Beet Workers

In a lot of cities in the United States in the west especially in states like California there is a small section in that city. That has people from the Midwest that have settled in. In that part of town there are people from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansan that all migrated when the dust bowl was accruing. Or as a lot of people know them by the okies. These people migrated to California during the 1930s when after the country was suffering from the great depression. The great depression had happen after a lot of Europe countries were striating to recover from the First World War. At first those countries were relying on the United State for food, because after the war a lot of those countries were destroyed. So during that time the united state

Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos were all brought in to work, but their low standard of living and attempts to organize caused race riots by the white labor force and subsequent removal of foreign workers from the agricultural industry. The need for cheap labor therefore remained. To fill this void, many Mexican workers were brought in;so many that the white worker could not even live in southern California anymore because the wages were so low. Eventually the Mexican worker population grew so massive that they too began to organize, causing the growers to take action against them with "vigilante terrorism and savagery unbelievable in a civilized state" (pg 54). Eventually Mexican labor was withdrawn as well.

Many California farms were corporate-owned. They were larger, and more modernized that those of the southern plains, and the crops were unfamiliar. Many farmers from the Great Plains ended up picking cotton and grapes for wages as low as 0.75 $ a day.

Throughout the era of the great depression, migrant farm workers were put at unfair labor. A man named Cesar Chavez helped migrant farm workers by boycotting the fruit companies they worked for and forming unions for them. The beginning of Chavez’s life, striking and boycotting fruit companies, and his new projects were the biggest impact in changing farm worker’s lives.

Immigrants overwhelmingly filled blue-collar jobs (operators, fabricators and laborers) but also accounted for as much as half the growth in categories such as administrative support and services. According to Julian Samora Research Institute, the migration of Hispanics to the Midwest has been shown to be directly related to the labor needs of agriculture and manufacturing in the region. Much less, however, is known about how Hispanics have fared economically in this major industrial setting. Manufacturing in the Midwest has likewise benefitted from the supply of Mexican labor and has contributed to the growth of the Hispanic population. The need for industrial labor during both World War I and II as well as during strike activities in the steel industry in 1919 and the meat packing industry in 1921 assured the continued migration of Chicanos to the Midwest. Moreover, as the decline in migrant farm workers accelerated in the late sixties and early seventies as a result of agricultural mechanization, manufacturing--especially the auto-related industries--tapped former migrant workers for work. One study of Chicanos in Michigan viewed the period in the early seventies as a transition for Chicanos from field workers to factory workers.

“As a ‘double whammy’ of drought and depression deepened on the Great Plains, more and more farmers gave up or were forced off of their land” (Winter). According to Bart Robinson, an eyewitness, “Many people thought it was a plague” (Robinson). The migrant workers started moving away. “When pioneers headed west in the late 19th century, many couldn’t resist the lure of the tall grassy land in the semiarid Midwestern and Southern plains of the United States” (“Black Sunday”). Many people did travel to other states. Though “the exact scale of migrants is unknown but it’s estimated that up to 400,000 Southwesterns moved west during the 1930s and to 300,000 moved into California a decade earlier” (Sander). Dust Bowl refugees found roots in California (Winter). “Sometimes they found work, but mostly they found heartbreak and anger” (Robinson). They had once “owned profitable farms. Then they had nothin’ but hunger and dirt and two cents a barrel” (Robinson). Some migrant workers had trouble finding houses within their price range. “Many of the migrant workers lived in labor camps”

For thousands of years’ immigration to the United States has been considered one of the biggest problems and has been one of the topics most talked about, especially in this year, being one of the favorite topics to talk about in the presidential debates. Yet, due to speeches given by President Donald Trump little is known and talked about the problems immigrants, especially Latinos face day by day, socially and economically. By being a minority in the United States it has been very difficult for immigrant farm workers’ to get where they are now and have more opportunities than before the 1970s. Fortunately, there have been organizations and leaders that have helped immigrants through the years, one of these being Dolores Huerta.

The farm workers’ rights issues were also a major matter that the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement dealt with along with the other issues. Mexican-American migrant farm workers had to endure the harsh working conditions while traveling from farm to farm in the United States in search for work. While working, the farm workers tended to be exploited by farm owners while also receiving low wages that kept them below the poverty level (Ramirez). Due to certain

Holmes’ purpose in conducting his fieldwork with the migrant workers (specifically the Triqui of Mexico) of California and Washington fruit agriculture was to gain understanding from a perspective many do not consider and that has not been assessed in this way before. Similarly, the goal of this book was to pass that understanding to the common reader, the average American, those who are affected directly and those who are believe they are unaffected by the migrants of American agriculture—and to distinguish that they are not unaffected. Doing so creates the potential for change, even if by only a small factor like

"Where there 's a will, there 's a way" is a phrase often used here in America and it holds true to all walks of life including migrant workers. The desires range from the simple want to make an honest living to wanting to support the family to just wanting to live the American dream. However, the "way", does not always possess the same innocent light of the optimistic saying. In Eric Schlosser’s article, “In the Strawberry Fields” he discusses exactly that. Immigrants often end up doing the laborious farm work most Americans are unwilling to do with good reason. More specifically, he discusses the working conditions of migrant workers in strawberry fields, one of the most difficult row crops to grow. This work is largely done in California where the farming industry is allowed to bend laws as they please, routinely exploiting the vulnerability of immigrants’ legal states. Though, the concepts of small fruits and workers ' rights are not completely relatable to one another until we move past the happy connotation of the vibrant red, juicy fruit and into the grittier efforts that go into making them what we know in grocery stores. Many of us have the pleasant memories of the cool fruit on warm summer days but this image is quite the opposite to its production. Bent at the waist, hundreds of migrant workers, pick fruits under the sweltering summer sun and it would seem like a way a farming that vanished long ago but it is most certainly here. Though the conditions are worsened

Unfortunately, a new life in California was not as ideal as they thought it would be. There were less jobs available than were advertised. In California, many farmers found themselves still unemployed. They gave up farming corporations when they discovered that a good portion of California’s farmlands were owned by large farms with various different crops and eventually they looked to do different work. (“The Dust Bowl” 2)

One of the important problems that the author raised is the legal status of the illegal immigrants and their depressed living conditions. The legal status and living conditions are interconnected because in order to rent a decent apartment you need to prove that you are legally present in USA with thorough documentation which the illegal farm workers will not have and hence these poor workers were miserably compromised to live in pits, trenches and under trees. The author describes that the poor farm workers were very bad in shape and are constantly at the mercy of variable adversities like natural disasters and bad weather. If there is a storm they get wet all night and the only way they can dry up is to wait for the morning sunlight. Also illegal immigrants keep move place to place to find a job and look for shelter to stay because of their constant move they can 't afford to have permanent structured home at one

a.migrant workers in California made 3.35 cents per hour in 1928 made only 14 cents per hour in 1933.

The United States is well known as the land of opportunity. Many immigrants come here to work and live a better life. For immigrants that cannot enter the country legally, the end result is to enter the country illegally. The majority of undocumented immigrants “do often take some of the country’s least attractive job, such as agriculture” (Davidson).

     John Steinbeck wrote about what surrounded him. At the time he was writing, the nineteen-thirties, a great depression was plaguing the United States. Many people were out of work. Many farmers were losing their farms and homes. An extreme drought had also wrecked the farms of the Midwest and made them into what is now referred to as the "dust bowl". It was a terrible time to be poor, and most were. People died of malnutrition every day. In California, where Steinbeck resided, migrant workers dominated the workforce. Thousands traveled from all around to pick fruit in the farms of the Salinas Valley for minuscule wages. Thousands more could not find suitable