We have organizers throughout the wheat district
Our men are going to demand a wage of $3 a day for ten hours' work,
with overtime demands of 50 cents an hour.
The organization is proceeding rapidly.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Sunday August 1, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: "Among the Harvesters," Part 1
Over the next three days, Hellraisers will republish an article by Nils H. Hanson on life among the wheat harvesters. The campaign is now on to organize these men into the newly formed Agricultural Workers Organization. Today we offer the first part of the article which describes the struggle of the harvest workers to get to the job, a job that might not even be there once they arrive.
From the International Socialist Review of August 1915:
AMONG THE HARVESTERS
By NILS H. HANSON
[Part 1.]
THIS is a great year for the men who gather in the crops. Never before has there been made so much effort in trying to organize the harvesters who are one group of the most important toilers in the world.
Few realize the immense amount of power possessed by the ragged "low-down harvest bums." They don't all know it themselves, but this may be said about the workers in any industry. Still we all agree that bread is one of the most important necessities of life. Sometimes we are forced to get along without almost everything else that is supposed to be essential to human life but if bread is also deprived us, we may as well say, goodnight, for good. Whether it be in the palace or in the hovel men must have bread, though it be in different quantity and quality. This reminds me that we used to be taught in the schools of Sweden of a terrible period when that country was so devastated by war that the people were compelled to exist for a time on bark bread and water.
Along the roads and in the slums, bread is actually the staff of life to millions of human beings. In the jails and penitentiaries the authorities sustain life in their victims by bread, and often by bread alone. Spirits are broken on the bread diet, but prisoners are required to suffer and not to disappear altogether, and, as bread is the cornerstone of life, it is given them in small quantities.
FALSE ADVERTISING.
Most bread is made from wheat flour. And it is the harvesters of this immense wheat crop, estimated this year to be 930 million bushels, and which will probably sell at over a billion dollars, it is these harvesters, who are this year trying to get a trifle more of what rightly belongs to them.
Of course they are up against a hard proposition. In the past wages have been so low that nine-tenths of the men have gone to the harvest fields in a half starved and miserable condition. For months they have depended upon the kindness of "good hearted" people who hold them in bread lines and feed them in soup kitchens in the winter. And these soft-handed charity bunglers can never seem to understand that the smaller the wage the sooner will the harvesters be forced back to ask for charity.
The U. S. Department of Labor has undertaken to supply "hands" to the farmers, whereby they have made things far worse than ever before. This department states that "workers are expected to pay their own expenses to and from the places of employment," and expects that its kindly auspices will mean "larger profits to the farmers."
When we read the following advertisement which was sent to innumerable newspapers and local agencies for posting in the large centers of population, it almost looks as though the Department of Labor was trying to make business for the railroads as well as to aid the farm employer:
Wanted—Eighteen thousand men, willing to work at wages ranging from $2 to $3 a day and board; English-speaking white men preferred; persons other than English- speaking apply to W. G. Ashton, Commissioner of Labor, Oklahoma City, Okla.
Members of the department state further:
We are to do our best to confine the labor army to men of industry and steady habits. Usually there gets into a crowd of this size a number of men of vagrant habits, who do much to demoralize the men who are disposed to be industrious. We want to weed out as many of that type this year as possible.
C. L. Green, general inspector in charge of distribution work, department of labor, stationed in New York, will go to Kansas City, from which place he will co-operate with state authorities in Oklahoma and Kansas. Men who are sent to the harvest fields from other sections of the country must pass inspection before Mr. Green and the state authorities referred to. Later Mr. Green will take up this kind of work with state authorities farther north.
The following statement signed by J. Manzon, John Stewart and A. V. Azuana in Kansas City, Mo., on June 23rd, shows how this government system works to clean out the harvesters and to the securing of low paid workers for the farmers:
STATEMENT.
We, the undersigned, vouch that Antonio Hermoso, Jose Ruiz, and E. Saurez were in Enid, Okla., before the 20th of June and were run out of town with about 2,300 other men on that date, and came north with us. They landed here yesterday and shipped out for the Santa Fe Railroad to work on a section for $1.50 a day (they to board themselves).
They gave us the following story: In New York they went to the federal employment office; shipped to Kansas City, Mo., to there apply at the federal office. On June 6th, they were given a ticket for Enid and then paid the fare from New York to Enid, the amount being $27.75.
Arrived at Enid on June 7th, and remained till June 20th, paying all their own expenses during that time. They told us they were sent to a farmer twenty-five miles from Enid on the 14th and paid their fare going to his place. They were compelled to walk ten miles more to the farm house and when they arrived the farmer advised them that he already had all the men needed. They returned to Enid, where they remained till the 20th, when we were all driven out of town.
On the 19th these three men went to the mayor of Enid and told their story. He said he could do nothing for them.
Signed this 23rd day of June, 1915, Kansas City, Mo.
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 16
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1915
https://books.google.com/...
ISR Aug 1915
https://books.google.com/...
"Among the Harvesters" by Nils H. Hanson
https://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Harvest Worker,
International Socialist Review, Aug 1915
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
History of the "400" A. W. O.
-by E. Workman [Walter T Nef], February 1939
One Big Union Club of New York, N. Y.
(Source also for image of cover.)
https://archive.org/...
Note: E. Workman was actually
Walter T Nef per several sources
including this one:
http://www.abebooks.de/...
For more on Walter T Nef and
the founding of the AWO:
https://books.google.com/...
Shall Freedom Die?
166 Union Men In Jail for Labor
IWW, about 1917
(Walter T Nef was one of the 166.)
https://en.wikisource.org/...
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Wayfaring Stranger-Emmy Lou Harris
I am a poor wayfaring stranger
While traveling through this world of woe
Yet there's no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright world to which I go
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