Debating American Identity: Southwestern Statehood and Mexican Immigration

4: Marginalization Evolves: Image of a Temporary Worker

83 Carl Trumbull Hayden, born in an adobe home in the Arizona territory in 1877, was reportedly the first Anglo child born in what would become the town of Tempe. He grew up to become one of the longest-serving legislators of the new state of Arizona. Elected as a Democrat in the first year of statehood, Hayden became Arizona’s sole representative to the U.S. House of Representatives and then a senator in 1927, serving until age ninety-one. A shy sort and considered a “workhorse” in the halls of Congress, Hayden actively supported his constituents, especially farmers. He supported them long before he ever ran for office when he lobbied on their behalf concerning various irrigation projects. He later came to the aid of corporations such as the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which ran the first largescale farm of the state’s soon to be famous Pima cotton. To help his agricultural constituents and appease the growing fans of immigration restriction, Hayden promoted temporary legislation designed to permit Mexican laborers to enter the nation on an interim basis: the idea was that they would provide their labor for a brief stint and then return home. While Hayden likely was not threatened by the potential cultural impact of these immigrants—having gone to school with “Mexicans” and speaking “schoolboy Spanish” as a child—he believed that keeping the door to Mexico open would lower the American standard of living. Even so, because he—and the Arizona State Federation of Labor at the time—believed that no Americans in the Southwest would ever pick cotton , he did not favor outright exclusion, instead supporting a position that permitted Mexican workers to enter the country and labor in the fields, at chapter four Marginalization Evolves Image of a Temporary Worker 84 · Chapter 4 least temporarily.1 Mexicans could enter the country for work, but were not expected to remain permanently. For much of Western history people have scorned those who migrate from place to place and job to job. In fact, Europeans believed that “gypsies,” or Romani people traveling in their midst, possessed evil spirits. In the late nineteenth century, Arizona settlers, too, viewed nomadic Apache Indians as barbarians, in part because they lacked a fixed domicile. Prior to statehood , one of the arguments against Arizona joining the union was that it was full of itinerant men who, as such, were presumed to be poor workers, wild, and without morals. Americans viewed these itinerants as best left on the fringes of civilization. Words associated with impermanence—such as temporary, rootless, and transience—suggested a lack of belonging, and those who embodied such terms found themselves repeatedly excluded from civil society.2 During the final years before Arizona and New Mexico achieved statehood , those favoring marginalization had begun to view people of Mexican descent as easily marginalized from mainstream American society and under the control of their Anglo employers. After the 1910s, this sort of thinking fell out of favor due to world revolutions and associated fears of having a permanent and growing underclass, which might spark such an uprising at home. As a result, Americans began to side with exclusionists who argued that existing restriction laws should remain in place without exception, and opposed the extension of wartime immigration exemptions. Growers, however, desired more fluid borders so that they could retain a steady supply of workers, maintain low wages, and maximize profits. When their former arguments emphasizing Mexicans’ second-class citizenship no longer proved persuasive, they stressed immigrants’ temporary stay and lack of belonging in America. While such language occasionally surfaced during the prior struggles over statehood, the words did not resonate since comparatively few Mexicans emigrated during those years. But as Mexican immigration increased, growers and their allies found highlighting the immigrants’ temporary prospects an increasingly effective way to persuade other Americans that Mexicans would not stick around long enough to harm America or to change it in any way. Many historians have noted how growers labeled Mexicans as temporary and “birds of passage” in their efforts to retain a ready supply of workers, but this chapter and the following ones emphasize how the linkage between Mexicans and a temporary Marginalization Evolves · 85 status developed, grew, and spread over time. While previous historians have emphasized how growers promoted the workers’ temporary status for expediency, the subsequent chapters show how Mexican and Anglo Americans, including growers and their...