Episode Transcript [sounds of seagulls, ships creaking, and waves] Ranger J.R. EARNEST as MAX STERN: “Past the freight and transport docks we crept, leaving Alcatraz, Meiggs Wharf, and finally Lime Point in our wake. Marin County, bathed in sunshine and her hill slopes flaunting the California colors of blue and gold, done in lupins and poppies. White ferry boats were taking autos full of campers and parties of hikers to its playgrounds. On the left lay the Presidio from which came faint sounds of a band consent. Ahead of us opened the Golden Gate, through which we could see and feel the great gray Pacific. A stiff breeze was coming through and the waters ahead had suddenly become flecked with white caps. The little tug ahead of us rolled as we passed the Cliff House. The air had so cooled that we shivered and made below for extra coats or sweaters. We were standing out well past the Seal rocks, as we got our last close-up of California. We had left her in her glorious youth of April, and when we returned these hills would be withered and brown.” [Audio pause] AM: Hi, Sabrina! SO: Hey, Anne! So, where are we metaphorically going this week? AM: Well, I think you’ll be glad it’s metaphorical...and I thought you might have an idea based on that newspaper excerpt we just heard from Ranger JR Earnest. SO: Wasn’t that from the investigative series, The Price of Salmon? [AM: Mhm] It’s one of our primary sources in telling the story of our historic ship, the Balclutha. AM: Yes! More precisely, we use it to tell the story of Balclutha when she was sailing under the name, Star of Alaska. SO: Are you saying we’re going to Alaska today? Because I am not prepared to go walking in snowshoes. AM: One, we’d be going in the summer, so there might not be snow. [SO: Okay…] Two, we’re not going to go walking around a lot. [SO: Thank God.] We’re just going to hang out in a cannery. SO: You’re still not really selling it...I mean, don’t we hang out in a cannery everyday? AM: We do! Our visitor center is located in the Haslett Warehouse, which was originally built by the California Fruit Cannery Association between 1907 and 1909. And when it was built, it was part of a complex which comprised the largest fruit and vegetable cannery in San Francisco. SO: That’s right! And the California Fruit Cannery Association would later be renamed (drum roll please) [AM attempts a drum roll] Thank you. Del Monte! AM: And there’s another important cannery connection here. SO: Which is? AM: We both know about the Alaska Packers Association, right? [SO: Mhm] For the first few decades of the 20th century, they owned a fleet of sailing ships, including the Star of Alaska. SO: And Alaska Packers also sold products under the Del Monte label before getting absorbed into the Del Monte corporation! AM: You sound like you just might convince yourself to take a trip to a cannery. SO: Uhh that’s a solid maybe, but this has taken a historically interesting turn. Want to explore it for the next 45 minutes? AM: You betcha! [music break] SO: Okay, wait, let’s clarify -- why are we hanging out in an Alaskan cannery today? AM: It seemed like a good idea at the time? No? Okay...Well, like we said at the end of our last episode, we’re now looking at how Balclutha became a crucial piece to understanding the histories we’ve covered in this podcast: the Gold Rush and Gold Mountain, Chinatown, immigration and exclusion, the Filipinos’ American dream. In a way, those stories come to a head in the period when Balcutha was Star of Alaska. SO: Right. But if we’re looking at better lives and bitter lies during this period, we’re no longer really looking at these themes in light of the 1849 California Gold Rush. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the riches in California were no longer in flakes and nuggets in rivers. They were in golden harvests from its fields. AM: That’s true! And “the West” no longer meant mainly California, but also farther up along the Pacific: Oregon, Washington, all the way to Alaska. And this was where -- despite there actually having been gold rushes in Alaska -- people came to make their fortunes from what’s been called the Silver Rush, or the Silver Horde. SO: But silver didn’t refer to the precious metal, but rather the metallic glint of salmon scales. AM: Commercial fishing ships were sailing from San Francisco to Alaskan waters as early as the 1860s. Initially, they were mostly fishing for cod, which was packed in salt for preservation on the trip back down. Cod canning did take place, but American consumers didn’t enjoy the taste of canned cod--which is difficult to say quickly [SO chuckles]--as much as they came to enjoy canned salmon. SO: Huh! Well, we can tie the beginning of the canned salmon industry to two industrious brothers, William and George Hume. [AM: Hmm] Originally from Maine, William Hume moved to Sacramento in 1852 and was joined by George four years later. AM: But it was the arrival of their friend, Andrew Hapgood, which really put the wind in the sails(/sales) of their fledgling company. Hapgood was a tinsmith and with him he brought the tools and expertise to can salmon, which allowed the Humes to expand their sales beyond salted and fresh salmon. In 1864, Hapgood, Hume, & Co. built the first Pacific Coast salmon cannery along the Sacramento River in today’s West Sacramento. SO: As Hapgood, Hume, & Co. grew, so, too, did the rest of the salmon industry. By 1866, the salmon run in the Sacramento River proved to be inadequate, so Hume and associates moved north to the Columbia River and, eventually, to the plentiful waters of Alaska near the town of Karluk which sits on the traditional lands of the Alutiiq people, also known by their ancestral name, Sugpiaq. AM: Plentiful is right. For example, Bristol Bay and its surrounding rivers alone are home to all five Pacific salmon species in North America. The lands and waters of Bristol Bay are majorly the traditional lands of the Yup’ik, Alutiiq, and Aleut peoples. Of course, businesses took advantage of this bounty. From 1878--when the first two canneries opened--to 1950, a total of 134 canneries were built along Bristol Bay, the Alaskan peninsula just south of it, and farther along the state’s southeastern coast towards Canada. Canneries lined shores which are now protected lands contained within several national parks and preserves: Katmai, Lake Clark, Kenai Fjords, Wrangell-St. Elias, and Glacier Bay. SO: And, from the 1890s to 1960s, it was the San Francisco-based Alaska Packers Association that controlled many of these canneries [AM: Mmm] -- at least 70% at some points. As the biggest salmon packer in Alaska, the APA literally and figuratively loomed large over the industry. It still does, actually. AM: Yeah. Aside from Del Monte, we’ve both heard of Trident Seafoods, right? [SO: Mhm] Both companies can trace their lineage to the APA’s presence around Bristol Bay. And, well, thanks to its long history, the APA also made their mark on the industry for reasons we’ll get into a bit more later. SO: Do these reasons have something to do