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171 CHAPTER SIX Imperial Farming, Imperialist Landscapes The 1951 Mexican labor recruiting program is, in fact, what the preceding programs have been—a huge subsidy in public funds, privat[e] charity and personal grief paid annually to the corporation farmers of the United States who have up to now been its main beneficiaries. Ernesto Galarza, “Report on Trip to Contracting Center for Mexican Contract Nationals at Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico,” April 22, 1951 In the citrus, we have need for men steadily. When the program was starting up five years ago or so, we used to give six-month contracts. The longest that was allowed. We thought, “What the heck? We can use ’em that long and longer.” But we soon found out better. We found out that in every crew there are bound to be two or three jokers . Maybe they haven’t got what it takes upstairs. They don’t give ’em any I.Q. tests, you know. Maybe they’re a little too fond of the bottle. Maybe they’re labor agitators. Maybe they don’t give a damn. . . . Well, with a six-month contract, you’re stuck with the jokers, unless you can prove that they haven’t lived up to their end of the contract. And this gets into so much red tape you wouldn’t believe it. We would usually end up shelling out good money to feed these two or three guys in each crew who were just sitting around on their duffs. It didn’t take us long to get smart. Now we give them nothing but six-week contracts. That way, we aren’t out so much when a guy turns out to be no good. Suppose a guy turns out to be a crackerjack worker. Well, when his contract comes to expire, we renew it. But the extension is for another six weeks only. You never know what might get into a guy who seemed to be a crackerjack worker. We’ve got a lot of men in camp right now who have been here eighteen months straight. They’ve all made it the hard way—by one six-week extension after another. Unnamed citrus grower, July 1957 172 • chapter six THE GOVERNOR’S COMMITTEE to Survey the Agricultural Labor Resources of the San Joaquin Valley submitted its 405-page report to Governor Warren on March 15, 1951. Bowing to strenuous grower opposition, the report lacked recommendations in key areas, especially minimum wages and inclusion of farm workers in the National Labor Relations Act, two reforms that perhaps would have had the most effect on the stability of farm labor and might have done the most to reestablish its reproduction on a plane approaching one that was healthy for the workers. And it made no direct recommendation on the advisability (or not) of a contract labor importation program, confining its recommendations in this area to a call for strengthened border enforcement to keep illegal entrants out. Nonetheless, it provided nearly fifty eminently practical, unanimously agreedupon recommendations, which if implemented would significantly alter the agricultural landscape of California (the research of the committee focused on the San Joaquin; its recommendations were largely geared toward statewide action).* Some of the recommendations had a sense of déjà vu about them. The committee recommended, for example, the “Establishment of Public Camp Sites for Agricultural Workers”—this in the immediate wake of the federal government being forced to divest itself of its camps, and the controversies over grower control. With such camps, the committee advised, the state would begin to see the elimination of “ditch bank camps, shack towns, and jungles, which have become a menace to the health of the occupants and a potential hazard to the community at large.” But it also recommended instituting a system of revocable permits for labor camps, auto courts, and other labor housing, a reorganization of the DoH so it could better meet its new workload, low-interest loans to farm workers so they could purchase their own housing as they settled out of the migratory stream, and a higher rate of amortization for labor camps to make their healthy operation more affordable.1 Some recommendations were long overdue, such as changes to the labor code to better regulate labor contractors and to revoke the licenses of those who violated the law, as well as to require them to post surety bonds of the higher * Fisher called the recommendations “innocuous,” and noted that central problems of the labor...

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