Take It Easy, But Take It

"The case was concluded on June 13th. After deliberating two hours the jury returned a verdict of guilty against all defendants on all 3 counts. The nine men were sentenced on June 16th. They are: Frank Spector, Los Angeles organizer for the International Labor Defense; record does not show that he was ever in Imperial Valley. Carl Sklar, Los Angeles organizer for the Communist Party; in Valley only a few times. Oscar Erickson, national secretary of the Agricultural Workers Industrial League; spent about two months in the Valley. Tsuji Horiuchi, Japanese citizen, secretary of the Imperial Valley Trade Union Unity League; Lawrence Emery of the Marine Workers Industrial Union; spent about two months in Valley. Danny Roxas, a Filipino, secretary of the local Agricultural Workers Industrial League; Eduardo Herrera, cement worker, Braulio Oroszco, carpenter, and Emilio Alonzo, agricultural workers; Mexican citizens. The first six men above wer...

"Within a year after the general strike [1934 San Francisco General strike], not a single member of the ILA in San Francisco was on relief - an hitherto unheard of situation. The Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast was organized, to provide a central body through which all maritime unions could cooperate in mutual assistance. The second great strike, occurring in the winter of 1936-1937, was primarily occasioned by the need of the members of the seamen's unions, who had not benefitted commensurately in 1934 and desired to raise their pay scales and working conditions to comparable equality with shore workers. The strike actually started as a lockout, with the employers presenting a stubborn front against any improvements and deliberately closing the port. In the end the seamen won a reasonable victory, but the longshoremen, who went out with them, took slight losses in certain respects. An outstanding feature of the 1936-37 strike, which lasted 99 days, was t...

"Almost from the very day that the fur workers first organized themselves into a union to fight for better working conditions, the bosses hired gangsters to smash the union. They sent their agents to disrupt it from within. They attacked the union through injunctions and court cases. They slandered and besmirched the union through the big-business controlled press. And as is their usual practice, they singled out trustworthy and militant leaders of the workers for frame-ups and persecutions - men in whom the membership had the greatest faith, leaders whose entire lives were devoted to serving the membership. But the union survived and grew, despite violence and gangsters and lockouts of employers. Why was it able to survive attacks as fierce as any ever aimed at a labor organization in the United States? Who were these men who could not be threatened, bribed, or slugged into submission? The history of the I.L.F.W.U. answers these questions. We give here only a few...