with economics and labor practices? AM: Well, yes...and we will get into that. I think we can agree that the APA also left an important legacy in terms of historic ship preservation. [SO: Mhm] Even as the world moved on to using steamships, APA maintained steel- and iron-hulled sailing ships for the salmon trade. Star of Alaska was just one of the vessels in what’s called their, quote-unquote, Great Star Fleet. SO: While sailing ships have long been tied to romantic notions of maritime trade, the APA acquired this fleet for decidedly unromantic reasons -- they didn’t want to spend more money chartering steamships that would just sit around as salmon got fished and canned. Regardless, it is how we still have Star of Alaska in our park. AM: Let’s not forget, though, that the Star of Alaska wasn’t the only sailing ship in our collection to participate in the salmon trade. SO: That’s true! C.A. Thayer, our California-built three-masted wooden-hulled schooner, sailed from the Fairhaven shipyards of H.D. Bendixsen in 1895. She was part of the West Coast lumber trade for the first seventeen years of her life. Thayer was capable of carrying roughly 575,000 board feet of lumber, which she mainly transported between Grays Harbor, WA, and San Francisco. On at least a few occasions, she did venture beyond this route--sailing south to Mexico and west to Fiji and Hawaii. AM: But sailing ships were being replaced by steam in the lumber trade and when Thayer sustained serious damage in 1912--thankfully, no lives were lost--it spelled the end of her first career. SO: For her second career, from 1912 to 1924, Thayer worked as a “salmon packet.” Each April, she carried barrel staves, gill-net boats, and literal tons of salt to Alaska. And each September, she returned to San Francisco laden with barrels of salted salmon. AM: But the Star of Alaska didn’t carry salmon in barrels, her catch was packaged in cans. SO: That’s true. Among other things, this meant that Star of Alaska participated in a much larger and industrialized operation. While Thayer carried limited supplies, Star of Alaska brought machines, sheets of tin for making cans, wood for making crates, desks, drawers, every imaginable thing or material needed to build or repair a cannery site. And guess what else the ship brought? AM: Uh, everybody needed to make that whole operation work? SO: Ding ding ding! [AM laughs] And guess where this pool of workers tended to come from? AM: Hmm, I think I have an idea, but go on... SO: Since 1866, when George Hume, a white entrepreneur, moved his cannery from the Sacramento River to the Columbia River, Chinese workers served as a significant portion of the salmon canning labor force. Before this, canneries had been mostly small businesses run with family and friends. But bigger operations, and a local scarcity of labor, led Hume to hire out of his circles. In 1870, Ah Shing and fourteen other Chinese comprised the first-ever Chinese cannery crew. [AM: Hm!] Twelve of them worked the canning line, while two were tinsmiths. The fifteenth man was a cook -- a man named Sam Mott. AM: Though he never seems to have been on the cannery line, Sam Mott is a significant figure in canning history. According to the scholar Chris Friday, George Hume so trusted Mott that he relied on him to reach out to the Chinese community in Portland. He recruited workers not under obligation to Chinese contractors or tongs. See, in the early 1870s, canning was still a new and lower-paying venture. Larger-scale labor contractors would have concentrated on bringing workers to railroads or mines. Individuals like Sam Mott stepped in to draw workers to the canneries. SO: Sam Mott’s role foreshadowed the power that individuals from ethnic groups would come to have in the industry. They would serve not just as recruiters, contractors, or foremen, but as as the middle-man between white canners and non-white crews. AM: Through the late 1800s, when Chinese workers dominated this workforce, the foreman was called a, quote-unquote, China Boss. His crew was called a “China Gang.” He was solely responsible for them. And the non-Chinese cannery owners and managers still supervised the non-Chinese fishermen, machinists, clerks, and other staff. SO: Over time, these cannery crews diversified. For example, ships like Star of Alaska would have also had workers who were Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Guamanian, and Black. But the majority was always an Asian group -- whether it was Chinese; then, after the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Japanese who came over from plantations in Hawaii; or, after subsequent limits on Japanese immigration, Filipinos whose avenue to immigration was more open, being U.S. nationals. Filipinos who came to dominate cannery crews called themselves “Alaskeros.” Yet despite this diversity, the name “China Gang” stuck well into the 1920s when The Price of Salmon was published in the San Francisco Daily News. AM: The legacy of Chinese cannery labor was--I don’t want to say preserved because, for a long time, what was passed on of the Chinese workers’ contributions in the canneries and their work culture was rotten and derogatory. SO: Are you talking about the original name of the butchering machine? AM: Among other things, yes. That original name was and is not acceptable, but erasing the term doesn’t feel right either. Which is why when the park was trying to determine whether or not to display the machine and its original name during the construction of Balclutha’s tweendeck exhibit, we consulted local Chinese American cultural and historical organizations. The guidance we were given was, essentially, yes, show it, but show it with context. Prompt a discussion. Don’t let this example of institutionalized racism be simply another item in the background. SO: On the subject of prompting discussions on mistreatment and racism in the canning industry, should we talk about the writer of The Price of Salmon, Max Stern? AM: Oh, yes, let’s! [background sound of ships creaking and waves begins] JR/MAX STERN: “But I wasn’t working for the Alaska Packers’ ass’n, nor for ‘Hungry’ Petersen, nor for the Alaska Salmon Co., nor for any other duly incorporated firm of salmon packers. Neither was I working for the firm of Meyer & Young. I had hired out to a mysterious and wealthy Chinaman. I did not know my boss. In the entire trip, I did not once hear his name. It was days before I knew that my boss was an unknown Oriental. But here was I, a white man and an American, in the direct employment of one of a race whose standards of living and whose social ideals are as widely different from ours as day is from night. I was part of one of the strangest and most un-American institutions that still survive to mock our democracy--the Chinese contract system of the Alaskan fisheries. [background sound ends] AM: Max Stern was a reporter for the San Francisco Daily News. In 1922, he went undercover as a cannery worker to write The Price of Salmon. His 37 articles brought attention to the unfair, abusive labor