Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
small-town community holding off a Communist bid to control local busi-
ness and politics. This CASV press release, which quotes CASV president
Frank Cornell, an area tractor dealer, framed CASV as a wary representative
of the “innocent bystander,” a silent majority that had stood by for too
long while Communist agitators took over a peaceful community:
What we are organized for is to keep the Salinas Valley on an even keel. We don't
want anyone who has even the slightest stake in the community to get seasick.
We have no quarrel with any man—or group—who puts his full weight into the
stroke of the oars and helps to shove the community ahead to the greater advance-
ment of everyone.
But we haven't any sympathy, either, with the fellow who rocks the boat.
No one can speak conclusively the individual opinions of everyone in as large a
group as this one is. But in general I know I can say defi nitely that certainly this
association doesn't for an instant question the right of a man to organize and to
act concertedly to attain defi nite objectives. How could we object? It's the very thing
we are doing ourselves.
And I think we are doing the right thing.
For from a broad community point of view, the interests of employers and
employees are absolutely mutual. And no minority group, whether they are classi-
fi ed as employees or employers, has any right by any stretch of the imagination to
jeopardize the economic stability of a community which constitutes an overwhelm-
ing majority.
In the Salinas Valley, at least we hope that the “innocent bystander” is going to
change his role. Instead of taking it on the nose in every brawl that happens, he's
going to “walk softly and carry a big stick.”
11
This narrative of all community members' being in the same boat por-
trayed labor as a minority voice that could not understand (or had forgot-
ten) the common interests between workers and management. By framing
grower interests as allied with the interests of the larger community, the
farm industry could justify the repression of this minority voice with its
“big stick.”
In all, Salinas Valley growers' access to resources for fi nancial support,
political leverage, media spin, and police-backed physical intimidation
dwarfed the means of the packing shed workers; the workers went back
to work after two months with no recognition or concessions from the
growers.
12
In fact, the Salinas growers' plan had proven so successful at
breaking the lettuce packers' strike that the same model was used in
Stockton, in California's Central Valley, to break a strike of cannery workers
in 1938.
