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- Organizing Farm Workers: The Beginning
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- Dick Meister
Few events in the long history of attempts to win decent conditions for the country's highly exploited farm workers have been more influential that the Wheatland Riot of August 1913. It stemmed from efforts by organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World to protest the miserable conditions of the men, women and children employed by what was then California's largest single employer of farm labor. It brought to broad public attention for the first time the terrible treatment of farm workers nationwide.
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Piece Description
Few events in the long history of attempts to win decent conditions for the country's highly exploited farm workers have been more influential that the Wheatland Riot of August 1913. It stemmed from efforts by organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World to protest the miserable conditions of the men, women and children employed by what was then California's largest single employer of farm labor. It brought to broad public attention for the first time the terrible treatment of farm workers nationwide.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
It was blistering hot on that afternoon of august third, 1913, on a barren field near the Northern California town of wheatland. More than two thousand hop pickers crowded tightly around a makeshift platform to hear a radical message from the industrial workers of the world.
STRIKE! an IWW organizer urged them. Strike now!
Within minutes, the crowd was plunged helter-skelter into what soon became known as the wheatland riot … a key event in the very long struggle to win decent conditions for farmworkers that finally led to creation of the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s.
The strike would be a bold, dangerous act. But it seemed the only way to improve the workers’ truly miserable conditions on the ranch where they worked, for California’s largest single employer of farm labor.
The workers … men, women and children … were jammed together in a treeless, sun-baked camp near th...
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Intro and Outro
INTRO:Commentator Dick Meister recalls a key event in farm labor history.
OUTRO:Dick Meister is co-author of"A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America's Farm Workers."
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