practices at work within APA canneries and their contractors. But, before we get into his work, we need to talk about the journalistic movement which inspired it. You know how we’ve talked about William Randolph Hearst and yellow journalism over the past few episodes? SO: Yes, um, are we circling back? AM: Not exactly. We’re branching off! SO: Oh, good. Because as tied as the Hearsts are to California history, I’m ready to hear about another journalist. AM: I’m so glad you said that. But we might have to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty for this next wave of journalism. It’s time to talk about muckrakers. SO: The character from Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan? AM: Wow. That’s a deep pull. [SO: Too many books.] Yes! President Theodore Roosevelt alluded to this character in his speech on April 15, 1906. This man, the muckraker, could look no way but downward with a muckrake in his hands. Roosevelt said that the men with the muckrakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck. SO: Huh. What do you think he meant by that? AM: We can definitely get into that, but before we do, I want to correct President Roosevelt. SO: He’s been dead for over one hundred years, but still, bold move. AM: Hahah, thanks. He said that the men with the muckrakes are indispensable. But, of course, it wasn’t just men who were changing society through investigative journalism. SO: That’s true! Like Ida Tarbell! AM: Ding ding ding! [SO: Is this our new thing?] Maybe! Ida Tarbell is one of the best known investigative journalists in American history. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Tarbell’s father was one of the many small oil producers in Ohio and western Pennsylvania who faced the impossible choice of selling out to John D. Rockefeller and his newly incorporated Standard Oil Company or competing against the rapidly growing monolith. SO: She was only fourteen years old, but watching Standard Oil absorb up to 85% of Cleveland’s oil refineries in 1872 certainly left an impression on Ida. She would later write, quote, [typewriter plays in background] “There was born in me a hatred of privilege, privilege of any sort. It was all pretty hazy, to be sure, but it still was well, at 15, to have one definite plan based on things seen and heard, ready for a future platform of social and economic justice if I should ever awake to my need of one.” [typewriter dings] AM: In 1904, she published a 19-part indictment on Rockefeller and Standard Oil for McClure’s magazine. Her work was founded on damaging internal documents, interviews with employees and lawyers, and--with an introduction from Mark Twain--candid conversations with Henry H. Rogers, Standard Oil’s then-most powerful senior executive. SO: The History of the Standard Oil Company, as the compilation was called, is credited with bringing attention to the questionable business practices of the Standard Oil Company, and its eventual breakup is credited to her investigative work. [typewriter dings] SO: Fast forward some 20 years later, and we have Max Stern investigating, actually not one, but several business operations. AM: Oh? Who else was he investigating aside from the Alaska Packers Association? SO: While the APA was, uh, the biggest fish to fry, [AM chuckles] they were by no means the only fish in the pond...if salmon are in ponds. AM: I support the brave attempt at metaphors and puns, but let’s can them for now. SO: Uh-huh. [AM chuckles] Let’s try that again. The APA was not the only party that exploited and perpetuated corruption within the contract labor system. In the last excerpt we heard, Max Stern mentions several entities, including his China Boss and a firm called Young & Mayer. Samuel Young and Emile Mayer ran a shop in Chinatown called the Alaska Outfitting Company, Gents Furnishers, and Alaska Outfitters. It was literally a storefront for a racket they ran into the 1930s. AM: In the 1910s, Young and Mayer agreed to supply workers to a long-time, big-time APA contractor. The scholar Chris Friday identifies this contractor as the Quong Ham Wah Company, headed by a man named Lem Sem. But, in a later book another scholar, Donald Guimary -- who was formerly a cannery worker -- names an individual called Quong Ham Wah. Either way, Young and Mayer teamed up with this partner to send approximately 1,500 workers to Alaska every year, mostly aboard APA ships for APA canneries. SO: At first, Young and Mayer got paid five to seven dollars for every worker they secured. Eventually, they agreed to no longer get monetary compensation. Instead, they set out to make money off the workers they hired. They did this by requiring them to buy items from their store -- with the required purchases counting against promised salaries. AM: Emphasis on promised. [SO: Hmn.] But, before we get into that, can I do a plug for our park’s exhibits right now? SO: Of course! AM: So, when visitors go to the tweendeck of Balclutha, there’s an exhibit on the Star of Alaska. This includes a small space that recreates the cramped quarters for the cannery workers. SO: Right. True to naming practices of the time, these were called “the Oriental Quarters” or “Chinatown.” AM: Now, if visitors squeeze in between the bunks, they’ll see, at the back of the space, a mural showing a, quote-unquote, China Gang smoking, drinking, and gambling in lamplight. I used to think, “Of course, they needed to do something in their spare time!” But then we learned that even these forms of recreation were stained by racketeering. SO: That’s right. Quong Ham Wah -- and other labor contractors and their foremen -- actually controlled gambling tables aboard ships and canneries, as well as liquor and food concessions. Through these, money was also siphoned off workers. AM: And, if visitors look closely at the items on the bunks, they’ll also see packages of clothes with the tag, “Young and Mayer, Alaska Outfitters.” SO: We can share another excerpt from Max Stern to explain that -- but why hear about this just from him? AM: That’s true. At this point, we’d like to play an oral history interview with a cannery worker who did go to Alaska throughout the 1930s. It might take a couple tries to understand what he says--due to the quality of the recording--and we appreciate it if you take the time to listen carefully. SO: We think listening to him is important not only for the facts he recalls, but because voices like his are not often heard. The cannery worker’s name is Sonny Raceles. Like many Alaskeros, he migrated from the Philippines in the 1920s, and found seasonal work all around the West. AM: In this clip from 1974, he is being interviewed by Apolonio K. Buyagawan; the full interview is accessible through the Labor Archives at the University of Washington Special Collections. Sonny begins by explaining why he came to America. SONNY RACELES: You know, FIlipinos like adventures and we heard news here and there: America is money here and there. We thought that money grows on trees, [INTERVIEWER laughs] so I decided to come to the United States. I