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Who Are the Associated Farmers?Richard L. Neuberger
Within the past year, organized labor in several states has lost rights gained in half a century of political and economic struggle. The technique for bringing this about has been provided by the Associated Farmers. They have demonstrated that labor excesses and the split in labor's ranks can be made the basis for sufficient public resentment to weaken organized labor. Last November the Associated Farmers, capitalizing on a swing of the political pendulum to the right, put through a law in Oregon which, by practically forbidding strikes and picketing, reduces unions to mere fraternal organizations. This has become the precedent for parallel action elsewhere. Modified versions of the Oregon law have been enacted in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Only a governor's veto kept Idaho out of this category, and similar bills have appeared in the legislatures of at least-fifteen other states. The Associated Farmers are as important as a symbol as they are intrinsically. They represent an attempt to accomplish two purposes: dividing the political allegiance of farm and city voters; and convincing large numbers of people that farmers vociferously demand the control and suppression of labor unions. In many parts of the Far West, "rural" organizations are at work along this line. Some of them maintain intermittent contacts with the Associated Farmers. Others follow the Associated Farmers' methods and means, the most distinctive feature of which is daubing a purely rural camouflage on forays against the trade union movement. California, the periodical of the chamber of commerce of that state, considers the Associated Farmers "the rural manifestation of farmer-employers' efforts to keep their freedom in labor matters." Frequently this alleged defense of freedom results in danger to the liberties of other people. Associated Farmers in the Imperial Valley recently insisted that a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board and Ellis E. Patterson, the lieutenant-governor of California, not be allowed to speak at the county fairgrounds because of their "communistic inclinations." Although particularly directed at the CIO, the hostility of the Associated Farmers extends to all bona fide labor organizations. Neither the AF of L nor the Railroad Brotherhoods were exempt from the restrictions of the initiative measures which the Associated Farmers pushed in all three Pacific Coast states last autumn. A leader of the Associated Farmers in the state of Washington made no qualifications when he told an NLRB examiner that the methods used against labor organizations may be either "legal or extra-legal." The same individual bragged to a meeting of Associated Farmers, "Just our intention and the formulation (sic) of a pickhandle brigade in Selah put the scare of Christ into organizers out there." On some of the literature of the Associated Farmers appears the slogan: "From Apathy to Action." The strategy of the Associated Farmers is premised on the fact that with the general public no figure is more popular than the man who grows the nation's food supply. He epitomizes qualities highly held: perseverance, thrift, sedulity, temperance. Cartoonists portray him as a perspiring toiler with a rugged countenance. In a world in crisis the farmer connotes a large proportion of the pleasant phases of life. His home is in the country amidst green fields. The lettuce that decorates salads and the strawberries which pop out of shortcake are raised by him. Seldom is he looked upon as radical like labor or greedy like business. More than any other artisan or worker, the farmer is considered the typical American. THIS SITUATION THE ASSOCIATED FARMERS HAVE EXPLOITED to full advantage. By using the farmer as an emblem of their policies, they have tried to impress on the people of the West that resentment against labor unions stems straight from the soil. The reasons for this are obvious. Political deference is a corollary of the esteem in which the farmer is held. His voice is listened for in legislative hall and executive mansion. Voters attempt to hear it on election day. It is highly beneficial for any cause to have—or seem to have—a preponderance of rural support. The political potentialities are imaginable if extreme, militant conservatism along the Pacific slope seems to originate not in banks and utility offices and counting houses, but out on the countryside where apples are grown and cattle pastured. The Associated Farmers are the source of that origination. In Oregon, for example, they, rather than industrial and commercial groups, officially and publicly sponsored the bill which has fettered organized labor. So many western voters have been induced to back bills of this type in the past year or so that liberal as well as labor leaders are thoroughly alarmed. Perhaps President Roosevelt had in mind the Associated Farmers' persistent attacks on labor unions when he chose Labor Day of 1938 to declare, "A