An American Idyll by Cornelia Stratton Parker

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"If the character of these three factors be studied, trust hostility to
American labor-unions can be explained in terms of economic measure. One
national characteristic, however, must be taken for granted. That is the
commercialized business morality which guides American economic life.
The responsibility for the moral or social effect of an act is so rarely
a consideration in a decision, that it can be here neglected without
error. It is not a factor."

* * * * *

At the close of his investigation, he took his first vacation in five
years--a canoe-trip up the Brule with Hal Bradley. That was one of our
dreams that could never come true--a canoe-trip together. We almost
bought the canoe at the Exposition--we looked holes through the one we
wanted. Our trip was planned to the remotest detail. We never did come
into our own in the matter of our vacations, although no two people
could have more fun in the woods than we. But the combination of small
children and no money and new babies and work--We figured that in three
more years we could be sure of at least one wonderful trip a year.
Anyway, we had the joy of our plannings.

CHAPTER IX

The second term in California had just got well under way when Carl was
offered the position of Executive Secretary in the State Immigration and
Housing Commission of California. I remember so well the night he came
home about midnight and told me. I am afraid the financial end would
have determined us, even if the work itself had small appeal--which,
however, was not the case. The salary offered was $4000. We were getting
$1500 at the University. We were $2000 in debt from our European trip,
and saw no earthly chance of ever paying it out of our University
salary. We figured that we could be square with the world in one year on
a $4000 salary, and then need never be swayed by financial
considerations again. So Carl accepted the new job. It was the wise
thing to do anyway, as matters turned out. It threw him into direct
contact for the first time with the migratory laborer and the I.W.W. It
gave him his first bent in the direction of labor-psychology, which was
to become his intellectual passion, and he was fired with a zeal that
never left him, to see that there should be less unhappiness and
inequality in the world.

The concrete result of Carl's work with the Immigration Commission was
the clean-up of labor camps all over California. From unsanitary,
fly-ridden, dirty makeshifts were developed ordered sanitary housing
accommodations, designed and executed by experts in their fields. Also
he awakened, through countless talks up and down the State, some
understanding of the I.W.W. and his problem; although, judging from the
newspapers nowadays, his work would seem to have been almost forgotten.
As the phrase went, "Carleton Parker put the migratory on the map."

I think of the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot, or the Ford and Suhr case,
which Carl was appointed to investigate for the Federal government, as
the dramatic incident which focused his attention on the need of a
deeper approach to a sound understanding of labor and its problems, and
which, in turn, justified Mr. Bruere in stating in the "New Republic":
"Parker was the first of our Economists, not only to analyse the
psychology of labor and especially of casual labor, but also to make his
analysis the basis for an applied technique of industrial and social
reconstruction." Also, that was the occasion of his concrete
introduction to the I.W.W. He wrote an account of it, later, for the
"Survey," and an article on "The California Casual and His Revolt" for
the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," in November, 1915.

It is all interesting enough, I feel, to warrant going into some detail.

The setting of the riot is best given in the article above referred to,
"The California Casual and His Revolt."

"The story of the Wheatland hop-pickers' riot is as simple as the facts
of it are new and naive in strike histories. Twenty-eight hundred
pickers were camped on a treeless hill which was part of the ---- ranch,
the largest single employer of agricultural labor in the state. Some
were in tents, some in topless squares of sacking, or with piles of
straw. There was no organization for sanitation, no garbage-disposal.
The temperature during the week of the riot had remained near 105 deg., and
though the wells were a mile from where the men, women, and children
were picking, and their bags could not be left for fear of theft of the
hops, no water was sent into the fields. A lemonade wagon appeared at
the end of the week, later found to be a concession granted to a cousin
of the ranch owner. Local Wheatland stores were forbidden to send
delivery wagons to the camp grounds. It developed in the state
investigation that the owner of the ranch received half of the net
profits earned by an alleged independent grocery store, which had been
granted the 'grocery concession' and was located in the centre of the
camp ground. . . .

"The pickers began coming to Wheatland on Tuesday, and by Sunday the
irritation over the wage-scale, the absence of water in the fields, plus
the persistent heat and the increasing indignity of the camp, had
resulted in mass meetings, violent talk, and a general strike.

