22 Yakima County Sheriff's deputies, 250+ vigilantes
Casualties
Injuries
Some picketers
Arrested
61 picketers
The 1933 Yakima Valley strike (also known as the Congdon Orchards Battle) took place on 24 August 1933 in the
Yakima Valley, Washington, United States. It is notable as the most serious and highly publicized agricultural labor disturbance in Washington history and as a brief revitalization of the Industrial Workers of the World
in the region.
Background
Since 1916, the
Yakima during the fall of that year was promptly raided by local police, who arrested its inhabitants, closed the building, and denied Wobblies the right to hold the street meetings which they regarded as essential to their organizational effort among the harvest workers flooding into the valley.[1]
The
child labor in the yards, and a minimum wage of 35 cents per hour for men and women alike. At the time, the current rate for common labor was 10 to 12 cents an hour, with hop farmers
claiming that they could not pay any more than 12 ½ cents per hour for labor due to lack of profit they made in sales.
In 1932,
Yakima Valley hops sold for 11 to 14 cents a pound. Then, effective 7 April 1933, Congress legalized 3.2 percent beer and wine. States rapidly moved to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment. The effect of these events on hop prices was dramatic: in April and May, Valley papers reported sales of the remaining uncommitted 1932 crops at 40 to 50 cents; the Yakima Morning Herald for nearly a month showed prices up to 75 cents per pound. The forthcoming crop for 1933 commanded 20 to 30 cents. Three- and four-year contracts were being signed for 18 to 25 cents.[2]
On the second day of the strike, the
picketers from continuing their activities. The IWW attorney had contacted the hop growers to see if he could bring about a peaceful settlement to the strike, but the hop growers never responded to the attorney. The strike had fizzled out with little success when matched against the hop growers, sheriffs, and state patrolmen, especially with the Yakima Chamber of Commerce
giving the law enforcement and business owners' their support.
In order to ensure that peace was maintained on the hop farms, Chief Criminal Deputy H.T. "Army" Armstrong persuaded local growers to enforce a "night hop patrol" in which at least six men would be on patrol at all times during the harvest in order to protect the fields from sabotage.
On August 14, several dozen men assembled at the Sunnyside Canal Bridge near the lower valley community of Sawyer. Some entered the orchard of Anna Mitchell where they talked to peach pickers about wages. While some protestors were reaching out to the pickers working at the orchard farms, others held their position on the bridge to try to dissuade the pickers from crossing the bridge to work for the farmers on the north side of the canal. With word spreading quickly of the protestors at the bridge, farmers gathered in order to out-number the strikers. Both sides had armed themselves with homemade clubs or tree limbs. The protest turned physical when protestors refused to remove themselves from the bridge. Farmers banded together to throw protestors over the bridge in to the canal to "cool them off" in order to calm down the protestors. Seeing as the farmers were well-organized and prepared for strikes, along with having the county sheriffs and state patrolmen coming to their aid, the protests of 15 and 16 August were a complete failure.
The
picketers, 61 workers were taken to the county jail.[3]
Aftermath
Bullpen used to imprison striking farmworkers
The strike was broken up on the night of August 24 due to the
vigilantes tarred and feathered their victims and put linoleum cement in their shoes before freeing them.[2]
The prisoners were charged with criminal syndicalism, later changed to
vagrancy and agreed not to take civil action against the county, while non-resident Wobblies promised to leave the county for at least one year; in return, Yakima authorities dropped all other charges. The Yakima repression "utterly smashed" the strike and agricultural unionism in the Valley, but the wooden stockade remained on the county courthouse grounds until 1943 as a "silent reminder to future malcontents that the spirit of 1933 remained alive in the region".[4]