landed in Seattle -- from here, I go to California, to Idaho, Montana, Southern California, Oregon, that time of going to Alaska, I go to Alaska. INTERVIEWER (APOLONIO K. BUYAGAWAN): I see. You went up to Alaska during that time then, huh? RACELES: Yeah, yeah, I went to Alaska. I go to get the job from San Francisco, you know. Yeah. Before you go, you got to order a suit. INTERVIEWER: Why do you have to order a suit? RACELES: That’s the racketeering-- before you get the employment, you got to give them business so you order a suit so you could go. If you don’t order a suit, you can’t go. INTERVIEWER: Mm. [chuckles] Hmph. SO: You can play that back, if you’d like -- in the last part, Raceles says he got his cannery job from San Francisco, and, before he could work, he had to order a suit. AM: I’ll echo the interviewer: why did you have to order a suit? It doesn’t sound like a uniform for gutting fish in Alaska. SO: Right? As Raceles says, making workers buy a suit as a condition for employment was part of a racket. Though we don’t know which specific contractor Raceles worked for, his memory lines up with what Max Stern wrote in The Price of Salmon about a decade earlier. And when Stern questioned the price of the suit, this is what he was told: JR/MAX STERN: “‘Nothing ain’t too good for a working man,’ he replied. ‘A fine suit like that is just what they need. And ain’t it better to have a fine suit like that for the winter than nothing at all?’” AM: Does that response sound a little suspect to you? SO: Mmhmm. AM: It also reminds me of something else I’ve read about three-piece suits. [SO: Hmph?] Many migrant workers -- Filipino ones, at least -- spent what little money they earned on stylish clothing, mimicking Hollywood stars like Fred Astaire or Clark Gable. With these suits, as the title of the study about it by Mina Roces would suggest, These Guys Came Out Looking Like Movie Actors. It was their way of fashioning their identities separate from their working selves and temporarily erasing the stigma of manual labor. SO: I see that. In that sense, why, really, can’t they have a fine suit? But, which suits are we talking about? Ones they bought of their own volition or ones they were forced into buying? AM: That is an important distinction. And interesting, too, because, as Mina Roces states, the first-generation Filipinos “wished to represent themselves as successful people who assimilated into the new country. The self-representation in photographs sent to relatives back in the Philippines was not their working selves, celebrating instead the disposable income they could spend on expensive items. Such pictures failed to communicate the suffering many experienced in racist America.” SO: Hmnn… that isn’t a practice, or a desire, unique to first-generation Filipinos. [AM: True.] But let’s go back to Young & Mayer. Because suits were not the only things they made workers buy, docking more money off their promised income. Workers had to pay for their transportation to Alaska. And also their own bedding and blankets on the ship. Any other personal items. Even better food. AM: As a fisherman said to Max Stern, “Nobody makes any money up here, but the companies. They own this part of Alaska, and they give us what they please.” SO: And Max Stern would learn this for himself. After being transported to Pier 29, Stern-- along with the other crew members--was made to sign a blank sheet of paper, which they were told was the contract...though they weren’t allowed to read the actual contract. [AM: Hmn.] After signing, they were each given a paper book with a $10 bill inside. In signing the paper and accepting the money, they found themselves legally bound to their assignment, which started with being held aboard their transport ship for three more days as they waited for supplies and were forbidden shore leave. Part of the anticipated supplies came from Young and Mayer Alaska Outfitters. And, you may be surprised by this--probably not--the packages they purchased sight-unseen were far lower in quality than Stern dared to imagine. He wrote: JR/MAX STERN: “The Waters over which we were passing are considered dangerous by mariners. That a sailing vessel should travel over 1600 miles across the open seas and attempt to pass through a 10 mile pass, with no wireless, is considered among deepseamen these days as one of the most scandalous things about the Alaskan ‘hell ships.’” AM: Remember the Marine Hospital Service? SO: Yeah! Episode 5. [AM: Mhm.] It was the organization Rupert Blue and Joseph Kinyoun worked for. And it eventually became the U.S. Public Health Service? AM: That’s right. Well, as far back as 1900--more than twenty years before Max Stern’s investigative series--the Assistant Surgeon of the Marine Hospital Service prepared a report which was extremely critical of the conditions under which Chinese cannery workers were kept on their voyage to Alaska. [SO: Hmn!] The report said: “Th[ese] White men on these vessels disclaim responsibility for the conditions under which the Chinese live and transact all business through a Chinese foreman...It is a crime against humanity that these helpless, irresponsible creatures should be herded together in this way, allowed to remain amidst all this filth during a voyage of about three weeks.” SO: Hmn. “Helpless, irresponsible creatures” suggests its own paternalistic racism [AM: Mhm] and according to Immigrant Institutions: The Organization of Immigrant Life, we learned that ships were generally outfitted with spartan, cramped accommodations for up to five hundred cannery workers. [AM: Wow.] Through the trials of Young and Mayer in 1934, it came to light that often--unbeknownst to the captain and the cannery--labor contractors would actually board a thousand cannery workers [AM: Oh, my gosh.] while only paying for the transportation of five hundred. AM: Like we said earlier, the contractors also made money through shipboard gambling where, according to a 1911 U.S. Commission of Immigration report, the contractors and their sub-bosses received 25 percent of the table earnings. SO: As reported in an article in The Western Worker on October 15, 1932: “On the ship, the Mexican foreman with a gun on his hip takes charge of robbing the workers of what is left of their ‘credit.’ He sells them hooch at $5 a pint, tobacco at 50 cents [a tin]...When he gets the gang drunk and full of hop, conditions are unbelievably horrible. Loaded dice and trick cards reduce the workers to indebtedness. Many of them lose their $45 suit before they have started to work.” AM: Filipino and Chinese workers weren’t the only Asian groups taken advantage of by this labor system. We’ve mentioned that Japanese laborers immigrated to Hawaii and worked on plantations there before the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 limited immigration. Between 1885 and 1924, roughly 380,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii and the continental United States. SO: The majority of the early Japanese immigrants tended to be--you guessed it--sojourners who intended to return to their home country. But over time, and as Charlotte Brooks reminded us it’s never a simple linear movement, some of these sojourners began to regard the U.S. as their homeland, though they, too, maintained strong ties to their ancestral home. AM: Part of this transition was the building of families in the U.S. Issei refers to that first generation to immigrate to a new place. The term nisei refers to the first generation born to Japanese parents who have immigrated to a new place. While issei workers fought for fair labor practices on Hawaiian plantations, nisei workers faced similar issues in the canneries. George Akahoshi, a nisei of California, recalled, quote, jobs in those days were so scarce that Nisei had to cling to any kind of job they could get in order to keep body and soul together, end-quote. SO: Even as wages dropped from around $50 a month in 1929 to $30 a month in 1933, Japanese laborers on the West Coast had few options for work outside of the canneries. Albert Ikeda, a Nisei in Los Angeles, recalled the feelings of both his and his family’s preceding generation: quote, they were pretty bitter about being pushed down. They worked hard and they were still hopeful that someday they would be able to make some advancements although this dream was fading pretty fast. AM: Yes, and according to Chris Friday, workers often accumulated debt before the canning season even began. Contractors were known to give cash and credit advances for rooms near the workers’ departure point, as well as meal tickets redeemable at restaurants the contractors just so happened to own. [SO chuckles] These practices could put workers in debt for up to a month’s wages...and that’s before the $45 suit. SO: In these ways, the contract labor system -- which at its best, functions like a padrone or patronage system and a form of community network -- becomes another system entirely. It’s a system of debt peonage, where an employer forces an employee to pay off debt with work -- debt which could not conceivably be paid off in a lifetime. It is also known as economic slavery. [audio break - waves crashing] JR/MAX STERN: "As I looked through my square window to the groups of gamblers below, it came over me that this, after all, was not so different from prison. Prison, in fact, would be in many ways better because it would be safer and freer from the dangers of disease. What crime had we committed that we had been sentenced to six months of this sort of life? None, you will say. But yes, we were guilty of the inforgivable sin of this age. We had all committed first degree poverty.” [waves crashing sound effect ends] AM: Max Stern certainly had a way of capturing attention, both from sympathetic readers and the indignant accused. Because The Price of Salmon was run as a series, reactions to previous articles were sometimes published alongside new chapters--like this response from Myron Young, read by Ranger Alvin Rivera: [sound of newspaper crinkling] AR/MYRON YOUNG: “A pack of lies! Max Stern is a liar if he says that I take advantage of poor Mexicans. ‘I have a legitimate business here. Big businessmen trade with me. And besides, business is business. I refuse to make a statement. I have nothing to say, but--Mr. Stern better look out! These Mexican boys are insulted. Mr. Stern said that there was a strong animal-like smell coming from the hold of the ship. The Mexican boys will kill him if they ever meet him. He better look out, that’s all. Besides it wasn’t an Alaska Packer ship. It belonged to another cannery. There’s a mistake he made. But it’s no use asking me. I refuse to make a statement. Mr. Stern is nothing to me, absolutely nothing!” SO: Despite such vehement protests, justice eventually found Mayer, Young, and other abusers of the contract labor system -- although not until the 1930s. As you know, this is the same decade that saw the Great Depression, the New Deal, the rise of organized labor and such famous milestones as the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike... We can’t go into all that right now, but we can talk about two unions that contributed to the contract labor system’s eventual demise. AM: The first is the independent Alaska Cannery Workers’ Union, formed here in San Francisco. In 1933, its 40 members immediately demanded a halt to abuses and tried to negotiate better conditions. When Young and Mayer, APA, and the Bristol Bay Packing Company refused to budge, this union filed suits that led to a State Labor Commission investigation. SO: And so, in 1934, business partners Samuel Young, Ynocincio Lopez, Emil Mayer, and his son, Arthur L. Mayer were convicted in California for violating state peonage laws in their work supplying cannery workers for labor contractors. According to historian Chris Friday, one attorney charged that Mayer and Young had perpetrated, quote, the worst case of slavery since the Civil War, end-quote. The charges brought against the four men included paying an average wage scale of 6 cents an hour after the men had paid excessive prices for clothes and outfits; advanced money for gambling and operated an employment agency without a license. [AM: Hm] Mayer and Young were originally sentenced to two years in prison, though this was eventually reduced to six months in jail and two years’ probation. AM: At this time, according to an April 1934 article in Pacific Fisherman, the APA broke with the tradition of only hiring cannery workers through a third party and became directly involved with the successor of the Mayer and Young Company, including loaning $3,000 to A.G. Brockhoff, a purported relative of Emil Mayer, to purchase the assets of the Mayer and Young Company. Under the name, Brockhoff Brothers, A.G.’s store began preparing to hire for the 1934 salmon season. SO: Now, as we’ve said, Young, Mayer, Quong Ham Wah, and the APA weren’t the only ones exploiting the contract labor system. Abuses took place far beyond San Francisco, and the abusers came from a wide range of ethnicities. And, at this point, the city was no longer the main hub for recruiting Asians into Alaskan salmon canneries -- Seattle had become one as well. This was where, in 1933, the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union, Local 7, also formed. AM: The CWFLU was organized by six Filipinos, four of whom were university students. It was the first Filipino-led union in the United States. While these founders primarily aimed to end the corrupt contract labor system and improve conditions at the canneries, they also saw their fight as one against discrimination and racism within the canning industry. SO: According to the historian Stephanie Hinnershitz, they were also inspired by their beliefs in the ideals America stands for. She argues that, quote, because Filipinos linked their civil rights demands to a more abstract notion of what it meant to be an American rather than citizenship alone, civil rights spoke more to the guarantee of basic protection and freedoms in the pursuit of happiness than specific political rights. AM: This union did