On this day in Labor History the year was 1933.
That was the day that forty armed cotton growers shot at a group of striking workers in the small town of Pixley, California.
That year a wave of labor unrest had swept through the fields of California’s agriculture industry.
Nearly 50,000 workers participated in strikes throughout the year.
The Agricultural Workers Industrial Union led many of the strikes.
The American Federation of Labor also led two walkouts.
Workers were angry over declining wages and the harsh working conditions of agricultural life.
The Depression had slashed wages.
Cotton field workers in the San Joaquin Valley had seen their wages cut as much as seventy-five percent.
Three-fourths of those workers were Mexican.
As cotton harvest season neared, the workers organized to strike.
They demanded a dollar for every hundred pounds of cotton picked, and recognition of their union.
The growers offered sixty cents.
At the peak of the strike an estimated 12,000 to 18,000 workers had walked off the job.
Anger mounted.
Armed growers attacked strikers, demanding they return to work or leave California.
Strike leaders were arrested.
In Pixley, the growers formed a “Farmers Protective Association.”
They claimed to have 600 members.
Reportedly one manager of a cotton gin told the farmers, “The time has come for us to take the law into our own hands and drive the strikers from our farms.”
The simmering tensions boiled over.
As highway patrolman looked on, a band of growers shot into a group of unarmed strikers.
At least two strikers fell dead.
The violence resulted in public outcry and federal intervention.
The workers received federal relief, and a mediator helped settle the strike.
And in the settlement the workers would receive 75 cents per 100 pounds of cotton.
Labor History in 2:00 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and The Rick Smith Show