Gentlemen Farmers

Along California highways last week, red, white & blue billboard posters shouted: "National Defense--A nation at work --Protect the open door for jobs for everyone--The open shop is the open door." California businessmen were rallying their forces for a last-ditch fight with labor.

Businessmen were alarmed by labor's successful strike at Vultee Aircraft Corp., where workers had won a higher wage; by State Supreme Court decisions upholding the legality of a closed-shop contract. From their annual convention at Fresno, bigwigs of the Associated Farmers of California, Inc. scurried to Los Angeles to huddle with members of the State Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco Employers' Association, the Merchants' & Manufacturers' Association. There they discussed ways & means of nullifying the Supreme Court decisions.

Gas & Gun. Most notorious labor-baiting group in California are the so-called Associated Farmers. These "Farmers" track very little earth into their parlors. They were born at a meeting of an agricultural committee of the State Chamber of Commerce in 1934, when the State was being invaded by Dust Bowl migrants (the Okies of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath). The Okies wanted better wages, better living conditions than Mexican peons. With mounting labor costs, great industrialized farms faced a cut in profits. Shippers, canners, bankers were also vitally concerned. The time had come, the Chamber of Commerce decided, for "aggressive action if business is to survive."

The Associated Farmers supplied the aggressive action. During the Salinas agricultural strike in 1936 and the Stockton strike in 1937, they acted with tear gas and shotguns. The stench of blood and powder hung long over California's Imperial Valley. Strikes were broken, but so was the secretive silence that had surrounded these private affairs in the Valley. For direct action the Associated Farmers turned to quieter campaigns in the State Legislature.

They went on record as "favoring the complete exemption of agricultural labor from the Wages & Hours Law, the National Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Act and similar legislation," as opposed to repeal of local anti-picketing ordinances in California, to the closed shop and the "hiring hall."

Farmer in the Dell. Contributors to the Associated Farmers, as revealed by the La Follette Committee, include: American Trust Co., Bank of America, Bank of California, Canners League, railroads, utilities, packers, employer associations. Claimed membership is 40,000. According to the La Follette Committee report, a truer figure would be something under 12,000. The membership includes a small percentage of small growers in the State who were scared by desperate, frequently reckless labor tactics and were genuinely hurt by growing labor costs. But the important membership is a large percentage of the large growers. They are the hierarchy and inner circle, gentlemen landinternational FARMER BANCROFT His enemies comforted him.

owners who have closer bonds with the banks than with the soil.

One of these gentlemen farmers is Philip Bancroft, who ran for the U. S. Senate against Sheridan (Up-and) Downey and lost. Farmer Bancroft, small, leathery, quietly bitter, is a Harvard graduate, member of the American Legion, and a Social Registerite. He raises pears on the Walnut Creek acres he inherited from his father. Last week Mr. Bancroft found comfort in the fact that "[we] have as our enemies every Communist, Nazi, Fascist, starry-eyed pink, goon-squad leader and labor racketeer in the State of California."

Another is Robert F. Schmeiser, who raises wheat in Fresno County. Oil gushed out of Mr. Schmeiser's land one day. Now he embarrasses the Farmers' publicity man, whose job it is to paint a picture of sweat and simplicity, by appearing at conventions in a Cadillac driven by a chauffeur.

Newly elected president is 33-year-old Donald Archibald Stevning, who is no Red-baiter but is opposed to unionization of farms and packing companies. Young Mr. Stevning married the daughter of an Orange County citrus grower, now manages the 120 acres she inherited and 25 of his own. It remained for Mr. Stevning, West Point graduate and ex-Army flier, to set the new theme for bucolic businessmen in California. Said he: "We'll be ready soon to shift from the tactics of defense to offense."

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