"The ranch owner, a nervous man, was harassed by the rush of work
brought on by the too rapidly ripening hops, and indignant at the jeers
and catcalls which greeted his appearance near the meetings of the
pickers. Confused with a crisis outside his slender social philosophy,
he acted true to his tradition, and perhaps his type, and called on a
sheriff's posse. What industrial relationship had existed was too
insecure to stand such a procedure. It disappeared entirely, leaving in
control the instincts and vagaries of a mob on the one hand, and great
apprehension and inexperience on the other.

"As if a stage had been set, the posse arrived in automobiles at the
instant when the officially 'wanted' strike-leader was addressing a mass
meeting of excited men, women, and children. After a short and typical
period of skirmishing and the minor and major events of arresting a
person under such circumstances, a member of the posse standing outside
fired a double-barreled shot-gun over the heads of the crowd, 'to sober
them,' as he explained it. Four men were killed--two of the posse and
two strikers; the posse fled in their automobiles to the county seat,
and all that night the roads out of Wheatland were filled with pickers
leaving the camp. Eight months later, two hop-pickers, proved to be the
leaders of the strike and its agitation, were convicted of murder in the
first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. Their appeal for a new
trial was denied."

In his report to the Governor, written in 1914, Carl characterized the
case as follows:--

"The occurrence known as the Wheatland Hop-Fields riot took place on
Sunday afternoon, August 3, 1913. Growing discontent among the
hop-pickers over wages, neglected camp-sanitation and absence of water
in the fields had resulted in spasmodic meetings of protest on Saturday
and Sunday morning, and finally by Sunday noon in a more or less
involuntary strike. At five o'clock on Sunday about one thousand
pickers gathered about a dance pavilion to listen to speakers. Two
automobiles carrying a sheriff's posse drove up to this meeting, and
officials armed with guns and revolvers attempted to disperse the crowd
and to arrest, on a John Doe warrant, Richard Ford, the apparent leader
of the strike. In the ensuing confusion shooting began and some twenty
shots were fired. Two pickers, a deputy sheriff, and the district
attorney of the county were killed. The posse fled and the camp remained
unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn next morning.

"The occurrence has grown from a casual, though bloody, event in
California labor history into such a focus for discussion and analysis
of the State's great migratory labor-problem that the incident can well
be said to begin, for the commonwealth, a new and momentous labor epoch.

"The problem of vagrancy; that of the unemployed and the unemployable;
the vexing conflict between the right of agitation and free speech and
the law relating to criminal conspiracy; the housing and wages of
agricultural laborers; the efficiency and sense of responsibility found
in a posse of country deputies; the temper of the country people faced
with the confusion and rioting of a labor outbreak; all these problems
have found a starting point for their new and vigorous analysis in the
Wheatland riot.

In the same report, submitted a year before the "Quarterly Journal"
article, and almost a year before his study of psychology began, Carl
wrote:--

"The manager and part-owner of the ranch is an example of a certain type
of California employer. The refusal of this type to meet the social
responsibilities which come with the hiring of human beings for labor,
not only works concrete and cruelly unnecessary misery upon a class
little able to combat personal indignity and degradation, but adds fuel
to the fire of resentment and unrest which is beginning to burn in the
uncared-for migratory worker in California. That ---- could refuse his
clear duty of real trusteeship of a camp on his own ranch, which
contained hundreds of women and children, is a social fact of miserable
import. The excuses we have heard of unpreparedness, of alleged
ignorance of conditions, are shamed by the proven human suffering and
humiliation repeated each day of the week, from Wednesday to Sunday.
Even where the employer's innate sense of moral obligation fails to
point out his duty, he should have realized the insanity of stimulating
unrest and bitterness in this inflammable labor force. The riot on the
---- ranch is a California contribution to the literature of the social
unrest in America."

