Largely Black and Italian workers uniting in the Communist-led Cannery and Agricultural Workers’ Industrial Union and striking against the plantation-like conditions in South Jersey’s industrial farms brought down the hammer of vigilante and state repression. Sasha Small on the work of the International Labor Defense in the strike.

‘’Law and Order’ Seabrook Style’ by Sasha Small from Labor Defender. Vol. 10 No. 8. September, 1934.

“The local union is said to have the backing of the Inter- national Labor Defense, a figure in the Scottsboro and Sacco-Vanzetti case, whose legal activities in this section are directed by Max Daroff, of Philadelphia.

“It is feared locally that unless the trouble can be stamped out immediately that the agitators will carry out threats to tie up the entire South Jersey’s farming area by organizing a strike among canning houses during the busy packing season next month. Farmers (?) are, therefore, organizing by the thousands (?) to fight the threat and prevent utter ruin, which would result should another bad season occur after financial losses of the past few years.” In this way, Charles Seabrook, lord and master of Seabrook Farms at Bridgeton, N.J. announced to the world in a large paid advertisement in the Bridgeton Evening News his declaration of war. His fight was not limited to words and broadsides. He hired thugs, he bribed newspapermen, he crowded his 3500 acre domain with armed police, he brought his justices of the peace right into his office to hand out jail sentences to the strikers, and he organized groups of vigilantes to hound the organizers of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union out of South Jersey.

Open class war, open violation of the most elementary democratic rights of American citizens, open lynch incitement against the Negro workers, no shadow of any attempt at bourgeois democratic hypocrisy.

The story of the attack upon the strikers on Seabrook Farms striking for an increase in wages from 12 and 17c an hour for back breaking toil to 25 and 30c an hour is now well known. Tear gas and vomit gas were thrown into the wretched hovels in which Mr. Seabrook’s workers must exist. Children were attacked. Women were slugged and beaten. Dozens were injured. Dozens arrested on phony warrants–three and four times on identical charges on carbon copy warrants.

A delegation of professors from Bryn Mawr and Amherst College were witnesses to the battle at Seabrook. They testified at the open hearing in Bridgeton one week later. They testified to the brutal attack on the peaceful picket line. They testified to the open drunken boastings of the thugs and vigilantes. They testified to the horrible hovels which Seabrook makes his workers pay high rents for hovels without windows, without light, without water, without toilets–firetraps that would go up like a box of matches.

The International Labor Defense defended the arrested strikers. It participated in the open hearing. I.L.D. Atty Isserman acted as the prosecuting attorney against Seabrook and the vigilantes. Sections and branches of the I.L.D. conducted a protest campaign directed against Seabrook and his justices of the peace. The hearing resulted in a real warrant being issued for Seabrook’s arrest based on the charges of misdemeanor for holding court in his private office.

Though the strike is settled and the workers won two of their major demands, higher wages and no discrimination against the strikers, Seabrook is continuing his reign of terror. Tom Crawford, militant Negro union leader is in jail. Donald and Elinor Henderson were repeatedly arrested. Their home was raided, and they were driven out.

The Seabrook workers are still carrying on their desperate fight in defense of their right to live. Sea- brook is continuing his onslaught against them. This is class war of the clearest sort. Terror as a weapon in the hands of the ruling class is most clearly demonstrated. Ownership and control of the courts which are supposed to be ruled only by the blind goddess Justice who weighs evidence in the balance, are shown here in the starkest nakedness.

The lesson of Seabrook farms for members of the I.L.D. is very clear–mass defense is the only effective weapon in defense of victims of ruling class terror and oppression. Reliance upon the fairness of the courts is simply playing into the hands of these courts and their masters. Only mass pressure can effectively curb the vigilante terror rule of men like Seabrook. And the most effective mass defense and mass pressure can be organized only by the mass defense organization of the working class. Join and build the I.L.D. the defense organization of the working class.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Not only were these among the most successful campaigns by Communists, they were among the most important of the period and the urgency and activity is duly reflected in its pages. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1934/v10n08-sep-1934-orig-LD.pdf