small minority is trying to drive a wedge between the farmers on one hand and their relatives and logical partners in the cities on the other." Secretary of Agriculture Wallace has urged farmers not to "allow themselves to be used as cat's-paws in any anti-labor front secretly sponsored by the ultra-reactionary industrial interests." The U.S. wage and hour administrator, Elmer F. Andrews, recently went on the radio to describe the Associated Farmers as "a notorious labor-busting outfit of the West Coast, which is largely financed by the chamber of commerce of California, big public utility interests and employers opposed to organized labor." And as these words are written, the Senate committee headed by Robert M. La Follette, Jr. has just been allotted $50,000 with which to complete an investigation of denials of civil liberties on the Pacific seaboard. The appropriation was requested by President Roosevelt and advocated by Senators from states where the Associated Farmers have been active. Lewis Schwellenbach of Washington and Sheridan Downey of California introduced the appropriation bill, which had the support of the Republican minority leader, Charles L. McNary of Oregon. The Associated Farmers are expected to be the main object of the probe. A cursory survey last year revealed, according to Marquis W. Childs of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that "funds provided by the Industrial Association helped to finance the Associated Farmers." Childs claimed the organization was promoting "an anti-union drive on the coast." The Associated Farmers disputed these charges. Now, fortunately, there will be a complete and thorough investigation. Senator La Follette's committee will discover that although the Associated Farmers have won their major victory to date in Oregon, they had their genesis in California and are a product of that state's complex agricultural economy. Wage earners on the great industrialized farms have long been restless over low wages, seasonality, bad housing. For decades there have been attempts at organization and flare-ups of violence. Perhaps Section 7-a of the National Industrial Recovery Act was the incipient incident of the present movement: it stirred laborers in the field as well as factory to a consciousness of their collective force. In the autumn of 1933 more than 15,000 cotton pickers went on strike in the San Joaquin Valley. A few months later, farm hands and migratory workers were trudging picket lines in the Imperial Valley, many miles to the south. Some of these men and women had been earning less than 75 cents a day. A federal commission found them living in "filth, squalor and an entire absence of sanitation." Farm workers began organizing in other parts of California. Strikes coincided with harvest time. The employers of farm labor were jittery. In numerous instances the employers were powerful corporate and financial interests; farming is big business in California. And in this big business something new had happened. In a state that produces more than a third of all the fruits and vegetables consumed in the nation, fortunes had been made paying pickers 12 cents an hour. The whole set-up was geared to a peon wage scale. Now people heretofore regarded as virtual serfs had rebelled. Of thirty-seven agricultural strikes which took place in California in 1933, at least twenty-nine resulted in pay increases for the workers. The wage in some localities was boosted to 25 cents for an hour's labor in the orchards. Other changes were occurring in California. Along the waterfront the longshoremen had formed a strong union. Already their leader had put his name in the headlines, and the state was reading for the first time about Harry Bridges. The abandonment of submarginal farms in the Middle-west also was in the news. Toward the sunset clattered the vanguard of thousands of nomads from the seared and blown Dust Bowl. These people had been ranchers in Oklahoma and Texas and the Dakotas. They could not be kicked around like wandering Mexican pickers who would docilely drink water out of irrigation canals and sleep in tar-paper shanties. They were accustomed to independence. In tourist camps all over the state they bolstered the courage of the agricultural laborers. It was the heyday of the New Deal. Upton Sinclair had started the EPIC campaign which was to make him Democratic nominee for governor. In a Long Beach real estate office, an elderly physician named Townsend talked about pensions of $200 a month. In this atmosphere the Associated Farmers were incorporated in May of 1934. Groups long absolute in California feared their sovereignty was jeopardized. They got ready to confront the menace on every sector, whether the foe consisted of old people clamoring for pensions, an idealist running for governor or farm labor demanding more pay. "The forces which threaten business stability in California," warned the chamber of commerce, "must be met with concerted, aggressive action if business is to survive." What was needed, said the chamber, was "A United