A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970

5. CITRUS IN THE WAR YEARS: Gender, Citizenship, and Labor, 1940–1964

5 Oddly enough, [braceros’] contacts with the local Mexican communities in California [have] not been pleasant. Frequently they were told by local Mexicans that they were ‘‘scabs,’’ that they were being ‘‘used,’’ that they were working for lower wages than local labor (which is not true), and that, ultimately, they would remain here and take the jobs of the local Mexicans. —Carey McWilliams, ‘‘They Saved the Crops’’ CitrusintheWarYears Gender, Citizenship, and Labor, 1940–1964 Despite the depression, citrus remained a profitable enterprise. Throughout the 1930s the industry remained one of the foundations of the regional economy , evidenced by the extraordinary profits of ranch owners and the growth of citrus farms. Growers’ consistently pulled in revenues above $90 million annually through the 1930s, while land values and the number of acres under citrus cultivation continued to expand. By 1939, citrus acreage in California exceeded 350,000 acres at an average price of $2,133 per acre. The mean size of parcels topped fifty acres, reflecting the importance of large-scale operations, but small 158 • CITRUS IN THE WAR YEARS farm investors kept the median size of lots to only seventeen acres. Consequently , unlike other agricultural investments, citrus withstood the tumultuous years of the depression and entered the World War II era in relatively good standing.1 Suppression of labor activism and the maintenance of depressed wages remained a defining aspect of the industry throughout the depression and contributed to the generous returns citrus growers received on their investments. While white farm owners survived and even prospered during the 1930s, the predominantly Mexican and Filipino workforce suffered the consequence of having to compete with poor, white Dust Bowl migrants for agricultural jobs. In spite of their contributions over the first three decades of the twentieth century , Mexican and Asian workers experienced the 1930s as a ‘‘decade of betrayal ’’ when local, state, and federal officials called for their removal to Mexico and the Philippines. The majority of those that stayed and fought these injustices met an organized and impenetrable agribusiness front that increased its strength during the depression. Thanks to loopholes that excluded agricultural laborers from protection under the Wagner Act, striking citrus workers found little support for their causes from the National Labor Relations Board. Growers so successfully limited the strength of organized labor that by the late 1940s one former packinghouse worker observed: ‘‘Though the need for labor unions in the industry has been recognized by workers, labor leaders, the National Labor Relations Board, and many others, few workers are organized today.’’2 The failure to establish long-lasting unions remains one of the legacies of citrus in Southern California. Whereas unions such as cawiu, cucom, ucapawa, and the Teamsters managed sustained union campaigns on Central and Imperial Valley farms and in California canneries throughout the 1930s, the 1936 Citrus Strike in Orange County proved to be an apogee rather than a starting point for further organization as, one by one, attempts by workers to increase wages were met with stolid defiance and repression from citrus growers. Particularly tight were the grower organizations in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Valley who resisted challenges to their order in Corona, Riverside, Upland, and San Dimas in 1941 and 1942. In each town, workers struck for a living wage, but growers responded by replacing them with local youth. Often, ranch owners pitted Mexican Americans, Filipinos, Dust Bowl migrants, and Mexican immigrants against one another. In Corona in 1941, for example, hand-to-hand combat between angry strikers and strikebreaking Mexican immigrants along with junior college students resulted in the arrest of twenty-seven strikers and the abrupt end of the upstart cio-affiliated Agricul- CITRUS IN THE WAR YEARS • 159 tural Workers Union. Similarly, in San Dimas, a strike engineered by Mexican pickers ended when Filipino workers chose not to accompany their fellow pickers on the picket lines, and growers obtained replacement workers from the United States Employment Service.3 The most serious blow to citrus workers came in the 1941 Lemon Strike in Santa Paula. Pickers and packers, organized as the afl-affiliated Agricultural and Citrus Workers Union, Local 22342, confronted their employer and cfge president Charles C. Teague to demand a modest increase in pay at the Ventura County Limoneira Company after a decade of low and static wages. Teague responded by evicting nearly 700 Mexican employees from the company...