By Joe Livernois
Salinas was mostly a sleepy town before the troubles of the mid-1930s. Before the agitation and the Great Depression, before the labor tension and the fascism, before the Dust Bowl immigration and the vigilante goon squads.
Labor tensions had been simmering in Salinas early in the decade, and they exploded in 1934 and 1936 with lettuce strikes that featured mysterious labor camp fires, lawlessness and a willingness by city leaders to turn over their city to union-busting thugs while shrugging off due process and the protocols of civil society.
Historian Carey McWilliams once characterized the struggle between labor and capital in California as one of "total engagement." The hostilities played out in the canneries of San Jose, the docks along San Francisco Bay and the fields in the Salinas Valley.
The labor strife coincided with the emergence of mass production of vegetables in the Salinas Valley, the result of boxcar refrigeration innovations that assured delivery of produce throughout the country. But the management of labor — the development of a cut-rate workforce from employees willing to work hard and without complaint — was the drama that propelled resentments, ugliness and novels for decades. Lettuce is a volatile crop, both in price and in shelf life, and farmers knew the importance of getting product out of the fields and into the stores as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
The first and worst of the lettuce wars unfolded in the mid-1930s, as the entire country still struggled through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl immigration. Progressive politics took form during that era, led by the New Deal idealism that would bring Relief, Reform and Recovery — the Three R’s — to citizens that had suffered the worst during the nation’s worst economic calamity.
Government programs were one thing but, in the private sector, a conspiracy of tycoons, industrialists and farmers took full advantage of immigrants and reform loopholes to keep their labor costs low.
Having learned the lessons of railroad tycoons who exploited Chinese and Irish immigrants, farmers knew that newcomers to the country were willing to work long hours for little pay. Mexicans were handy, but the importation of Filipinos into the region made for a glut of available labor. Desperate refugees from the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma and Texas also arrived; the “foreigners” contributed to an oversupply of labor and turned the region into a melting pot of resentments. Agriculture was exempt from many of the basic labor regulations, and farmers milked the resentments for their own benefit.
It all added up to perilous times in the Salinas Valley. Spurred by effective activism among the Filipino farmworkers, who learned rather quickly that they were being abused and treated like second-class citizens, the labor union they created walked out of packing houses in 1934, demanding better pay and union recognition.
Reaction among growers and the status quo in Salinas was swift. Signs posted around town let Filipinos know where they stood: “This is a White Man’s Country. Get out of Here if You Don’t Like What We Pay.”
Racial tensions were already high between Filipinos and whites. Reports of brutal attacks by gangs of white men had been reported in cities across the United States, and one of the worst “riots” occurred in Watsonville. According to reports at the time, the Watsonville Riots started when local Anglos targeted “taxi dance halls,” where Filipino men were charged 10 cents to dance with white women. The dance halls were popular because U.S. immigration policies allowed young Filipino men only; their wives and girlfriends weren’t welcome.
The Watsonville Riots were preceded by a racist rhetoric contained in a ruling by the Justice of the Peace in town, Judge D.W. Rohrback on Jan. 10, 1930, who insisted that Filipinos were a danger to society. “Marriages among white and Filipinos soon will be common, and if the present state of affairs continues there will be 40,000 halfbreeds in the state of California before 10 years have passed.
For a period of five days soon after Rohrback’s public denouncement, gangs of white marauders flushed out Filipinos throughout Watsonville in the dark of night. One man, Fermin Tabera, was shot through the heart while in a bunk house on a nearby ranch, and dozens of other Filipinos were shot and beaten during the violence. While maintaining the honor of white women and the purity of the white race was the stated intent of the vigilantes, the state Department of Industrial Relations later concluded that the riots were a direct reaction to the fact that Filipinos “were displacing white workers” in agricultural fields.
Growers in Monterey County were also hiring Filipinos instead of whites, and local authorities, frightened by reports of trouble across the Pajaro River, outlawed taxi dance halls. The prevailing attitude was that dance halls contributed to the “moral” degradation of the county. The editors of the Salinas Californian explained that “mingling of white girls with Filipinos in a crowded dance hall sets the foundation for a great deal of trouble” because “it excites the interest of a Filipino to dance with a white girl.”
