, Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1075–1078, observed that Obreros Unidos de Loíza was “the strongest and only durable sugar workers union of its kind in Puerto Rico,” as “the third significant force in sugar-worker politics in Puerto Rico.” Formed in 1941 by field and mill workers associated with Central Canóvanas in eastern Puerto Rico, its longtime President Lorenzo Fernández was a former storekeeper who had very close relations with the Populares.

Notes to Pages 89–97 255

Giusti- Cordero reported that Fernández was considered white, yet most union members were mulatto and black. The independence of OU was challenged in 1946 by Sebastian López, Auténtica, who charged that Ramos Antonini of Gubernamental controlled Fernández. See Memorandum: Posición nuestra en relación con los demás partidos, January 2, 1946, CEP, JC, Microfilm Reel 21. 62. Hibben and Picó, Industrial, 13; Statement Augusto Soltero, U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 264; Bird, Report, 3; Dudley Smith, Handbook on the Puerto Rican Sugar Industry, WHS, UPWA, Box 541, folder 4; Gayer, Sugar Economy, 182; Perloff, Puerto Rico’s, 71. 63. U.S. Department of Labor, The Sugar Farming Industry, 4; Fernando Sierra Berdecia, Some Additional Thoughts on Planning for Mechanization, December 3, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 5; Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Annual Report 1953–54, 14; “Ataca actitud political.” 64. Loehwing, “Puerto Rico,” 17; Puerto Rico, Forty-Fifth Annual Report of the Governor, 1945, NA, RG 126, Box 977; Perloff, Puerto Rico’s, 74. 65. Loehwing, “Puerto Rico,” 17–18. 66. Sáez Corales, Comentarios, 27 noviembre 1955; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1015; “Peticiones de la UGT de PR y del consejo central de desempleados,” 2 febrero 1950, AGPR, OG, Box 2265. 67. Helstein to Muñoz Marín, June 9, 1959, and Helstein to International Executive Board, January 28, 1955, WHS, UPWA, Box 437, folder 1; Helstein to Muñoz Marín, March 28, 1951, WHS, UPWA, Box 541, folder 3. 68. Clark, Porto Rico, xxii; Diffie and Diffie, Porto Rico, 113–116, 612; Statement Antonio Lucchetti, U.S. Senate, Economic and Social, I, 171–173. 69. Cook and Otero, History, 3, 16, 17, 20–21; Clark, Porto Rico, 480–481; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1010. 70. Guillermo Clarisell to Muñoz Marín April 7, 1955, and Francisco Corton to Muñoz Marín, March 2, 1956, AGPR, OG, Box 2262, folder 3; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1015–1018; Report on Luce & Company, January 29, 1947, NA, RG 280, file 474/189. 71. United States Department of Labor, The Sugarcane Farming Industry, Table 10, B-16. 72. Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Annual Agricultural and Food Processing Report 1953, AGPR, OG, Box 810; Goldsmith Reports, June 18 and July 15, 1948, NA, RG 280, files 484/950–s and 484/952–s. 73. Statement Ernesto Carasquillo, USDA, Public Hearings on Fair and Reasonable Rates in the Sugar Cane Industry in Puerto Rico, October 22–23, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 211, folder 10. 74. “Cane Cutting Machine,” 19; Salvador Roig to Piñero, February 4, 1947, AGPR, O6, Box 408; “Ataca Actitud”; Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Report 1956–57, 39; Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 1015–1018. 75. Association of Sugar Producers, Sugar Problem, 1; Bird, Report, 59; Rivera Martínez, “Labor Conditions,” 8. 76. Cohen, “Comments on a Development Plan for Puerto Rico,” November 1945, FDR, RGT, Box 34, folder Diary July–December 1945; Labor Commissioner to Tugwell, February 27, 1942, AGPR, OG, Box 782. 77. G 2 San Juan Report August 27, 1945, FBI, LMM, Section 3,, 149; “Aid

256 Notes to Pages 97–103

Planned”; Puerto Rico Governor, Annual Report 1948–1949, NA, RG 126, Box 979, file Reports Annual Governor; Puerto Rico Department of Labor, 17th Annual Report, 1947–48, 1; Fernando Sierra Bercedia, Unemployment, February 21, 1950, NA, RG 126, Box 833, folder Unemployment. 78. Senior, “Puerto Rico IS Overpopulated,” 2; Cohen, “Puerto Rico’s Problem,” 3. 79. Puerto Rico Department of Labor, Annual Agricultural and Food Processing Report 1953, AGPR, OG, Box 810; Richards, “Worker Shortage”; Untitled, El Mundo, February 16, 1956, WHS, UPWA, Box 540, folder 1; Puerto Rican Worker Program, January 11, 1967, in National Farm Labor Conference, WPR, UFWOP, Box 40, folder 15; Giusti- Cordero, “Labor,” 1021. 80. Sáez Corales, Comentarios, December 31, 1955, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 3; Statement Everett Wilson, U.S. House, Investigation Political, XIII, 1108–1109; 1955 UPWA-APA Collective Bargaining Agreement Agricultural Phase, WHS, UPWA, Box 542, folder 5; Ramos, La Muerte, 207–208. 81. Pringle, “A Temporal,” 28. 82. Toro, Historia Económica, 499–500; Perloff, Puerto Rico’s, 73–74; Smith, Handbook, 2–3; Jerrero, “En Torno,” 64, 67; Statement José Acosta Velarde, U.S. House, Investigation Political, Appendix 295. 83. Lugo López, “A Study,” 124–125; Meyer Sherman to Helstein, December 4, 1953, and Jose E. de Guzmán to Helstein, November 16, 1953, WHS, UPWA, Box 538, folder 5. 84. Helstein to Muñoz Marín, March 28, 1961, WHS, UPWA, Box 541, folder 3. 85. U.S. Department of Labor, The Sugarcane Industry, 9–10; Giusti-Cordero, “Labor,” 1024. 86. Charles F. Brannan to Vito Marcantonio, September 19, 1946, NA, RG 174, Lewis B. Schwellenbach, General Subjects, 1945–57, folder Agriculture Dept., 1946; Senior, “Puerto Rican Migratory Farm Worker,” March 28, 1952, WHS, UPWA, Box 93, folder 5; Statement Clarence Senior, U.S. Senate, Migratory Labor (1952), I, 794–796; Puerto Rican Worker Program. 87. Felipe Rivera, “The Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Worker,” WPR, UFW, IRD, Box 26, folder 14. 88. Senior, “Puerto Rican Migratory Farm Worker”; Sierra Berdecia to H. L. Mitchell, January 20, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; “President’s Commission Studies Eastern Migrants,” Workers Defense Bulletin, Fall 1950, WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 18; Statement Clarence Senior, U.S. Senate, Migratory Labor (1960), I, 553–554; “Agreement Between Employers and Puerto Rican Agricultural Workers—1952,” WHS, UPWA, Box 304, folder 3; A. H. Raskin, “Farm Migrants”; McConnell, Report of Conference, December 16, 1947, DDE, PCML, Box 94, folder Migratory Labor—General; “President’s Commission Studies.” 89. Remarks George Aguilera, UPWA Convention Sioux City, Iowa, May 4, 1954, WHS, UPWA, Box 539, folder 1; “President’s Commission Studies.” 90. Carlton E. Heritage to James P. Mitchell, March 11, 1960, DDE, JPM, Box 103, folder 1960—Migratory Farm Workers ( Jan-March-1). 91. Cooper, “Preliminary Report on Organizing Migrant Workers in New

Notes to Pages 104–110 257

Jersey,” September 30, 1961, WHS, UPWA, Box 498, folder 5; H. L. Mitchell to Sierra Berdecia, June 7, 1950, and Sierra Berdecia to Mitchell, June 30, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; Mitchell to Water P. Reuther, April 8, 1959, STFU, Reel 41; Asociación de Trabajadores Agrícolas de Puerto Rico (ATA), re: ATA et. al., v. Rafael Hernández Colón et al., Press Release, WPR, UFW, IR, Box 2, folder 17. 92. López, “Posición Nuestra”; Loehwing, “Puerto Rico,” 3. 93. Mathews, Puerto Rican Politics, v. 94. Sáez Corales, Informe III Congreso, Confederación General de Trabajadores, 22–23–24 de marzo de 1945, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 1. 95. Sáez Corales, Comentarios, December 11, 1955, and January 14, 1956, CEP, JC, Box 3, folder 1. 96. Helstein to Aguilera, February 9, 1956, WHS, UPWA, Box 540, folder 1. 97. Helstein, Report on Puerto Rico, January 28, 1955; U.S. Department of Labor, The General Agricultural Industry, 4–5; Acosta, Santa Juana, 107. 98. “10 Puerto Rican Top Reds”; Sáez Corales, Untitled autobiography and Comentarios, December 25, 1955; U.S. House, Proceedings Against Juan Sáez Corales, and Proceedings Against Consuelo Burgos de Sáez Pagán. Chapter 3 The chapter epigraph is taken from Morris Watson, ILWU Dispatcher, July 14, 1961. 1. Meister and Loftis, A Long Time, 59–70; Taylor, “Labor,” 100. 2. Aller, Labor Relations, 1. 3. Shoemaker, Economy, 4, 32; National Productivity Council, Sugar, 36. As of 1930, of the forty-one sugar plantations in the territory, eighteen were on Hawai‘i, and the remaining twenty-three in irrigated settings on the other islands. 4. C. Randahl, Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, April 13, 1946. UHM, HSPA, PSC 50/8 Daily Log—1946; Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 354–355; Report September 24, 1946, UHM, RASRL, CF, Box 14, folder 9. The Big Five were led by American Factors, which in 1946 had nine plantations and 30.8 percent of production; followed by C. Brewer with fourteen plantations and 23.5 percent of production, Alexander and Baldwin with four plantations and 20.8 percent of production; Castle & Cook with three plantations and 14.5 percent of production and T. H. Davies with four plantations and 6.9 percent of production, from Farrington Report in papers included in “Report of a meeting,” September 24, 1946, RARSL, CF, Box 14, folder 9; Shoemaker, Economy, 29; “Republicans’ Senate.” 5. HSPA Census, June 30, 1943, UHM, HSPA, PSC 125/18; Questions on strike, n.d., UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7, Correspondence—strike 1946; Shoemaker, Economy, 39; Notice to Employees, August 12, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/6; Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 19–20; Mollett, Sugar Plantation, 11; Shoemaker, Labor, 70–71. 6. Aller, Labor Relations, 2, 17, 42; Shoemaker, Labor, 57. At the Ola‘a and Puna plantations, in 1947 the working day began at 6 a.m. from May through August; at

258 Notes to Pages 111–118

6:30 a.m. in September, March and April, and at 7 a.m. from November through February, and the workday usually ended at 5 p.m., based on G. Hay, Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, September 30, 1947, UHM, HSPA, PSC 51/11. 7. Shoemaker, Labor, 5; USDL, Labor Conditions, 15; Kunna, “Migration of Philippine Labor,” 1267–1268. On Puerto Ricans, see “Para las islas,” “En PuertoRico”; Carr, Puerto Ricans, 1 ff.; Interview Pedro and Cresencia Ponce, in Hanahana, 98–110. 8. Shoemaker, Labor, 32, 35, 58, 65; Aller, Labor Relations, 17; Otis E. Mulliken, Agricultural Labor in the Sugar Industry, May 20, 1940, WHS, Box 506, folder 4; HSPA Census, June 30, 1943; Labor Report Ola‘a Sugar Company, December 31, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 40/17. 9. Aller, Labor Relations, 17, 19; Shoemaker, Labor, 13. 10. USDL, Labor Conditions, 27–29; Kekaha Sugar Co., Confidential Statistics, UHM, HSPA, KSC 26/28, HSPA Labor Committee 1937–1938; Shoemaker, Labor, 36–40. 11. Labor Report Ola‘a Sugar Company, December 31, 1946. Cane cutters, who were the largest category of employees, averaged 8.73 tons of cane per manday during 1937–1938 season at Kekaha, Kekaha Sugar Co., Confidential Statistics. 12. Shoemaker, Labor, 56; USDL, Labor Conditions, 3. At Ola‘a, at the end of 1946, about 88.8 percent of employees were men, 6.6 percent women and 4.6 percent children, based on the Labor Report of December, 1946; Ola‘a Sugar Co., Manpower and Cultivated Area, July 31, 1948, UHM, HSPA, PSC 36/2; Kekaha Sugar Co., Confidential Statistics. Mulliken, Agricultural Labor, calculated that in 1939 about 80 percent of field workers employed on the plantations were adult males, 11 percent adult females, and 9 percent were less than 18 years old; Interview Lucy and Seraphine Robello, in Hanahana, 78; Interview Yasuki Arakaki, September 9, 1973, UHM, SZ, folder 28; Shoemaker, Labor, 34. 13. Acceptance Agreement of Adherent Planters, May 31, 1935, UHM, HSPA, PSC 49/11; Shoemaker, Labor, 24–25; Mollett, Sugar Plantation, 9, 63. 14. Shoemaker, Labor, 64, 76. 15. Mulliken, Agricultural Labor; Shoemaker, Labor, 76. 16. Shoemaker, Labor, 42, 45; Shoemaker, Economy, 60; Ola‘a Sugar Co., Labor Report to October 26, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 40/17. 17. Shoemaker, Labor, 83–85; Story of Pineapple, 4–5; Ramsey, “Dole”; U.S. Senate, Law Enforcement, 5–6; Pineapple Growers, Fact Book, 2, 7, 14; Ramsey, “Dole”; University of Hawai‘i, Women Workers, xiii; Matsumoto, 1947 Hawaiian Pineapple, 3. 18. Pineapple Growers, Fact Book, 18; Story of Pineapple, 5; Hawai‘i, “Impact of Foreign Pineapple,” 1–2; Pineapple Growers, Present Problems, 5, 9. 19. Pineapple Growers, Fact Book, 2; Horio, Hawaii and Pineapple, 9–11; Shoemaker, Labor, 86; USDL, Labor Conditions, 58, 69, 77. 20. Shoemaker, Labor, 88–90. 21. Elder, Pineapple, 19; Shoemaker, Labor, 87–89; USDL, Labor Conditions, 64–65; University of Hawai‘i, Women Workers, xiii–xiv. 22. Interview Al Quon McElrath; Cameron and Keane, Plantation Days, 8. 23. USDL, Labor Conditions, 11; Shoemaker, Labor, 86; Matsumoto, 1947 Pine-

