PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 63 



Gompers and his Federation of Labor passed a resolution informing 

 the Congress of the United States that, in the opinion of Mr. Gompers, 

 who is a Russian Jew, and who fled to this country from oppression 

 in his own country, the Panama canal should never be dug except by 

 American, white, union labor; but he didn't try to send any down 

 there. For my part I was willing to see the entire bunch exported and 

 put to work. (Great applause.) But he didn't supply it. 



When your harvest season comes on and your fruit is ripening, and 

 it is perishable property and it may be ruin or profit for you— the 

 saving of that crop— and you go down to Mr. Furuseth and Mr. 

 Casey and the rest of them, do they send you labor to harvest your crop ? 

 No, they do not and they won't; and if they sent it it would get drunk 

 on its first day's wages and that would be the last you would see of it. 

 Then why should rural California be under the domination of these 

 men? Why should you not have your rights? Why should you not 

 have the same privilege to draw upon the nearest and most reliable 

 market for labor, as the Atlantic seaboard draws upon its nearest avail- 

 able market? 



Another theory has appeared to the effect that when the Panama 

 canal is dug then we will get millions of these southern and south- 

 eastern Europeans flooded through the canal, and that will solve the 

 labor problem. You have got them here now. Have they solved any 

 problem ? They solved my problem of how to get my grape crop gath- 

 ered in Placer County, because a gang of Greeks working on the rail- 

 road stripped the vineyard in two nights. They solved that problem 

 for me. (Laughter.) Just below them was a gang of Chinese working 

 on the same railroad, minding their own business, and every peach 

 and pear in the neighborhood was absolutely safe from depredation. 

 • You are to Avait, then, until the Panama canal is dug ? If that is 

 to be the case some of you upon whose heads there rests the frost that 

 never melts, like it does upon mine, will have gone to the reward of 

 your labors and a release of your burdens long before the problem is 

 solved. But when you get them here through the Panama canal or any 

 other canal you know just as well as I do that you can not depend upon 

 that form of labor to do the work that must be done in these primary 

 processes of rural production in California, Why not unite, organize, 

 let the country know your wish, express your will ? Let the politicians 

 who represent you in Congress and elsewhere know that you have some 

 rights for which you demand respect. Let them know that you desire 

 to inflict no harm upon California; that instead of degrading Ameri- 

 can blood you propose to keep it pure, as it is, because you don't want 

 to bring here a horde of labor that has to be assimilated. You want a 

 form of labor that minds its own business, takes care of itself, obeys 

 the laws of the country as far as they relate to their relations with the 



