Bloodshed and repression in one of the first major modern U.S. agricultural workers strikes, the hop pickers organized against the Durst Brothers in Wheatland, California led by the I.W.W.

‘Hop Field Horrors’ by Murphy from Voice of the People. Vol. 2 No. 33. August 21, 1913.

On Sunday evening, August 3d, a tragedy was enacted near the town of Wheatland, California. Four lives were lost any many per sons were wounded owing to the rapacious greed of those who care not for human lives when their Profits are threatened.

The Durst Brothers of Wheatland, California, own large hop ranches adjoining that town, and every season employ from 2000 to 2500 pickers to harvest the hops on their ranches. Men, women and children are engaged as pickers.

The conditions existing this season as in former years were intolerable, the water was not fit to drink, and the Drust Brothers refused to deliver water of any kind to the pickers in the field who were engaged in gathering the hops sweltering under the scorching rays of a torrid sun, toiling long and weary hours for a paltry pittance.

The system of payment as well as the rate of wages was most unfair to the pickers.

Men, women and children were compelled to use the same lavatory and on account of lack of sufficient toilet accommodations men, women and children were forced to stand in line awaiting their turn to use the same toilet.

It would be a hard task to try and describe the loathsome plague-spots that the Drust Brothers have the contemptuous nerve to insult the pickers by calling them toilets.

What is called a toilet in a hop-camp, is nothing but a short trench with a few upright pieces of lumber covered with burlap or else some old boards, and having no sewerage connection the human excrement is allowed to accumulate throughout the hop-picking season. The stench arising from such abominably filthy places is sufficient to cause some persons to become faint and sick while using them.

Why does the Board of Health permit such atrocious conditions to prevail, endangering the health and lives of thousands of men. women and children of the working class?

Well, we know the reason why. It would cause a slight decrease in the masters’ profit.

Ranting Reformers and politically-polluted-Progressives rave and shout about what they call “morality” and yet they permit such damnable conditions to exist, and don’t even pretend to attempt to compel such employers as Durst Brothers to obey the laws of common decency in reference to the sexes, by forcing them to have separate toilets for men and women. And such despicable creatures are eulogized as being eminently respectable and God-loving people (save the mark).

On the day mentioned, the wage-slaves working at the Durst Brothers ranch revolted against the degrading and pauperizing system of Durst Brothers. 2500 men, women and children insisted upon a redress of their just grievances. All the pickers were united, several nationalities were represented, even Japanese and Greeks. Certain demands were presented to Ralph Durst, one of the owners. This was a severe jolt to Durst. His slaves had revolted. How dare you rebel! How can they ask for more wages and better conditions! Well he, Mr. Ralph Durst would show them something. He would get the Peace (?) officers.

The Peace (?) officers came to the ranch at Ralph Durst bidding. What followed is now a matter of history, And itis only another bloody chapter in the record of Labor’s struggle for emancipation from the galling cursed yoke of wage-slavery.

The Peace (?) officers came to Durst Brothers’ ranch and pursued the same death-dealing tactics their kind the world over use when the master-class call on them to try and prevent awakening class-conscious wage-slaves who dare to assert themselves and use their economic power to gain the wealth their labor-power has produced, but which the exploiting master-class has stolen from them.

As a result of the visit of the Sheriff and his posse and their bloody and brutal acts two workingmen, one a white man, the other a colored man were slaughtered. The District Attorney of Yuba County and a deputy sheriff also got killed.

Those who were engaged on the “Law (?) and Order” (?) side have several different versions of how the bloody affair started.

According to the Los Angeles “Times”, a particularly rabid anti-labor paper the Peace (?) officers started the shooting for Ralph Durst is quoted as saying in a carefully prepared statement that the sheriff “he fired his revolver into the air as emphasis” because for sooth the strikers would not disperse immediately and stop holding a peaceful meeting when his “Nibs” the sheriff ordered them. What authority has a sheriff on any other Peace (?) officer to disperse a peaceful meeting?

Previous to the above episode, Constable Anderson tried to arrest a man who was walking along peacefully, without a warrant, and when the man objected the Constable hurried to town and secured a warrant. his acts proving that he was acting illegally in attempting the arrest without a warrant.

Another of the many versions by the “authorities” is given by Henry Daken, of Marysville, Calif. This fellow Daken is a game warden. In the Stockton Daily Independent of August 6th, under the caption “New Version of cause of Riot by Game Warden,” appears this self-accusing statement:

“HENRY DAKEN SAYS HE FIRED FIRST SHOT THAT PRECIPITATED THE MELEE.”