Notes to Pages 118–128 259

apple, 1–2; “Labor Supply,” in U.S. Congress, Law Enforcement, 185; Pineapple Growers, Fact Book, 4. 24. Shoemaker, Labor, 90–91, 97. 25. Shoemaker, Labor, 98–99; Elder, Pineapple, 29. 26. Interviews D. T. Fleming and Shuji Seki, in Cameron, Plantation Days, 13, 28; Interview Tom Poy. 27. Aller, Labor Relations, 19; Interview Melvin Ah Ching; Interview Satoki Tamamoto, in Cameron and Keane, Plantation Days, 4. 28. USDL, Labor Conditions, 6, 17; Shoemaker, Economy, 101. 29. Pendleton, “Reversal,” 29; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 64th Annual Meeting; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 66th Annual Meeting; Kiyoshi, “Unionization,” 15. 30. Yoshihara, “Camp Life.” 31. Notes on Japanese girl student by Dr. Lind, March 29, 1947, UHM, RASRL, CF, Box 20, folder 15; Kiyoshi, “Unionization,” 16–17; Pendleton, “Reversal,” 31; Interviews Andrea Abacar and Melvin Ah Ching; Aller, Labor Relations, 37. 32. Interview Yasuki Arakaki; Aller, Labor Relations, 19. 33. Thompson, “ILWU,” 40; Rosegg, “Trail”; Mollett, Sugar Plantation, 9–10. 34. Discussions on earlier island strikes appear in Beechert, Working in Hawaii; Duus, Japanese Conspiracy; Reinecke, Piecemeal Strike; Kerkvliet, Unbending Cane. Takaki, “Ethnicity and Class,” 45–46; Interview Pedro and Cresencia Ponce, in Hanahana, 109–111, 119. 35. Merrill and Martínez, “Hawaii’s Farmworkers.” 36. Beechert, “Racial Divisions,” 127–30; Merrill and Martínez, “Hawaii’s Farmworkers”; Mulliken, Agricultural Labor. 37. Thompson, “IWLU,” 35. 38. Rosegg, “A forgotten”; “Kawano Testimony.” 39. Henderson, “Labor,” 53; Beechert, Working, 275 ff.; Weingarten, Raising Cane, 35. 40. Interview Lucy and Seraphine Robello, in Hanahana, 90; Rosegg, “A forgotten,” and “Labor’s Great”; “Kawano Testimony.” 41. Shoemaker, Economy, 21–25; Notes on Dr. Shoemaker’s Report, 1947, IWLU, folder Organizing Local 136, 1937–51; Henderson, “Labor,” 53; Thompson, “ILWU,” 40. 42. Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 356; Beechert, Working, 287. 43. Beechert, Working, 327; “Kawano Testimony”; Bert Nakano to Louis Goldblatt, February 3, 1944, and Jack H. Kawano to Julian Napuunoa, March 3, 1945, IWLU Organizing Files, folder Hawaii Correspondence Local 145; Aller, Labor Relations, 59. 44. Weingarten, Raising Cane, 42–43; Aller, Labor Relations, 60–61. 45. Shoemaker, Economy, 24–26; Beechert, Working, 288–291. 46. Interview Yasuki Arakaki. 47. Rosegg, “Labor’s great awakening.” 48. Interview Yasuki Arakaki.

260 Notes to Pages 128–136

49. Rosegg, “Labor’s great awakening”; “Kawano Testimony.” 50. Interview Yasuki Arakaki. 51. Kiyoshi, “Unionization,” 24; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Comments, August 12, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/6; “Sugar Strike”; Weingarten, Raising Cane, 42–43; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 65th Annual Meeting. 52. Aller, Labor Relations, 60; Matsumoto, 1947 Hawaiian Pineapple, 6. 53. Aller, Labor Relations, 62–63; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Comments, August 12, 1946. 54. Aller, Labor Relations, 83–84, 102; Beechert, Working, 294; Interview Lucy and Seraphine Robello, Hanahana, 89; R. K. Conant, Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, June 17, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 50/9 Daily Log—1946. 55. Sugar Negotiation Bulletin #5, September 3, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7; “Union’s Fate”; “Sugar Strike.” 56. Notes on Japanese girl student. 57. Interview Yasuki Arakaki; “Sugar Strike.” 58. “Union maps”; Strike Strategy Committee Meeting, August 20, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7, Correspondence, Strike—1946; Instructions to Supervisors, Ola‘a Sugar Co., August 12, 1946, UHM, HSPA, August 12, 1946, PSC 61/6, Correspondence, Strike—1946; Beechert, Working, 298; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 66th Annual Meeting; “Bargaining to Settle”; “ILWU Shuns”; Notes on Dr. Shoemaker’s Report on Labor Conditions in Hawaii, ILWU, folder Organizing Local 136, 1937–51. 59. Interview Yasuki Arakaki; Ola‘a Sugar Company Strike Logs, November 15, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 51/5; Questions on Strike Action, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7; Report of the ILWU Sugar Negotiating Committee, July 18, 1946, UHM, PSC, PSC 61/6, Manuel, “Time Off”; “Union Maps.” 60. “Union maps”; “Union set”; Ola‘a Sugar Company Strike Log, October 3, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 51/2; Logan, “Empty Cane”; Hideo Akada to Dear Sir and Brother, December 17, 1946, ILWU 142, folder post-sugar strike 1946; Weingarten, Raising Cane; Interviews Louis Goldblatt, Tom Poy. 61. R. L. Conant to W. L. S. Williams, August 31, 1946, Sugar Negotiation Bulletin #5, September 3, 1945, and Strike Strategy Committee Meeting, August 20, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Notice to Employees, August 12, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/6; Conant to Williams, August 31, 1946. 62. Slater M. Miller, 1945–1946 Filipino Emigration Project, and Secretary of Interior Ickes to Steelman, October 25, 1946, NA, RG 280, file 467/1583; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 66th Annual Meeting; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Comments, August 12, 1946; Individual Employment Agreement, Form 503, UHM, HSPA, LPC 13/7. 63. Interviews Marcelino Querubin, Tom Poy, Melvin Ah-Ching, and Trinidad Arias. 64. Aller, Labor Relations, 87. 65. “Sugar Workers”; “Violence issue”; Interviews Al Quon McGrath, Trinidad Arias and Andrea Abacar. 66. “Pickets Assemble”; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Daily Strike History Sheet, September 3–9, 1946, and Ola‘a Sugar Company Strike Log, September 3, 1946,

Notes to Pages 136–143 261

UHM, HSPA, PSC 50/11; “Bargaining to Settle”; “Maui Plantation”; “Managers Resist”; Beechert, Working, 299–300. 67. R. K. Conant, Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, September 4–5, 1946, and Ola‘a Sugar Company Strike Log, September 4, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC, 50/11. 68. Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, September 14, 1946, and October 1, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC, 51/2. 69. Notes on casual conversation with two Ewa plantation workers, November 10, 1946, UHM, RASRL, CF, Box 20, folder 15. 70. Aller, Labor Relations, 37; Notes on Japanese girl student. 71. Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, September 4, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 50/11. 72. Ola‘a Sugar Company Strike Log, September 4, 1946; C. Randahl, Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, September 13, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 51/1. 73. Beechert, Working, 300; Jack Hall, “A Lawless Judge Will Not Break the Strike,” September 23, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/6; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 66th Annual Meeting; Jack W. Hall to J. A. Krug, ILWU Local 142, folder sugar strike correspondence, government agencies 1946; “Lihue Picket”; Nutter, “Harriet Bouslog”; “Court Order”; Arinaga, “Harriet Bouslog.” 74. Interview Emigdio Cabico, Hanahana, 130–131; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Comments, August 12, 1946. 75. Ola‘a Sugar Company, Strike Log November 12, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 51/5; Ola‘a Sugar Company, Strike Log, September 27 and October 3, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC, 51/2; Interview Al Quon McElrath; Jack W. Hall, “Tighten the Ranks,” November 17, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7; M. O. Isherwood, Ola‘a Sugar Company Daily Log, September 5, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 50/11; Logan, “Empty Cane; “Violence Issue.” 76. Rademaker, “Race Relations,” 40; Joint Fact Finding Committee, Report on the Sugar Strike Situation, October 22, 1946, ILWU Local 142, folder Sugar strike 1946; Interview Al Quon McElrath; Logan, “Empty Cane.” 77. “Record Registration”; Akada to Dear Sir; Rademaker, “Race Relations,” 43; “P.A.C. Lashed”; West, “Brutality.” 78. Interview Al Quon McElrath; “White Critical”; “Bridges Hails.” 79. “AFL Leaders Hit.” 80. “IT IS HAPPENING”; “Voters, Here is What”; “Labor’s Future”; “Advertiser Editor.” 81. “Two Types”; Ola‘a Sugar Company Strike Log, September 26, 1946; UHM, HSPA, PSC 51/2; Interview Lucy and Seraphine Robello, Hanahana, 90–91; “Bridges Hails.” 82. Interview Yasuki Arakaki. 83. Ickes to Steelman, October 26, 1946, and Eric Beecroft to H. Rex Lee, October 22, 1946, NA, RG 280, file 467/1583; Aller, Labor Relations, 87. 84. Slater M. Miller, Memorandum of Agreement, November 15, 1946, and Radio Address by Louis Goldblatt, November 15, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 29/10. 85. Akada to Dear Sir; Report of a private meeting, September 24, 1946, UHM, RASRL, CF, Box 14, folder 9; Radio Address by Louis Goldblatt; Aller, Labor Relations, 19–20, 88–89; Jack Hall to Dear Sir and Brother, September 12, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 61/7.

