Race and Class in Rural California: The El Monte Berry Strike of 1933

Abstract

at the end of May 1933 outside agitators appeared in the San Gabriel / Valley, 30 miles east of Los Angeles. They were avowed radicals, L jL organizers for the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU), an affiliate of the Communist Party. They came to organ ize a strike of the San Gabriel Valley's Mexican berry pickers, and on June 1, they called a mass meeting at Hicks Camp, an agricultural labor settlement on the outskirts of El Monte. The meeting was a success: more than 500 workers attended and demanded wages that would guarantee a minimum of 25 cents per hour. Under the guidance of CAWIU personnel, a Committee of Action was formed and demands were delivered to the bosses, Japanese growers who operated several dozen berry farms in the vicinity of El Monte. When the demands were not met, the Committee proclaimed a strike and established picket lines in berry fields throughout the San Gabriel Val ley. By June 5 more than 800 workers were off the job and the Valley's berry harvest was in jeopardy. The El Monte berry strike and the larger conflicts that grew from it are part of a long heritage of struggle in California fields. Since the entrance of Chinese workers into the farm labor market in the 1870's, California growers have had access to laborers who have been the victims of racial prejudice and who have been willing or forced to accept wages lower than those in the state's other major economic sectors. Even the Depression migration of and Arkies did not alter this fact, for the Dust Bowl migrants worked alongside Mexican, Japanese, and Filipinos throughout the thirties. Indeed, the Okies themselves became something of a group, despite their white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant origin. They found themselves in an economic and social position normally held by non-whites in Califor nia society, and thus it was not surprising that they suffered the kind of dis crimination and exploitation usually experienced by minority groups. This simply illustrates the interrelationship of race and class in the history