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Journal ArticleDOI

Factories in the Field Revisited

01 May 1997-Pacific Historical Review-Vol. 66, Iss: 2, pp 149-184
TL;DR: The welfare of this whole community is so bound up in the prosperity of the raisin business, and the progress of that business is so dependent on organized and more or less public action, that raisin affairs have always been treated, and properly treated, as public affairs.
Abstract: The raisin situation... is more than a private business question. The welfare of this whole community is so bound up in the prosperity of the raisin business, and the progress of that business is so dependent on organized and more or less public action, that raisin affairs have always been treated, and properly treated, as public affairs.... The raisin industry, in this community, can not be treated, and never has been treated, as "business" in that narrowly private sense. Chester Rowell
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper traced the emergence and development of an American agrarian discourse, constituted from a wealth of ideas and theories concerning the place of farming in American society and the embodiment of these lines of thought in the agricultural legislation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Abstract: In this article we initiate a critical analysis of the discursive geographies from which U.S. agricultural legislation has been constructed. First, we refer to the geography of discourse, which consists of the production, dissemination, and consumption of ideas, concepts, theories, and understandings. Specifically, we trace the emergence and development of an American agrarian discourse, constituted from a wealth of ideas and theories concerning the place of farming in American society and the embodiment of these lines of thought in the agricultural legislation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We highlight particular discursive sites and the establishment of expert groups and associated institutions, as well as time and place specific understandings of farmers and farming. The second dimension we draw out focuses on the semantic geography of discourse itself: It is through discourse that objects of debate—such as people and place—are demarcated and placed in relation to each other. In this case, farming and farmers have been understood in relation to a series of binaries (free/fettered, family/corporate, rural/urban, welfare/investment, safety/risk, individual/social, us/them), one side of which becomes valorized as “ideal” or the “norm.” We explore the semantic geography of agricultural legislation by focusing on one discursive site, namely the U.S. Senate, and the debates leading to the passage of the 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill.

62 citations


Cites background from "Factories in the Field Revisited"

  • ...Farmers are not heavily subsidized, and, according to Vaught (1997) their discursive understandings of farms, farming, and farmers/farm workers, while certainly definitive at the regional level, are not formative of post–WorldWar II federal agricultural policy....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Matthews worked the next two years laying pipe for the Hollister Water Company and earned $18.70 from "the Water Co." that month as discussed by the authors, but was laid off after thirty-eight days and died six months later from a work-related accident.
Abstract: Joseph Warren Matthews experienced the industrial Far West late in life. Seeking wages, the fifty-one-year-old Californian took a temporary job at Claus Spreckels's Watsonville sugar refinery in 1893 but soon left for the better pay offered on a nearby ranch. Matthews worked the next two years laying pipe for the Hollister Water Company. "This is my birthday," Matthews scribbled in his diary on June 6, 1896. "I am 54 years old. I worked all day filling in [the] ditch." He earned $18.70 from "the Water Co." that month. Eventually laid off, Matthews sought employment during the following three years wherever it could be found: mining quicksilver in California; wage labor in the Alaskan goldfields; road work for a Pacific Northwest lumber company; smelting ore for the San Jose Copper Company; and finally, an irrigation job in the San Joaquin Valley for Miller & Lux, the massive land, cattle, and water company. Now fiftyseven years old, Matthews drew less than a dollar per day "plus found" working on one of the firm's night irrigation crews. He left Miller & Lux's employ after thirty-eight days and died six months later from a work-related accident.1

20 citations

01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: This article analyzed Steinbeck's three most prevalent cognitive landscapes, i.e., highway, automobile, and migrant camp, for The Grapes of Wrath, and found that they served as his unwitting autobiography, documenting his tastes, values, aspirations, and fears in a visible form.
Abstract: John Steinbeck was a writer who created memorable stories and deeply cared about people, particularly the dispossessed and the persecuted. These people were the subject of his greatest novels. Steinbeck's critics in the 1930s viewed him as an anti-capitalist and anti-industrialist because of his desire to document the horrid living conditions in the agricultural fields of California's Central Valley, but, in reality, Steinbeck's beliefs and attitudes were ambivalent when writing about the complex relationships that drove the social and economic life in the 1930s. Steinbeck created landscapes in The Grapes of Wrath to illustrate the effects of rapid industrialization within the American society of the 1930s, supporting a complex economic system that provided both benefits and liabilities to those living in this period of change. Cultural landscapes derive meaning through the hard work and effort of those who modify their physical surroundings. In much the same way, Steinbeck mentally crafted landscapes full of meaning as the setting for the characters of The Grapes of Wrath to act upon. This study has termed the landscape, crafted in the author's mind and used as the background setting for the novel, the "cognitive landscape." This cognitive landscape created for The Grapes of Wrath served as Steinbeck's unwitting autobiography, documenting his tastes, values, aspirations, and fears, all in a visible form. This study analyzes Steinbeck's three most prevalent cognitive landscapes; the highway, automobile, and migrant camp. Steinbeck created the highway landscape to illustrate the struggle between opportunity and oppression. He crafted the automobile landscape to describe the tension between the need to be mobile and the need to remain focused on the values that exist at home. He formed the migrant camp landscape to

