LABOR: The Cane Mutiny

In the dusty bayou country of southern Louisiana last week, the sugar cane stood 10 ft. high. It was time for harvest, but on the huge sugar plantations many of the harvesters failed to report for work. Each morning before sunup, some 2,000 (an estimated 10% of the labor force) gathered in Masonic lodges and Burial Society halls from the outskirts of New Orleans to the Atchafalaya River to sing hymns, pray, sip coffee and idle away the day. After generations of precarious existence on the big plantations, the cane workers were out on an organized strike. Their wages (minimums are set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of a 1¢-a-lb. sugar subsidy program) average from $700 a year for field hands to a top of $1,200 for skilled workers. Most workers live rent-free in company-owned houses, some of them hovels, some adequate. Most workers trade in company stores and are completely dependent on the plantation owners. About two-thirds are illiterate; some know no English, speak only a Cajun patois. Four-fifths are Negroes. Major objective of the strike is not to seek improvements in wages or living standards, but to gain recognition of the union.

Powerful Ally. The strikers have been organized by the A.F.L.’s struggling National Agricultural Workers’ Union, have the full support of both A.F.L. and C.I.O. (last week the C.I.O.’s Walter Reuther sent them a check for $5,000). They have an even more powerful ally in the Roman Catholic Church, which is strong in Louisiana. Priests from New Orleans and the local parishes have given their active support to the strikers, and the Catholic Committee of the South has publicly called on growers to meet with the union’s representatives.

The owners replied that recognition would be followed inevitably by ruinous wage demands. As it is, the Department of Agriculture subsidy makes the difference between profit and loss for many a planter. This week the growers’ Sugar Cane League, in newspaper advertisements, vowed that “this is a struggle which the farmers will not and cannot lose,” threatened “mass discharges and evictions” if the strike did not end. Some planters have already imported strikebreakers from Mississippi.

Prompt Arrest. Despite the restraining efforts of priests and organizers, the threat of violence hung like Spanish moss over the bayous. In Terrebonne Parish, swamp-fire violence flared briefly when four men ambushed and shot three Negro sugar-mill workers, wounding them slightly. The four were promptly arrested. Said Governor Robert F. Kennon: “I feel it is my duty to publicly state that such acts will not be tolerated.” Said Jesuit Father L. J. Twomey of New Orleans’ Loyola University: “The workers are apparently willing to take whatever risks are involved to free, if not themselves, at least their children, from this environment.”