Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

The I.W.W. publicly criticised those "socialists"
who were part of the anti-Asian campaign. In a special
pamphlet they appealed to white workers to see that Asians
were good union men, who would be helpful in winning
higher wages: "They are as anxious as you, to get as much
as possibie. This is proven by the fact that they have come
to this country." (35)
But while scattered Japanese workers joined the
I.W.W., in the main we did not. The reason, quite simply,
is that while the I.W.W. wanted our cooperation, they did
not want the hated Japanese workers inside the I.W.W. In
order to keep amicable relations with the mass of whitesupremacist
settlers in the West, the I.W.W. limited their
relationship to us. Some Asians would be acceptable, but
any conspicuous mass recruitment of Japanese was too
controversial. A sympathetic writer about the I.W.W. at
the time noted:
"At the Third Convention, George Speed, a
delegate from California, quite accurately expressed the
sentiment of the organization in regard to the Japanese
Question. 'The whole fight against the Japanese,' he said,
'is the fight of the middle class of California, in which they
employ the labor faker to back it up.' He added, however,
that he considered it 'practically useless.. . under present
conditions for the I. W. W. to take any steps' to organize
the Japanese.. " (36)
This position was seen in action at the 1914 Hop
Pickers Strike near Maryville, California; which was the
well-publicized struggle that launched the I.W.W.'s farm
worker organizing drive in that state. That year the Durst
Ranch hired 2,800 migrant workers at below-market
wages, and forced them to toil in isolated near-slavery.
I.W.W. organizers soon started a strike in which the
Japanese, Mexicano, Greek, Syrian, Puerto Rican and
other nationalities were strongly united. The strike led to a
national defense campaign when the sheriff, after shooting
two striking workers, arrested the two main I.W.W.
organizers as the alleged murderers.
Although the strike was victorious - and led to
bigger organizing drives - the Japanese workers had
disappeared. We were persuaded to withdraw (while still
honoring the picket lines) in order to help the I.W.W.,
since "...the feeling of the working class against the
Japanese was so general throughout the state that the
association of the Japanese with the strikers would in all
probability be detrimental to the latter." The I.W.W. tried
to justify everything by saying that move was on the initiative
of the Japanese workers - and then praising it as
an act of "solidarity." Notice that while the Japanese
laborers lived, and worked, and went out on strike with the
others, that the I.W.W. statement separates "the
Japanese" from "the strikers. "
Tk I.W.W. considered it "solidarity" for oppressed
Asian workers to be excluded from their own
struggle, so that the I.W.W. could get together with the
open racists. It should be clear that while the I.W.W.
70 hoped to establish the "unity of all workers" as a princi-