Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California"A masterpiece. . . . Two months after the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, Little, Brown issued the second controversial California documentary of 1939, Factories in the Field. . . . If John Steinbeck was a novelist seeking documentation, Carey McWilliams was a documentary journalist seeking the moral and imaginative intensity of art."—Kevin Starr, author of Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California "Factories in the Field is a true classic of the 'other California' that one rarely hears about. McWilliams chronicles the modern saga of industrial capitalism's transformation of would-be yeoman farmers into a low-paid, multi-racial army of farmworkers toiling on huge factory farms. From the start, McWilliams called for the abolition of the artificial distinction between factory and farm as the necessary first step in guaranteeing farmworkers the right to collective bargaining. His work is still relevant to the ongoing migrations of peoples around the world in search of a better life."—Neil Foley, author of The White Scourge "Indispensable to the study of California history."—Jules Tygiel, author of The Great Los Angeles Swindle |
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This book is very difficult to read without getting confused!
Contents
| 3 | |
| 11 | |
| 28 | |
| 48 | |
| 66 | |
| 81 | |
Our Oriental Agriculture | 103 |
Social Consequences | 134 |
The Postwar Decade 19201930 | 185 |
Delhi and Durham | 200 |
The Great Strikes 21 r XIV The Rise of Farm Fascism | 230 |
The Drive for Unionization | 264 |
The Trend toward Stabilization | 283 |
The End of a Cycle | 305 |
Bibliography | 327 |
Bibliographical Essay by Douglas C Sackman | 335 |
Other editions - View all
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California Carey McWilliams Limited preview - 1939 |
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California Carey McWilliams Limited preview - 2000 |
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acres activities agencies agricultural American Angeles appeared army arrested attempt began Cali California California agriculture called camp cent Chinese colony committee Company consequence continued cotton County course crop demand effect employed employment established example existence experiment fact factory families farm labor farmers Federal fields Filipino force formed fornia Fresno fruit Government grants growers hand harvest holdings housing hundred immigration important increased indicated industry interests involved Japanese land later living March McWilliams ment methods Mexican migratory Miller move never officials operated orchards organized Pacific Rural Press period practice problem production projects race ranches rates relief riot San Francisco San Joaquin season settlers social story strike sugar-beet supply thousand throughout tion union United University Valley various vigilantes wages workers wrote
Popular passages
Page 340 - 1995), David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991) and Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994).
Page 80 - the holding of large tracts of land, uncultivated and unimproved, by individuals and corporations, is against the public interest, and should be discouraged by all means not inconsistent with the rights of private property.
Page 225 - filth, squalor, an entire absence of sanitation, and a crowding of human beings into totally inadequate tents or crude structures built of boards, weeds, and anything that was at hand to give a pitiful semblance of a home at its worst. Words cannot describe some of the conditions we saw.
Page 62 - In marshy places and around the cienegas, where there was a vestige of green, the ground was covered with their skeletons, and the traveler for years afterward was often startled by coming suddenly on a veritable Golgotha — a place of skulls — the long horns standing out in
Page 56 - I should be very much pleased if you could find me something good (meaty) on economic conditions in California. California is very important for me because nowhere else has the upheaval most shamelessly caused by capitalist centralization taken place with such speed.
Page 324 - But these developments are merely signposts along the way. The real solution involves the substitution of collective agriculture for the present monopolistically owned and controlled system. As a first step in the direction of collectivization, agricultural workers must be organized. Once they are organized, they can work out the solutions for most of their immediate problems.
Page 25 - And over our ill-kept, shadeless, dusty roads, where a house is an unwonted landmark, and which run frequently for miles through the same man's land, plod the tramps, with blankets on back, the labourers of the California farmer, looking for work, in its seasons, or toiling back to the city when the ploughing is ended or the wheat crop is gathered.
Page 63 - long horns standing out in defiant attitude, as if protecting the fleshless bones. It is said that 30,000 head of cattle died on the Stearns Ranchos alone.
Page 126 - Peon? Isn't the word peon a little out of character when applied to a Mexican family which buzzes around in its own battered flivver, going from crop to crop, seeing Beautiful California, breathing its air, eating its food, and finally doing the homing pigeon stunt back to Mexico with more money than their neighbors dreamed existed?
Bibliographic information
| Title | Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California |
| Author | Carey McWilliams |
| Contributor | Douglas C. Sackman |
| Edition | reprint, revised |
| Publisher | University of California Press, 2000 |
| ISBN | 0520224132, 9780520224131 |
| Length | 345 pages |
| Subjects | › Business & Economics / Labor History / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |