Orchard vs. Row Crop/Field Work

Title

Orchard vs. Row Crop/Field Work

Description

During the 1920s and 1930s, Mexicans performed 80% of the harvest work in Santa Clara County. Racially and ethnically segregated workplaces were the norm in orchard and row crops, with each group working either a different crop or at a different skill level and getting paid different amounts. Anglo male farmworkers filled the skilled year-round work of pruning and irrigating, while Mexican immigrant workers were forced into seasonal harvest jobs. Mexican workers labored for at least ten hours a day, seven days a week during harvest season and were paid on a piece-work rather than hourly basis.

With the introduction of specialty crops in the late 1800s, only male workers were hired; however, employers soon found they could attract and retain workers if they employed men with families. Between 1920-1940 first-generation Mexican immigrant men and children, who began work at five or six years of age, often worked as a group, with only the father paid for his entire family’s labor. Mexican immigrant mothers stayed at home to care for their babies and campsites; women did not enter cannery work in Santa Clara Valley until World War II.

Child labor laws (covering minors under age 15) were not created until 1938 when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which was not enforced until after WWII. The federal Fair Employment Practices Committee, established by the Roosevelt administration in 1941, found that more than one-third of all complaints came from Mexican agricultural workers.

Scholar Talk

https://vimeo.com/812901325?share=copy

https://vimeo.com/812901268?share=copy

https://vimeo.com/812901365?share=copy

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Two: Slide 011