262 Notes to Pages 144–156

86. Statement Louis Goldblatt, USDL hearing on Importation of Mexican Laborers, December 9, 1964, WPR, UFWOC-NFWA, Box 6, folder Hawaiian Agriculture. 87. Radio Address by Louis Goldblatt; Akada to Dear Sir; ILWU, Excerpts of Sugar Agreement 1948–1950, UHM, HSPA, PSC 39/2; Notes by Teddy Kreps, December 23, 1948, ILWU, folder Organizing Local 136, 1937–1951; Thompson, “The ILWU,” 41; Radio Address by Louis Goldblatt. 88. Interview Lucy and Seraphine Robello, Hanahana, 89, 91. 89. Interview Emigdio Cabico, Hanahana, 131; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 67th Annual Meeting. 90. Taylor, “Labor Moves”; McCabe, “Pineapple Worker.” 91. Beechert, “Racial Divisions,” 138; Joint Fact Finding Committee, Report. Chapter 4 The chapter epigraph is from Rosegg, “Trail.” 1. Beechert, Working, 302; “Maui ILWU Chief”; “Maui Pine Closes”; “Hall Urged”; “Weekend.” 2. Pineapple Industry, “If the ILWU.” 3. “Hawaiian Pine May”; James to Lee; “Bridges Promotes.” 4. “Hall Leaves”; Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 7–8; “Fed UP?”; “Strikes Threaten”; “C.I.O. Leadership”; “It’s Everybody’s Business.” 5. “AFL United”; Logan, “Maui Sees”; “Hall Leaves.” 6. “Hall Leaves.” CPC is California Packing Corporation; LML is Libby, McNeill, and Libby. 7. Ida Kanekoa Milles, interviewed in Michi Kodama-Nishimoto et al., Hanana, 4; “Parleys Fail”; Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 14. 8. “Record Number Apply”; “We the Women.” 9. “Can You Stand”; “It’s Everybody’s Business”; “Pine Firms Stand”; Elder, Pineapple in Hawaii, 31. 10. “Union Agrees”; Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 13. 11. “Union Agrees”; Roy E. James to Rex Lee, July 15, 1947, NA, RG 280, file 467/1583. 12. “Strike violence flares”; “Pineapple Industry Tieup”; Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 10; “McLaughlin’s Strike Rules.” 13. “Pineapple Industry Tieup”; “Maui Grand Jury.” 14. Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 10; “As Canneries”; “Parleys Fail”; “4 Arrests”; “Non-Strikers Work”; “Volunteers Pick.” 15. “Strike Arrests”; “Hall’s Bias Charges”; “Pineapple Strike Called.” 16. Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 12–13. Wages for men ranged between 90 cents and $1.70 per hour, and women earned between 80 cents and $1.85. 17. Roy E. James to Oren E. Long, August 5, 1947, NA, RG 280, file 467/1583. 18. Matsumoto, 1947 Pineapple, 13; Brissenden, Labor Injunction, 17–18; “McLaughlin’s Strike Rules.” 19. Beechert, Working, 306 ff.; Aller, Labor Relations, 90. 20. The ILWU remained independent until 1988, when it became part of

Notes to Pages 156–164 263

the AFL-CIO. Meister and Loftis, Long Time, 79–91; Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 364; “Two Giants”; “Kawano Testimony”; Ernesto Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 28, 1955, STFU, Reel 38; Hank Hasiwar, “Wages and Working Conditions of Sugar Cane Workers on Louisiana Plantations, Louisiana, 1953,” WHS, UPWA, Box 360, folder 3; Meister and Loftis, Long Time, 79–90; Holmberg, “Jack Hall.” 21. Aller, Labor Relations, 73, 77; Beechert, Working, 304–306; Rosegg, “Red probe”; “All-Out Union,” 144. 22. Nakatsuka, “Lanai is Unhappy”; “800 ILWU Men”; Elder, Pineapple in Hawaii, 32. 23. “ILWU Asks Publication”; “800 ILWU Pineapple Workers”; Nakatsuka, “Job Security.” 24. “Lanai Strike”; Nakatsuka, “Lanai Is Unhappy.” 25. Nakatsuka, “Strike May Damage,” “Lanai Is Unhappy,” “Lanai Strike,” and “Airlift”; “Pine Workers Get.” 26. Nakatsuka, “Lanai is Unhappy.” 27. Ramsey, “James A. Dole”; “Letter to HAPCO”; “Travelers Have Rights”; “Clearing the Air”; “481 Yes”; Epstein, “Work Starts.” 28. “Pine Workers Get”; Beechert, Working, 315; “Lanai Strike.” In the sense of focusing specifically on one racial group in an interracial effort, the concept of interracialism makes sense in this case. See Jung, “Interracialism,” 373–400. 29. Beechert, Working, 320–330; ILWU Local 142, Facts for 1958: A Sugar Year, Honolulu, 1958, ILWU Local 142; Oshiro, “Sugar firms”; Interviews with Melvin Ah Ching and Andrea Abacar; “All- Out Union”; interview Tom Poy. 30. Pineapple Growers Association, Pineapple Fact Book, 8. 31. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, passim; Teddy Kreps, Report December 23, 1948, ILWU, folder: ILWU Organizing Local 136; Aller, Labor Relations, 16. 32. Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 352–354. 33. Shoemaker, Labor, 32; Taylor, “Labor Moves,” 101; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 66th Annual Meeting; Aller, Labor Relations, 13; “Labor Supply,” in U.S. Congress, Law Enforcement, 190. 34. USDL, Labor Conditions, 13–14, 29–30; Shoemaker, Labor, 16–21; U.S. Congress, Law Enforcement, 190; Shoemaker, Economy, 40–41. 35. Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 357. 36. Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 357; Shoemaker, Economy, 42. 37. Aller, Labor Relations, 12; Chauncey B. Wightman, “Problems of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association,” November 10, 1945, UHM, HSPA, PSC 124/6; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 66th Annual Meeting; Shoemaker, Economy, 71. 38. Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 70th Annual Meeting; Olaa Sugar Company, Daily Log, March 25, 1946, UHM, HSPA, PSC 50/8; Olaa Sugar Company to All Employees, May 14, 1954, UHM, HSPA, PSC 124/16; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Report 70th Annual Meeting; Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association, Experiment Station Annual Report, Year Ending September 30, 1950; Olaa Sugar Company to All Employees. 39. University of Hawaii, Women Workers, xiv; Shoemaker, Labor, 83; Elder,

264 Notes to Pages 164–172

Pineapple in Hawaii, 13; Baldwin, Supplement, 9, 20–22; The Story of Pineapple, 12; Shoemaker, Economy, 78–80. 40. Elder, Pineapple in Hawaii, 13, 26; Baldwin, Supplement, 22. 41. Baldwin, Supplement, 20–21; University of Hawaii, Women Workers, xiv; Shoemaker, Economy, 80; Horio, Hawaii and Pineapple, 12; Elder, Pineapple in Hawaii, 19. 42. Henderson, “Labor,” 45; Kreps, Report; Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 363; “A Year of Ulcer-Making.” 43. Aller, Labor Relations, 12; Kreps, Report; C.E.S. Burns and Antonio Rana, Statement of Principles and Procedures used in determining disposition of employees, Olaa Sugar Company, Olaa, Hawaii, July 16, 1954, UHM, HSPA, PSC 124/16; Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 363–364; 44. Olaa Sugar Company to All Employees. 45. Kreps, Report. 46. ILWU Local 142, Facts for 1958. 47. Aller, Labor Relations, 7; Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 359. 48. ILWU Local 142, Facts for 1958; Pineapple Growers Association, Pineapple Fact Book, 4; Reinold, “After Long Affair.” 49. Geschwender and Levine, “Rationalization,” 364–365. Chapter 5 The chapter epigraph comes from an interview with Hank Hasiwar by Anne Loftis, June 30, 1975, New York City, Bancroft Library Oral History Project, SCSU. 1. NFLU News Release, August 1946, WPR, WDL, Box 165, folder 11; NFLU to International Union Officers, Organization of Agricultural Workers, n.d., WPR, WDL, Box 166, folder 10; Testimony George Fisher, Jr., President’s Committee on Migratory Labor (hereafter PCML) Proceedings, IV, 6–7. It estimated that in 1949 California had 263,000 temporary agricultural workers, of whom 194,500 were men, 47,100 women, 13,300 boys, and 8,100 girls under 18; 8,000 Mexican Nationals; McWilliams, California, 3 ff. 2. Tomasek, “Migrant Problem,” 304; Jenkins, “The Transformation,” 56; Meier and Loftis, 75–79, quotation on p. 79. 3. Blum and Boyden, “Three Big DiGiorgio Strikes,” WPR, UFW LIB, folder Blum; Grubbs, “Prelude,” 455–462. 4. Majka and Majka, Farm Workers, 11–19; Galarza, Farm Workers, esp. 78–90. 5. Accounts on union philosophy and vision by insiders include Mitchell, Mean Things; NFLU Kern County Local 218 Press Release, October 20, 1947, STFU, Reel 32; Galarza, “Big Farm.” On NSF, see especially Ana Capples and Harold L. Oram, Memorandum to the Board of the NSF, December 12, 1946, WPR, WDL, Box 168, folder 24; and Fay Bennett, Background Report for National Sharecroppers Fund Board of Directors Meeting, December 20, 1960, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 14. 6. Stephens, “Revolt,” 656; H. L. Mitchell to Joseph Duncan, April 11, 1946,

Notes to Pages 173–176 265

STFU, Reel 32; NFLU Executive Council, Report to 13th Annual Convention, January, 1947, STFU, Reel 32. 7. On the UCAPAWA campaigns of 1937–1939, see especially, Jamieson, Labor, 165 ff.; H. L. Mitchell to W. T. O’Rear, June 23, 1939, STFU, Reel 11; Mitchell, Mean Things, 166–170; H. L. Mitchell to James E. Sidel, December 15, 1939, STFU, Reel 13; H. L. Mitchell to Donald H. Grubbs, July 11, 1972, SCSU, EG, Box 5, folder 2; Mitchell, “The Voice of the Disinherited: A Brief History of the Agricultural Workers, 1935–1959,” SCSU, EG, Box 6, folder 9; Mitchell to Sidel; H. L. Mitchell to W. T. O’Rear, June 23, 1939, STFU, Reel 11; Stephens, “Revolt,” 663. 8. Mitchell, “Little Known,” 112–113; Testimony Edwin C. Mitchell, PCML Proceedings, I, 174; Mitchell, Mean Things, 189–190; H. L. Mitchell to Avis Etheridge, September 1, 1944, STFU Reel 27; Robert J. House to H. L. Mitchell, July 24, 1945, STFU Reel 30; H. L. Mitchell, “Migrant Farm Labor,” 1950, PHS, NCC, Box 3, folder 4. 9. Chamberlain, Victory, 81; Mitchell, “Little Known,” 114–116; Testimony Edwin C. Mitchell, PCML Proceedings, I, 174–175; David A. Munro, “The New American Serfdom,” New Leader ( July 22, 1944): 7, in SCSU, EG, Box 24, folder 10; NFLU, Agricultural Labor in 1948, November 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 2; Woodruff, “Pick or Fight,” 75–76. 10. Mitchell, “Little Known,” 115–116; testimony Leon B. Schachter, PCML Proceedings, VIII, 311–312; Hahamovitch The Fruits, 183–199; testimony John M. Seabrook, PCML Proceedings, VIII, 111. 11. H. L. Mitchell to W. T. O’Rear, June 23, 1939, Julius B. Nathan to H. L. Mitchell, June 28, 1939, and U. Richardson to H. L. Mitchell, June 23, 1939, STFU Reel 11; David Dubinsky to H. L. Mitchell, May 5, 1945, and Allan S. Haywood to H. L. Mitchell, June 3, 1946, STFU Reel 32; H. L. Mitchell to Norman Smith, June 8, 1959, STFU Reel 42. 12. H. L. Mitchell, “America’s Disinherited: A Brief History of the Nation’s Farmworkers’ Efforts to Form Organizations,” 1970, STFU, Reel 58; Casper, “Social History,” 91. Jenkins, Politics of Insurgency, 88, suggests that “intense rivalries between the AFL and the CIO prompted the formation of a new farmworker challenge” by the AFL through the NFLU. 13. American Federation of Labor, Proceedings 65th Convention, 413–414; “Plans to Organize”; NFLU, “Statement to the American Federation of Labor,” August 14, 1946, STFU, Reel 32. 14. NFLU, Agricultural Labor in 1948; H. L. Mitchell to Hazel Whitman, January 6, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; American Federation of Labor, Proceedings 66th Convention, 511, 631, 648; NFLU Legislative Program, January 1949, WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 3; “Statement to the American Federation of Labor, August 14, 1946, STFU, Reel 32. 15. H. L. Mitchell to William Green, May 1, 1946, STFU, Reel 32; Hazel Whitman, Confidential Report to the Board of the National Sharecroppers Fund, 1947, WPR, WDL, Box 168, folder 23; NFLU Executive Council, Report to the 14th Annual Convention, Little Rock, December 12, 1947, STFU, Reel 32; Hank Hasiwar to Roland Watts, January 22, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 2.