start off by winning smaller victories, like getting workers more wages. But earning the ultimate prize, so to speak, took time. It also cost lives. SO: In 1936, the nephew of a labor contractor gunned down the union’s first president and secretary, Virgilio Duyungan and Aurelio Simon, at a Japanese cafe in Seattle. The murders were seen as retaliation for the union. But instead of intimidating the movement, the assassinations only galvanized support for it -- and not just from Filipino workers. AM: As Stephanie Hinnershitz recounts, the new president, Ireneo Cabatit, and a Norwegian American member, Conrad Espe, soon began to refocus efforts on interracial and interethnic cooperation. With other leaders, they began reaching out to Chinese and Japanese employees, explaining, for example, that, quote, the supervisors’ practice of saving the grueling labor and disgusting bunks for Asian employees and utilizing contractors and foremen to carry out their racist practices were problems that could be better attacked as one unified force, end-quote. The CWFLU charter soon said it welcomed all members and did not discriminate based on color, creed, or religion. SO: Of course, it wasn’t that easy. For example, the groups weren’t always friendly with each other. And, since some Japanese workers benefited from having Japanese contractors, they didn’t necessarily see why Filipinos -- some of whom also benefited from having Filipino labor contractors -- wanted to end the system. And, all around, there were workers who saw the contractor or foreman positions as rungs on the ladder to aspire to. AM: What’s the saying? “What’s in it for me?” Or “Divide and conquer?” -- “See the bigger picture?” Or -- better yet, “We’re all in this together?!” SO: Okay, that’s from High School Musical [AM laughs] and that’s a lot of sayings, but all sound applicable here! Eventually, the CWFLU did become composed of workers of different ethnic backgrounds. It also united with other unions in San Francisco and Portland. AM: And, most importantly, with this groundswell of support, the CWFLU succeeded. In 1937, they signed an agreement with canners that outlawed labor agents and contractors once and for all. SO: And that wouldn’t even be the last time cannery labor decisions had an impact on the larger picture, like in the case of Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio. This was an employment discrimination lawsuit initially brought by a Samoan cannery worker named Frank Atonio, though he would be joined by several other cannery workers of color. Atonio and the other plaintiffs asserted there was racial discrimination in the hiring of the higher paying cannery jobs. Though it would ultimately be decided for Wards Cove, this case is known as one of the seven Supreme Court cases after 1964 which helped to hurry along the Civil Rights Law of 1991. AM: And, as is often the case, a justice’s dissenting opinion grew to bear more and more weight over the decades. Justice Harry Blackmun dissented saying: The harshness of these results lies well demonstrated by the facts of this case. The salmon industry described by this record takes back to a kind of overt and institutionalized discrimination we have not dealt with in years: A total residential and work environment organized on the principles of racial stratification and segregation, which, as Justice Stevens points out, resembles a plantation economy. This industry long has been characterized by a taste for page discrimination of the old-fashioned sort: A preference for hiring non-whites to fill its lowest-level positions, on the condition they stay there. One wonders whether the majority still believes that race discrimination or, more accurately, race discrimination against non-whites is a program in our society or even remembers that it ever was. [audio break] AM: Organizing a union and taking abusers to court is definitely one way to fight back against oppression. But, of course, there are other ways humans can respond to the indignities--even inhumanities--they come up against. SO: One way is through art [AM: Mhm] -- in this case, writing, which is of course how we learn these kinds of stories through journalists like Max Stern and Ida Tarbell. But now we’re talking about a different kind of writing, and a different kind of window into the lives of people who worked at canneries. AM: Several Alaskeros and labor organizers were not only union leaders but also gifted writers. For example, Carlos Bulosan -- an icon of Filipino American history and literature -- wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, called America Is in the Heart. Bulosan based this on his own experiences immigrating to the U.S. in 1930, working canneries in Alaska and farms of California. SO: America Is in the Heart. That’s certainly an interesting title. When was it published? AM: 1946. SO: Hmn! That’s just one year after another famous novel [AM: Hm!]-- Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, who, of course, also wrote a lot about the lives of migrant workers during the Depression in California. AM: That’s true! Aside from novels, Steinbeck actually also wrote a series of articles on immigrant laborers. He called it The Harvest Gypsies. It was published in the San Francisco News. SO: What did we say once? Everything is a glorious network of rabbit holes? [AM laughs] And since everything is connected, I’m guessing Bulosan’s title of America Is in the Heart has something to do with what we talked about in our “Little Brown Brothers” episode. AM: It sure does! Many Filipinos born in the early 20th century grew up learning about the promise of America, its ideals, and its values. And once they got here, many, like Bulosan, fought and endured disappointments, hardships, and injustices. But Bulosan never lost faith in his new country. In the novel, he writes: We are Americans all who have toiled for this land, who have made it rich and free. But we must not demand from America, because she is still our unfinished dream. SO: Country was also on the mind of another writer, Trinidad Rojo -- one of the original founders of the CWFLU who became its president in 1939. He’s cited for this poem called “A Cannery Worker’s Life.” The first three lines go, “It’s a hard and lonesome fate / That we face in Alaska / Oh! What a fate!” He supposedly sang it to the tune of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” AM: Are you going to sing it? SO: No! AM: [laughs] Just checking! What you might like better is another verse he wrote, which seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. [SO: Hmn!] Remember how -- much earlier [SO laughs]-- we were talking about the salmon butchering machine and how its first name dehumanized workers? SO: Never forget. AM: Well, this verse suggests how intertwined a cannery worker’s life was with such machines. But see how it goes. [SO: Mhm] It’s supposedly from the point of view of a worker to a native Alaskan girl -- since native women also did work at the canneries, helping to clean the fish. And it says I love you very big As big as Alaska I love you very high As high as the sky Never come down. My heart beats loud and clear Like the topping machine Tack tack tack! Tack! Tack! Tack! It never never stops. SO: Hahaha, I love the humor and lightness of this verse. [AM: Me too!] I don’t know about you, but the sound of office equipment has definitely worked its way into my subconscious at more than one desk job. [AM chuckles] But you know who talks about this really eloquently? AM: Oscar Peñaranda? SO: Ding ding ding! Or should I say, tack tack tack!? [AM & SO laugh] As we’ve moved forward throughout San Francisco maritime history, we’ve had different primary resources available to us for research, but none--I think you’ll agree--beat an interview with a person who lived the experience we’re studying. AM: One hundred percent agree. Oscar Peñaranda is a Filipino American poet, activist, retired professor, former union leader, and so much more. And, honestly, we’d rather let him tell you about it -- but wait, wait, wait! SO: [laughs] What what what? AM: Oscar did live the experiences we are studying, but, we should note, his experiences were already different from Bulosan’s or Rojo’s and other Alaskeros. This was due partly to the victories of earlier unions, and partly to changing times. One thing that jumps out at me is, though Oscar worked for the Alaska Packers Association, he rode airplanes, not sailing ships or steamships. SO: Yeah! That’s somewhat hard to grasp when we’re around Star of Alaska all the time! [AM: True!] But the APA stopped using sailing ships altogether in 1936. And Balclutha’s career as Star of Alaska actually ended six years earlier. AM: But the company continued operating, which meant men -- and later, women -- kept going up north… and the stories of Alaskeros continued to get made. So without further ado, let’s now listen to one of their foremost storytellers. Here are a few excerpts from our interview with Oscar Peñaranda. AM: Can you tell us a bit about your personal background and your work in canneries and farms? OP: my personal background is that I was born in the Philippines. I left, uh, the Philippines when I was 12. I came to the America, Canada and U S. My father worked for the foreign services for the Philippine consulate, and he was one of the several officers to open the first Filipino embassy in Canada. So we were the first official Filipinos in Canada in 1956. I was 12. Then when I was 17, five years later, we moved to San Francisco and I've lived in San Francisco ever since, but every summer, even when I was in Canada, I would always, uh, do something. You know, I, I found work in the, in the fields. I picked fruits here in Sioux Valley, in Vacaville and Delano, Salinas for about two or three summers. And then I worked in Las Vegas for two summers, and then I worked in Alaska for 15 summers in a row. Every summer I went to Alaska, I would swear. I'll never go back again. [AM laughs] Every year I was there, there was six of us that took that promise, that oath. It was so backbreaking and hard, the job was. We said, you see me here. I'm going to give you a hundred bucks next year. And every year we were back...for 15 summers. SO: And which years were those? When, when did you say OP: Yeah, 1966 to 1980, 1966. I was 21 years old. I, um, I was just finishing my 21st year. So that was 15 consecutive years. I was teaching in between and I, I was a college student in between SO: So why did you go the first time and why did you keep coming back? OP: Yeah. There's a saying in Alaska that the first time, um, that you get hired, you know, that's the company's fault that you got hired, but the second time you come back, that's your fault. [AM laughs] So everybody has their reasons for coming back, but I, I, you know, I became a writer, while I was doing all this work...while I was doing farm work. And I was also developing as a, as an individual, as a learner, as a social conscience, uh, person. And I was...I found my voice as a writer. Of course, I didn't know that then, but looking back at it now, I knew that it was genuine what I was writing because of those, uh, workers in Alaska and the fields, uneducated and illiterate though they were, they showed me the way You know, it's ironic. AM: Yeah. Were you a member of the union, your entire, all 15 years? OP: Yes, yes. Yes. You have to be. I was a union delegate in my sixth or seventh year, I took Larry Itliong's job. Larry Itliong, the famous Larry Itliong from Delano, they knew him and his friends, his best friend was our foreman. Larry was the union delegate of the cannery I worked in before I was a union delegate. There was one between us, but I never met Larry working in Alaska. I met Larry here in Delano and, and San Francisco State and California. SO: For the episode we're doing. Um, we're actually interested in union, um, before Larry Itliong, [OP: Mm, yes, yes.] um, and the webinar you did with Positively Filipino, you said that you personally knew Trinidad Rojo, [OP: Yes] who was one of the founders, right. So would you mind telling us more about him or why that first cannery union was formed? OP: Yeah. Trinidad Rojo was one of the, uh, guard old guards in which he was already getting in years when I was, when I first started in Alaska. So he walked slow, a little bit, had a little cane, but he was still some kind of officer, he was the secretary, I think of the union at the time and all this stuff I'm telling you, came from them, uh, word of mouth from them. And they were telling me that, Oscar, this union was born under bloodshed. Like I said, in the, in the thing, every time they would tell me how this thing started. There was always a gunfight. There was always some violence. So there was always intimidation. And it was, I knew they had a hard time in trying to decide things for their own. And also I knew there was a lot of internal fighting in the union, but I never knew the politics too much. I just knew the people. Um, at the time I saw them, most of those old guys, within five or six years they would be gone. I felt when I first saw them that something was dying, something was going away. Of course, I didn't know, you know, I was young and something else was being born because the world at this time, parang ngayon, just like today, was in the middle of turmoil and chaos. It was the Vietnam War. It was the ethnic studies. We were all involved in it. It's always good to look at these things, not in a vacuum, but in the social context that the world was in at the time. SO: Yeah. Um, if you had the Vietnam War, then their generation would have been forming the unions and going off to Alaska during the Great Depression. OP: Yes. [AM: Yeah. Hm-hmn.] You know, I'm one of those young guys who like to hang out with old folks. When an old timer kind of, uh, senses that a young guy, uh, likes to hear his stories or her story, they would cling to the young guy. Well, they were always waiting for me and "Oscar, remember I was telling you this, well, this is what happened." So they would tell me all the different, see, once they knew I was a listener, they would tell me everything. Of course I had to, uh, pick out which one was factual. You know, which one was not. They like to bullshit too, see. [AM & SO laugh] Then the other, the other, uh, the other worker would check them onto it. "No, no. Don't believe that guy. Man, he didn't do that. He did, this. He's full of shit. So I, in the final analysis, what I tell you guys, I already have chosen it myself. But you know, who cares about the facts when we know the truth? The truth is bigger than the facts. AM: “The truth is bigger than the facts.” That’s a loaded statement. [SO: Mhm] And a slippery slope, as park rangers and interpreters who strive to tell history accurately. But I think we can appreciate what Oscar is getting at here. SO: Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly no quibbling about the historical facts of cannery life. But people live these facts uniquely. Their individual perspectives can also help us understand many truths about the same thing. AM: A same thing, such as a salmon butchering machine [SO: Mm]... which we know is an object with a dehumanizing history… and which, knowing that, Oscar also came to know as something like... a dance partner. Let’s listen to him again: OP: When you fish, when you do the salmon, the most important part is the fish house. Like I was saying, there's a rhythm and there's a beat, and there's a music to the beat, to the feeding of the salmon to the machine. You put the tail in, it comes out in the head and then we bend it. So that is all smooth motion. Then you lift the hydraulic so that the air would go ssssshh, go like that, and a whole bunch of salmon would shoot out and it sssshh again. You leave it on too long, you have too many fish coming up. They'll be all over your face. So you got to know how to do ssssh, you got to bend right away. So only the Filipinos could do that, until today. SO: That's interesting. So, um, are you saying that, um, it's the Filipinos, mostly, who operate this salmon butchering machine? OP: Yes. Yeah, only. Exclusively when I was going to work. And now this is for decades and decades before me too. And that machine was called the Iron Chink because Chinamen were hired to do that before us. [SO & AM: uh huh] AM: Um, you, you have such a beautiful way of speaking about a really industrial... OP: Oh, thank you. AM: Yeah, we were wondering if maybe there's a favorite poem of yours, about your experience in Alaskan canneries that you'd like to share. OP: Yeah. Yeah. Let me look for one. This is called Alaska/Filipino Bunkhouse/Lights Out Curled up like brown puppies they would cuddle alone at nights or early mornings in their spring soggy beds (the veterans would have put a slab of plywood stolen from the white machinists under rotting mattresses for their aching and irreplaceable backs) each retreating under a blanket of separate dreams that, during the routine of neverending work, wrap above them like stubborn sheets of Alaskan rain and wind thinking perhaps of staying and living the winter there tired not from the skillful maneuvering of salmon around the clock but from arguing all night which one the white woman at the store stole a glance at that day SO: Anne, I will say this: after everything we’ve read about workers being cheated and mistreated with hard beds and rough blankets, that poem certainly made me… listen again. And think again. AM: Oscar did say Alaska helped him find his voice as a writer… and that line about “each retreating under a blanket of separate dreams” gets to me. You have to wonder what were the dreams that kept them warm in the cold? [SO: Mhm] Because we did wonder why, despite everything, people kept going back to Alaska. Oscar shared his thoughts. Let’s listen to him again: SO: Okay. Um, so we're just really fascinated by what you said, that they say the first time that you get to Alaska, it's the company's fault. And anytime thereafter, it's your fault. [OP: Yeah.] But we were wondering even if the conditions were harsh and even if it was a form of economic slavery, what were the different reasons that people kept choosing to go back to Alaska to work? OP: Yeah. Um, many reasons. I think I wrote about it here and there. So right now, number one is the camaraderie. Remember I told you there were six of us? We took a vow. "We're never going to come back again." And every year we were back 15 times. This, the camaraderie, people whom I know that live in San Francisco, I do not see nor care to see until you go to Alaska. [AM laughs] So there's something about Alaska. And that experience, this experience is kind of unique. In that kind of life, you can sort of or feel like one can build, uh, start anew, reinvent themselves, sort of. You might not, it might not be real, but at least you might feel that way because physically you go there, you have the experience only among yourselves. And then you go back here to reality in the lower 48 states. And while you're here, your head is still spinning because of that experience that you did in Alaska, and you did it and you do it every year. So it becomes sort of a ritual. Like the salmon. We, we become just like the fish that we're trying to catch. And we just go back again just like, they do. They go through all kinds of hurdles to go back there, lay down. And the Pinoys too, they go through all kinds of stuff so that they can get to Alaska and meet the salmon there. Also that when you get there, literally you're not, you get literally reinvented because 90% of the time you get named, you get a nickname that, uh, that's what they'll call you. You don't really have a choice about the name that they're going to call you, you'll probably find a nickname. So you, you are reinvented there and you become a legend sort of, and you think you're kind of important because you are a legend until you find out everybody is a legend in Alaska [seagulls, waves crashing, ships creaking] SO: Hey Anne. Are you still there? AM: Hi, Sabrina. SO: This has been a long episode. AM: And a long season. SO: And a long year. [AM: Mhm] I say that because this is where we’re pausing Better Lives, Bitter Lies for now. AM: Mhm. And I think there is no better way to wrap up this episode, season, and year than by reflecting on everything Oscar Penaranda shared with us. While Star of Alaska stopped sailing for APA in 1930, the fight for fairer labor practices in canneries continued on, and we're so thankful to be able to see the effects it had on the next generation through Oscar sharing his experience as an immigrant seasonal laborer of color. SO: Personal histories are so important to understand the human impact of the historical events and movements we've talked about. [AM: Mhm.] In our next episodes, we're hoping to continue taking a magnifying glass to maritime history. AM: Next episodes? So you’re saying we really have a next season? SO: Oh no. AM: OH YES. Stay tuned. SO: [sighs] Oh yes I will. And I also hope that all you who have been listening will stay tuned too. AM: Mhm. Thanks, Mom! [outro music] END TRANSCRIPT
