Race, paternalism, and "California Pastoral": Rural rehabilitation and mexican Labor in greater Los Angeles

Agricultural History

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 1-35

  Lewthwaite, Stephanie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL LABOR; AGROINDUSTRY; PASTORALISM; RACE; RESETTLEMENT POLICY; RURAL HISTORY; RURAL PLANNING; RURAL POLICY; WELFARE IMPACT;

CALIFORNIA; LOS ANGELES; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 38949122727     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3098/ah.2007.81.1.1     Document Type: Article

References (129)

1. Hubert Howe Bancroft, California Pastoral, 1769-1848 (San Francisco: History Company, 1888), 264.
2. Phoebe S. Kropp, California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (Berkeley: California University Press, 2006), 43,44,46
3. Bancroft, California Pastoral, 247
4. Cletus E. Daniel, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farm workers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 18.
5. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 63.
6. Ibid., 17-18
7. Don Mitchell, The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 14. For more, read chapter one in full, "California: The Beautiful and the Damned."
8. Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 190-92
9. Dana W. Bartlett, quoted in Report of the Housing Commission of the City of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: n.p., 1909-1910), 14;
10. Matt García, A World of its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 19-29
11. J. Torrey Connor, Saunterings in Summerland (Los Angeles: Ernest K. Foster, 1902), 72.
12. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 18. For a fuller discussion, read chapter one in its entirety, "Agrarian Idealism," 15-39
13. Carey McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States (1942; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1976), 328
14. Camille Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 14.
15. Connor, Saunterings in Summerland, 32-33.
16. For example, see, Mitchell, Lie of the Land, 83.
17. García, World of its Own, 17-46.
18. In 1917 US employers defeated restrictive clauses applying the literacy test and head tax to Mexican immigrants. See, Ricardo Romo, "Responses to Mexican Immigration, 1910-1930," Aztlán 6 (Fall 1975): 173-76.
19. For more on the development of these arguments, see, Mark Reisler, "Always the Laborer, Never the Citizen: Anglo Perceptions of the Mexican Immigrant During the 1920s," Pacific Historical Review 45 (Mar. 1976): 231-54
20. Connor, Saunterings in Summerland, 72.
21. Emory S. Bogardus, The Mexican in the United States (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1934), 47.
22. For example, see, García, World of its Own, 29-31.
23. Will J. French, Mexicans in California, Report of Governor C. C. Young's Mexican Fact-Finding Committee (San Francisco: State Printing Office, 1930), 94-95, 160
24. García, World of its Own, 48, 77.
25. García, World of its Own, 36
26. Helen Walker, "Mexican Immigrants as Laborers," Sociology and Social Research 13 (Sept. 1928): 55-62
27. Paul Taylor, "Mexicans North of the Rio Grande," Survey 66 (May 1931): 137-40.
28. Taylor, "Mexicans North of the Rio Grande," 137-40.
29. García, World of its Own, 19-22. For a similar interpretation, see, Mitchell, Lie of the Land, especially chapter one
30. Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California, foreword by Douglas C. Sackman (1939; repr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 6
31. Frances Kellor, "A Domestic Immigration Policy," sent with cover letter from Dana Bartlett to Robert Newton Lynch, Oct. 21, 1912, Dana Webster Bartlett Folder, Box 1, Simon J. Lubin Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Calif. (hereafter Lubin Papers).
32. For more on these experiments, see, García, World of its Own, chapters two and three, and Don Mitchell, "Fixing in Place: Progressive Science and Landscapes of Repression in California," Historical Geography 23 (Spring 1993): 44-61.
33. Also see, Joseph Timmons, "Citrus Workers in Model Homes," Los Angeles Examiner, Sept. 2, 1920, 3,
34. and for an example of the application of the worker colony as far as Catalina Island, see, "Island Solves Problem," Los Angeles Times, Nov. 10, 1929, Part V, 14.
35. Douglas Sackman, Introduction to McWilliams, Factories in the Field, xvii; Fourth Report of the Committee on Selective Immigration of the Eugenics Society Inc. (1928), Immigration and Emigration Folder, Box 78, John Randolph Haynes Papers, Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles, Calif. (hereafter JRH Papers), pp. 8-9
36. Statement by Wilson in "Seasonal and Agricultural Laborers from Mexico," Hearing before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, 69th Cong., 1st sess., Jan.-Feb. 1926, Miscellaneous Folder, Box 63, George Pigeon Clements Papers, Special Collections, UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif. (hereafter GPC Papers), p. 25
37. John Randolph Haynes, questionnaire sent to Roy L. Garis, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., Aug. 29, 1929, Immigration-Mexico Folder, Box 78, JRH Papers. For more on Haynes as a eugenicist, see, Tom Sitton, The Haynes Foundation and Urban Reform Philanthropy in Los Angeles: A History of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation (Los Angeles: Historical Society of Southern California, 1999), 49-50.
38. Max Sylvius Handman, "Economic Reasons for the Coming of the Mexican Immigrant," American Journal of Sociology 35 (Jan. 1930): 611.
39. Carey McWilliams, "Migration and Resettlement of the People," Report to National Conference of Planning, July 8-10, 1940, Mexicans in the United States Folder, Box 29, Carey McWilliams Papers, Special Collections, UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif. (hereafter MCW Papers), p. 3
40. George P. Clements, questionnaire sent to Roy L. Garis, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 5, 1929, Untitled Folder, Box 64, GPC Papers, p. 9
41. Clements, "Mexican Indian or Porto Rican Indian Casual Labor? The Box Bill," Speech before the Pasadena Women's Civic League, Feb. 6, 1928, Folder 1, Part I, Box 62, GPC Papers.
42. George P. Clements, questionnaire to Roy Garis, Sept. 5, 1929, GPC Papers, pp. 9-10
43. Clements, letter to Dr. George B. Mangold, School of Social Welfare, University of Southern California, Nov. 30, 1929, Folder 1, Part II, Box 62, GPC Papers, p.2
44. Clements, "Mexican Indian or Porto Rican Casual Labor?";
45. Charles C. Teague, "A Statement on Mexican Immigration," Saturday Evening Post, Mar. 10, 1928, El Monte Labor Folder, Box 62, GPC Papers; Statement by S. Parker Frisselle in "Seasonal and Agricultural Laborers from Mexico," 8.
46. On Progressive Era Country Lifers and eugenicists as central to the development of citrus colonies and culture, see, García, World of its Own, 32-33.
47. Douglas Monroy, Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 65, 150
48. Robert McLean, "Goodbye, Vicente!" Survey 66 (May 1931): 196
49. McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 305. Anglo Americans constituted 50 percent of labor camp employees in 1934, Mexicans 33 percent, Filipinos 11 percent, and Japanese and Chinese workers 3 percent each.
50. Devra Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold: Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 126-27.
51. Walter J. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1973), 82-83
52. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 271.
53. Address by Earl Jensen, Superintendent of Los Angeles Charities, to Directors, Aug. 28, 1933, Folder AAA (1), Box 64, John Anson Ford Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (hereafter JAF Papers).
54. George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 221-25
55. Superintendent Rex Thomson to Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Oct.25, 1937, with Bureau of Indigent Relief Report, Sept. 1937, Folder AAA (5), Box 64, JAF Papers
56. Rex Thomson to Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Jan. 23, 1939, with statement from Bureau of Indigent Relief, "Analysis of the Case Load, Department of Charities, 1 January 1939," Folder AAA (7), Box 64, JAF Papers.
57. Mario T. García, ed., Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 60-61, 68, 71-72.
58. Devra Weber, "The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers: Imperial Valley, and Los Angeles 1928-34, An Oral History Approach," Aztlán 3 (Fall 1973): 312.
59. García, Memories, 65, 75-77;
60. Manuel Gamio, The Life Story of the Mexican Immigrant (1931; repr., New York: Dover Publications, 1971), 127-30.
61. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 210, 230
62. Weber, "The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers," 308-309.
63. García, Memories, 65, 80-83.
64. Weber, "The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers," 308-309.
65. Paul S. Taylor, "California: Los Angeles Field Notes," Folder 26, LA Field Notes: El Monte, Carton 10, 1927, Paul Schuster Taylor Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.