Front for California." The Associated Farmers comprised the rural phase of the mobilization. AFTER THE SERIES OF AGRICULTURAL STRIKES IN 1933, THE Farm Bureau Federation and the chamber of commerce had recommended a permanent group to conduct "a campaign of education and assistance in the farming areas." Sporadic organization work went on for several months before the Associated Farmers were formally established. Much of this early effort had been concentrated in the Imperial Valley. The chairman at the first meeting of the Associated Farmers was Parker Frisselle of Fresno, a director of the California chamber of commerce. The personnel seemed more distinguished for animosity toward labor unions than for affinity to farmers. In the salient position of executive secretary was no specialist on agriculture, but Guernsey Fraser, an American Legion official conspicuous for condemnation of purported radicals. The Associated Farmers got under way with financial contributions from important utility corporations: the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads and the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The welfare of the farmer was discussed, although so far as the policies of the new organization were concerned, that welfare appeared to be exclusively a question of resisting the unionization of farm workers. The reason given for setting up the Associated Farmers was that "the labor controversies in the farming areas had been fomented by communists as a definite part of Moscow's program to change the form of government in California." The Associated Farmers had early opportunities to demonstrate their effectiveness. Strikes continued and the organization fought them grimly. Once in a while the Associated Farmers stayed in the background. More often they moved to the front of the anti-labor procession. They were particularly conspicuous in the great agricultural strike at Salinas in 1936, where a large proportion of the country's lettuce is grown. Local peace officers were advised by prominent Associated Farmers, who took rooms in a downtown hotel. Male residents were mobilized to defend law and order. Numerous Associated Farmers became special deputies. Vigilantes marched against the Central Labor Council. The editor of a conservative newspaper, Paul Smith of the San Francisco Chronicle, went to the scene of the strike and wrote an article called "It Did Happen in Salinas." Success brought about further demands for the services of the Associated Farmers. Not long after the Salinas episode, Colonel Walter E. Garrison, then the Associated Farmers' president, assumed leadership at Stockton in the combating of a strike by the AF of L Cannery Workers' Union. More than one hundred tear-gas bombs were thrown at the picket line. Fifty strikers were injured. Opposition to the strike was depicted as emanating from "outraged farmers," despite the fact that the strike was directed against such "outraged farmers" as the Stockton Food Products Company and other processors. In his recent book, "Factories in the Field," Carey McWilliams declares, "Stockton, like Salinas, was a milepost in the march of the Associated Farmers to crush union labor in the fields and packing plants." Mr. McWilliams is now California commissioner of immigration and housing. THE FIELDS AND PACKING PLANTS WHERE THE ASSOCIATED Farmers have battled the unions are part of America's most fabulous agricultural empire. Farming in California does not primarily involve the individual rancher who tills a half section to keep his family in food and clothing. The Golden State is a land of corporation farming. Ranches almost as vast as counties are controlled by absentee owners. Ten percent of the farms of California produce 53 percent of the total value of the state's agricultural products. Two percent of the farms have 25 percent of the acreage. Of all the farms in the nation with a crop worth more than $30,000 annually, 36 percent are in California. The state contains 44 percent of the country's large scale general farms and 60 percent of the large scale fruit farms. These farms, so expansive they are marked off by horizons rather than fence posts, frequently earn rich profits. In 1936 dividends on the preferred and common stock of the California Packing Corporation, which hires 35,000 men and women at seasonal employment in the fields, were $2,059,256. The lush valleys of the state are the source of more wealth than the gold-pocketed Sierras that first drew the pioneers westward. In California the cash income per farm is triple the national average. The Associated Farmers have been concerned in protecting this income from the raids of farm laborers. Professor Paul Taylor of the University of California has indicated that some of these raids may not be without economic justification; he estimates the yearly wage of the typical migratory worker at approximately $375. Malnutrition is often an occupational disease among these people. As the Associated Farmers increased the zeal and efficiency with which they assailed the strikes of