In early 1903, two thousand Mexican and Japanese sugar beet workers in Oxnard, California, collectively organized a large biracial strike, and then asked Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, for a union charter. Upon receiving the request, Gompers replied, "Your union must guarantee that it will under no circumstances accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese."1 His response was typical of American trade unionism because of its anti-Asian sentiment and for its refusal to organize Asian workers even when they were willing to organize themselves.2 Consequently, in a great act of solidarity the Mexican workers repudiated any charter that excluded Japanese workers.

Among labor and leftist organizations, the Industrial Workers of the World, the anarcho-syndicalist group, were the sole exception to this pattern of hostility toward Asian immigrants. The I.W.W. was the only major national labor organization of the period to hold open their door to Asian workers and consequently to remain consistent in a rhetoric of including all workers regardless of race.