66. Weber, "The Organizing of Mexicano Agricultural Workers," 326-33.
67. The Mexican Federation of Agricultural Unions (Confederación de Uniónes de Campesinos y Obreros Mexicanos, CUCOM) was established after the El Monte Berry Strike with the aid of Los Angeles Consulate Alejandro Martínez and Vice-Consul Ricardo Hill. During the Depression, Anglo farmers often sublet their land to Japanese families to grow cash crops. Japanese tenant farmers often lived on-site. Both Mexicans and Japanese families underwent segregated schooling. During the 1930s the Japanese comprised 5 percent, Mexicans 20 percent, and Anglos 75 percent of El Monte's total population, see, Ronald W. López, "The El Monte Berry Strike of 1933," Aztlán 1 (Spring 1970): 103.
68. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 79, 80, 83
69. Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams, 118-19.
70. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 79, 104
71. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 168-69.
72. McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 92-96, 200-205. Sugar beet owner Claus Spreckles collaborated with the Salvation Army in the construction of Fort Romie. Letter from Dana Bartlett to Robert Newton Lynch, Oct. 14, 1912, Dana Webster Bartlett Folder, Box 1, Lubin Papers. Also see further correspondence and miscellaneous clippings from Dana Bartlett to Robert Newton Lynch, Oct. 21, 23, 28, 1912, Dana Webster Bartlett Folder, Box 1
73. Letter from James Harvey McBride to Simon J. Lubin, June 30, 1915, James Harvey McBride Folder, Box 3, Lubin Papers
74. Letter from Mary S. Gibson to Reverend John Joseph Cantwell, Jan. 30, 1918, Reverend John Joseph Cantwell Papers, 1918-1947, Archives of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Mission Hills, Calif.
75. Copy of letter from N. O. Nelson to Dana Bartlett, sent with cover letter from Bartlett to Lynch, Oct. 28, 1912, Dana Webster Bartlett Folder, Box 1, Lubin Papers. For more, see, Mc Williams, Factories in the Field, 200-201
76. Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (1946; repr., Layton, Utah: Gibbs-Smith, 1973), 302.
77. "Report of 1933 White House Conference on Child Health and Protection," in Robin Fitzgerald Scott, "The Mexican American in the Los Angeles Area, 1920-1950: From Acquiescence to Activity" (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1971), 127-30.
78. Works Progress Administration, American Born Mexican Survey: Detailed Information and Tabulations, Project Application presented to Dr. James B. Sharp (Los Angeles: WPA, July 1935), Sacramento State Library, Sacramento, Calif.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Anthony Pratt and J. L. Pomeroy "Los Angeles Tenement Problem and the Bubonic-Pneumonic Plagues: A Report of a Survey by Representatives of Nine Leading Organizations," Municipal League of Los Angeles Bulletin 2 (Feb. 1925): 3-4.
83. WPA, American Born Mexican Survey.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. George Clements, "California Casual Labor Demands: Notes for Talk before the Annual Conference of the 'Friends of the Mexicans,'" under the auspices of Pomona College, Claremont, Calif., Nov. 13, 1926, Untitled Folder, Box 64
87. George Clements to Howard Britton Morris, Department of History, College of City of New York, Mar. 28, 1931, Folder 1, Part 1, Box 62
88. Clements to W. Frank Persons, Director, US Employment Service, Department of Labor, Washington, DC, Oct. 16, 1935, Subcommittee Hearings and Minutes Folder, Box 64, GPC Papers.
89. "Plan for Rehabilitation of Certain Classes of Unemployed in Indigent Circumstances," Report by Vernon Campbell to Manufacturing and Industries Committee, June 18, 1936, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Minutes, Carton 25, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce Collection, Regional History Archives, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Calif. (hereafter LACC Collection).
90. Interdepartmental Memo., "Mexican Labor," from Arthur G. Arnoll to George Clements, June 20, 1936, Subcommittee Hearings and Minutes Folder, Box 64, GPC Papers.
91. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 224
92. Francis I. Weber, "Preface," in Calendar of Documents and Related Historical Materials in the Archival Center, Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for the Most Reverend John Joseph Cantwell, Volume 1 (1918-1935), ed. Sister Maty Rose Cunningham, CSC and Monsignor Francis J. Weber (Mission Hills, Calif.: Saint Francis Historical Society, 1991), lxxxiv
93. Memo., "Mexican Labor," June 20, 1936
94. Interdepartmental Memo., "Mexican Consul and Agricultural Labor," from Arnoll to Clements, Dec. 2, 1936, Subcommittee Hearings and Minutes Folder, Box 64, GPC Papers.
