‘Two Workers Murdered In Lettuce Walk-Out’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 12 No. 44. February 20, 1935.

Vigilantes and Gunmen Fire 500 Shots at Picket Lines of 1,200 Packers and Trimmers in West Coast A. F. of L. Strike.

SAN DIEGO, Cal., Feb. 19. —Two strikers were murdered and four wounded Sunday when scabs, gunmen and vigilantes fired five hundred shots into the picket lines of the striking lettuce workers of Imperial Valley. One woman was severely beaten. The murders by the vigilante gangs were made at the William Wahl El Centro Shed. Local and state police gassed the strikers. The twelve hundred packers, trimmers and shed workers, members of the Fruit and Vegetable Packers Union (A. F. of L.) struck a week ago for recognition of the union, no split bench, and for the Salinas scale of wages. Fifty-one strikers have been arrested to date, including eight women. Governor Merriam. who played a leading role in breaking the San Francisco general strike, has added thirty men to the state highway patrol. The authorities are demanding the entire state force and the national guard be called. C. B. Lawrence, secretary of the union, declared the strikers are just beginning to fight. The two strikers were killed, he said, by hired gunmen. Those killed were Paul Knight of Santa Maria and Eldred Hamaker of Westmoreland. The labor board conciliator, Fitzgerald, declared he sees no hope of an amicable adjustment. The growers have so far refused to recognize the “outside” union. There are ten thousand Imperial Valley lettuce workers. The field workers are not yet on strike. The present lettuce crop is valued at over two million dollars which the growers fear losing by rotting in the fields if the strike continues much longer. The American Legion officials charge that the Communists are responsible. All A. F. of L. unions, all workers’ organizations are urged to protest against the shootings to Sheriff Ware at El Centro.

‘Rites Honor Slain Strikers’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 12 No. 49. February 26, 1935.

EL CENTRO. Cali.. Feb. 25. More than two thousand workers marched in the funeral of Paul Knight and Kenneth Hamaker, both 24 years old, lettuce strikers who were killed by hired gunmen of the growers on Feb. 16. Facing a heavy police concentration, the workers marched through the business section of El Centro. The services were held in the First Presbyterian Church. The strikers belong to the Fruit and Vegetable Workers Union of the American Federation of Labor. After the shooting, the growers brought in scores of deputized gunmen to the William Wahl Packing shed where the murder of the strikers took place. Four were critically wounded by the vigilantes, one a woman. C. B. Lawrence, financial secretary of the union, declared, “The shooting was nothing less than murder.” The two strikers were killed by hired gunmen.” William Casey, Western representative of the American Federation of Labor, did not do anything to mobilize the workers to protest the terror against the strikers. Instead he declared he would ask the 1,500 pickets to “withdraw” from the sheds. The International Labor Defense held a protest meeting at the Plaza, attended by several hundred, which condemned the murder of the strikers.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of original issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n044-Nat-feb-20-1935-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n049-Nat-feb-26-1935-DW-LOC.pdf