more apparent than in the case of agricultural labor, a thorny political question that perfectly demonstrated the enormous gulf separating the wealthy and well-connected from the poor and politically powerless. Huge landholdings inherited from Spanish and Mexican grants or from awards to railroads made California by the late nineteenth century ahead of its time in the development of massive agribusiness operations as the principal producers of farmed goods. British observer James Bryce in his American Commonwealth in the 1880s commented that “the land system in California presents features both peculiar and dangerous, a contrast between great properties, often appearing to conflict with the general weal, and the sometimes hard pressed small farmer, together with a mass of unsettled labor, thrown without work into the towns at certain times of the year.”58 Landowners could depend upon a ready supply of immigrant labor from Asia and Mexico as well as periodic waves of domestic unemployed pushed westward by economic crisis or drought. High capitalization costs for enormous holdings concentrating on single crops necessitated a flexible, mobile labor force that could be rapidly increased at harvest times and then reduced out of season.59 The economic realities of California agriculture created a system in which a small number of wealthy landowners controlled the economic well-being of hundreds of thousands of rural poor who held little political sway and who in many cases were not even American citizens, thereby condemning them to the status of indentured wage slaves at the mercy of the needs of their employers and their allies in government.
The politics of farm labor conspired with the economic factors to leave rural workers outside the protective umbrella of progressive governance well into the post-World War II era. A riot at the Durst Brothers Hop Ranch in Wheatland in 1913 brought the plight of rural laborers into the public eye and prompted the recently established California commission of Immigration and Housing to inspect labor camps “with the object in view of rendering the immigrant that protection to which he is entitled,” and the legislature gave the commission funds and a remit to attempt to force an improvement in camp conditions.60 An improvement in living arrangements and sanitation in the camps was seen as the solution to the farm labor problem; happier, healthier workers would be less prone to riot or strike, and social peace would be restored. The larger question of the economic status of lowly paid, seasonal workers was never addressed, and there was no direct organizational link between government and the agricultural workforce to match the development of labor unions for industrial workers. Indeed, despite efforts in the 1930s to unionize and politicize farm labor, it quickly became clear that differences of ethnicity, citizenship, and patterns of work in the fields rendered agriculture a far cry from urban industry in its place in the economic structure.61 Progressive politics in California saw questions of labor relations and economic inequality as individual technical problems to be addressed on a case by case basis. Without a coherent ideological worldview to unite elected politicians and the economically disenfranchised it was difficult to see how the overall position of farm workers could be improved.
In the 1940s the question of the economic and political position of farm workers gained new salience with the passage of the bracero law in 1942 and the decision of the AFL-affiliated National Farm Workers' Union to organize in California in early 1947. The wartime pressure for maximum agricultural production led to leaders of agribusiness to press congress into allowing the legal importation of Mexican farm labor into the United States, initially on an emergency basis but extended indefinitely in 1951. The bracero program was also supported by a ready supply of illegal immigrant labor that made it virtually impossible for labor organizers to exert upward pressure on wages, as farm owners increasingly turned away from a reliance on domestic labor in order to ensure complete employment flexibility and to keep wages low. Out of some half million people involved in harvesting crops in California in the 1940s, only about 140,000 were local day wage laborers, meaning that imported labor constituted much of the rest. “Vast differences in culture and ethos separated [braceros, domestics, and illegals] despite their common class status as rural proletarians,” wrote Ernesto Galarza, farm labor organizer in the NFLU in the late 1940s. “Significant savings in the wage outlay for harvesting became possible by discarding domestics and lowering wage scales to more economical ratios with fertilizer, machinery, fuel, and other non-human inputs.”62 Rivalries between domestics and non-U.S. citizens for jobs undermined efforts to create solidarity over issues of pay and conditions, and the flexibility of the bracero system allowed owners and managers to circumvent unionization efforts by firing striking workers and bringing in extra imported labor.
The first serious effort by the NFLU to make headway in California was the strike at the DiGiorgio ranch in 1947, but the protracted and bitter dispute over union recognition at the largest estate in the central Valley revealed serious political roadblocks to the union's goal of transforming working conditions in the farming heartland of the state. The problem was not just one of supply and demand—the fact that the availability of cheap and willing labor outweighed the number of workers willing to strike—it was also one of political power. Not only did Robert DiGiorgio benefit from the support of local officials in Kern county, including the sheriff, the Board of Supervisors, and the justice of the peace, but he also drew upon larger reserves of political patronage at the state level, and knew that the weight of legislative and legal machinery could be brought to bear.63 Membership of the state board of agriculture, for instance, was restricted to leading figures in the Farm Bureau, the Associated Farmers, grower-shipper associations, and business leaders, all hostile to union organizing.64 Farm owners had almost exclusive access to state and federal officials who implemented and managed the bracero agreements with Mexico, allowing them to write wage agreements and dictate the terms of the program to their advantage. And when in the wake of the unsuccessful DiGiorgio strike the NFLU and AFL organized a boycott to pressurize owners into recognizing the union, DiGiorgio's lawyers filed suit against the boycotters, invoking the ban on secondary boycotts in the recently passed Taft-Hartley Act despite the fact that agricultural labor was excluded from federal collective bargaining legislation. Agricultural labor was thus deprived of the benefits of the National Labor Relations Act but victim of its antistrike provisions, testimony to the major imbalance in New Deal-era industrial relations law between employers and employees.65
The very limited success of the farm worker organizing movement in the late 1940s demonstrated the vital need for a shift in the wider political climate in California at Mid-Century. Without the integration of farm labor into the protective embrace of collective bargaining, minimum wage, and prospective fair employment legislation, the scope for a substantive shift in living conditions on the land in the Golden State remained severely limited, regardless of grassroots organizing activity. Existing power structures in the era of Earl Warren had no incentive to challenge the dominance of grower elites in the central and Imperial Valleys, and the California Federation of Labor, keen to keep its place at the legislative table in Sacramento and to head off any attempts to roll back its political influence, was by the early 1950s wary of getting too involved in new organizing drives.66 What was lacking was a language of social inclusion in political discourse at the state level that could embrace farm workers in its legislative and ideological agenda. It would take a new generational of political activists who, on the face of it, had nothing in common with those toiling in the fields to change the landscape of California politics in ways that could open the door at least to a consideration of farm labor as part of a broader question of social citizenship in the 1950s.
CHAPTER 2
Building the Democratic Party in the 1940s
The California Democratic Party needed a message and a program in order to unite all left-of-center interests in the state behind its banner and thus establish a genuine political choice for the public and set up the terms of debate in the postwar years. The difficulties it faced in achieving this task also point up reasons why it would become one of the most radical in reshaping its political perspective during the 1950s and 1960s: liberal political ideology was being thrashed out within the Democratic party hierarchy and in activist organizations against a backdrop of a strong popular front tradition in
