On Christmas Day, 1913 unemployed gathered at the Los Angeles Plaza where police attacked and the crowd resisted for hours. The Mexican-born wobbly Rafael Adames was killed. Georgia Kotsch describes the funeral and circumstances of his death, saving extra venom for the ‘yellow’ Socialists. L.A. was widely called Otistown by the Left and union movement after the city’s vehemently reactionary anti-labor stance championed by Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the deeply conservative Los Angeles Times and one of California’s wealthiest speculators in land and water.

‘Otistown and its Unemployed’ by Georgia Kotsch from Solidarity. Vol. 5 No. 211. January 24, 1914.

The funeral of Rafael Adames, who was shot by the police on Christmas day when they broke up a peaceful meeting of the unemployed at the Plaza occurred January 2d. A thousand men and women, mostly Mexicans, marched three miles to the Odd Fellows’ cemetery where speeches were made at the grave in English and Spanish urging organization and solidarity of the working class. “The Red Flag” the “Marseillaise” and other revolutionary songs were sung.

The trial of the 43 men who were imprisoned for resenting the interference with the meeting, begins January 21. Separate trials were denied. Money for the defense is being raised by the I.W.W. Over $50 worth of tickets for a benefit dance for the defense to be given the 16th by the Women’s Economic League have been sold in various labor organizations. Job Harriman will defend most of the men; one has retained Ray Horton, deputy prosecutor in the Darrow trials.

Street fighting is an antiquated and ineffectual method of threshing out the industrial struggle, but any collision between the disinherited and the plunderbund serves to define and clarify the situation. The Plaza battle applied the acid test to the vociferous professions of loyalty to the working class of Fred C. Wheeler, lone Socialist councilman in Los Angeles. He made speeches recommending more tact upon the part of the police and pointed out the advantage of public forums, the idea seemingly being as a means of safety to the capitalist class–the people thereby being allowed to give vent to their discontent in harmless talk. He said, “The police should be instructed to remember that in this country we have the right of free speech.” That is certainly news to most of us and it is no wonder the police have not found it out. This is a specimen of the heavy guns levelled at the robber class by this flower and fruitage of numerous Socialist political campaigns in Los Angeles. When called upon by the acting mayor for his vote, without a wriggle he voted, “Aye” for the EXONERATION OF THE POLICE for killing one and wounding others in breaking up a peaceful meeting of the unemployed. He is serving his constituency, a conglomeration of middleclass reformers, Christian Socialists and the half-baked generally, who are just as fearful of losing their small privileges as are the very rich of losing their large ones.

The developments in the unemployed situation in Los Angeles have not been such as to one confidence in the power or the disposition of the capitalists to handle the situation they have created.

As a atter of fact, the ostrich of capitalism just sticks its head in the sand of its own desert of lies and cries peace and safety. Headed by the Times, all the great moral and religious dailies are consistently plugging away urging more people to come to be separated from their money and turned out to live on climate.

To the clubs and the reformers the crisis has been a real feast. They have proved themselves utterly inefficient to meet the “immediate need,” I which is the shibboleth with which you are squelched if you mention the ultimate solution I which is also the most immediate help we will get. It has furnished an arena for ambitious gabsters and the fertile futility of the political and social saviours has worked overtime. After weeks of offending the air with their noisy wisdom capitalist councilman in his committee now declares he knows of unemployed who are starving.

The fabulous wealth of this city responded with a rain of money when the fleet came this way; it raised a half million dollars at the call of the Y.M.C.A.; it is planning to levy a tax of 2c per hundred to entertain full-fed visitors next year. The working class has nothing to hope for except what by its organized might it can compel.

A miserable $3,500 has been appropriated for tree-planting on the streets which will enhance the property of the real estate owners; meals have been furnished at the jail to those O-K-ed by the Associated Charities; a Municipal Employment Bureau has lumbered painfully into being to direct the jobless to jobs that ain’t.

The ghost that stalks night and day before the harried eyes of the city fathers is the fear that the city will furnish employment to someone who is “unworthy.” A safety sieve was invented by the superintendent of parks. It is four hours a day on park work for food and lodging, a beautiful theory being attached thereto that this gives the men an opportunity to hunt other jobs. Receiving no money they would have nothing for car fare and the dirty work for no pay ruins the one suit needed for presentable appearance in job hunting in many lines. Men refusing this glorious opportunity were to be deported, the whole scheme amounting to an excuse for shipping the troublesome unemployed away.

A lot-cleaning bureau has closed on the discovery that its promoters would be held responsible for injury to the men put to work, under the workmen’s compensation act. Usually one law calls for another to denature it, but this one does not. All that is necessary is for the employer to turn the men out to starve for fear they may get hurt.

But it’s heads I win and tails you lose for Otisites. The final vote of the city council is to take advantage of the necessity of the unemployed and set the precedent of lowering wages. One dollar a day is to be paid men on public work. This is Los Angeles after all its sectional strikes and Socialist campaigns.

The only good thing which has come out of the wretchedness which has gripped the city for months is that officially through the capitalistic city council, (and seemingly spurred thereto by the direct action at the Plaza) the lying advertisement of Los Angeles as a place of prosperity and opportunity has been repudiated and the press has been asked by said council to give the widest publicity to the fact that the city is not able to employ its population and to advise workers to stay away.

With the long-vaunted capitalistic prosperity of Los Angeles a bursted bubble one more chunk of confidence in the efficiency of the management of our betters is amputated and a few more workers will be willing to unite with their own kind in the only management of society which can feed and clothe the world.

GEORGIA KOTSCH.

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1914/v05-w211-jan-24-1914-solidarity.pdf