844 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



of the white laboring population. Men of that sort pay for the extra 

 cost of their care by exceptional initiative and by unusual devotion 

 to their employer's interests. 



271. SOLVING LABOR TROUBLE IN CALIFORNIA 1 



There occurred on August 3, 1913, on the Durst hop ranch near 

 Wheatland, Yuba County, a riot among the hop pickers employed on 

 the ranch, resulting in the killing of two police officials and two 

 pickers. It was the claim of the pickers that one of the primary 

 causes of the discontent hi their ranks, leading to riot and bloodshed, 

 was the insanitary condition of the camp in which they were segregated 

 on the ranch Brief investigations and reports of state officials had 

 partially substantiated these claims. Before the trial of Richard Ford 

 and Herman Suhr, charged with having caused the murder of one of 

 the state officials by inciting the crowd of pickers to riot, was begun, 

 it was announced that evidence concerning the sanitary and living 

 conditions in the camp would be introduced. Consequently the 

 Commission of Immigration and Housing decided to avail itself of 

 this opportunity to conduct a 'careful investigation into the economic 

 and social causes leading up to the riot. The results of this investi- 

 gation are here merely summarized. 



In previous years there had often been a lack of pickers when the 

 hops were ripe, but in the season of 1913, by means of coastwide 

 advertising, the Durst brothers succeeded in assembling an army of 

 nearly 3,000 persons, and at the time of the riot there were probably 

 2,800 workers in the camps, about half of them women and children. 

 Of this number, fully i ,000 were foreign born males, including Syrians, 

 Mexicans, Italians, Porto Ricans, Poles, Hindus, and Japanese. The 

 American element was made up of wandering casual workers, poor 

 persons from near-by towns, owners of small ranches in the foothills 

 of the Sierras, roving hoboes, and a few families of the better laboring 

 class from towns and cities, who often go to the hop fields for their 

 summer "outing." 



When this motley horde arrived at the Durst ranch, they found a 

 desolate, sunbaked field, without shelter from the burning California 

 sun. There were a few tents to be rented at 75 cents a week, but the 

 majority had to construct rude shelters of poles and gunny sacks, 



1 Adapted from First Annual Report of the Commission of Immigration and 

 Housing of California (January 2, 1915) pp. 15-50. 



