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Chapter 4 The Mexican Dependency Problem
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C H A P T E R 4 The Mexican Dependency Problem On the eve of the Great Depression, the Los Angeles Municipal League asked R. R. Miller, the superintendent of outdoor relief for the County Department of Charities, to answer “a criticism on the alleged excessive amount of relief that goes to Mexicans.” Miller responded in an article for the Municipal League Bulletin entitled “The Mexican Dependency Problem.” According to Miller, the “best population statistics” indicated that Mexicans made up 11 percent of the county but furnished 24 percent of the outdoor relief caseload, “showing that proportionally the dependency problem is very large.” The burden on the “taxpayers” was perceived to be so great that the Department of Charities had abandoned all efforts at “intensive, constructive case work,” offering instead only “the most temporary assistance” and “stressing immediate employment at all times.” Miller emphasized that unless the flow of immigration was “checked,” the Mexican dependency situation might never be “corrected.”1 Social workers’ views of their dependent charges from the Progressive Era through the stock market crash in 1929 are the subject of this chapter and the next. In these chapters, I argue that social workers had very different perceptions of Mexicans, European immigrants, and blacks prior to the Depression and the subsequent widespread federal intervention in relief provision. By the 1920s, social workers had come to believe that Mexicans were an especially dependent and undeserving group, and they did what they could to convince others of their views. Nativists often saw European immigrants as welfare dependent, too, but social workers firmly rejected these characterizations and tried to forge a competing perspective—of a group that was, by their account, thrifty, hardworking, and worthy of assistance. Blacks, meanwhile, were often simply ignored by white welfare workers or portrayed as the least dependent group of all. Social workers’ disparate views of their charges were shaped by their perceptions about each group’s potential for racial assimilation, as well as the political and labor market context in which they lived. These views, in turn, profoundly influenced the treatment each group received. In this chapter, I document the emergence of the perception of a “Mexican dependency problem,” which gained early traction in Los Angeles. By 1930 Los Angeles County was home to more than 167,000 Mexicans— 74 • Chapter 4 the largest concentration of Mexicans outside Mexico City. But the population fluctuated with the seasons, swelling in the winter months when migrant workers came to look for work between harvests. And it was in Los Angeles and cities like it that migrant workers sometimes turned to relief when no work could be found. Prior to the 1920s, social workers in the city were cautiously optimistic that Mexicans could be assimilated, and they saw relief as one step in that process. As Mexicans made greater use of relief, however, social workers’ initial optimism waned. By the mid-1920s, they became convinced that Mexicans were a dependent and diseased population, lacking in thrift and ambition. They decided that their efforts at Americanizing this group had failed. Migrant workers did not stick around long enough for Americanization efforts to bear fruit. Naturalization rates among Mexicans were low and declining, and there was little evidence of socioeconomic mobility. Concerned that charity funds were essentially subsidizing the agricultural industry, they came to believe that Mexicans represented an illegitimate economic and social burden to “American taxpayers.” Mexicans , they concluded, were racially inassimilable after all. These social workers played a critical role in constructing Mexicans as an undeserving population. To make their case, they collected data on the Mexican “dependency problem” and selectively cited statistics that exaggerated their reliance on relief. They disseminated these findings widely and used them to lobby for restriction on immigration from Mexico. From their perspective, restriction was needed in order to “check” the flow of a people they now saw as undesirable, who drained municipal coffers and spread disease. But restriction also provided the best hope they had to incorporate those already here. Over time, the stereotypes associated with the “dependent Mexican” spread throughout much of the country, especially during the debates over immigration restriction. Though Mexicans protested these unfair characterizations, their lack of political power prevented them from dispelling such stereotypes. Ironically , it was often the Americanization teachers who went door to door through Mexican neighborhoods who had referred them to these charities . After telling Mexicans to apply for relief, these social workers criticized them for following through on their suggestions. The Mexican...