agricultural labor, their realm was extended both geographically and politically. Late in 1937 units of the movement were formed in Oregon and Washington, and a Pacific Coast convention took place at San Jose. Colonel Garrison and others corresponded with men of similar ideas in Nevada, Arizona, Minnesota and elsewhere. Inquiries were received from practically every state. All this time the Associated Farmers were also expanding in scope. No longer did they confine themselves to repulsing the demands of farm workers. They began vehement criticism of the NLRB, the La Follette committee, compulsory health insurance, the wage and hour administration, the AF of L and the CIO. John Steinbeck was accused of being in hiding. The deportation of Harry Bridges was urged so strenuously that at the recent hearing on Angel Island, Dean James M. Landis took cognizance of the Associated Farmers as an interested party to the proceedings. FEW RECOGNIZED AUTHORITIES ON AGRICULTURE EVER HAVE been connected or identified with the Associated Farmers. The group keeps scant records on the cost of production, rural electrification, county roads and other problems vital to the rank and file farmer. However, there is an elaborate card index file on alleged radicals and for a time the payroll of the organization was decorated with the presence of Harper Knowles, an official of a San Francisco stone and granite company who claims to be an expert on subversive happenings. At the Bridges hearing, Knowles admitted exchanging information with business and industrial leaders. Before the Dies committee, this employee of the Associated Farmers denounced Culbert L. Olson, now governor of California, as a communist sympathizer. All these developments, unimportant alone, attain significance when it is considered that the Associated Farmers not only are looked upon by many people as a 100% farm organization, but that their tactics have been copied in the state and nation. California is full of high sounding groups principally interested in thwarting the aims of organized labor. There is Southern Californians, Inc., for example, which George Creel calls a "fund raising agency for the 'industrial freedom' fight." The Women of the Pacific are also active. Theirs is the "Housewives' Crusade." The Women of the Pacific announce that their "sole purpose is to keep southern California clear of the labor rackets." To accomplish this, they would incorporate and restrict unions. But such a program has been promoted most successfully by the Associated Farmers. They are a real force in the West. Last year their vice-president, Philip Bancroft, polled more than a million votes for the United States Senate, losing to Sheridan Downey—1,080,000 to 1,325,000. California labor leaders think that was a close call. Today the Associated Farmers have about 30,000 members in California. The membership fee is one dollar a year, plus an additional dollar for each $1000 paid in wages to farm workers. Sometimes the fee is computed on the basis of one cent for every ton of fruit and vegetables a farm ships. Headquarters of the Associated Farmers are in the Russ Building, near the center of San Francisco's business and financial district. This is a long way from the smell of sod. Not many people who enter the Russ Building push a plow or pitch hay. Practically al] the biggest corporation farms have joined the organization. So have a lot of processors and packers. The National Labor Relations Board has just brought a joint complaint against the Associated Farmers of Kings County and the J. G. Boswell Company, distributors of cotton and cotton by-products. But some genuine small farmers are members of the Associated Farmers, too. One reason is the heavy depredation labor unions in the Far West have committed in recent years. Another is the fact that increased payrolls frequently weigh most oppressively on the modest-sized farms, which face glutted markets with little reserve capital. And because I. W. W.'s in the earlier days and the communists recently were undoubtedly active in the formation of some of the agricultural unions, fear and anxiety have been instilled in numerous farmers; this fright will not quickly subside. UNDOUBTEDLY GOVERNOR OLSON WAS REFERRING TO THE small ranchers who belong to the Associated Farmers in a radio speech several months ago: "The farmers of California should analyze their own farm organizations, both real and pseudo, and their own farm leaders, real and alleged, and find out with whom they associate, and whom they really represent." As further investigation by Senator La Follette's committee impends, contradictions become more evident in the behavior of the Associated Farmers. "We have never accepted a cent from anyone not a farmer," a spokesman for the group told a California legislative hearing. Yet Harold Pomeroy, the organization's new executive secretary, frankly admits, "Twenty-five percent of our funds come from industrial interests allied with agriculture." Over a period of four years, this "farm" group got $6025 from the Southern