116:. Local anti-picketing ordinances sprang up throughout California, and “the Associated Farmers helped secure the passage of such ordinances.” These ordinances had sweeping prohibitions on speech (and were later deemed unconstitutional) including “prohibit the use of language...that tended to provoke a breach of the peace...” and making it “unlawful for any person to utter...or to make any loud noise or to speak in a loud or unusual tone...” to prevent people from patronizing a business under labor negotiations." The anti-syndicalism laws also helped put numerous labor leaders like
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agriculture," no member of the
Associated Farmers suffered more than public exposure, and a decade of mostly losses during labor strikes left the farmworker movement crippled. The public testimony revealed during the La Follette committee hearings, along with the advent of World War 2 and the fading of the Great Depression, all contributed to the gradual elimination of the Associated Farmers as a significant source of union opposition in California.
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Associated Farmer employed spies to infiltrate labor organizations and kept lists of union activists so that employers could avoid hiring them. A letter from the
Associated Farmers to the Olive Hillside groves requested their help “To better assist you in determining any possible agitators or workers with undesirable affiliations in your employment, we are asking you to mail us a complete list of your pickers or field laborers."
101:"subversive" activity." These groups were often involved in violent repression of labor actions and strikes. “The citizen groups were responsible for a series of vigilante attacks on farmworkers and their organizers. The vigilantes were untrained in police tactics but were nonetheless armed with 20 inch pick axe handles, and in some cases tear gas, and turned loose on strikers." By 1936, led by Colonel
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report found a “conspiracy to suppress constitutional rights that ...made
California seem more a fascist European dictatorship than part of the United States." But although the American public had seen "a damning indictment of the abusive labor policies that prevailed in California's industrialized
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and the Farm Bureau already existed, but the AF “arose in 1934 out of the numerous citizen associations that were created in 1933 to combat farmworker unionization.” As the number of annual strikes increased in the 1930s, AF chapters spread throughout the state, with 42 chapters eventually in place
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The
Associated Farmers Association was created as a reaction to the growing labor movement in California in the 1930s as farmworkers agitated for increased wages and improved working conditions. The AF was “rganized in Fresno on 28 March 1934 by members of the California State Chamber of Commerce
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administration." The real extent of the business community's support of the
Associated Farmers was only fully revealed during the Senate inquiry into the group's anti-labor activities, which were determined to violate free speech and assembly as well as the right of labor to organize and bargain
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opened a Senate subcommittee hearing into the “Violations of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor,” to investigate numerous “violations of the rights of free speech and ...undue interference with the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively." The committee hearings took testimony and
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from making arrests in strikes, a bill mandating the inspection of labor camps by outside parties, and even a bill that would require farmers to provide their workers with drinking cups. “Not one bill which the
Associated Farmers opposed in 1939 got through the legislature.” In 1935, Herman
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The
Associated Farmers also helped form citizens’ groups to mobilize against farmworkers, mostly with the support of local law enforcement. “The cooperation and mobilization of civilian groups was endorsed by the Peace Officers Association of the State of California as a means of combating
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The
Associated Farmers kept files on more “than a thousand suspected subversives (read, union organizers), sharing this information with police officials throughout the state." Operatives from the AF requested information from growers so they could identify problematic labor organizers. The
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The founders and leading contributors to the
Associated Farmers were not only farmers, but businesses with links to agriculture. “These included packing companies, ginning combines, transportation, power and finance companies. ... The industrial supporters of the AF were among the largest
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was an influential anti-labor organization in
California between 1934 and 1939. Agricultural and business leaders formed the organization to counter growing labor activism in California. The AF was responsible for substantial violence in reaction to agricultural strikes; the creation of
76:." These donors provided substantial funding. From May 1934 to November 1939 the AF collected $ 184,231. The “ten largest contributors to the Associated Farmers, though constituting but the smallest fraction of 1 percent of all contributors, provided 44.3 percent of all funds."
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of 1935. The committee heard testimony on the violence in the 1934 lettuce strike, attacks on attorneys, vigilantism, and even a motion by the local Associated Farmers group of the Imperial Valley to investigate the cost of machine guns to arm the sheriff's office.
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incorporated letters and memoranda from numerous members of the Associated Farmers, including S. Parker Frisselle (the AF's first president) and Colonel Walter Garrison, who succeeded Frisselle in 1936. The hearings in Los Angeles in January 1940 focused on the
124:, and others into jail, successfully breaking strikes through "eliminat union leadership." Once strikers or organizers had been arrested, the Associated Farmers worked closely with prosecutors, even going “..so far as to hire District Attorney Elmer Heald of
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The AF believed that “Communists were attempting to organize the farm workers of California” and in fact most of the organizers they cited were openly Communist. But “the Associated Farmers were after something else: the suppression of farm labor through a
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anti-picketing ordinances; and spying on the activities of labor organizations. After a US Senate investigation into its actions and the advent of WW2, it lost influence and eventually disbanded. “The reign of the AF would only come to an end when the
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Cottrell, Associated Farmers official and organizer of its paramilitary California Cavaliers, declared, “We aren't going to stand for any more of these organizers from now on; anyone who peeps about higher wages will wish he hadn't.”
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The Associated Farmers were determined to prevent any labor actions by agricultural union organizers along with most labor reforms. They opposed housing programs and the farm minimum wage. They fought against a bill prohibiting the
334:
Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor,” Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor. United States Senate. Part 52. Los Angeles CA, 1940. US Government Printing Office, DC
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and the California Farm Bureau” and the founders considered it as “an emergency organization set up to prevent a recurrence of the strikes of 1933.” Numerous farm organizations including the
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After the successes the Associated Farmers achieved against strikes in Salinas in 1936 and Stockton in 1937, the tide began to turn against the group. In December 1939, Senator
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38:
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characterized the Associated Farmers of California as Farm Fascists. The Associated Farmers used California's anti-syndicalism laws to prevent strikes and destroy the
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ended its investigations by reporting that “the economic and social plight of California's agricultural labor is miserable beyond belief.” The conclusions of the
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turned its scrutiny towards its activities in 1939 and 1940." The committee's attention short-circuited the AF's attempt to expand across the United States.”
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Pichardo, Nelson (1995). "The Power Elite and Elite-Driven Countermovements: The Associated Farmers of California during the 1930s".
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175:(which referred to a fictional “Farmers' Association” intended to stand for the Associated Farmers). In 1940 the
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and “the total number of individuals mobilized probably exceed 50,000 and may have been as high as 70,000."
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John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath", Penguin Classics (2006 edition), note 2 to Chapter 22, p. 462.
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165:” in 1939 had already helped to shine a light on the actions of the Associated Farmers, as did
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administration...blocked forty pro-farm labor bills... . Another 140 were blocked in the
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to prepare the criminal syndicalism indictment for his Sacramento County counterpart...”
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In the 1930s the Associated Farmers opposed worker housing programs, and during “the
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corporations in California." Financial supporters included “the
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Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers, 1870-1941
319:. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 44–45.
354:. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 251.
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Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California
289:. New York: International Publishers. p. 68.
274:. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 162.
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396:1934 establishments in California
391:Organizations established in 1934
386:Organizations based in California
55:Funding, Leadership, and Politics
21:Associated Farmers of California
16:American anti-labor organization
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317:California Farm Organizations
74:Spreckels Investment Company
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169:'s publication in 1939 of
62:Southern Pacific Railroad
48:California Highway Patrol
315:Chambers, Clark (1952).
140:The Senate Investigation
350:Daniel, Cletus (1981).
287:The Long Road to Delano
163:Factories in the Fields
70:Holly Sugar Corporation
381:Farmers' organizations
151:Imperial Valley Strike
285:Kushner, Sam (1975).
270:Starr, Kevin (1996).
181:La Follette committee
177:La Follette committee
146:Robert La Follette Jr
32:Founding and Mission
26:LaFollette Committee
172:The Grapes of Wrath
157:The publication by
226:10.1007/BF02098563
214:Sociological Forum
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118:Pat Chambers
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375:Categories
188:References
72:, and the
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134:Red Scare
108:In 1939
81:Merriam
68:...the
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234:684757
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64:, the
39:Grange
238:S2CID
230:JSTOR
114:CAWIU
85:Olson
335:1940
291:ISBN
161:of “
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