95. Memo., "Mexican Consul and Agricultural Labor," from Arnoll to Clements, Dec. 2, 1936, GPC Papers. For example, see, Marie Pope Wallis, "A Study of Dependency in One Hundred Cases taken from Files of the Bureau of County Welfare, Catholic Welfare Bureau, Los Angeles County Relief Administration" (master's thesis, University of Southern California, 1933), 73.
96. Report from Vernon Campbell to Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Aug. 19, 1937, Folder AA (1), Box 65, JAF Papers.
97. For example, see, Bogardus, The Mexicans in the United States, 18-22, 75 and Cloyd V. Gustafson, "An Ecological Analysis of the Hollenbeck Area of Los Angeles" (master's thesis, University of Southern California, 1940), 103.
98. McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land, 340;
99. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 169.
100. This term is used by Sarah Deutsch who has described similar New Deal projects devoted to reviving folk culture in rural Colorado and New Mexico under the WPA, National Youth Administration, and vocational training bodies. See, Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 192-99, 204.
101. Cover letter and Report, "Rehabilitation for Mexican Farm Laborers," from Joseph A. Facci to Laurence I. Howes Jr., Regional Director, and R. W. Hollenberg, Assistant Regional Director, Nov. 18, 1939, Minorities-Mexicans Folder, Box 16, MCW Papers
102. Memo. from State Division of Immigration and Housing, "Housing Conditions Among Migratory Workers in California," prepared by Carey McWilliams, Chief of DIH, Mar. 20, 1939, Division of Immigration and Housing Folder, 1938-1942, Box 67, MCW Papers, p. 10.
103. In 1934 almost 45 percent of all of America's self-help organizations were active in Los Angeles County, while more than half of one hundred sixty cooperatives accepting federal funds during the early New Deal were in California. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 133
104. McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 200-201
105. McWilliams, Southern California, 302
106. John Anson Ford, Thirty Explosive Years in Los Angeles County (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1961), 11-12
107. Mitchell, Lie of the Land, 181
108. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration, 154.
109. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 270
110. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration, 159, 161.
111. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 133
112. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration, 151.
113. McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land, 238, 378
114. McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 303
115. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 135.
116. WPA, American Born Mexican Survey.
117. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 63
118. Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold, 134.
119. Carey McWilliams, Untitled Report [post-1937(?)], Division of Immigration and Housing Folder, 1938-1942, Box 67
120. Bernhard Groverman, Secretary, Associated Farmers of California, to Nelson Rockefeller, Office of Inter-American Affairs, Washington, DC, State Department, Dec. 22, 1941, Mexicans-Culture Folder, Box 28, MCW Papers.
121. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 58
122. McWilliams, Factories in the Field, 95.
123. Los Angeles Examiner, Feb. 28, 1913, quotation in Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis, 191. Jess Walsh has insightfully linked welfare policies targeting Mexican workers during the New Deal with more contemporary discussions concerning welfare and recent undocumented Latin-American immigrant workers. See, Walsh, "Laboring at the Margins: Welfare and the Regulation of Mexican Workers in Southern California," Antipode 31 (Oct. 1999): 416.
124. McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land, 3-5. For more on the Mission Myth and its social racial order, see, James J. Rawls, "The California Mission as Symbol and Myth," California History 71 (Fall 1992): 343-61.
125. For similar work and interpretations, see, Abigail A. Van Slyck, "Mañana, Mañana: Racial Stereotypes and the Anglo Rediscovery of the Southwest's Vernacular Architecture, 1890-1920," in Gender, Class, and Shelter: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 5, ed. Elizabeth Collins Cromley and Carter L. Hudgins (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995), 95-108
126. Roberto Lint Sagarena, "Building California's Past: Mission Revival Architecture and Regional Identity," Journal of Urban History 28 (May 2002): 429-44.
127. McWilliams, Ill Fares the Land, 5.
128. On the bracero program as crystallizing the image of the Mexican as a "foreign" worker, see, Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams, 135
129. Daniel, Bitter Harvest, 35.