Pacific. Pomeroy implies he has no knowledge of the Associated Farmers in Washington and Oregon, but a leader of the Associated Farmers of Washington informed an NLRB examiner that his unit was definitely affiliated with the Associated Farmers of California. Despite Pomeroy's inference that he knows nothing about the Associated Farmers in adjacent states, the monthly bulletin he helps to edit snapped, "We happen to know that such is not the case," when the Associated Farmers of Oregon were accused of being a camouflage for industry. And on the door of the Russ Building offices, as of the end of July, appeared the twin legend "Associated Farmers of California" and "Associated Farmers of the Pacific Coast." Faith in democracy is constantly affirmed by the Associated Farmers. Colonel Garrison, now on the executive committee and for a considerable time their president, insists Americanism is his paramount interest. Yet in a letter made public by the Dies Committee, George Deatherage of the notorious Knights of the White Camelia proposed that General Moseley lead a National movement which would include, among others, "Garrison of the Associated Farmers—in all, men who are heads of large groups on our side of the fence." Carey McWilliams charges that the Associated Farmers have frequently sponsored speeches in rural districts by anti-Semites. The Associated Farmers are now pushing the harsh anti-alien. legislation which has been disapproved by a large section of the conservative press, including the Herald Tribune of New York. LAST AUTUMN THE ASSOCIATED FARMERS TOOK ON A MORE significant as well as a more ominous aspect. In Oregon and Washington they promoted—and in California they helped to promote—laws pointing to the annihilation of the trade union movement in the Far West. No such severe anti-labor statutes ever had been enacted before in the United States. They were proposed as initiative measures. One of those measures was overwhelmingly adopted in Oregon. Another was defeated in Washington by a slender margin. The third failed in California by a more decisive majority.* The Associated Farmers may try again in the two states in which they were beaten, particularly if the AF of L and CIO are still at war next year. Already they have asked the Washington legislature to consider the bill the voters rejected so narrowly. In the Pacific Northwest, the Associated Farmers confronted a situation far different from that in California. There are not many corporation farms along the Columbia River. Thousands of ranchers in Oregon and Washington are desperately poor. Their average annual income is approximately half that of the farmers of California. A lot of these farmers in the Northwest have no electricity. Some of them live deep in the wilderness on old logging roads. Others strain their backs stump-ranching hills which the lumber industry has stripped bare. Oregon, in spite of vast natural resources, ranked twenty-fifth among the states in per capita income in 1935; California was fourth. To such farmers there had to be some appeal other than antagonism to the unionization of agricultural workers. Many of the ranchers of Oregon and Washington never get sufficient cash in their wallets to employ a solitary hired man, let alone a whole crew of harvest hands. The Associated Farmers adapted their strategy to local conditions. They warned the farmers that Dave Beck of Seattle, the ruthless teamster boss of the region, would force them to hire union truck drivers to haul their produce to market. They said that future waterfront strikes would hold up seed shipments and prevent spring planting. In all this there was just enough truth to gain the Associated Farmers an audience. A number of Beck's men, in organizing commercial truckers, had harassed farmers transporting their own crops. And the maritime picket lines of 1934 and 1936 had inconvenienced ranchers expecting consignments of seed, fertilizer and farm implements. At Portland the Associated Farmers made a good story better. They first arranged for newspaper photographers to be present, and then defended themselves with pitchforks against a hypothetical sortie of teamsters. The Oregonian declared that the incident, which occurred at a warehouse, was phony and the men involved exhibitionists. But the Associated Farmers enlisted a few members and were ready for political and economic action in the Northwest. The paucity of their numbers was revealed when they attempted to name the officers of the Oregon Grange, the biggest farm organization in the state. The candidates of the Associated Farmers were vanquished by a two-to-one majority. The Grange election, a statewide referendum of all members, was extraordinary for the outside meddling which occurred. Anti-labor newspapers advised the Grangers to vote for the Associated Farmers' selections. The most vociferous of these was the Corvallis Gazette-Times, which commended Hitler for ridding Germany of Albert Einstein. To understand what has happened in Oregon and Washington, it is necessary to know that the Granges