Montgomery - The Awakening Part 27

"What?"

"When I went to the carnival with Taylor, a fortuneteller told me-"

"I am bleeding to death and you're talking about that frigid-"

"I wasn't talking about Taylor, I was talking about our son who will be- "

He kissed her. "Come on, let's go to the Union Hall. I want to interview some people about what's happened. The faster we get this down, the faster I can get it to the newspapers."

"We'll go after I've driven you to a doctor."

"You are going to drive in town? With other cars on the road? With pedestrians in the street?"

"Please?" she asked softly, running her finger down his cheek.

"Yes," he said. "Yes."

Author's Note.

I have based the people and events in this book on history more directly than I have in any of my previous novels.

Dr. Henry R. Montgomery is based on Dr. Carleton Parker, a professor of economics who trained in Germany. Dr. Parker was a man who cared: he cared about his students, he cared about the way people were treated by their employers. While he was in school, he spent summers working in mines all over the world to get firsthand knowledge of labor and laborers. After graduating with honors, he returned to the United States where he wrote about and taught against the horrors that were visited upon non-unionized workers.

Dr. Parker hoped that the labor problems of the workers could be solved without violence, but the IWW, the International Workers of the World, the Wobblies as they were called, believed that violence was the only way to get the world's attention. Several men, and whether they were true martyrs willing to die for a cause or just plain crazy no one knows, went from one place of abuse to another and incited downtrodden workers to revolt in protest. Unfortunately, they seemed to have been right because, when blood was shed, the world looked and listened and eventually did something.

The Awakening is based on the Wheatland Hop Riot that took place on one swelteringly hot day in August 1913, in Wheatland, California. Every word I wrote about the conditions in the fields is true. Usually a writer has to add to the actual events to give her story more drama, but in this case I just reported the facts with no embellishment. The facts were worse than I could ever have imagined, and just the reading of them and later the recounting of them was enough to make me ill.

The riot itself was as I described. The district attorney, by chance, happened to be visiting Wheatland that day, and when the call for the sheriff's men came, he decided to tag along. He was killed in the fracas. During the riot, the owner of the ranch hid inside his house.

After the riot, the State Militia was called into Wheatland and a manhunt was made for the IWW leaders. Four men-William Beck, Richard "Blackie" Ford, Walter Bagan and Herman Suhr-were charged with murder. They were tried in Marysville, California, which is very near Wheatland (the Terrill City in my novel), where feeling against the unionists ran high.

The trial was a farce. Alibis were thrown out as being "too good."

"Evidence" consisted of a telegram to IWW headquarters asking for postage stamps.

Bagan and Beck were acquitted; Ford and Suhr were sent to San Quentin for life. Their sentences were meant to let the unionists know what would happen to them if they interfered in a private landowner's business again.

But it backfired. Dr. Carleton Parker, having left teaching to become the Executive Secretary in the State Immigration and Housing Commission of California, went to Wheatland. He asked questions and wrote some powerful articles about what had happened there. It was largely through his efforts that plans were made to enforce existing laws that provided regulation of sanitation of the labor camps. The Board of Health was given the power to inspect, condemn and prosecute employers, and a commission was set up to educate the migrant laborers and inform them of their rights.

I hope my story has not been too one-sided. The private landowner does have rights, and too often I hear employee comments of, "Someday I'm going to be the boss and sit in a cool office and do nothing but answer the telephone." The year of the Wheatland Riot, hop prices were rock bottom, buyers' warehouses were full from the previous years, and many hop ranches were going under-and it did indeed cost an enormous amount of money to run a ranch. The owner had to save pennies wherever he could. It is a philosophical dilemma: does he offer thousands of people low-paying jobs with no water (for water delivery costs money) and save his ranch and offer more jobs next year, or does he pay good wages, provide expensive services for one year, go bankrupt and offer no jobs the next year?

Mr. Durst (my J. Harker Caulden) eventually went bankrupt, and today Wheatland is a pale shadow of its former rich self. I'm not sure who won from the Wheatland Hop Riot.

Jude Deveraux.

Santa Fe, New Mexico August 1987.

end.