266 Notes to Pages 176–184

16. Hank Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities in California, March 1947 to April 1949, WPR, WDL, Box 166, folder 8; Interview Hasiwar; “Organizer Appointed.” Hasiwar’s closest link to agriculture was that he was reared on a truck farm in Pennsylvania; Zane Meckler to Morris Milgram, April 12, 1947, WPR, WDL, Box 35, folder 4; Mitchell, Roll the Union, 60. 17. Galarza to Dorothy, June 23, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Hasiwar and Galarza, Operations of the NFLU-AFL, in the Imperial Valley, February-May 1951, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder NFLU Imperial Valley 1951. 18. Testimony George Fisher, PCML Proceedings, V, 7; Hill, “DP Shipping.” 19. Testimony Ellis Coman, PCML Proceedings, V, 152–153; González, Labor, 17 ff.; García, A World, 35–69. 20. McWilliams, California, 3 ff.; García, A World, 5; González, Labor, 17 ff.; Meany, “Peonage,” 3–5, 31; Meany to S. V. Bledsoe, May 27, 1941, NA, RG 16, General Correspondence 1941, Employment 1–3, Strikes. 21. Interviews William Croddy, George A. Graham and Ed Rosenbaum; Testimony Ellis Coman, PCML Proceedings, V, 153–154. 22. Testimony, Ellis Coman, PCML Proceedings, V, 153–155; “Wetbacks: Menace,” 11. 23. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 7, 1948, STFU, Reel 33. 24. USDA, Preliminary Survey, 163, 165; Testimony Philip Veracruz, PCML Proceedings, V, 617; Hasiwar, “Organizing in California”; Schwartz, “Recent Developments,” 834 ff.; NFLU Local 218 Press Release, May 12, 1948, STFU Reel 32; Galarza, Farm Workers, 199. 25. U.S.D.A., Preliminary Survey, 163–167. 26. Hasiwar to Watts, January 22, 1948; Jim Wrightson to Rowland Watts, January 31, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 2. 27. U.S.D.A., Preliminary, 166–167. 28. Valuable works on Central Valley agricultural workers in the cotton strike include Taylor, “Documentary History,” 17–158; Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 167– 221; Weber, Dark Sweat, 79–111; Acuña, Corridors; and Stein, California, 36–39. U.S.D.A., Preliminary, 168–169; NFLU press release, January 3, 1950, STFU Reel 34. 29. Mary O. Brown, California Project, August 14, 1950, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 19; A. S. Moore, Report on Mexican Migrants, July 1942, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 16. 30. Taylor, “Housing,” 198–199; Victor Reisel, Inside Labor, August 29, 1947, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 17; Eduard C. Lindeman to Dear Friend, October 16, 1947, WPR, WDL, Box 168, folder 23. 31. Testimony Ernesto Galarza and Mike Soto, PCML Proceedings, V, 568–569, 622; Harvey Harper, United Ministry to Migrants in Kern County, October 1, 1949 to May 15, 1950, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 18; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 7, 1948. 32. NFLU to International Union Officers, Organization of Agricultural Workers; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 7, 1948; Mrs. R. F. Sitken, Rural Slums, PHS, HMC, Box 13, folder 4. 33. Goldschmidt, As You Sow, 80–81, 86, 88. 34. Ibid., 66–75. Quotation page 71.

Notes to Pages 185–190 267

35. Ibid., 67, 135. 36. Boyden and Ken Blum, “The 1939 DiGiorgio Peach Strike of the CIO,” WPR, UFW, OP, Box 23, folder 3; Report on DiGiorgio Strike, NA, RG 280, file 196/6897. 37. Scruggs, Braceros, 356. 38. Curt Hyans to C. J. Haggerty, November 4, 1947, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder DiGiorgio Strike; Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; Hank Hasiwar, California Farm Labor Organizing Report, April 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Interview Hasiwar; Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; Hasiwar, “Organizing in California”; “Union Members Picket.” 39. Galarza, “DiGiorgio Strike”; Galarza, “Poverty.” 40. Galarza, “Poverty”; Galarza, “Big Farm”; Hank Hasiwar, NFLU News Release, STFU, Reel 32; “Farm Workers Strike.” 41. Wrightson to Watts, January 31, 1948. 42. Mitchell, Mean Things, 251– 254, Galarza, “Big Farm,” 179, 181; Galarza, “Poverty”; Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 7, 1948. 43. NFLU News Release, October 2, 1947, STFU Reel 32; Hasiwar, “Organizing in California”; NFLU, Chronological Summary of the DiGiorgio Strike, February, 1948, WPR, UFW, OP, Box 24, folder 9; “SUP Answers SOS”; Galarza, “Poverty”; Mitchell, Mean Things, 253–254; Interview Hasiwar. 44. Meister, Long Time, 75; Wrightson to Watts, January 31, 1948; Galarza, “Poverty”; Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; Interview Hasiwar. 45. NFLU Local 218 Press Release, November 2, 1947, STFU Reel 32; Hasiwar to Watts, January 22, 1948; Ickes, “Man to Man”; Testimony Alfred J. Elliott, Congressional Record—House, March 22, 1948, 3287–3288; National Farm Labor Union, Statement on the importation of agricultural workers from Mexico, June 4, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 15. 46. NFLU Local 218 Press Release, October 20, 1947; NFLU, Chronological Summary; Curt Hyans to C. J. Haggerty, November 4, 1947; Interview Hasiwar. 47. Whitman, Confidential Report; NFLU, Chronological Summary; Galarza, “DiGiorgio Strike”; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, July 18, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 7, 1948. 48. Foley, White Scourge, 192, argues that NFLU “mistakenly sought to be interclass.” Rather, the union recognized that small farmers in objective terms were in an intermediary position and struggled to educate them to adopt a working class position subjectively. Elliot D. Pratt to subscriber, June 21, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; “Farm Strikers”; Galarza, “Ranch Workers.” 49. Interview Hasiwar; H. L. Mitchell to Joe Papa, April 6, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Testimony H. L. Mitchell to U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Labor and Education, March 16, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; Special Citizens Committee Investigating DiGiorgio Farms, “A Community Aroused,” December 17, 1947, STFU, Reel 32; Galarza, “Poverty”; Ken Blum and Richard Boyden, “The 1947– 1950 DiGiorgio Strike,” WPR, UFW, OP, Box 23, folder 3; Testimony Alfred J. Elliott, Congressional Record—House, March 22, 1948, 3289. 50. NFLU Local 218 Press Release, November 2, 1947; Interview Hank Hasiwar; Curt Hyans to C. J. Haggerty, November 4, 1947; To the Board of the NSF,

268 Notes to Pages 190–194

Confidential Memo on the DiGiorgio Strike, (1947), WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 1; NFLU Local 218 Press Release, November 2, 1947; NFLU Local 218, DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #5, November 28, 1947, STFU Reel 32; NFLU Local 218, DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #6, December 7, 1947, STFU Reel 32. 51. Fred West to Dear Friend, November 2, 1947, STFU Reel 32; Wrightson to Watts, January 31, 1948; Mitchell, Mean Things, 254. 52. Wrightson to Watts, February 19, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 4; “Union Agents.” 53. NFLU, Chronological Summary; W. B. Camp to Earl Butz, May 6, 1975, NA, RG 16, folder General Correspondence 1–1, January 1, 1975; Brannan to Baldwin, December 18, 1947. 54. Curt Hyans to C. J. Haggerty, November 4, 1947; To the Board of the NSF, Confidential Memo; Hasiwar to Watts, January 22, 1948; Galarza, “Big Farm.” 55. H. L. Mitchell to Joseph Savoretti, August 11, 1947, STFU Reel 32; NFLU Local 218, DiGiorgio NFLU Local 218, Strike Bulletin #4, November 24, 1947; Workers Defense League News Release, October 27, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 2; “45 Aliens”; “California Strike in 4th Month,” Farm Labor News, January 1948; NFLU Local 218, DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #6; NFLU Local 218, DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #9, December 28, 1947, SCSU, EG, Box 42, folder 9; Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio.” 56. Charles T. Brannan to Raymond E. Baldwin, December 18, 1947, NA, RG 16, General Correspondence 1947, folder Employment 1–1 Agricultural Labor; James D. Bryant to C. J. Haggerty, April 9, 1948, SCSU, EG, Box 24, folder 10; “Associated Farmers Hit.” 57. NFLU News Release, October 2, 1947; Curt Hyans to C. J. Haggerty, November 4, 1947; Statement H. L. Mitchell, AFL Proceedings, 66th Convention; Brannan to Baldwin, December 18, 1947; NFLU Local 218 Press Release, October 20, 1947; Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio”; Rowland Watts to George C. Marshall, October 18, 1947, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 1. 58. NFLU DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #9; Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio”; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 7, 1948; “45 Aliens”; To the Board of the NSF, Confidential Memo. 59. Kern County Farm Labor Union #218, DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #24, April 18, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; H. L. Mitchell to William Wolpert, June 8, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; “Friendship Caravan Brings Food”; “Pickets Close”; “DiGiorgio Farm Products”; Blum and Boyden, “Three Big”; Hasiwar to Watts, January 22, 1948; Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio.” 60. Hasiwar to Watts, January 22, 1948; Mitchell, Mean Things, 254–256; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, July 18, 1948; Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; “DiGiorgio Farm Products”; Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio.” 61. H. L. Mitchell to Helen Gahagan Douglas, May 12, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Galarza, “DiGiorgio Strike”; Jim Wrightson to Rowland Watts, January 26, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 2; “Friendship Caravan Brings Food”; Minutes of the Board of the National Sharecroppers Fund, May 19, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Galarza, “Ranch Workers”; NFLU News Release, May 9, 1950, STFU, Reel 35. 62. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 22, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; Report on

Notes to Pages 194–200 269

Conference of Representatives of Confederación Proletaria Nacional de México and NFLU at Laredo, October 16–18, 1948, STFU, Reel 33; H. L. Mitchell to National Sharecroppers Fund, n.d., WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 5. 63. The National Committee to Aid the DiGiorgio Strikers changed its name in 1948 to the Citizens Committee on the DiGiorgio strike. “Form National Committee”; Citizens Committee on the DiGiorgio Strike, News Release, May 14, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 7; DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #9. 64. Wrightson to Watts, January 31, 1948; Zane Meckler to Roland Watts, February 1, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 4; Hank Hasiwar to Rowland Watts, February 6, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 4; “DiGiorgio Goons Fail”; “Friendship Caravan Brings Food.” 65. “Three DiGiorgio Pickets”; “Company Resorts”; H. L. Mitchell to Rowland Watts, February 10, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 4; Mitchell, Mean Things, 260–261. 66. Farm Labor News, April 1948; H. L. Mitchell to Hank Hasiwar, SCSU, EG, Box 7, folder 6; Meister and Loftis, A Long Time, 79–80; Galarza biographical sketch, STFU, Reel 36; Pitti, “Ernesto Galarza,” 161–188; Chabran, “Activism,” 134–152. 67. Galarza, “DiGiorgio Strike”; AFL Information and Publicity Service Press Release, May 18, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; NFLU, Agricultural Labor in 1948; Mitchell, “Little Known,” 117; John Haynes Holmes to Editor of America, May 26, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 7. 68. DiGiorgio Conference, June 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 65, folder 19; “DiGiorgio Farms Labor Violence.” 69. Testimony Alfred J. Elliott, Congressional Record—House, March 22, 1948, 3287–3288; Special Citizens Committee Investigating DiGiorgio Farms, “A Community Aroused”; Galarza, “Poverty”; “DiGiorgio, Union Heads”; “Tenney Group”; NSF Board Meeting Minutes, February 26, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 168, folder 25; “DiGiorgio Farms Labor Violence”; NSF Board Meeting Minutes, February 26, 1948; NSF Board Meeting Minutes March 17, 1955, WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 5; “Red Cries”; California Senate, Un-American Activities, 337; John Hayes Holmes to Rowland Watts, April 23, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 6; Galarza, “Big Farm.” 70. H. L. Mitchell to Donald H. Grubbs, July 11, 1972, SCSU, EG, Box 5, folder 2; John Haynes Holmes to Earl Warren, April 23, 1948, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 6. 71. H. L. Mitchell to L. P. H. Day, October 11, 1945, STFU, Reel 31; NFLU Local 218 Press Release, May 12, 1948; DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin, May 14, 1948, SCSU, EG, Box 42, folder 9. 72. Galarza to Don, August 10, 1951, WPR, WR, Box 344, folder 10. 73. Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio”; Galarza, Spiders, 61–65; Alexander H. Schullman to H. L. Mitchell, October 24, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; Alexander H. Schullman to H. L. Mitchell, May 5, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; Agreement between DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation and Harry W. Flannery, NFLU, Hollywood AFL Film Council, May 23, 1950, STFU, Reel 35. 74. NFLU, DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin #5, November 28, 1947, STFU, Reel 32; NFLU News Release, November 2, 1947, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 1;

