No worker ‘takes’ a job from another worker. Workers sell their labor, and it is the capitalist who buys and employs that labor. And damn near the whole of the class war is so they can purchase it at the cheapest costs to themselves. Here, the Southern Pecan Shelling Co. of San Antonio uses white chauvinism and draconian immigration laws to help take advantage of refugees from U.S.-inspired unrest in Mexico to secure a day’s work for pennies. And then there is the bosses short-weighing and graft with the contractors to wring more of their bread from the sweat of other people’s faces. Four years after this article, in 1938, 12,000 San Antonio-area pecan shellers would strike with the new CIO and win, placing shellers under the new minimum wage. In response a process of mechanization was introduced by the companies that would reduce the workforce by over 80% within five years. The class war.

“5 Cents a Day Plenty for Mexicans” by Felipe Ibarro from The Daily Worker. Vol. 11 No. 130. May 31, 1934.

Is Brutal Reply of Pecan Shelling Boss

Labor Board Hearing Leads only to Vague Promises–Workers Learn That Strong Union Is Only Way

By a Farm Worker Correspondent. SAN ANTONIO, Texas, “Five cents a day is plenty for a Mexican to live on.”

That was literally the direct and brutal answer J. Seligman, vice president of the Southern Pecan Shelling Co., and one of the big shots of the Southern Pecan Shellers Association, gave a member of the so-called impartial local Texas Regional Labor Board, on a hearing held Saturday afternoon, May 12th, in the 94th district court room.

In the room were, besides some members of the board, officers and individuals of the association, reporters for the capitalist press, two stenographers, social workers and several hundred Mexican pecan shellers, men, women and children, part of the 12,000 workers who signed a petition to force the members of the association to come to a hearing before the board.

The Southern Pecan Shellers Association employs directly and indirectly over 20,000 Mexican men, women and children as cebradores, limpiadores, relimpiadores (crackers, shellers and recleaners).

Even the local capitalist propaganda sheets were forced to admit and print that workers put in between 56 and 60 hours a week and received from 32 cents to $1.50 per week.

The workers were misled and fooled by a local Mexican Nationalist, (a dangerous character and dope fiend), who persuaded them that before they use the only real and effective weapon, the strike, they should first appeal to the local Labor Board for help.

Even those patriots and politicians couldn’t swallow the ugly, lying and mean statement of Mr. Seligman when he told them with a cynical smile: “Gentlemen: you don’t know how fat those Mexicans are getting eating all day the meat of the nuts.”

Let me explain how Mr. Seligman and the association not only exploit the shellers by paying them starvation wages, but also rob and over-charge the Mexican cockroach subcontractor. The Mexican sub is usually an ignorant vicious slave driver with an itch to make money.

The only way he can have a few dollars left for himself after he pays off his worker Saturday afternoon is by short weighing the shellers five days in the week, and by falsely adding up the amount he owes them the sixth day when he pays them off.

Mr. Seligman and his association sell to the cockroach Monday morning 2,000-pound pecans in the shells at 9c per pound (the market price is usually from 3c to 4c less per lb.) and then buy back from him Saturday afternoon halves at 30 cents per pound and pieces at 29 cents, but the meat must be white and dry. If the meat is dark than they only pay the cockroach 20 cents for halves and as low as 13 cents for pieces. (One hundred pound pecans in the shell will yield about 38 lbs. in meat.)

Most of the subs with a few exceptions are always in debt to the contractors. All the contractors have to say is that this barrel is dark meat and the prices goes down like mercury in a midwinter blizzard.

The members of the board got nervous and ashamed when one of them asked Seligman whether he signed the N.R.A. code for the pecan shellers. He boldly answered them. “No, sir. I did not and don’t intend to.”

Yet at the end of the hearing the chairman announced that the board had received so many complaints, so many affidavits of abuse, that they will have to hold several hearings and it will take weeks and possibly months to investigate the complaints.

When I left the court room a bunch of Mexican pecan shellers stood in the hall, and with blood in their eyes discussed Mr. Seligman’s insulting and lying statements about them. They asked me my opinion of Seligman’s statements. I told them that I think Seligman is a yellow-rat and a public enemy No. 1 and that his statements are lousy.

One of them made a crack about him: “A greedy guy like him, can’t be handled with silk gloves, but must be handled with an iron fist.”

“Some day Mr. Seligman will tremble like a guitar and will play to our time.” remarked another, “and we will make him cough out everything he robbed of the workers.”

“Wait till we organize ourselves in a union, in a real union, in a militant union,” cuts in a young Mexican worker with fire in his eyes, (and in the meantime sticks a fist under my nose) and we will call Mr. Seligman and his association to a hearing before a board of workers and not of politicians.”

Felipe Ibarro (Signature authorized)

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n130-may-31-1934-DW-LOC.pdf