there are predominantly liberal in contrast to the generally conservative National Grange. For years the Granges in those states have worked closely with organized labor. Grange officials have endorsed legislation guaranteeing and amplifying labor's rights. Labor has fought for public power laws to get the farmers cheap electricity from the Columbia River. This reciprocal relationship made Oregon and Washington national pace-setters in the enactment of power and labor legislation. The Associated Farmers have attempted to end this mutuality of interest. Last year was a propitious time to seek political retribution against organized labor in the Northwest. This was especially true in Oregon, where the unions had been guilty of stupid strategy and foolish blunders. Bloody tiffs between AF of L and CIO lumberjacks had closed down many sawmills. The AF of L boycotted CIO lumber, and logging camps were as silent as a wasteland. More than a hundred teamsters had been arrested and charged with vandalism and other crimes. Dave Beck's chief lieutenant in Oregon, Al Rosser, had been sentenced to twelve years in the penitentiary for arson. The books of the Teamsters' Union had been found to be confused and bungled, and $42,000 could not be accounted for properly. Teamster "Goon squads" had intimidated business men, beaten up CIO loggers and destroyed property. Elaborate price-fixing deals with laundries, breweries, bakeries and groceries rigged up the cost of bread and other necessities. Harry Bridges, the CIO leader, had answered the AF of L marauding with intemperate speeches approving the class struggle. Bridges, an alien himself, appointed another alien, Harold J. Pritchett of the timber workers, to be his chief subaltern in the Northwest. Among the general public there was more resentment and animosity against organized labor than ever before in Oregon's history, and probably with more cause. The Associated Farmers immediately capitalized on the situation. They began circulating petitions for an initiative measure restricting virtually all trade union activities. The law meant the hog-tying of labor in the state. William Green of the A F of L said it jeopardized every union's actual existence. The Oregonian described the proposal as containing "vengeful provisions restrictive of the rights of workers as American citizens." But the law was put over, a feat accomplished by persuading a majority of the voters that the measure represented the aims and aspirations of Oregon's farmers. The electorate, blinded by its irritation over labor's blunders and excesses, was shrewdly led to swallow the most extravagant propaganda. Nearly all of the literature promoting the bill referred to it as "the Farmers' measure." The phrase was used continually. "The Farmers' measure, the Farmers' measure, the Farmers' measure,"—the people of Oregon saw that on billboards, handbills, leaflets and stickers. They heard it over the radio and from meeting rostrums. The key folder of the Associated Farmers was headed: "Facts about the Farmers' Measure, 316 X Yes!" On early morning broadcasts synthetic cowboys yodeled "Clementine" and "Home on the Range," and professional entertainers conversed in backwoods' drawl about the rural sentiment manifesting itself for "the Farmers' measure." Advertisements in Portland newspapers called on the people of the city to keep faith with the hinterland. "Let's all of us," urged a reactionary former mayor of Portland, "accept the challenge of the 65,000 farmers behind this antiracket bill." "You People in Portland Wake Up!" exclaimed one of the advertisements of the Associated Farmers. "A vote of 316 X Yes on the November ballot is your opportunity to join with the farmer in correcting abuses." This and other announcements were prepared by one of the largest advertising agencies in the Far West. The Associated Farmers had expert assistance. The attorney for the Portland Industrial Relations Association managed their headquarters. Their lawyers were—and are—Dey, Hampson and Nelson, general counsel for the Southern Pacific Lines. The Oregon Association of Manufacturers solicited funds for this impressive array of talent. During the campaign, organized labor tried to point out the real antecedents and backing of the sponsors of the initiative. "The organization known as the Associated Farmers," said D. E. Nickerson, secretary of the Oregon State Federation of Labor, "is not a genuine organization of Oregon farmers, but largely an organization promoted, financed and organized by large, bitterly anti-labor corporate employers of the Pacific Coast." Such accusations the Associated Farmers of Oregon seldom bothered to refute in the campaign. They merely intensified their pleas for support of "the Farmers' measure." This conduct seemed patterned after the technique that once a falsehood gets a head start, the truth confronts a difficult pursuit. Sometimes it never catches up at all. And the Associated Farmers had infinitely more money to push "the Farmers' measure" than the labor unions could raise to refute