270 Notes to Pages 200–209

Herbert S. Thatcher to H. L. Mitchell, May 11, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; NFLU Press Release July 4, 1948, and NFLU DiGiorgio Strike Bulletin, July 7, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; Ickes, “Man to Man.” 75. Herbert Thatcher to H. L. Mitchell, May 11, 1948; NFLU Press Release, June 28, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; NFLU, Agricultural Labor in 1948; NFLU News Service, NFLU Press Release May 9, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; Grubbs, “Prelude,” 462. 76. Interview Hasiwar; Interview Galarza, 15; Talk by Galarza, San Jose, May 7, 1974, SCSU, EG, Box 3, folder 6; Galarza, Spiders, 48–55; Blum and Boyden, “The 1947–1950 DiGiorgio.” 77. Scruggs, Braceros, 356. 78. Mitchell, “America’s Disinherited.” 79. Quoted in Mitchell, Mean Things, 256; Interview Galarza, 23. Chapter 6 The chapter epigraph is from H. L. Mitchell, in National Sharecroppers Fund, “Migratory Labor and Low Income Farmers,” NSF Proceedings 1957, 16. 1. Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; NFLU to International Union Officers, Organization of Agricultural Workers. 2. Hank Hasiwar to Governor Warren, September 7, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; NFLU News Release, September 3, 1949, STFU, Reel 34. 3. For more on the 1933 cotton strike, see especially Acuña, Corridors, 237– 285; Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 167–221; Weber, Dark Sweat, 79–111; Taylor, “Documentary History,” 17–158. The demographic shift is detailed in Harvey Harper, Santa Clara Valley Migrant Project, June 10, 1950 to September 1, 1950, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 18. 4. Testimony W. L. Frick, PCML Proceedings, V, August 10–12, 1950, 317. 5. Galarza, Farm Workers, 101–102; NFLU, Agricultural Labor in 1948. 6. Galarza, Summary of the present cotton picking situation, October 5, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; H. L. Mitchell to Harry S. Truman, September 28, 1949, SCSU, EG, Box 33, folder 1. 7. Coy, “Cotton Picking Machine”; “The Cotton Picker and Unemployment,” STFU, Reel 6. 8. Eleanor Short, West Fresno County Cotton Project, 1947–1948, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 17; Valdés, “Machine Politics” 206–210; “Cotton Strike”; Harvey Harper, The United Ministry to Migrants in Kern County, October 1, 1949, to May 15, 1950, PHS, HMC, Box 9, folder 17; “Attempts to Prevent”; H. L. Mitchell to Truman, September 28, 1949. 9. “Cotton Strike”; H. L. Mitchell, California Farm Workers Win Strike, (1949), WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 4; Beth Biderman, The Condition of Farm Workers in 1949, WPR, WDL, Box 168, folder 22. 10. Cotton Pickers Strike, Central Valley, California, WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 2; Cotton Picker Strike Extended to South, WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 3; “Attempts to Prevent.” 11. Elliot D. Pratt to Galarza, November 10, 1949, SCSU, EG, Box 33, folder 1;

Notes to Pages 209–217 271

H. L. Mitchell, California Farm Workers Win; “Attempts to Prevent”; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, September 29, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; H. L. Mitchell to Harry S. Truman, September 28, 1949; Testimony W. L. Frick, PCML Proceedings, V, 302. 12. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, December 31, 1950, STFU Reel 35; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, October 20, 1949, STFU Reel 34. 13. H. L. Mitchell, California Farm Workers Win; Biderman, Condition 1949; Cotton Pickers Strike, Central Valley; Pratt to Galarza, November 10, 1949. 14. Galarza, Summary; Hazel Whitman, Memo re: Cotton Strike (October 1949), WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 2; Testimony Galarza, PCML Proceedings, V, 561. 15. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, October 20, 1949. 16. Jacques Levy, César Chávez, 79; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell and others, April 7, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; H. L. Mitchell, California Farm Workers Win. 17. NFLU News Service Press Release, October 30, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; “20,000 Cotton Pickers”; Beth Biderman, The Condition of Farm Workers in 1950, WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 1. 18. Harper, United Ministry to Migrants in Kern County; Biderman, Condition 1950. 19. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, September 7, 1950 and September 20, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; “Union Wins.” 20. Interview McCullough. 21. “Union Wins.” 22. “Big Farmers”; Hank Hasiwar and Ernesto Galarza, Operations of the NFLU-AFL in the Imperial Valley, February–May, 1951, STFU, Reel 35. 23. Hasiwar and Galarza, Operations. 24. U.S.D.A., Preliminary, 157–158. 25. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, April 19, 1951, STFU, Reel 35. 26. NFLU, The Wetback Strike, May 24–June 25, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Beth Biderman, The Condition of Farm Workers in 1951, WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder 6; Hank Hasiwar, Report on the Imperial Valley, January 3, 1950, STFU, Reel 34. 27. Biderman, Condition 1951, U.S.D.A. Preliminary Survey, 157. 28. NFLU, Wetback Strike; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, April 17, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; “Imperial Valley Being Organized”; Testimony Jacinto Cota, U.S. Senate, Migratory Labor (1952) I, 231. 29. U.S.D.A., Preliminary, 159; Biderman, Condition 1951; NFLU, Wetback Strike; Joaquín López et. al. to Dear Friends, May 31, 1952, WHS, UPWA, Box 304, folder 3. 30. NFLU, Wetback Strike; Galarza to Mitchell, May 8, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Biderman, Condition 1951; “California Farmers.” 31. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, August 15, 1949, STFU, Reel 34; E. C. de la Baca to H. L. Mitchell, April 26, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Imperial Valley Farm Labor Union Council, Do the Nationals Have to Be Moved? June 4, 1951, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder NFLU—Curt Hyans. 32. “Citrus Growers Refuse Jobs to Americans” (June 1950), SCSU, EG, Box 42, folder 10; Hank Hasiwar to Thomas Campbell, July 28, 1950, SCSU, EG, Box 42, folder 9.

272 Notes to Pages 218–224

33. “Agricultural Board”; “Citrus Growers Refuse.” 34. NFLU, Report on Imperial Valley, March 12, 1951, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder NFLU Imperial Valley 1951. 35. NFLU News Release, February 6, 1951, STFU Reel 35; Kempton, “U.S. Slaps”; Hank Hasiwar to H. L. Mitchell, May 9, 1951, STFU, Reel 35. 36. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 8, 1951; Hasiwar and Galarza, Operations. 37. NFLU, Report on Imperial Valley; “California Farmers”; “Imperial Valley Being Organized”; NFLU, Wetback Strike. 38. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, January 30, 1951 and NFLU Press Releases, March 13 and March, 1951, STFU Reel 35. 39. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, January 30, 1951; NFLU Press Release March 13 1951; Galarza, Farm Workers, 154–156. 40. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 8, 1951; Ernesto Galarza to Rowland Watts, April 16, 1951, WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 9; H. L. Mitchell to Rowland Watts, April 5, 1951, WPR, WDL, Box 158, folder 9; Confidential—Current Situation in Imperial—Strike Expected About May 23, STFU, Reel 35. 41. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, April 10, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; C. J. Haggerty to Galarza, May 15, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; H. L. Mitchell to National Sharecroppers Fund, n.d., WPR, WDL, Box 169, folder NSF 1951; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 17, 1951, STFU Reel 35; Mitchell, Mean Things, 220; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 8, 1951. 42. Hasiwar, Report on NFLU activities; NFLU, Wetback Strike. 43. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, April 10, 1951; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 8, 1951. 44. Galarza, Report on meetings at Brawley, El Central, Calexico and Calipatria of April 13 and April 14, 1950, SCSU, EG, Box 42, folder 9; Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, December 31, 1950, STFU, Reel 35; “Farm Workers in Calif. Strike”; Galarza to Beth Biderman, May 11, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; NFLU Press Release, May 24, 1951, STFU, Reel 35. 45. Galarza to William Green, June 2, 1951, GM, WG, Box 7, folder 52; NFLU, Wetback Strike; NFLU Press Release, May 24, 1951. 46. “Farm workers in Calif. Strike”; NFLU, Wetback Strike; Imperial Valley Farm Labor Union Council El Centro, “Why the Strike Was Called,” WPR, CH, Box 1, folder NFLU Curt Hyans; “AFL Farm Workers”; Curt Hyans, Strike of Farm Labor Union, June 1951, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder Foreign Labor. 47. NFLU, Wetback Strike; Mitchell, Mean Things, 268; “Situation is ‘Tense’”; NFLU Press Release, May 28, 1951, STFU, Reel 35. 48. Confidential—Current Situation; Galarza to Beth Biderman, May 11, 1951. 49. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 25, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; NFLU, Wetback Strike; Casper, “Social History,” 93–98; Galarza to Vern H. Cannon, May 25, 1951, GM, WG, Box 7, folder 52; Mitchell, Mean Things, 266. 50. NFLU, Wetback Strike, “AFL Farm Workers”; Curt Hyans to Pat, June 11, 1951, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder NFLU Imperial Valley 1951; NFLU Press Release, June 9, 1951, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 25. 51. First California Council of Agricultural Unions, Convention, September 14–15, 1951, GM, WG, Box 7, folder 52; NFLU, Wetback Strike.

Notes to Pages 225–238 273

52. “Situation is ‘Tense’”; NFLU Press Release, May 28, 1951; Mitchell, “Little Known,” 119; NFLU Press Release, “Kidnapping Charged.” 53. H. L. Mitchell to J. Howard McGrath, May 30, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; NFLU Press Release, May 31, 1951, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 25; Hyans, Strike of Farm Labor Union; Testimony Juanita García, U.S. Senate, Migratory Labor (1952) I, 229. 54. NFLU News Release, June 9, 1951, WPR, WDL, 159, folder 25; Kempton, “Paradise”; NFLU News Release, June 11, 1951, WPR, CH, Box 1, folder NFLU Imperial Valley 1951; V. Harwood Blocker to Department of State, June 6, 1951, NA, RG 174, files of Robert T. Creasy (1951), folder Mexican Dispatches; NFLU El Centro Press Release, June 14, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Kempton, “Paradise”; Hyans to Pat, June 11, 1951; NFLU Press Release, May 28, 1951. 55. Galarza to H. L. Mitchell, May 17, 1951; NFLU, Wetback Strike; NFLU News Release, June 11, 1951; Blocker to Department of State, June 6, 1951. 56. NFLU, Wetback Strike; NFLU News Release, June 5, 1951, WPR, WDL, Box 159, folder 25; Blocker to Department of State, June 6, 1951. 57. NFLU Press Release, May 28, 1951; H. L. Mitchell to Michael J. Galvin, June 25, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Hasiwar quote in Mitchell, Mean Things, 268. 58. NFLU Press Release, May 28, 1951; NFLU News Release, June 5, 1951; Maurice J. Tobin to H. L. Mitchell, June 8, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Kempton, “Paradise.” 59. NFLU, Wetback Strike; James D. Bryant to C. J. Haggerty, April 9, 1948, SCSU EG, Box 24, folder 10. 60. NFLU El Centro Press Release, June 22, 1951, STFU Reel 35; J. Galvin to H. L. Mitchell, June 21, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; H. L. Mitchell to Michael J. Galvin, June 25, 1951; Mitchell, Mean Things, 269. 61. Mitchell to National Sharecroppers Fund (n.d.). 62. Douglas Still to Louise Shotwell, November 24, 1951, PHS, NCC, Box 7, folder 13; NFLU El Centro Press Release, May 14, 1951, STFU, Reel 35; Galarza, “The Present Situation in Imperial Valley,” February 1, 1952, STFU, Reel 36. Retrospective and Prospectus 91.

The epigraph is from “The Ballad of the DiGiorgio Strikers,” Mitchell, Roll,

1. García-Muñiz, “The South,” 584. 2. Statement by International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union, March 27, 1969. ILWU, folder Trade Union Relations, Farmworkers, United. 3. Galarza, Merchants, 72; Kim, “Political Economy,” 45. 4. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 132. For a different view on colonization of Mexican workers, see González, “Imperialism and Labor: Mexican, Indian, and Algerian Labor Migrations in Comparative Perspective,” 15–55, and “Indentured Labor: A Convention in U.S.-Mexico Relations,” 141–175, in González, Guest Workers. 5. H. L. Mitchell to Galarza, December 16, 1952, STFU, Reel 36; Levenstein, “Sindicalismo,” 165.

