Human Sperit

The Associated Farmers and Corporations influence on the Government

In The Grapes of Wrath the Associated Farmers of California greatly influenced the life and law of the land. The Associated Farmers of California were founded in March of 1934 by the Chamber of Commerce which set it up to be an emergency organization in response to the strikes of 1933. However with funding help from the Industrial Association of San Francisco the Associated Farmers of California soon began to get more powerful. From their forming through 1935 the Associated Farmers remained primarily a conference group that assisted local growing organizations, however the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1936 the Associated Farmers became a much more sophisticated and ambitious organization.

At this time the Associated Farmers presided over 42 counties in California. This allowed the Associated Farmers to rapidly gain dominant influence and become the leading power for California agribusiness. By 1939 the Associated Farmers had gained financial backing from the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Southern Californians Inc., the Holly Sugar Corporation, and the Spreckels Investment Company. With this new found money and power the Association began going after farm labor with an iron fist. They organized vigilante armies on a county-by-county basis. There were 1,200 in Imperial County, 1,100 in Sonoma County, 1,000 in Stanislaus County, 900 in San Joaquin County and so forth. They gained so much power and which they used to fight laborers that Carey McWilliams characterized the Associated Farmers as Farm Fascists. The vigilante armies were used as strike breakers and were often deputized by local sheriffs, which gave them even more power to fight the “okies.” In the Grapes of Wrath Jim Casey is murdered by one of these vigilantes. The deputized vigilantes would abuse their power by arresting strike leaders on trumped up charges. For instance union leader Gus Sartoris was jailed on false striking charges before the harvest began.

The Associated Farmers also used more sophisticated tactics than their brutish vigilante armies. The Associated Farmers had an extremely well funded highly organized lobbying effort. Through out the later half of the 1930s the Association fought hard against any legislation that provided housing programs to agricultural laborers, set a farming minimum wage, set a farm payroll tax, prohibited California Highway Patrol men to arrest strikers, required labor camps to be inspected by outside parties, or that required farmers to provide their workers with drinking cups. The Associated Farmers lobbying effort was so successful that not one bill that the Associated Farmers opposed in 1939 got through the legislature. The Association also managed to pass several anti-picketing bills. Though these bills were unconstitutional it took many years for these bills to trickle up to the Supreme Court where they were deemed to be unconstitutional.

On top of vigilante armies and strong lobbying tactics the Associated farmers also unleashed a propaganda campaign which pushed the idea the strikers were Communists trying to organize in the farming community. They said that Soviet Russia was targeting California in an attempt to destroy the U.S. food supply. The Farmers association was trying to suppress farm labor through a Red Scare, and it worked. By using vigilante armies, lobbying, and propaganda the Farmers Associations of California had complete control over all aspects of the farming community and managed to suppress the farm workers rights.

Today corporations also have a great deal of influence on the government though not as much as they Farmers Association of California did in the late 1930s. Rather than using such crude, barbaric, and brutal tactics as vigilante squads today corporations use sophisticated, well-developed, yet equally brutal tactics in courtrooms across the United States. For instance if a small business has a patent on a device and a corporation decides to use this technology without paying the small business the corporation is able to get away with this crime without any punishment. The corporation will hire extremely good lawyers and pay them thousands of dollars to delay the court proceedings until the costs of lawyers and other legal expenses becomes too much for the small business, and the are forced to give in. Even though the corporation broke the law, they got away with it and the small business is forced to go bankrupt because of the legal expenses it had to pay during the trial. This is a highly sophisticated, well-developed, yet brutal way that corporations today can break the law and shut down “the little guy.”