ultimate ebb and probable defeat? Although Chavez chose hope, his fears were well founded. For the NFWA, as conceived by its founder, could not survive the crucible of the strike. The association was transformed—nay, doomed. A union was in the birth canal. And Chavez, despite all the years of struggle and effort he would give to nurturing this new creation, was never entirely satisfied with what became of the new child.
August to November ’65
It takes a lot of people, working much of the year, to grow table grapes. Grape vines left to themselves do not produce uniform bunches of grapes suitable for shipping, unlike, for example, lettuce seedlings, which grow into heads of lettuce with a minimum of weeding and thinning. Vines have to be pruned, tied, and girdled. The developing grapes must be thinned and tipped. Finally, just before the harvest, some of the leaves must be pulled off so that the grapes will be exposed to the sun and become sweeter. People with tools in their hands do all of that work. None of it has ever been successfully mechanized. Without this extensive pre-harvest demand for labor, large numbers of farm workers would not have been able to establish permanent residency in the area around Delano, and the two large communities of nonmigrant, professional farm workers—the Mexican Americans of the barrios and the Filipinos in labor camps, which the NFWA and AWOC were trying to organize—would not have existed.
Table grapes require not only a large number of workers but, at various points in the growing cycle, a significant supply of relatively skilled ones. In the Delano area, pruning extends from December to March and involves 2,000 people at its peak, usually in January. Before 1970 all of this work was done by men; now some women prune. How a vine is pruned goes a long way toward determining the quantity and quality of the grapes it will bear, as well as what the viticulturists call the “vigor” (rate of growth) of the plant. Nothing can be done to make a poorly pruned vine produce enough good fruit in the upcoming season, while an especially bad job of pruning can ruin a vine for years. One grower estimates that a pruner makes 200 difficult decisions in any eight-hour workday; learning to prune “comes best and most easily from years of pruning along with older workers, in the comforting shade of their years of experience.”1
Pruning is followed by spraying (sulfur, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers) and careful irrigating, neither of which is labor-intensive. A large amount of labor is then needed to tie the spurs to the trellises. This work is done by men and women and requires stamina and patience but not any specialized knowledge. Girdling and thinning come next, in the spring. Girdling is particularly difficult. Workers cut through the hard bark of the vine, completely encircling the stalk, usually down low at the trunk. This cut, when done correctly, forces the sap of the plant to remain in the upper part of the vine and increases the amount of sugar that the vine stores in the grapes, as well as the actual number of grapes. The cut is a delicate one: if too shallow, the sap won’t rise; if too deep, the vine will die. And the surgical use of the special knife has to be done while bent over, by men who are working as fast as they can, because girdling is always done by individual piece-rate workers. Thus, the girdlers are the most skilled of the grape workers, and when they learn the job well enough to do it quickly, they are the best paid. At the same time that the girdlers are working, many men and women thin and tip the grapes. Left to themselves, grapes come in odd-shaped bunches, with the berries so densely packed that they impede on one another’s growth and remain small. Thinning and tipping produces the characteristic shape and size of the bunches that end up at supermarkets. About 3,000 people are needed for thinning and tipping, which continues into the early summer. Large numbers are also employed in the last pre-harvest job, “pulling leaves,” exposing the bunches to the sun in midsummer, and 5,000 are needed for the harvest, which in Delano usually lasts from August to November.2
The Delano grape growers, dependent on all of this labor, were particularly anxious about the possibility of any significant jump in workers’ wages. Perhaps more worrying was the long-term decline in U.S. per capita table grape consumption, from an average high of 6.8 pounds per year from 1934 to 1938 to a low of 3.7 pounds in 1965.3 Unable to agree on a marketing order that would keep some vineyards out of production, the growers faced an extremely unwelcome conclusion: they had planted too many vines, and unless consumption patterns changed, they stood to lose plenty of money. They could partially cover their losses by selling their grapes for wine-crush—many varieties can go both ways, although high-quality wine grapes make poor table grapes—but the crush price is far below the fresh price. A grower who paid for all the pre-harvest work necessary to produce a table grape and then, because of an oversupplied market, decided to sell for crush would not even make the average return of a straight wine grape grower. If, on the other hand, a grower decided to avoid the pre-harvest costs of fresh grapes and produce just for the wine market, he would have to write off whatever capital investment he had made in packing sheds and cooling facilities, as well as missing whatever chance he might have to take advantage of a quick upturn in the table grape market, where large profits might make up for the long years of soft markets.
None of the choices were good, and in 1965, men whose wealth was based on the production of table grapes faced an uncertain future. Would the long slump in grape consumption ever be reversed? It was hard to tell; until the 1920s, table grapes had never been an important product of the vine. Although vineyards are nearly as old as agriculture, first mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphics around 2400 BC, the ancients were not much interested in eating grapes. Noah used his vineyard to make wine, as did the Greeks in Homeric times. The French, who received grape cuttings from the Phoenicians and started planting vineyards in 600 BC, were wine drinkers, not grape eaters. Franciscans and Jesuits, who carefully carried cuttings to California and other far reaches of the New World, drank the grapes they grew. Only during the Gold Rush did people eat enough grapes to create a small local market, and local it had to remain because fresh grapes could not travel far before they spoiled. Grapes started being put on refrigerated rail cars and moved around the country in large quantities only because Prohibition legislation allowed individuals to make up to 200 gallons of wine for their own consumption. Strong spirits and beer received no similar legal dispensation, and with most U.S. wineries closed down, the field was clear for the household winemakers. Prior to prohibition, average U.S. wine production was about forty-five to fifty million gallons. By 1930, makeshift vintners were brewing, even by the low official count, 145 million gallons of wine. The price of grapes, which had topped out at $75 a ton before 1919, had doubled by 1920, with some selling for $300 a ton within two years.4
California growers planted more than 128 million new vines between 1919 and 1925, an increase of more than 50 percent. Vines producing the more hardy table grape varieties that could also be used to make wine (like Thompson seedless grapes) were especially popular and increased by 250 percent.5 Most of this new acreage was planted on the eastern outskirts of the old Tulare Basin, by relatively poor Italian and Croatian immigrants who bought cheap dry land and used the relatively new centrifugal pump to tap ground water and irrigate their vineyards. Led by Joseph DiGiorgio, the more successful new growers threw up packing sheds as quickly as possible, and in cooperation with the railroads, they improved and extended the infrastructure necessary to keep the fresh grapes cool on the trip east. Bunches of fresh grapes, the vast majority grown in and around Delano, began to appear all over the country. Most were destined for wine vats, but some made their way to the dinner table, and a new national market was born.
But bust follows boom, and by the mid-twenties the table grape market crashed. The new growers had put in too many vines. Some of them went broke even before the Depression officially arrived. A few dozen survived the crisis and acquired holdings of thousands of acres. But when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the problem of oversupply intensified. Per capita sales fell consistently. No one knew where the bottom was.
The immigrant farmers who had prospered through the various ups and downs in the market had acquired enough land and had diversified into other fruit so that their dominant class position was secure. But this was a small group of people. Although there