274 Notes to Pages 239–242

6. H. L. Mitchell to William Becker, December 17, 1952, STFU, Reel 36; George Meany to S. V. Bledsoe, May 27, 1941, NA, RG 16, General correspondence 1941, folder Employment 1–3, Strikes; Testimony George Meany, U.S. Senate, Agricultural Labor Legislation, 198–199; Moyer, “Conversation,” 3–4; Meany, “Peonage,” 3–5, 31. 7. Mitchell, Mean Things, 223; Hasiwar, “California Farm Labor Organization Report to the National Executive Council,” NFLU, April, 1948, STFU, Reel 32; H. L. Mitchell to Patrick Gorman, January 19, 1956, STFU, Reel 39. 8. H. L. Mitchell to William Becker, December 17, 1952, STFU, Reel 36; Galarza to Meany, June 10, 1954, STFU, Reel 38; Mitchell to Patrick Gorman, January 19, 1956. 9. In 1953, the UPWA, which had recently been designated the union of agricultural workers of Puerto Rico by the CIO, spoke of forming one big agricultural union when it absorbed remnants of the Fruit and Vegetable Workers Union, Locals 78-A and 78-B, which had contracts in Arizona and California sheds. Local 78 was already in serious decline as growers were transferring packing tasks from the sheds to the fields, where they could then hire Mexican nationals not under union contract. Local 78 lost over 2500 jobs during the early 1950s, and AFL processing worker unions also suffered from this assault by corporation agriculture. On May 10, 1954, the CIO awarded the UPWA jurisdiction over all agricultural and processing workers in the nation. The following day, the UPWA offered Galarza a job to direct an organizing campaign for field and processing workers for California, and positions to several other NAWU officers. Galarza asserted that “every one of our key members” had been offered positions either by the CSO or the UPWA to work in their drive. For more on the UPWA drive, see Watson, “Mixed Medley”; Galarza to Mitchell, May 29, 30, and June 10, 1954, STFU, Reel 38. 10. “CIO Aids Farm Labor,” 27–30, reprinted from Economic Outlook, April 1952, Pamphlet No. 205, WHS, UPWA, Box 304, folder 3. 11. Gardner Jackson to Walter P. Reuther, June 3, 1954, EG, Box 7, folder 8; Watson, “Mixed Medley,” 58–71. 12. League for Industrial Democracy and National Sharecroppers Fund, Down on the Farm, n.p.; the best example of the pervasiveness of the theme of powerlessness was evident in the influential 1970 hearings that produced a 16-volume report, Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Powerlessness; Zieger, CIO.

Glossary: Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Short Terms

AAA Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1934 AAPR Asociación de Agricultores de Puerto Rico AF Associated Farmers AFBF American Farm Bureau Federation of America AFL American Federation of Labor agregado Nonlandowning rural worker Agricultural Workers National Agricultural Workers Union (AFL). Successor to National Farm Labor Union. Merged with Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workers Union (AFL). ALB San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Labor Bureau Alianza The Alliance of the Partido Union and segments of the Partido Republicano AMCBW Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of America ANBM Alianza Nacional de Braceros de México APA Asociación de Productores de Azúcar APLC Agricultural Producers Labor Committee Auténtica Confederación General de Trabajadores-Auténtica (Independent) AWOC Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO) Big Five The five major Hawaiian factors (corporate companies): C. Brewer (1826), Theo H. Davies (1845), American Factors (1849), Castle & Cooke (1851), and Alexander & Baldwin (1870) central Sugarcane processing factory CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations CLC Central Labor Council (AFL) Coalición Coalition of the Partido Socialista and segments of the Partido Republicano, and other dissident elements colonia “Colony.” Farms, nominally independent but in practice tributaries of centrales. Sugarcane workers commonly worked and often resided in a hamlet or town on colonia property. colono Farmer Confederación Confederación General de Trabajadores (Independent)

276 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

convenio Collective bargaining agreement CPC Pineapple Company on Maui CSES California State Employment Service, division of USES CSFL California State Federation of Labor. State affiliate of AFL. CTM Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos Farm Labor(ers) National Farm Labor Union (AFL). Successor to Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Federación Federación Libre de Trabajadores (AFL) FLSA Fair Labor Standards Act FNT Federación Nacional de Trabajadores (Independent) FTA Food, Tobacco, and Allied Workers Union of America (1944–1950), successor to UCAPAWA (CIO) FWAUA Farm Workers Allied Union of America (Independent) Gubernamental Confederación General de Trabajadores—Gubernamental hacienda Large rural landholding HAPCO Hawaiian Pineapple Company (Dole), founded 1901, acquired by Castle & Cook during the 1960s, renamed Dole in 1991 HEC Hawaii Employers Council HERA Hawaiian Employment Relations Act HSPA Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association (1895–1996), successor to the Planters’ Labor and Supply Company, formed in 1882. Changed name to Hawaii Agricultural Research Center in 1996. independentista Advocate of independence ingenio Sugar mill ILA International Longshoremen’s Association (AFL) INS Immigration and Naturalization Service IVFA Imperial Valley Farmers Association Longshore International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Workers Union (changed name to International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union in 1997) (CIO to 1950, independent 1950–1988) LML Pineapple plant, Maui mayordomo Overseer MPI Movimiento Pro-Independencia nacionalista Partido Nacionalista member NLRA National Labor Relations Act of 1935 NLRB National Labor Relations Board Organización Organización Obrera Insular PAC Political Action Committee Packinghouse United Packinghouse Workers of America (1937–1968), chartered by the CIO as the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee in 1937, named Packinghouse Workers of America (1943–1968). Renamed United Packinghouse and Allied Workers Union, merged into the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. (CIO, AFL-CIO) Partido Union Unionist Party Popular(es) Partido Popular Democrático and member(s) PRCP Puerto Rican Communist Party PRDL Puerto Rican Department of Labor

Glossary 277

rattoon Cane grown from shoots in second and subsequent seasons, enabling growers to harvest without planting as required in the first season Republicano Member of the Republican Party Sindicato Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Azucarera, union affiliate of the Confederación General de Trabajo (1940–1945), and of the Confederación General de Trabajadores—Gubernamental (1945–1951). Changed name to the Sindicato Azucarero when it affiliated with the United Packinghouse Workers of America in 1951. (Independent through 1949, then CIO) SRE Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Foreign Relations Secretariat) Tenant Farmers Southern Tenant Farmers Union (1934–1946). Predecessor to National Farm Labor Union. (Independent, merged with UCAPAWA- CIO 1937–1939, again independent through 1946) tiempo muerto “Dead time,” period of seasonal unemployment UAW United Auto Workers (CIO) UCAPAWA United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (CIO) Unidad Unidad General de Trabajadores unionista Member of Partido Unión USDA United States Department of Agriculture USES United States Employment Service USDL United States Department of Labor UTAVM Unión de Trabajadores Agrícolas del Valle de Mexicali WDL Workers’ Defense League WMC War Manpower Commission

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Archives AGPR CDO CEP CSUF DDE FHS FDR

FBI

GM ILWU

Archivo General de Puerto Rico, San Juan OG Office of the Governor papers Centro de Documentación Obrera Santiago Iglesias Pantín, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Humacao SIP Santiago Iglesias Pantín papers Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos, New York, New York JC Jesús Colón papers (Microfilm copy, Microfilm Reel 21) California State University–Fullerton OH Oral History Collection Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas PCML President’s Commission on Migratory Labor JPM James P. Mitchell papers Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky AY Arthur Yager papers Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York CW Caroline Ware papers HH Harry Hopkins papers RGT Rexford Guy Tugwell papers VF Vertical Files FBI Files on Puerto Ricans. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts Section. LMM Luis Muñoz Marín Files. File no. 100-HQ-5745. http://www. pr-secretfiles.net/individuals_case.html?detail=1&file=1. Accessed July 20, 2009. George Meany Archives, Washington, D.C. WG William Green papers (Office of the President, Collection 4) International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union Archives, San Francisco, California

280 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

ILWU Local 142 NA

PCML PHS

STFU SCSU UCB UF UHM

WHS

WPR

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Index

Acosta Velarde, José, 28, 99 Act Number 49 (Puerto Rico), 55 Afirmación Socialista, 53, 57 Agricultural Adjustment Act, 72, 172 Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union, 179 Agricultural Producers Labor Committee (APLC), 179, 218 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), 175, 213, 242 Agricultural Workers Union, 6 Aguilera, George, 87 Aguirre Sugar Company, 22, 27–28, 32–33, 65, 68, 74–75, 87, 94, 196, 248 Albizu Campos, Pedro, 53–54, 57, 67, 233 Alexander and Baldwin, 257n4 Alianza, 50 Alianza de Braceros, USA, 194 Alianza Nacional de Braceros de Mexico (ANBM), 219–220 Alicea Sánchez, Delfín, 69 Aller, Curtis, 110, 126, 137, 156, 161 Alonso Torres, Rafael, 51, 59 American Club, 35 American Factors, 132, 135, 257n4 American Farm Bureau Federation, 51, 78, 173–174, 195, 197; in California, 189, 217, 228; in Puerto Rico, 59, 71, 78, 197

American Federation of Labor (AFL), 5, 12, 23, 25, 47, 49, 56–57, 59, 63– 66, 68, 71, 83, 85, 103–105, 122, 125– 126, 141, 167–169, 174–177, 179, 193, 195, 197–199, 209, 213, 217, 221–222, 224, 229, 232–242, 274 American Fruit Company, 223 Ames, Azel, 15 Anglo American Caribbean Commission, 36 apricot production, in California, 181 Arakaki, Yasuki “Yasu,” 121, 127–129, 131, 142–143 Ariyoshi, Koji, 145 Artisans Club, 35 Arujo, John, 136 Asociación de Agricultores de Puerto Rico (AAPR), 51 Asociación de Colonos, 51 Asociación de Productores de Azúcar de Puerto Rico (APA), 27, 50–55, 59, 64–78 Associated Farmers, 170, 189, 194, 197, 209–211, 218 Associated Press, 223 Atkins, Edward, 16 Autonomista government (in Puerto Rico), 17 Baez, Carlos, 85 Bailey, Cleveland, 200

304 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

Bakersfield Californian, 190 Bakersfield Press, 190 Bakunin, Mikhail, 43 banana production, in Puerto Rico, 14–15, 39 Barceló, Antonio, 27 Barreto Pérez, Ramón, 81 Barton, B. G., 192 Bear Flag Republic, 2 Beck, David, 193, 221, 224 Becker, Bill, 176 Beechert, Edward, 126, 155–156, 159 Bergad, Laird, 14, 247 Bernabe, Rafael, 54 Biderman, Beth, 210 Bird, Esteban, 42, 96 Bise, Tony, 159 Blaisdell, William, 9 Blanshard, Paul, 36, 61 Blum, Ken, 170, 193 Bouslog, Harriet, 138 Bowie, Clarence, 41 Boyden, Richard, 170 Bracero Program, 173, 193, 217, 220, 228–229, 236–237 Brannan, Charles T., 191 Brasher, Ernest, 223 Braverman, Harry, 160–161 Bridges, Harry, 128–129, 141, 149, 158 Brockway, Glenn, 214 Bryant, James, 226–228 Bucklin, George, 223 Bureau of Insular Affairs (War Department), 1 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42, 119 Burgos de Sáez Pagán, Consuelo, 106 Burns, Hugh, 197 Butcher Workers union, 103, 174–175, 186 Byrnes Act, 191 Cabico, Emigidio, 139, 144 California, 1, 169–230; apricot production in, 181; citrus production in, 177–180, 217–218, 230; conquest and annexation of, 1–6, 23; cotton production in, 181–182,

184, 196, 203, 206–213, 219; grape production in, 181–182, 185–186, 188, 191–193, 214, 242; immigrant workers in, 5, 173–174, 176–188, 191–194, 206–209, 213–230, 236– 238, 240; melon production in, 203, 214, 223–228; pear production in, 185–186; plum production in, 181, 186, 191; potato production in, 181–182, 184, 186; sugar production in, 180; tomato production in, 181–182, 203, 212–214, 219; unions in, 5–6, 107, 177–185; working conditions in, 37 California Bureau of Employment, 227 California Citizens Arrest Act, 225 California Cotton Cooperative Association, 206 California Department of Employment, 191, 226–227 California Farm Bureau. See under Farm Bureau California State Board of Agriculture, 217 California State Chamber of Commerce, 218 California State Employment Service (CSES), 214, 217–218 California State Federation of Labor (CSFL), 174, 186, 193–194, 211, 221, 224, 228 California State Mediation and Conciliation Service, 210–211, 223–224 Calpack, 153 Camp, W. B., 191 Campbell Soup Company, 198 Campos del Toro, Enrique, 77 Canilarias, Pedro, 40 Capetillo, Luisa, 43–49 Castle & Cooke, 135, 143, 257n4 cattle, in Puerto Rico, 14 C. Brewer, 257n4 Central Aguirre Sugar Syndicate. See Aguirre Sugar Syndicate Central Canovanas, 95, 254n61 Central Caribe, 75

Index 305

Central Cortada, 87 Central Eureka, 72 Central Guamaní, 75 Central Guánica, 54 Central Labor Council of California, 199, 221 Central Machete, 75, 87 Central Pasto Viejo, 54 Central Roig, 94 Central Soller, 71 Chamber of Commerce, 59 Chávez, César, 210, 239 Chávez, Helen, 210 Christopulos, Diana, 53 Citrus Growers Association, 217 citrus production: in California, 177– 182, 217–218, 230, 239; in Puerto Rico, 14, 34 Civil War, 6 Clairborne, Robert W., 28, 58 Clark, Victor, 71 Cleveland, Grover, 18 Coalición, 50–52, 54, 57, 63, 81, 233 coconut production, in Puerto Rico, 14, 18 coffee production, in Puerto Rico, 14– 15, 17, 22, 38–39, 53, 98 Cohen, Felix, 96–97 Colburn, John F., 10 Colby, Frank, 15 Cold War, 150, 154, 157, 168, 198, 237 Colón Gordiany, Francisco, 80–81 colonos, 30–31 Colonos’ Association of Puerto Rico, 54 Colonos Committee of the Farmers Association, 54 Colunga, Elías, 209, 226 Coman, Ellis, 179–180 Commodity Credit Corporation, 78– 79 Communist Party, 5, 85, 172; in Hawai‘i, 140–141, 150–151, 155–156, 158, 167–168, 175, 197–198, 224, 236, 240. See also Puerto Rican Communist Party Conant, R. K., 130, 136

Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), 193, 219 Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT), 61–103, 196, 233–234 Confederación Proletaria Nacional de México (CPN), 194 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 5, 59, 61–62, 79–88, 104– 105, 123, 129, 141, 145, 155, 167–168, 172, 175, 198, 224, 229, 234, 237, 240–242, 274; National Maritime Union of, 62 Constancia Sugar Factory, 65, 72 Cooke, J. P., 120 Copland, Ray, 195 corn production, in Puerto Rico, 39 Cornwall, William, 10 Cota, Jacinto, 216 cotton production: 4, 12, 171–172; in California, 181–182, 184, 196, 203, 206–213, 219; mechanization of, 207–208; in Puerto Rico, 90; strikes in, 219 CPC pineapple plant, 151 Creasy, Robert, 219, 227 Crist, Raymond, 29 Crockett Farm, 208 Crossley, Randolph, 149 Cruzada del Ideal (Cruzada), 49 CSO, 274 Cuba, 1, 11, 13–20, 23, 99, 161, 245nn28,38; pineapple industry in, 149–150; sugar production in, 13–17 Cuban War of Independence, 13 Davis, George W., 22 Day, William Rufus, 20 De Anda, Delphina, 187, 190 De Anda, Luís, 187 de la Baca, E. C., 217 de la Cruz, Justo, 143 de la Cruz, Pedro, 157 Del Monte, 166 Democratic Party, in Hawai‘i, 140 Department of Agriculture and Labor (Puerto Rico), 92 Department of Justice, 173

306 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

Dewey, George Washington, 11 Dewey, John, 197 Díaz, Porfirio, 3–4 Dickey, James A., 69 DiGiorgio, Joseph, 186, 197 DiGiorgio Corporation, 169–170, 185– 205, 207–209, 211, 214, 239 DiGiorgio strike. See DiGiorgio Corporation Dole, Sanford, 115 Dole pineapple company, 115, 158, 163, 166. See also Hawaiian Pineapple Company Dos Passos, John, 194 Durkin, Martin P., 237 Eagen, E. J., 121 Eastern Sugar Associates, 41, 58, 65, 67, 72 Edwards, Frank, 213 1887 Revolution (Hawai‘i), 10 1876 Reciprocity Treaty, 8, 10 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 237 Elias, John, 128 Elliot, Alfred J., 197, 199 Ensenada, Puerto Rico, 32–33, 35, 74 Escabi de Peña, Paca, 44 Estado Libre Asociado, 84 Ewa plantation, 136, 140, 143 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937, 58, 64 Fajardo Corporation, 27–28, 42 Fantauzzis family, 27 Farm Bureau. See American Farm Bureau Federation Farmers’ Association of Puerto Rico, 51, 71 Farm Workers Allied Union of America (FWAUA), 174 Federación Libre de Trabajo, 25–26, 33, 36, 38, 43–59, 61–103, 232–233 Federación Nacional de Trabajadores (FNT), 53 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 76

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 42, 52, 183 Federal Sugar Corporation of Boston, 68 Feinsinger, Nathan P., 152, 154 Fernández, Lorenzo, 254n61 Fernández, Raul, 3 Fernós Isern, Antonio, 96 Figueroa, Loida, 248 Fijisake, Saburo, 135 Filipino Labor Union, 123 Fiske, Amos K., 11, 20 Flannery, Harry, 192 Fomento, 97 Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America (FTA), 85, 172–173, 175, 181, 198, 224, 240– 241 Foraker, Joseph, 21 Foy, Tom, 159 Fresno County Board of Supervisors, 211 Frick, W. L., 206, 209 Fruit and Vegetable Workers Union, 274 Fujimoto, 139 Furike, Takeo, 157 Galarza, Ernesto, 171, 176, 180, 183, 189, 195–196, 198–202, 204, 210, 212, 214, 220–222, 224, 226–227, 231, 239, 241, 274 Gambogy Farm, 208 García, Juanita, 225 Garden State Service Cooperative Association (GSSCA), 102 Geer, Owen, 194 Geschwender, James, 161, 167 Gilmore, A. B., 41 Ginaca, Henry, 163 Giusti–Cordero, Juan, 80, 254n61 Goldblatt, Louis, 129, 143–144 Goldschmidt, Walter, 184 Goldsmith, Charles, 72, 78, 93 Gompers, Samuel, 25, 45, 48, 56 Gonzales Quiñones, Manuel, 68, 71

Index 307

González, Gilbert, 3, 179 González, Manuel, 74 Graham, Frank P., 227 grape production, in California, 181– 182, 185–186, 188, 191–193, 214, 242 Great Depression, 5–6, 28, 31, 51, 88, 96, 111, 114, 123, 161, 171, 175, 181– 182, 188–189, 206 Great Mahele of 1848, 7 Gresham, Walter Q., 10 Grubbs, Donald, 170–171 Guánica Central, 32–33 Guerra, Alfonso, 226 Guerra de Diez Años, 13 Haggerty, C. J. “Neil,” 221, 228–229 Hall, Jack, 107, 124, 129, 139, 143, 145, 155–156, 158 Hamm, Margherita, 36–37 Hanna, Philip C., 26 Harrigan, B. A., 226 Hasiwar, Hank, 176, 186–188, 194–195, 198, 200–202, 221, 225, 229 Hawai‘i, 1, 23, 107–168; conquest and annexation of, 6–13, 23, 108; employee roles in, 111–114; gender roles among workers in, 118; immigrant workers in, 9, 12, 110–112, 114–115, 117–118, 122–123, 133–134, 235–236; pineapple production in, 108–109, 115–119, 130, 141, 147–158, 163–167, 236; sugarcane production in, 6–10, 12, 108–121, 124–136, 141–155, 160–166, 257n3; strikes in, 165, 167; unionization of pineapple workers in, 122–131; wages in, 70; worker conditions in, 116, 131 Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company, 124 Hawaiian Employment Relations Act (HERA), 129, 149 Hawaiian Pineapple Company (HAPCO), 141, 148–149, 151, 153, 157, 166 Hawaiian Pineapple Growers Association, 115

Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA), 109, 111, 115, 117, 120, 130, 132–134, 144, 161–163, 166 Hawaii Employers Council (HEC), 130, 159, 167 Hawaii Pineapple Packers Association, 163 Helstein, Ralph, 86, 91, 105 Henderson, Donald, 172 Henna, Julio, 20 Hill, Gladwin, 177, 223 Hollywood Film Council, 193, 199, 224 Holmes, John Hayes, 194 Homestead Commission, 49 Honolulu Advertiser, 141–142, 152 Honolulu Council of Churches, 140 Honolulu Police Department, 140 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 120, 151, 158 House Committee on Un-American Activities, 106 Hugo, Victor, 43 Huntley, Chet, 192 Hyans, Curt, 186, 223 Ickes, Harold, 143 Iglesias, Santiago, 44, 46, 48–49, 56, 59 Ignacio, Amos, 128, 143, 155 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 180, 192, 213, 218, 225 Imperial Valley Central Labor Council, 224 Imperial Valley Farmers Association (IVFA), 214–216, 218, 220, 222–228 Industrial Workers of the World, 5 Insular Government, 68 Insular Hydroelectric System, 28 Insular Labor Relations Act of 1938, 56 Insular Labor Relations Board (ILRB), 73, 77–78 International Harvester, 207 International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, 107–108, 122–158, 165–168, 196, 235–236, 240

308 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), 85 Italian Swiss Colony, 193 Jackson, Gardner, 241 Jacobs, Paul, 156 James, Roy E., 154 Jamieson, Stuart, 6, 176 Japanese Americans Citizens League, 194 Jenkins, J. Craig, 170 J. G. Boswell Farm, 208 Jones Act of 1917, 28, 47–48 Kamehameha I (king), 142 Kawano, Jack, 122, 124, 126–128, 152, 155–156 Kelly, Bob, 195 Kern County Central Labor Council (CLC), 186, 190 Knowles, William, 56 Korean War, 211, 213, 229 Koretz, Robert, 75 Kreps, Teddy, 160, 165 Kropotkin, Pytor, 43 Kurose, Hideo, 117 La Ley de la Mordaza, 106 Lara, Carl, 225 Law 42 (Puerto Rico), 49 League for Industrial Democracy, 241 lemon production. See citrus production Levine, Rhonda, 161, 167 Lihue Plantation Company, 138 Lili‘uokalani, Lydia (queen), 10 lime production. See citrus production Lind, Andrew W., 137 LML pineapple plant, 151 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 19 Loehwing, David, 90, 104 Loftis, Anne, 170 Loíza Sugar Factory, 72 Long, Oren E., 153 López, Joaquín, 216 López, Sebastián, 104, 254n61

López, William D., 41, 58 Los Angeles Daily News, 223 Los Angeles Times, 190 Louisiana, sugarcane production in, 114, 229, 240 Lowrie, W. J., 32 Luce & Company, 68, 92, 94 Luchetti, Antonio, 29 Lugo López, Miguel, 27, 100 Lunalilo, William (king), 7 Luviminda, Vibora, 123 MacNaughton, Boyd, 149–150 Maggio, 218 Magoon, Charles, 1 Majka, Linda, 171 Majka, Theo, 171 Malthus, Thomas, 97 Manifest Destiny, 18, 21 Manlapit, Pablo, 123 Manos a la Obra. See Operation Bootstrap Márquez, Ignacio, 220 Marshall, George, 192 Martí, José, 16, 20 Marx, Karl, 43, 238 Masaoka, Mike, 194 Mata, Andrés, 43 Mattei Lluveras, Antonio, 20 Maui Agricultural Company, 138 Maui Pineapple Company, 148 McBryde Plantation, 123 McCoy, Don, 218 McCullough, Thomas, 212–213 McElrath, Robert, 132 McGrath, Al Quon, 117, 140 McKinley, William, 18–20 McKinley tariff, 10 McLaughlin, J. Frank, 154 McWilliams, Carey, 169, 176 Meany, George, 179, 191, 237–240, 242 Meister, Dick, 170 melon production, in California, 203, 214, 223–228 Méndez Mejía, Tomás, 85 Mets, Keith, 218

Index 309

Mexican Contract Labor Program, 213 Mexican Farm Labor Program, 174, 179 Mexico, 3–5 Migrant Ministry, 182 Miles, Nelson, 20 Milián, Antonio, 46 Ministerial Union of Honolulu, 140 Mitchell, H. L., 174, 195, 197–198, 201, 211, 228, 239–241 Mitchell, James P., 102, 237 Mollett, J. A., 122 Monroe, Lillian, 174 Mookini, Robert Sr., 150–151 Moore, A. S., 182 Moore, Neil, 102 Moore, Wilson C., 153 Mulliken, Otis E., 56, 258n12 Muños Marín, Luís, 61, 67–69, 75, 77, 80–84, 87–88, 91, 93, 96, 103–104, 234 Nadal, Ricardo, 26 Nadler, Harry, 67 Nagata, Mike, 125 Nakano, Bert, 126–128, 132 Nakatsuka, Lawrence, 158 National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), 103, 237–239, 241, 274 National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 192 National Citizens Committee to Aid the DiGiorgio Strikers, 194 National Council of Churches, 207 National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), 103, 169, 171–176, 180–181, 185–189, 193–211, 204–205, 217–230, 236, 239–241 National Farm Workers Association, 170, 193, 242 Nationalist Party, 71, 76 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 77, 83, 123–124, 129, 149, 195, 200, 221 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), 121, 123, 125, 129, 199, 201