this claim. Election day the voters in Oregon's cities were certain the 65,000 farmers on the last frontier wanted the law passed. The farmers themselves had been assured most of their country neighbors were in favor of the proposal. "The Farmers' measure" was adopted-in the words of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, "the most drastic anti-labor law on the nation's statute books." The paper said, "The law, in its more drastic phase, virtually abolishes the right to strike." Collier's editorialized, "Looked at calmly, the Oregon law is a bad one; it goes too far." But on the books the law remains, limiting strikes, boycotts, political campaigns and practically all other efforts in which labor unions customarily engage. Not to be overlooked is the fact that this law received more substantial majorities in cities and towns than in many precincts inhabited primarily by dirt farmers. The circumstances are emphasized by this: farmers were least deceived of all by the propaganda about "the farmers' measure"; and many working people in Oregon's urban areas are disgusted with the racketeering, violence and ideological strife which have split labor's ranks. "The wallop that organized labor took at the last election in Oregon," warns the Grange Bulletin, "should cause the two labor factions to leave no stone unturned to find a solution of their grievances against each other." Since the adoption of the anti-union initiative, Oregon has learned some interesting data about "the Farmers' measure" and the Associated Farmers. Labor mustered $10,059 to oppose the proposal. The "farmers" had $40,404 with which to promote it. Only a few hundred dollars of this latter amount can be traced to rank and file farmers. Practically all the money spent by the Associated Farmers was put up by a nebulous, unincorporated organization known as the "Oregon Business Council." This outfit has defied orders from the secretary of state and the state attorney general to make known the identity of its contributors. Conservative newspapers have demanded a grand jury investigation of the whole affair. The Oregon Voter, weekly organ of business and finance, has said the episode "cannot be condoned on any ground of civic decency." The small portion of the Associated Farmers' receipts filed with the secretary of state shows just how questionable is the organizations 100% rural atmosphere. Money was donated by such typical "farmers" as the Kay Woolen Mills, the Valley Packing Company, the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company, the Chadwick Hotel and the Schultz Motor Company. This, indeed, will be a fertile field for the La Follette committee's investigators. The AF of L in Oregon has filed a court action, under the state corrupt practices act, alleging that some of the wealthiest individuals of the Northwest have concealed financial contributions made to the Associated Farmers. NOW THAT THE VOTERS OF OREGON—ANGERED BY THE BEHAVIOR of labor, and hoodwinked by the behavior of the Associated Farmers—have enacted America's sternest anti-labor statute, what has been the result? Union gains have ebbed away. Picket lines which did not vanish at the mere threat of invoking anti-labor law have been dispersed by court injunctions. Wage cuts have been acquiesced in by unions virtually helpless to do otherwise. Labor in the state has lost much of its vigor and morale. Living standards have been imperiled. Longshoremen were forbidden to picket as a protest against several of their members being discharged for union activity. Dan Tobin, international president of the teamsters, complains that unions in Oregon are handcuffed. The labor editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, Arthur Eggleston, says that employers in California's neighboring state to the north "are already tearing up collective bargaining agreements." Like a dagger, the Oregon anti-union law is simple but deadly. No strike is legal unless it takes place between an establishment and an absolute majority of its employee. This means craft unions are almost powerless to strike, because seldom does any craft constitute a majority in a plant. It is dubious, for example, whether it would even be possible for all the employee of a chain of retail stores in Oregon to go on strike. Most of the chains have stores in other states and the Oregon employee are only a minority of all the people on the payroll. Jurisdictional strikes, too, are outlawed. There is nothing to prevent an employer recognizing one percent of his crew as a company union, thus making any strike even with 99 percent of his workers arrayed against him-a jurisdictional matter and consequently illegal. The law also forbids any strike over union recognition. Boycotts, direct or indirect, are banned and labor cannot publish a blacklist. Unions can only raise funds for "legitimate requirements" and the courts can determine what "legitimate requirements" happen to be. By neither direct nor indirect methods can a man be hindered from working for any firm which wants to hire him. Labor