concrete
introduction to the I.W.W. He wrote an account of it, later, for the
"Survey," and an article on "The California Casual and His Revolt" for
the "Quarterly Journal of Economics," in November, 1915.

It is all interesting enough, I feel, to warrant going into some detail.

The setting of the riot is best given in the article above referred to,
"The California Casual and His Revolt."

"The story of the Wheatland hop-pickers' riot is as simple as the facts
of it are new and naive in strike histories. Twenty-eight hundred
pickers were camped on a treeless hill which was part of the ---- ranch,
the largest single employer of agricultural labor in the state. Some
were in tents, some in topless squares of sacking, or with piles of
straw. There was no organization for sanitation, no garbage-disposal.
The temperature during the week of the riot had remained near 105 deg., and
though the wells were a mile from where the men, women, and children
were picking, and their bags could not be left for fear of theft of the
hops, no water was sent into the fields. A lemonade wagon appeared at
the end of the week, later found to be a concession granted to a cousin
of the ranch owner. Local Wheatland stores were forbidden to send
delivery wagons to the camp grounds. It developed in the state
investigation that the owner of the ranch received half of the net
profits earned by an alleged independent grocery store, which had been
granted the 'grocery concession' and was located in the centre of the
camp ground. . . .

"The pickers began coming to Wheatland on Tuesday, and by Sunday the
irritation over the wage-scale, the absence of water in the fields, plus
the persistent heat and the increasing indignity of the camp, had
resulted in mass meetings, violent talk, and a general strike.

"The ranch owner, a nervous man, was harassed by the rush of work
brought on by the too rapidly ripening hops, and indignant at the jeers
and catcalls which greeted his appearance near the meetings of the
pickers. Confused with a crisis outside his slender social philosophy,
he acted true to his tradition, and perhaps his type, and called on a
sheriff's posse. What industrial relationship had existed was too
insecure to stand such a procedure. It disappeared entirely, leaving in
control the instincts and vagaries of a mob on the one hand, and great
apprehension and inexperience on the other.

"As if a stage had been set, the posse arrived in automob