As to the "Legal and Economic Aspects" of the case, again quoting from
the report to the Governor:--

"The position taken by the defense and their sympathizers in the course
of the trial has not only an economic and social bearing, but many
arguments made before the court are distinct efforts to introduce
sociological modifications of the law which will have a far-reaching
effect on the industrial relations of capital and labor. It is asserted
that the common law, on which American jurisprudence is founded, is
known as an ever-developing law, which must adapt itself to changing
economic and social conditions; and, in this connection, it is claimed
that the established theories of legal causation must be enlarged to
include economic and social factors in the chain of causes leading to a
result. Concretely, it is argued:--

"First, That, when unsanitary conditions lead to discontent so intense
that the crowd can be incited to bloodshed, those responsible for the
unsanitary conditions are to be held legally responsible for the
bloodshed, as well as the actual inciters of the riot.

"Second, That, if the law will not reach out so far as to hold the
creator of unsanitary, unlivable conditions guilty of bloodshed, at any
rate such conditions excuse the inciters from liability, because
inciters are the involuntary transmitting agents of an uncontrollable
force set in motion by those who created the unlivable conditions. . . .

"Furthermore, on the legal side, modifications of the law of property
are urged. It is argued that modern law no longer holds the rights of
private property sacred, that these rights are being constantly
regulated and limited, and that in the Wheatland case the owner's
traditional rights in relation to his own lands are to be held subject
to the right of the laborers to organize thereon. It is urged that a
worker on land has a 'property right in his job,' and that he cannot be
made to leave the job, or the land, merely because he is trying to
organize his fellow workers to make a protest as to living and economic
conditions. It is urged that the organizing worker cannot be made to
leave the job because the job is _his_ property and it is all that he
has."

As to "The Remedy":--

"It is obvious that the violent strike methods adopted by the I.W.W.
type agitators, which only incidentally, although effectively, tend to
improve camp conditions, are not to be accepted as a solution of the
problem. It is also obvious that the conviction of the agitators, such
as Ford and Suhr, of murder, is not a solution, but is only the
punishment or revenge inflicted by organized society for a past deed.
The Remedy lies in prevention.

"It is the opinion of your investigator that the improvement of living
conditions in the labor camps will have the immediate effect of making
the recurrence of impassioned, violent strikes and riots not only
improbable, but impossible; and furthermore, such improvement will go
far towards eradicating the hatred and bitterness in the minds of the
employers and in the minds of the roving, migratory laborers. This
accomplished, the two conflicting parties will be in a position to meet
on a saner, more constructive basis, in solving the further industrial
problems arising between them. . . .

"They must come to realize that their own laxity in allowing the
existence of unsanitary and filthy conditions gives a much-desired
foothold to the very agitators of the revolutionary I.W.W. doctrines
whom they so dread; they must learn that unbearable, aggravating living
conditions inoculate the minds of the otherwise peaceful workers with
the germs of bitterness and violence, as so well exemplified at the
Wheatland riot, giving the agitators a fruitful field wherein to sow the
seeds of revolt and preach the doctrine of direct action and sabotage.

"On the other hand, the migratory laborers must be shown that revolts
accompanied by force in scattered and isolated localities not only
involve serious breaches of law and lead to crime, but that they
accomplish no lasting constructive results in advancing their cause.

"The Commission intends to furnish a clearinghouse to hear complaints of
grievances, of both sides, and act as a mediator or safety-valve."

In the report to the Governor appear Carl's first writings on the I.W.W.

"Of this entire labor force at the ---- ranch, it appears that some 100
had been I.W.W. 'card men,' or had had affiliations with that
organization. There is evidence that there was in this camp a loosely
caught together camp local of the I.W.W., with about 30 active members.
It is suggestive that these 30 men, through a spasmodic action, and with
the aid of the deplorable camp conditions, dominated a heterogeneous
mass of 2800 unskilled laborers in 3 days. Some 700 or 800 of the
force were of the 'hobo' class, in every sense potential I.W.W.
strikers. At least 400 knew in a rough way the--for them curiously
attractive--philosophy of the I.W.W., and could also sing some of its
songs.

"Of the 100-odd 'card men' of the I.W.W., some had been through the San
Diego affair, some had been soap-boxers in Fresno, a dozen had been in
the Free Speech fight in Spokane. They sized up the hop-field as a ripe
opportunity, as the principal defendant, 'Blackie' Ford, puts it, 'to
start something.' On Friday, two days after picking began, the practical
agitators began working through the camp. Whether or not Ford came to
the ---- ranch to foment trouble seems immaterial. There are five Fords
in every camp of seasonal laborers in California. We have devoted
ourselves in these weeks to such questions as this: 'How big a per cent
of California's migratory seasonal labor force know the technique of an
I.W.W. strike?' 'How many of the migratory laborers know when conditions
are ripe to "start something"?' We are convinced that among the
individuals of every fruit-farm labor group are many potential strikers.
Where a group of hoboes sit around a fire under a railroad bridge, many
of the group can sing I.W.W. songs without the book. This was not so
three years ago. The I.W.W. in California is not a closely organized
body, with a steady membership. The rank and file know little of the
technical organization of industrial life which their written
constitution demands. They listen eagerly to the appeal for the
'solidarity' of their class. In the dignifying of vagabondage through
their crude but virile song and verse, in the bitter vilification of the
jail turnkey and county sheriff, in their condemnation of the church and
its formal social work, they find the vindication of their hobo status
which they desire. They cannot sustain a live organization unless they
have a strike or free-speech fight to stimulate their spirit. It is in
their methods of warfare, not in their abstract philosophy or even
hatred of law and judges, that danger lies for organized society. Since
every one of the 5000 laborers in California who have been at some time
connected with the I.W.W. considers himself a 'camp delegate' with
walking papers to organize a camp local, this small army is watching, as
Ford did, for an unsanitary camp or low wage-scale, to start the strike
which will not only create a new I.W.W. local, but bring fame to the
organizer. This common acceptance of direct action and sabotage as the
rule of operation, the songs and the common vocabulary are, we feel
convinced, the first stirring of a class expression.

"Class solidarity they have not. That may never come, for the migratory
laborer has neither the force nor the vision nor tenacity to hold long
enough to the ideal to attain it. But the I.W.W. is teaching a method of
action which will give this class in violent flare-ups, such as that at
Wheatland, expression.

"The dying away of the organization after the outburst is, therefore, to
be expected. Their social condition is a miserable one. Their work, even
at the best, must be irregular. They have nothing to lose in a strike,
and, as a leader put it, 'A riot and a chance to blackguard a jailer is
about the only intellectual fun we have.'

"Taking into consideration the misery and physical privation and the
barren outlook of this life of the seasonal worker, the I.W.W. movement,
with all its irresponsible motive and unlawful action, becomes in
reality a class-protest, and the dignity which this characteristic gives
it perhaps alone explains the persistence of the organization in the
field.

"Those attending the protest mass-meeting of the Wheatland hop-pickers
were singing the I.W.W. song 'Mr. Block,' when the sheriff's posse came
up in its automobiles. The crowd had been harangued by an experienced
I.W.W. orator--'Blackie' Ford. They had been told, according to
evidence, to 'knock the blocks off the scissor-bills.' Ford had taken a
sick baby from its mother's arms and, holding it before the eyes of the
1500 people, had cried out: 'It's for the life of the kids we're doing
this.' Not a quarter of the crowd was of a type normally venturesome
enough to strike, and yet, when the sheriff went after Ford, he was
knocked down and kicked senseless by infuriated men. In the bloody riot
which then ensued, District Attorney Manwell, Deputy Sheriff Riordan, a
negro Porto Rican and the English boy were shot and killed. Many were
wounded. The posse literally fled, and the camp remained practically
unpoliced until the State Militia arrived at dawn the next day.