National Sharecroppers Fund, 171, 197, 210 Nevares, Oscar, 54 New Deal, 59 Newman, John V., 217 Newman, Max, 195 New York Fruit Auction, 193 New York Post, 225 New York Times, 20, 58, 68, 177, 223 NFWA. See National Farm Workers Association Nixon, Richard, 180, 200 Noakes, Frank, 220 Nogueras, Nicolás, 65 Obén, Marcelo J., 68–69, 74–75 Obreros Unidos de Loíza, 95, 254n61 O’Dwyer, Frank, 214, 218 O’Dwyer, William, 214, 225–226 O’Dwyer & Mets, 214, 218, 226, 228 Oishi, J., 137 Ola‘a Mill, 138 Ola‘a Plantation, 127–128, 136–137, 139, 165 Ola‘a Sugar Company, 121, 130 Operation Bootstrap, 58, 234 Orange County Farmers Incorporated, 179 orange production. See citrus production Organización Obrera Insular, 85 Ortiz Aponte, Justino, 69 Oslin, George, 195 Owens, John, 141, 150 Packinghouse Union. See United Packinghouse Workers of America Paia, William, 143 Palladino, Walt, 195 Panama Canal Zone, 1 Pan American Federation of Labor, 47, 49 Pan American Union, 196 Paramount Pictures, 199 Partido Nacionalista, 53, 76, 233 Partido Popular Democrático (Popu-

310 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

lares), 59, 61, 63, 67–72, 75–77, 80– 81, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 101, 103–104, 106, 233–234, 254n61 Partido Socialista, 45, 57, 80, 232 Partido Unión, 27, 48–49 Paz Granela, Francisco, 59 pea production: in Puerto Rico, 14 Pearl Harbor, 8 pear production: in California, 185– 186; in Puerto Rico, 14 Pérez, Louis, 18, 245n38 Pérez, Manuel, 34 Perloff, Harvey, 60, 89 Pesquera, José, 54 Philippine Labor Commission, 134 Philippines, 11–12, 19–21 Phillips, 226 Pineapple and Cannery Workers Union, 157 pineapple production: in Hawai‘i, 108–109, 115–119, 130, 141, 147–158, 163–167, 236; immigrant workers in, 157–159; mechanization of, 163– 166; in Puerto Rico, 14; strikes in, 147–160 Pineapple Research Institute, 163 plantain production: in Puerto Rico, 14, 39 Plantation Housing Ltd., 158 Planters Association, 132 plum production: in California, 181, 186, 191 Ponce, Pedro, 123 Populares. See Partido Popular Democrático Popular Party. See Partido Popular Democrático Porfiriato. See Díaz, Porfirio potato production: in California, 181– 182, 184, 186; in Puerto Rico, 14 Potts, F. A., 67 Powers, H. H., 21 Price, James, 190, 196 Puerto Rican Agricultural Company, 90 Puerto Rican Club, 35

Puerto Rican Communist Party, 53– 54, 57, 62, 71, 76–77, 81–82; San Germán chapter, 63 Puerto Rican Department of Labor (PRDL), 40, 52, 54–55, 67, 96–97, 102–103, 106; Mediation and Conciliation Service of, 51 Puerto Rican Development Company, 89 Puerto Rican Employers’ Association, 52 Puerto Rican Farm Bureau. See under American Farm Bureau Federation Puerto Rican Farmers’ Association, 68, 78 Puerto Rican Labor Board, 85 Puerto Rican Land Authority, 28, 90 Puerto Rico, 1, 18–23, 25–106; Agricultural Adjustment Administration of, 65, 72; banana production in, 14–15, 39; coconut production in, 14, 18; coffee production in, 14– 15, 17, 22, 38–39, 53, 98; conquest and annexation of, 13–23, 108; cotton production in, 90; gender roles among sugarcane workers in, 37–39, 113; income in, 41; labor organizing in, 36; labor unions in, 60–106; nineteenth-century conquest of, 1–2, 12–15, 17; pear production in, 14; pineapple production in, 14; plantain production in, 14, 39; racial practices among sugarcane workers in, 35; Revolutionary Committee of, 20; standard of living in, 42; strikes among sugarcane workers in, 44, 47–49, 51–56; sugar production in, 13–15, 21–23, 25–106, 113, 232–235, 246n42, 254n61; sweet potato production in, 15, 39; tobacco production in, 14–15, 38–39, 44, 57, 63; tomato production in, 14; wages of sugarcane workers in, 52–53; working conditions of sugarcane workers in, 33–34; yam production in, 14–15, 39

Index 311

Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 41 Puna plantation, 257n6 Querebin, Marcelino, 134 Quiñones, Samuel, 69 Ramos, Padre, 67 Ramos Antonioni, Ernesto, 52, 78, 81– 82, 106, 254n61 Rankin, Bertha, 189 Red Scare, 48 Reed, John, 191 Republicanos. See Republican Party: in Puerto Rico Republican Party: in Hawai‘i, 109, 140, 235; in Puerto Rico, 49–51, 59, 233 Requa, William, 28 Retail Clerks Union, 193 Reuther, Walter, 174, 191, 237–238, 240–241 Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico, 20 Rice, E. F., 68 Rice, Phillip L., 138 Rivera Martínez, Prudencio, 51, 53, 59, 63, 68, 71, 73, 96 Robello, Seraphine, 125, 130, 142, 144 Robert Marshall Civil Liberties Trust, 195 Roberts, F. C., 47 Roberts, Holland, 132 Rodríguez de Soto, José, 74 Roig family, 27, 94 Roosevelt, Theodore, 19, 245n38 Root, Elihu, 245n38 Russell & Company, 67, 72 Rust, John, 207 Rust, Mack, 207 Rutledge, Arthur, 150 Rutter, Frank R., 6, 8 Sáez Corales, Juan, 62–63, 66, 70, 72, 74–76, 81–82, 91, 104, 106 Safeway, 193

Salinas Central Trades and Labor Council, 181 Sánchez, Armando, 87–88 San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Labor Bureau (ALB), 206, 210–211, 217– 218 San José Sugar Cane and Coffee Plantations, 93 San Juan, bombing of, 19 Santana, Pedro, Jr., 68–69 Santos Cruz, Domingo, 47 Santos Rivera, Juan, 54 Saturday Evening Post, 107 Sayler Farm, 208 Schacter, Leon, 174 Schmeiser, Robert, 189, 197 Schullman, Alexander, 199–200 Seabrook, John, 174 Seabrook Farms, 174 Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE), 220 Seki, Shuji, 119 Senior, Clarence, 97 Serrallés family, 27 Severance, H. L., 7 Shade Tobacco Growers of Connecticut, 98 Shigimutsu, Harry, 143 Shoemaker, James, 109–110, 113, 119, 125, 132 Sierra Berdecia, Fernando, 89, 102– 103 Silva, Joe, 191 Sindicato Azucarero, 36 Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria Azucares, 64–104, 233–234, 241 Smith, Dudley, 27, 60 Social Democrats, 49 Socialistas, 49–51, 53–54, 233 Socialist Party, 54, 171, 176, 194 Soler, Gabriel, 72 Soltero, Augusto, 71–72 Soto, Mike, 183 Southern Tenant Farmers Union, 169, 171–175, 188, 198, 204–205, 215, 239, 241

312 Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW

South Porto Rico Sugar Company, 22, 27, 32 South Puerto Rico Sugar Corporation, 54, 65, 74, 98 Spain, 18; U.S. war against, 11 Spreckles, Claus, 10–11 Stalin, Joseph, 172, 198 Steinbeck, John, 176, 183 Stephens, Oren, 173 Sternback, David, 84, 86–87 Stevens, J. M., 9–10 strikes, 6, 12, 25, 38–41, 44–59, 62–75, 78–79, 82–83, 86–87, 92–95, 104– 107, 121–124, 130–161, 164–170, 174, 179, 181–182, 185–215, 219–229, 232–233, 236, 239. See also DiGiorgio Corporation Sugar Act, 41, 56, 63 Sugar Producers Association, 28, 233 sugar production, 6–9, 12; agricultural mechanization of, 92–95, 160–165; autonomy in, 39; beet sugar in, 6, 180; in California, 180; in Cuba, 13–17; in Hawai‘i, 6–10, 12, 108– 121, 124–136, 141–155, 160–166, 257n3; in Louisiana, 114, 229, 240; in Puerto Rico, 13–15, 21–23, 25– 106, 113, 232–235, 246n42, 254n61; strikes in, 131–152 Summers, Alex, 84, 86–87 Sunkist, 177, 179 Swearingen, William, 225 sweet potato production, in Puerto Rico, 15, 39 Taft-Hartley Act, 199–201 Takaki, Ronald, 122 Tamamoto, Satoki, 119 Taylor, Frank J., 107, 145, 161 Taylor, Hannis, 18 Teague Ranch, 179 Teamsters Union, 150, 186–187, 193, 224 Tenant Farmers. See Southern Tenant Farmers Union Thomas, Norman, 171, 176, 194 T. L. Davies, 257n4

tobacco, in Puerto Rico, 14–15, 38–39, 44, 57, 63 Tobin, Maurice J., 226–227, 237 Tolbert, William, 217 Tolstoy, Leo, 44 Tomasek, Robert, 170 Tomás Ramos, Juan, 35, 52 tomato production, 203; in California, 181–182, 203, 212–214, 219; in Puerto Rico, 14; strikes in, 219 Torres, Concha, 44 Tourette, William G., 102 Troussea, G., 7 Truman, Harry, 236 Tugadi, Felix, 143 Tugwell, Rexford, 31, 51, 65–66, 69– 71, 73, 75, 76–77, 80–85, 88 unemployment, 16, 91, 96–101, 105– 106, 160, 163, 173, 181, 184, 207; among sugarcane workers, 37, 40, 57, 101 Unidad General de Trabajadores, 83, 91 Unión Agrícola, 46, 56 Unión de Dependientes y Demás Empleados de los Muelles, 59 Unión de Trabajadores Agrícolas del Valle de Mexicali (UTAVM), 219– 220, 223 Unión de Trabajadores Industriales y Agrícolas de Yabucoa, 94 Unión Obrera, 44 Union of Hawaiian Agricultural Workers, 155 unions. See specific locations and union names United Auto Workers (UAW), 174, 176 United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), 6, 85, 123, 125–126, 172, 185, 198, 224, 240–241 United Farm Workers (UFW), 170– 171, 175, 181, 213; UFW Organizing Committee (UFWOC), 193 United Packinghouse Workers of

Index 313

America, 36, 61, 79–88, 95, 100, 102–103, 105–107, 165, 224, 234, 241, 274 United Porto Rico Sugar Corporation, 27, 51–52 United Puerto Rico Sugar Company, 54 United States Army Corps of Engineers, 22 United States Bureau of Labor, 40 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 56, 68, 192; Labor Section, Sugar Division, 56 United States Department of Interior, 83 United States Department of Labor (USDL), 15, 33, 58, 68, 72, 93, 101– 102, 132, 152, 192, 214, 225, 227–228 United States Employment Service (USES), 225 United States Pacific Squadron, 19 University of California, 132, 181 University of Hawai‘i, 137 University of Puerto Rico, 92, 94 Vargas Rodríguez, Pedro, 32 Ventura County Citrus Committee, 217 Veracruz, Philip, 181 Veve, R. A., 54 Vitousek, Roy A., 140 Waialua plantation, 125, 139 Wagner Act, 74, 129, 142 Walker, H. A., 132, 161, 163 Wallace, Henry, 198 Ware, Caroline, 33 War Manpower Commission (WMC), 173 War of 1898, 13–23

Warren, Earl, 196 Waterman Steamship Corporation, 59 Watson, James, 75 Watson, Robert, 42, 52 Watts, Rowland, 192, 194 Weingarten, Victor, 124 Wells, C. B., 9, 244n17 Werdel, Thomas, 200 West, Fred, 190 Weyl, Walter, 40 Whatley, Bob, 186, 209 White, Harry A., 153 White, Henry, 141 White Star Bus Lines, 62 Wightman, Chauncy B., 162 Williams, Lawrence, 195 Williams, W. L. “Billy,” 127 Wills, Arnold, 129 Wilson, Herbert, 21–22 Winery Workers Union, 186, 193 Winship, Blanton, 58, 62 Wirtz, Cable, 153 Workers Defense League (WDL), 63, 192, 194 Works Progress Administration, 187 World War I, 38, 49, 57, 177, 181, 184, 206, 232 World War II, 6, 56, 63, 66, 89, 92, 122, 124, 147, 161–162, 164, 173, 176, 183, 216, 229, 233, 235–236, 240 Yager, Arthur, 45–48, 232 yam production: in Puerto Rico, 14– 15, 39 Yoshihara, Yoichi, 120–121 Zaninovich fruit ranch, 186 Zembrick, 138 Zieger, Robert, 242