The crackdown, in concert with dozens of reported attacks and arrests on Filipinos, created an atmosphere of intimidation of farmworkers in Salinas and Pajaro valley’s farm fields. In an effort to defend themselves, Filipino community leaders formed unions and established newspapers to inform and rally others. In 1934, Filipino workers initiated labor actions in the region. The workers sought a 10-cent raise to their hourly rate, which would have raised the scale to 40 cents. Their demands sparked more white backlash.
On Sept. 21, 1934, an arson fire tore through a labor camp operated by Rufo Canete, the newly elected president of the Filipino Labor Union in Salinas. An estimated 75 vigilantes armed with rifles and shotguns fired into the bunkhouse in an effort to intimidate the 60 occupants, who were either in bed or playing cards. Witnesses said they later saw someone light oil that had been leaking from a 300-gallon tank that the attackers shot up. Power lines had been cut and residents at the camp were unable to call police.
Suspicions were raised that government and police agencies were in on the raid after it was learned that police and fire agencies had mysteriously shut down all businesses and recreation parlors in the “Oriental district” in Salinas (subsequently nicknamed Chinatown). Law enforcement also raided the Filipino Labor Union Hall on Lake Street just as the attack on the labor camp started. Police rounded up and jailed 47 Filipinos accused of “illegal gathering and inciting a riot.” While the cops and firefighters were busy with that business, they didn’t show up to Canete’s burning labor camp until the last of the bunkhouses was gutted by fire.
Earlier in the day, farmers at a county Industrial Relations Board meeting had argued against a 48-hour-maximum work week, saying their employees opposed a restriction of hours — and they also opposed time-and-a-half overtime pay for employees who worked in excess of 48 hours.
Details of the fiery labor camp raid, the labor strife and other incidents were covered in detail by the Philippines Mail, a newspaper published in Salinas. Its coverage included first-person eyewitness accounts, an illustration of the layout of the Canete camp and a front-page editorial titled “Law Must Be Respected.”
“The deplorable part of the recent attack ... is that the men who made the attack and burned down the bunkhouses occupied by over 60 Filipino field laborers were bent on murder of the most brutal and atrocious type,” read the editorial. “They shot into the private dwelling house of Canete, occupied by Canete, his wife and two young children, who narrowly escaped.
“That men of education, wealth and social position should revert to acts of primitive savages in this day and age is beyond all comprehension. But the people of the Salinas valley should take stock of this situation and call on their officers to enforce the law before an act is done which shall shock the community and disgrace them before the world.”
The sheriff at the time, Carl Abbott, never made any bones about his allegiances. He was a forthright protector of the farmers’ interests and he constantly told anyone who listened that out-of-town communists were stirring up trouble in Monterey County. The communists were agitating the Filipino workers, he said, parroting the prevailing sentiment. Before the last of the embers of Canete’s camp were extinguished, Abbott told a newspaper reporter that white people were not to blame for the fire. He said Canete’s Filipino enemies started the fire, even as residents at the camp said they were attacked by white men.
Within two days, Canete and four dozen other Filipinos were arrested and charged with inciting a riot, and approximately 800 other Filipinos were reportedly escorted out of the county at gunpoint. Hundreds of Mexican farm workers were imported into the region to take their place. Almost immediately after Canete’s arrest, farm organizations announced that the strike had ended and peace returned to Salinas.
Charges were dropped against Canete about two weeks later. Canete ultimately sued the county, which settled with Canete for $9,000. Years later, Abbott continued to intimidate Canete with public allegations about an alleged cock-fighting operation.
A couple of years later, the executive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Paul C. Smith, recounted the labor camp fire. He wrote that striking Filipinos “were given their lesson in ‘Americanism’ and sent on their way. Shocked Californians protested the vigilante action, but their protests were lost in a swirl of reports that the Filipino strikes had been fomented by communists …(T)he then District Attorney, Harry L. Noland, promised ‘fullest prosecution’ of the vigilantes, and the whole unpleasant business was forgotten promptly.”
Whew. Thanks for this report on the Filipino farm labor strikes, Joe!