"The question of social responsibility is one of the deepest
significance. The posse was, I am convinced, over-nervous and,
unfortunately, over-rigorous. This can be explained in part by the
state-wide apprehension over the I.W.W.; in part by the normal
California country posse's attitude toward a labor trouble. A deputy
sheriff, at the most critical moment, fired a shot in the air, as he
stated, 'to sober the crowd.' There were armed men in the crowd, for
every crowd of 2000 casual laborers includes a score of gunmen. Evidence
goes to show that even the gentler mountainfolk in the crowd had been
aroused to a sense of personal injury. ----'s automobile had brought
part of the posse. Numberless pickers cling to the belief that the posse
was '----'s police.' When Deputy Sheriff Dakin shot into the air, a
fusillade took place; and when he had fired his last shell, an
infuriated crowd of men and women chased him to the ranch store, where
he was forced to barricade himself. The crowd was dangerous and struck
the first blow. The murderous temper which turned the crowd into a mob
is incompatible with social existence, let alone social progress. The
crowd at the moment of the shooting was a wild and lawless animal. But
to your investigator the important subject to analyze is not the guilt
or innocence of Ford or Suhr, as the direct stimulators of the mob in
action, but to name and standardize the early and equally important
contributors to a psychological situation which resulted in an unlawful
killing. If this is done, how can we omit either the filth of the
hop-ranch, the cheap gun-talk of the ordinary deputy sheriff, or the
unbridled, irresponsible speech of the soap-box orator?

"Without doubt the propaganda which the I.W.W. had actually adopted for
the California seasonal worker can be, in its fairly normal working out
in law, a criminal conspiracy, and under that charge, Ford and Suhr have
been found guilty of the Wheatland murder. But the important fact is,
that this propaganda will be carried out, whether unlawful or not. We
have talked hours with the I.W.W. leaders, and they are absolutely
conscious of their position in the eyes of the law. Their only comment
is that they are glad, if it must be a conspiracy, that it is a criminal
conspiracy. They have volunteered the beginning of a cure; it is to
clean up the housing and wage problem of the seasonal worker. The
shrewdest I.W.W. leader we found said: 'We can't agitate in the country
unless things are rotten enough to bring the crowd along.' They
evidently were in Wheatland."

He was high ace with the Wobbly for a while. They invited him to their
Jungles, they carved him presents in jail. I remember a talk he gave on
some phase of the California labor-problem one Sunday night, at the
Congregational church in Oakland. The last three rows were filled with
unshaven hoboes, who filed up afterwards, to the evident distress of the
clean regular church-goers, to clasp his hand. They withdrew their
allegiance after a time, which naturally in no way phased Carl's
scientific interest in them. A paper hostile to Carl's attitude on the
I.W.W. and his insistence on the clean-up of camps published an article
portraying him as a double-faced individual who feigned an interest in
the under-dog really to undo him, as he was at heart and pocket-book a
capitalist, being the possessor of an independent income of $150,000 a
year. Some I.W.W.'s took this up, and convinced a large meeting that he
was really trying to sell them out. It is not only the rich who are
fickle. Some of them remained his firm friends always, however. That
summer two of his students hoboed it till they came down with malaria,
in the meantime turning in a fund of invaluable facts regarding the
migratory and his life.

A year later, in his article in the "Quarterly Journal," and, be it
remembered, after his study of psychology had begun, Carl wrote:--

"There is here, beyond a doubt, a great laboring population experiencing
a high suppression of normal instincts and traditions. There can be no
greater perversion of a desirable existence than this insecure,
under-nourished, wandering life, with its sordid sex-expression and
reckless and rare pleasures. Such a life leads to one of two
consequences: either a sinking of the class to a low and hopeless level,
where they become, through irresponsible conduct and economic
inefficiency, a charge upon society; or revolt and guerrilla labor
warfare.

"The migratory laborers, as a class, are the finished product of an
environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out beings moulded
after all the standards society abhors. Fortunately the psychologists
have made it unnecessary to explain that there is nothing willful or
personally reprehensible in the vagrancy of these vagrants. Their
histories show that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters of
the farms they ran away from, through their character-debasing
experience with irregular industrial labor, on to the vicious economic
life of the winter unemployed, their training predetermined but one
outcome. Nurture has triumphed over nature; the environment has
produced its type. Difficult though the organization of these people may
be, a coincidence of favoring conditions may place an opportunity in the
hands of a super-leader. If this comes, one can be sure that California
will be both very astonished and very misused."

I was told only recently of a Belgian economics professor, out here in
California during the war, on official business connected with aviation.
He asked at once to see Carl, but was told we had moved to Seattle. "My
colleagues in Belgium asked me to be sure and see Professor Parker," he
said, "as we consider him the one man in America who understands the
problem of the migratory laborer."

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