Then the Independent states “Daken said he fired into the air and he discharged the shot to intimidate the workmen” (marks the word intimidate). What right had Daken to intimidate workingmen when they are having a peaceful meeting, except it was to cause trouble and perhaps shed the blood of workers, if necessary, in the interests of Durst Brothers?

After trying to justify his cowardly act Daken is quoted as follows: Daken said he then fired point blank at the negro and killed him. It was after this, he said that Voss was beaten and Reardan was killed.

So HENRY DAKEN, according to the Independent ADMITS that AFTER he killed the negro that trouble started which resulted in more lives being lost. But Daken is not even arrested and tried for his cowardly killing of a workingman–WHY? Answer the question yourself, you ought to know the answer.

Here are a few excerpts from an editorial in the Pasadena “Daily News” of August 4th, commenting on the Wheatland tragedy:

“The indiscreet and even brutal conduct of the sheriff who was wounded in the fracas seems to have precipitated the shooting.

“Instead of using argument and pacificatory methods the peace officer attempted to ride rough-shod over the crowd with disastrous results. Following the action of the Constable who sought ineffectually to arrest the I.W.W. organizer, without a warrant, the sheriff and his posse appeared and interrupted a meeting by pulling the speaker from a stand, employing violent language in so doing.

“Of course, all is quite now. The damage has been done and the presence of the militia patrolling the disaffected district assures tranquility. But what about the culpability of the ranch owners whose picayune policy in ignoring the welfare of the workers led to the strike and to the subsequent rioting? What about the absence of drinking water in the fields, the scarcity of toilet accommodations, the single lavatory for both sexes? Wholly aside from the demand for better pay these are factors calculated to arouse the animosity of the hop pickers and for gross neglect of their comfort the ranch owners must be held strictly accountable. It is a costly lesson to other employers of similar itinerant labor but, perhaps a much needed one. Let the state heed it well and enact laws compelling employers to observe the decencies, at least, in making arrangements for the congestion of labor which the hop picking or fruit gathering entails.”

An inquest was held, and notwithstanding the varied acknowledgments of guilt from the authorities and their allies the coroner’s jury found that the disturbance was a result of I.W.W. agitation and recommended that special efforts be made to apprehend sone one they call Blackie Ford and any others that may be guilty. While the same jury exonerated the slayer of the negro workingman because such action was, the jury said, in the line of his duty. (Of course).

The sheriff and his gunmen are lauded for their bloody work, and the workers who try to defend themselves from the murderous assaults of those in power are condemned.

The workers’ struggle for economic freedom has been along a grewsome path and many ghastly tragedies have occurred to maintain the supremacy of the robbing, ruling class, so that they may continue to fatten and live in riotous extravagance on the wealth produced by the blood and sweat of the toilers.

Men and women of the working class, how long are you going to permit the master class to continue their awful carnage!

How long, you toilers, will you permit your fellow-workers to be murdered to give profit to your masters?

How long, will you, the producers of all wealth, permit the capitalistic human vultures and their carrion hirelings to gloat like buzzards when men and women, aye, and even little children of the working class are ruthlessly slaughtered to maintain profits for the master class?

The masters have some workers arrested in Wheatland, California and possibly will try to railroad them to the penitentiary, while the Durst Brothers, Sheriff Voss and Game Warden Henry Daken are allowed their liberty.

Working men and women, there is a the murdering of our brothers and way whereby we can stop. That way is to enlist in the ranks of the I.W.W., form ONE BIG UNION of the workers of every race, use your economic power and take control of the world and its wealth.

The class war is on, and will only be terminated by Labor being triumphant, and abolishing wage slavery.

In the struggle the class conscious wage-slaves may once in a while get a temporary set back, but they will come back better organized and stronger and more determined than before.

“For Freedom’s battle once begun.
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Through baffled oft, is ever won.”

Wage workers do your duty! Join the union of your class, the I.W.W.

If you want Industrial Freedom you must get it yourselves.

The day of saviors is passed!

You must break your chains yourselves if you want freedom from capitalistic tyranny!

To win you must organize! The only real working class organization is the I.W.W.

Get in the ranks! Join the I.W.W.

Then we will stop the Boss and his hirelings from murdering our brothers and sisters, we will get, what our labor-power produces. Poverty, prostitution and all other social ills caused by wage-slavery will be abolished when the workers are united in the I.W.W.

The Voice of the People continued The Lumberjack. The Lumberjack began in January 1913 as the weekly voice of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers strike in Merryville, Louisiana. Published by the Southern District of the National Industrial Union of Forest and Lumber Workers, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, the weekly paper was edited by Covington Hall of the Socialist Party in New Orleans. In July, 1913 the name was changed to Voice of the People and the printing home briefly moved to Portland, Oregon. It ran until late 1914.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/lumberjack/130821-voiceofthepeople-v2n33.pdf