lawyers claim this makes it a crime to urge a person by word of mouth not to be a "scab." The provisions of the law against boycotting are so all-inclusive that when Chinese sympathizers in Oregon recently picketed shipments of scrap-iron to Japan, numerous attorneys and newspapers suggested they were violating the anti-labor law. Courts can enforce this bristling statute through permanent injunctions. The deception practiced by the Associated Farmers even crept into the phraseology of the measure itself. A portion of Section 2 terms it a misdemeanor to obstruct "the lawful buying, selling, transporting, receiving' delivering, manufacturing, harvesting, processing, handling or marketing of any agricultural or other products." The reference to agriculture is superfluous. It adds no legal force or effect to the bill. It was inserted only to perfect the disguise of "the Farmers' measure." A YEAR AGO MOST POLITICAL EXPERTS DID NOT BELIEVE SUCH A law could be passed in the United States. The country was thought to have progressed too far socially. Now the experts know differently. Some of them claim that the Communist Party, as well as the numerous racketeers in certain unions, must share partial blame for the retrogression represented by the Oregon Law. Labor in California and Washington, the Associated Farmers have not yet been able to vanquish; but in Oregon the outlook is dark. Some of the West's key unions are under a yoke. This includes the stevedores along the waterfront, the fishermen who pull tuna from the Pacific and Chinook salmon from the swift Columbia, the loggers in the fir and pine forests. And there is not much hope for early relief. A special circuit court in Portland has just upheld the constitutionality of the law. The Oregon supreme court will probably do likewise. State tribunals take their cue from the election returns. The Oregon Labor Press, weekly AF of L publication, recently predicted that labor's best chance of rescue was by the Supreme Court of the United States. Undoubtedly at least a year will pass before the Oregon anti-labor statute is studied by the country's highest tribunal. During that interim, virtually all progressive labor legislation remains suspended in the state. The Norris-La Guardia act and the Wagner act are practically brushed aside so far as Oregon is concerned. What will the Supreme Court ultimately do? One circumstance disturbs the lawyers for both AF of L and CIO. The court has traditionally allowed the states great latitude in legislative experimentation. Will the highest tribunal view this law as legitimate experimentation? And how much weight will be given the fact that the antilabor law was adopted at a general referendum? Differences between management and labor, which the Oregon measure symptomizes, are often decided in bitter fashion on the West Coast. The region is still close to the frontier. Unscrupulous tactics are not rare. The Bridges controversy is merely a single ingredient in the political and economic brew which simmers along the Pacific seaboard. Out of that cauldron has come Bridges as one extreme, and the Associated Farmers as the other. In California there are families of fabulous wealth, and migratory farm families averaging $375 a year. Steinbeck has not exaggerated. A visit to a camp of Dust Bowl refugees proves the authenticity of his novels. The Associated Farmers have opposed Farm Security Administration colonies for these wanderers. They say they do not want the federal government "tyrannizing over" dozens of local committees. Strangely enough, this resistance has not applied to the tyrannical influence of the federal government's crop reduction bounties. Both the ideas and technique of the Associated Farmers are spreading. As Wisconsin's legislature adopted a version of the Oregon anti-labor statute, the Cooperative Builder declared, "The Wisconsin Council of Agriculture is being used by industrialists for putting over an anti-union law." In numerous regions the Associated Farmers—and organizations like them—have weakened the political alliance between street and countryside. That alliance—always shaky-breaks up fast; in 1936 the New Deal carried Oregon nearly three to one; in 1938 the anti-labor law was adopted. The Oregon Law and the group which sponsored it comprise a warning which America—and the labor movement in particular—cannot afford to ignore. * The anti-labor initiative passed in Oregon, 197,000 votes to 147,500. The initiatives in Washington and California were defeated 256,000 to 236,000 and 1,365,000 to 985,000 respectively. Jurisdictional warfare between the A F of L and CIO was more violent and widespread in Oregon than anywhere else in the West. California had the largest proportionate labor movement of all three Pacific Coast states, There also may be some significance In the fact that 44 percent of the people of California live in cities with more than 75,000 population, 37 percent of the people of Washington and only 31 percent of the people of Oregon.
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