Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
These factors provided growers with a seemingly potent system for con-
trolling labor costs and preventing the unionization of laborers. However,
despite these advantages, the farm industry's control of labor was anything
but certain, and two main factors contributed to the continual instability
of growers' labor supply. First, the biggest and most conservative urban
labor unions, especially the American Federation of Labor, feared that
migrant farmworkers would quickly leave rural farming areas and move to
larger cities, competing with white workers for urban industrial jobs.
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These established unions used their political infl uence to push for the
passage of anti-immigration laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of
1882, which effectively shut the door on Chinese immigration and even
provided a mechanism for many Chinese already in the United States to
be repatriated. After California growers lost access to Chinese labor that
matched their infl ated demands, they were able to supplant them with
Japanese immigrants, whose experience with orchard crops helped form
the foundations of California's own nascent citrus industry. Just like the
Chinese, however, Japanese farmworkers raised the ire of unions and white
workers when the economy took another downturn, and Japanese immi-
gration was also restricted (Daniel 1982, ch. 2). When the economy was
good, growers found that they could again encourage another immigrant
group toward the United States and California's farm industry. With each
downturn, the immigrants were targeted and restricted again, and the cycle
started anew.
Second, growers also faced a continual threat from smaller and
more radical unions, which made an active commitment to organizing
California's farmworkers in the late 1910s and throughout the 1930s. Pro-
voked by poor working conditions and under the guidance of these unions,
farmworkers belied their docile image by striking in a number of harvest
seasons throughout the state. Several strikes in the Great Depression years,
especially in the period 1931 through 1938, were particularly bitter strug-
gles between California growers and a handful of small Communist party-
affi liated unions. In some cases, these smaller unions scored successes
against growers, mostly by timing strike actions for the harvest season of
crops that needed to be picked quickly. These unions had more diffi culty,
though, building a permanent base membership from these actions, and
growers typically responded to the unions' strikes and organization drives
