Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Why treat the case of Spreckels in such depth? Overall, the Spreckels case
illustrates the connections and tensions between industrial modes of farm
production, labor politics, and the role of the state during this period.
Labor was a continual problem for the company's operations in the Salinas
Valley, and these labor troubles were not just a sudden outgrowth of World
War II. The sugar beet industry's labor problems stemmed from the basic
constraints of industrial production and the local political ecology of
Salinas Valley farming. Sugar beets may have been California's fi rst truly
industrial crop because they are not eaten as beets—they are produced
solely to be processed into sugar in a processing factory. Therefore, sugar
beet farming is tied very closely to the constraints and needs of industrial
processing, and processors require a steady and orderly fl ow of beets to
keep their factories operating at peak effi ciency. As a consequence, beet
processing was heavily reliant on labor—for operating the factory, of
course, but also to plant, thin, and harvest beets on the thousands of acres
required to support a large processing plant. The war tightened these con-
straints and led Spreckels to become one of the most aggressive lobbyists
for the Mexican National Program and among the largest recipients of
Mexican national labor during and after the war.
The interplay of these factors can be traced back to a dramatic event
in the history of the Salinas Valley: in 1898 it became home to what was
at the time the world's largest beet-processing facility. The United States
had no real sugar beet industry prior to the 1890s, but subsequent decades
saw a marked increase in beet sugar production in response to a federal
system of incentives.
22
Built by Claus Spreckels, the patriarch of a sugar
empire throughout the western United States,
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the plant was intended to
take over a large portion of the valley's farmland for beet production, as
emphasized in a USDA report of the time:
One of the remarkable incidents connected with the beet-sugar industry in this
country during the past year was the building of that mammoth concern at Salinas,
by Mr. Claus Spreckels, of California. This gives the United States the largest factory
in the world. . . . The factory will cost $2,750,000. It will use about 1,200 barrels of
petroleum daily for fuel. . . . Its production of raw sugar will be about 400 tons per
day. It will require about 30,000 acres of ground to produce the beets. (USDA 1898,
16; Allen 1934, 44-45)
The 30,000 acres of beets required to operate the plant represented about
15 percent of the valley's farmland, so Spreckels needed to convince many
