Blog: A History of Local Farm Labor: Part 1

By nature farm work is seasonal. No matter what combination of crops you plant, there are always going to be down times for most farm workers. There are simply more workers needed during the harvests than there are at other times of the year.

Even at the end of the agricultural era in the Santa Clara Valley, when efficiency was at its height, farm and cannery workers were out of work for at least a few months of the year.

The question for the farmer is: “Where can I find people who will help me for part of the year and not be a burden to me for the rest of the year?” The answer for most of the farmers during the fruit growing era in the Valley was: right at home and next door.

The orchard farms in the Valley were mostly family farms. The families worked them—the whole family. For the most part, labor was not something foreign, done by outsiders; it was Dad and Mom, the kids, and the kids’ friends from school.

The work of children in the orchards is a big part of the history of the Valley. The fruit orchards were mostly in the time before the invention of the American Teenager.

Of course, people had always grown up through their teens, but there was a vast change in the development of young people after work was eliminated from their educational experience.

Kids who work grow up understanding the concept of earning a living. They make the connection between productive work and the provision of necessities, and are less likely to grow up with the idea that other people will, or should, provide for them.

The elimination of work from this group has produced quite different results. There is an old Chinese proverb that says, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and he’ll feed himself for a lifetime.”

When the orchard farms dominated the Valley, all the kids worked. Early child labor laws excluded agriculture for the common sense reason that all hands are needed at harvest time.

It was not until near the end of the fruit growing era in the Valley, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, that labor laws became more restrictive and workers under the age of twelve, unless family members, were prohibited.

When World War II broke out, nearly all the young men were enlisted into military service. Most of the remaining work force, including many women who had not previously worked outside of the home, was occupied with war production. That left a huge farm labor shortage.

Mexican farm laborers did not come to California in significant numbers until about 1900. The immigration of Mexican workers continued until the Great Depression, during which time the last thing the country needed was more people looking for work.

However, with World War II, what became known as the Bracero Program began. After Mexico declared war on the Axis powers in June of 1942, the US Congress passed a new law that allowed the contracting of Mexican laborers for agricultural work in the US. Mexican farm labor was considered part of the war effort. Almost all of the Braceros—roughly translated “arms”—worked for the larger growers. For most of the family farms, there was no one left but the kids to bring in the crops.

And they did.

This blog, the first of two on the subject, was condensed from my new local history book, The Last of the Prune Pickers: A Pre-Silicon Valley Story.