Associated Farmers of California
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The Associated Farmers of California was an influential anti-labor organization in California between 1934 and 1939. Agricultural and business leaders formed the organization to counter growing labor activism in California. The AF was responsible for substantial violence in reaction to agricultural strikes; the creation of anti-picketing ordinances; and spying on the activities of labor organizations. After a US Senate investigation into its actions and the advent of WW2, it lost influence and eventually disbanded. “The reign of the AF would only come to an end when the LaFollette Committee turned its scrutiny towards its activities in 1939 and 1940." The committee's attention short-circuited the AF's attempt to expand across the United States.”[1]
The Associated Farmers Association was created as a reaction to the growing labor movement in California in the 1930s as farmworkers agitated for increased wages and improved working conditions. The AF was “[o]rganized in Fresno on 28 March 1934 by members of the California State Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau” and the founders considered it as “an emergency organization set up to prevent a recurrence of the strikes of 1933.”[2] Numerous farm organizations including the Grange and the Farm Bureau already existed, but the AF “arose in 1934 out of the numerous citizen associations that were created in 1933 to combat farmworker unionization.”[1] As the number of annual strikes increased in the 1930s, AF chapters spread throughout the state, with 42 chapters eventually in place and “the total number of individuals mobilized probably exceed[ing] 50,000 and may have been as high as 70,000."[1]
The Associated Farmers were determined to prevent any labor actions by agricultural union organizers along with most labor reforms. They opposed housing programs and the farm minimum wage. They fought against a bill prohibiting the California Highway Patrol from making arrests in strikes, a bill mandating the inspection of labor camps by outside parties, and even a bill that would require farmers to provide their workers with drinking cups. “Not one bill which the Associated Farmers opposed in 1939 got through the legislature.”[2] In 1935, Herman Cottrell, Associated Farmers official and organizer of its paramilitary California Cavaliers, declared, “We aren't going to stand for any more of these organizers from now on; anyone who peeps about higher wages will wish he hadn't.”[3]
Funding, Leadership, and Politics
The founders and leading contributors to the Associated Farmers were not only farmers, but businesses with links to agriculture. “These included packing companies, ginning combines, transportation, power and finance companies. ... The industrial supporters of the AF were among the largest corporations in California."[1] Financial supporters included “the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Pacific Gas & Electric Company ...the Holly Sugar Corporation, and the Spreckels Investment Company."[2] These donors provided substantial funding. From May 1934 to November 1939 the AF collected $184,231. The “ten largest contributors to the Associated Farmers, though constituting but the smallest fraction of 1 percent of all contributors, provided 44.3 percent of all funds."[4]
In the 1930s the Associated Farmers opposed worker housing programs, and during “the Merriam administration...blocked forty pro-farm labor bills... . Another 140 were blocked in the Olson administration."[2] The real extent of the business community's support of the Associated Farmers was only fully revealed during the Senate inquiry into the group's anti-labor activities, which were determined to violate free speech and assembly as well as the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively.