Bindle Stiffs
For the bindle-stiffs in 1910,
all they wanted was work at a fair wage.
In the great produce-growing lands
of the bounteous San Joaquin Valley.
Workers were needed at once
for harvesting, packing, and shipping
a record crop from heavy rains of 1909.
Migrant workers were “common labor,”
a cheap bargain for the farmers
so long as union organizers stayed away.
The Industrial Workers of the World
purpose, to organize a world-wide union
of the working-class labor force.
The union was for the worker
who had no voice, the fruit-tramps
that followed the crop harvests.
At the IWW, Local 66,
at 1114 Federal Alley, Fresno,
members mostly unskilled workers
from a large transient population
of migrant labor, and a natural place
for union agitating and organizing.
Author: Stephen Barile
On OMPJ
Photo Credit: Daniel van den Berg on Unsplash
Editor's note: bindle stiff: one who carries his clothes or bedding in a bundle (or bindle).
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