Wheatland hop riot
The riot, which resulted in four deaths and numerous injuries, was subsequently blamed by local authorities, who were controlled by management, upon the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
The Wheatland hop riot was among the first major farm labor confrontations in California and a harbinger of further such battles in the United States throughout the 20th century.
[2] In one flier soliciting laborers, the Durst Ranch promised a job to every white hops picker who arrived on his farm by August 5.
[3] In this year, however, the number of willing workers far outstripped demand, with some 2800 men, women, and children flocking to the Durst Ranch to work as pickers in the fields.
[2] Workers lived in tents in the hot summer sun on a barren hillside, paying Durst 75 cents per week for the privilege as a rental fee.
[3] More workers were on hand than could be accommodated in these tents, however, forcing some to make do in the elements under crude structures constructed from poles and burlap sacks.
[2] Drinking water was a mile from the fields and Durst refused to supply any to the pickers under his employ, instead allowing his cousin to operate a commercial lemonade wagon.
[9] Durst partially complied, indicating that he would henceforth improve toilet facilities, provide water in the fields, and allow one worker to witness the cleaning process.
A mass meeting was called, which was addressed by Ford and Herman Suhr, an IWW member who was acting as secretary of the temporary Durst Farm local.
He gathered Yuba County District Attorney Edward Manwell (who was also his own lawyer), Marysville Sheriff George Voss, and a number of deputies.
[10] The shot provoked the opposite effect intended and many members of the crowd jumped on District Attorney Manwell and Deputy Sheriff Lee Anderson and began beating them.
[15] In Martinez, Nelson was taken from jail to a room in a hotel where he was beaten by a sheriff and a private detective with pistol butts and a rubber hose and threatened with summary execution.
[15] A coroner's inquest was conducted which concluded that the IWW strike leadership had caused the riot which led to the death of District Attorney Manwell.
[14] One local newspaper, the Marysville Democrat, denounced the Wobblies as "venomous human snakes" who "always urged armed resistance to constituted authority" and were thus "more dangerous and deadly than the wild animals of the jungles.
"[18] No witness indicated that they had seen Ford with a gun; rather the case was made that by mobilizing the hop pickers the IWW organizer had "filled the magazines of wrath.
[18] Defense witnesses indicated that the shots which killed the law enforcement officials were fired by the dead Puerto Rican picker from Deputy Reardon's gun, which had been seized in the scuffle.
California's progressive Republican governor Hiram Johnson empowered a new Commission on Immigration and Housing to investigate the underlying causes behind the Wheatland Riot, which resulted in new legislation providing for the state inspection of labor camps.
[23] The California State investigation attracted federal attention and in August 1914 the US Commission on Industrial Relations conducted hearings on the Wheatland Hop Riot in San Francisco.
[24] Testimony gathered further exposed the conditions faced by California agricultural workers in general and those on the Durst Ranch in particular, as well as the systemic violence practiced by private detectives working in cooperation with Yuba County law enforcement authorities.
[24] Appeals to the California Supreme Court on their behalf were unsuccessful and the two convicted leaders of the Wheatland strike remained behind bars for over a decade.
[25] Blackie Ford was eventually paroled in 1924 only to be immediately re-arrested and charged for murder by the Yuba City District Attorney, this time for the death of sheriff's deputy Reardon.
