Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of controlling the farm labor supply and labor costs. Perhaps the simplest
way to keep wages depressed, from a purely economic perspective, is to
have a labor supply that is much greater than demand. For the growers
who pioneered California's niche farm industries, the basic demand for
labor could be quite large, especially at harvest time. To keep wages low,
many growers tried to recruit a workforce two or three times larger than
basic demand required. Therefore, they defi ned a labor crisis not only in
terms of the absolute number of workers required to complete the work
but also as not having enough labor to keep wages low. Given these special
demands, California growers seemed to face a labor crisis nearly every year,
and “a labor shortage existed whenever [growers] were unable to hire suf-
fi cient workers to harvest crops at the utmost speed and at the most effi ca-
cious moment for the lowest possible wage.”
4
Growers found large supplies of labor by recruiting among poor migrant
workers, especially recent immigrants. For example, when intensive agri-
culture in California fi rst began in earnest, in the late 1870s and early
1880s, there was a large population of Chinese laborers in California,
originally imported to work in mining and on the railroads. As employ-
ment in these two industries waned, agriculturalists began to use more
Chinese labor. The use of “foreign” labor was initially controversial among
the growers themselves, but they quickly realized the many advantages
of employing recent immigrants (Daniel 1982, chs. 1, 2). Most of these
workers had no land or permanent residence of their own, and their
migrant status made it diffi cult for them to establish a long-term relation-
ship with any one grower. Growers simply assumed that workers would
appear for work during the busy planting and harvesting seasons, and then
disappear to the cities (Chinese and Japanese labor) or back to their home-
land (Mexican labor).
5
Growers also provided very poor quality housing
(or none at all) to ensure that farmworkers would have little incentive
to stay nearby at the end of each crop season (Guerin-Gonzales 1994,
62-63).
Growers' power over farm labor was supported in many ways by the
state, from federal policies to local courts and police. When faced with the
potential unionization of farm labor, California's agricultural interests
called on the California State Highway Patrol, county-level sheriffs' offi ces,
and local police to use violence and other forms of intimidation to suppress
labor organization. These actions were often supported by county- and