13 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that Goldschmidt's community study method neglected class relationships that made Dinuba a predominantly middle-class community within a broader class-based geography, and suggest that the relative strength and coherence of Dinuba's middle class may have pr...
Abstract: Walter Goldschmidt's seminal research in the 1940s on the social consequences of industrial agriculture has fostered a continuing critique of large-scale commodity agriculture. Goldschmidt concluded that larger farm size produced a lower quality of life in rural towns by increasing the proportion of low-wage workers and moving capital and profits elsewhere. I address Goldschmidt's counts of seasonal laborers employed at the large-farm town of Arvin and the small-farm town of Dinuba, noting that Dinuba's seasonal laborers were more numerous than Arvin's and less likely to reside locally. Goldschmidt excluded this data from his analysis and conclusions, a fact that has eluded all subsequent scholars. I argue that Goldschmidt's community study method neglected class relationships that made Dinuba a predominantly middle-class community within a broader class-based geography. Using more recent studies from rural California, I suggest that the relative strength and coherence of Dinuba's middle class may have pr...

6 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI

179 citations

Book
01 Jan 1942
TL;DR: McWilliams' "Factories in the field" as discussed by the authors is a near-classic volume published a quarter of a century ago by Little, Brown, and it is a facsimile reissue of McWilliams' book.
Abstract: This is a facsimile reissue of Carey McWilliams' near-classic volume published a quarter of a century ago by Little, Brown. That a continuing demand for the book should have moved a major reprint house to bring it back in this sturdily bound format, obviously designed for libraries, is a tribute to the original work. It is unfortunate that this is not a new edition. As Professor Paul S. Taylor, one of our leading academic specialists in migratory labor problems, reminded us in the January 1968 issue of this quarterly ("California Farm Labor: A Review"): "The sources for the history of California's agricultural labor remain too largely unexploited" (p. 52). But McWilliams, alas, has long since given up writing his studies of California corporate farming and the problems of minority groups to devote himself to editing the liberal weekly, The Nation. A Los Angeles lawyer and political activist, McWilliams published his Factories in the Field, a critical expos6 of the workings of large-scale California agriculture in 1939, the year he took office as Commissioner of Immigration and Housing in Governor Culbert L. Olson's administration. He was an exceedingly energetic commissioner. Rushing about the state to inspect migratory labor camps and to see that employers would have difficulties in using migrants as strikebreakers, he managed to make himself a nuisance-to put it mildly-to farm operators. He also found time to prepare testimony for Congressional committees and to write Ill Fares the Land. In gathering material for this book, which includes a discussion of migratory labor problems not only in California but in other regions as well, McWilliams traveled widely throughout the country. Then the defeat of Olson brought Governor Earl Warren to office-and returned McWilliams to private life. McWilliams draws a gloomy picture of the plight of farm workers in the United States, one which, though it could be altered in detail today, is still fundamentally true. What he referred to in 1941 as "the defense program" had great short-run implications for migratory farm workers, but it is remarkable how little World War II changed the basic situation, except to shift the emphasis once again to Mexican laborers in the West. It was not McWilliams' intention to write "balanced history" in this impassioned although fact-filled book. But he managed to produce a social document of enduring value. It is good to have it back.

55 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines early Los Angeles's transition from an essentially entrepreneurial growth regime (1880-1906) to a more state-centered growth regime(1906-1932) and highlights the role of government in this transition.
Abstract: The author examines early Los Angeles's transition from an essentially entrepreneurial growth regime (1880-1906) to a more state-centered growth regime (1906-1932). The analysis highlights the role...

30 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The IWW and Organization of Asian Workers in Early 20th Century America as discussed by the authors were two of the most prominent organizations for Asian workers in the US during the early 20th century.
Abstract: (1995). The IWW and Organization of Asian Workers in Early 20th Century America. Labor History: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 77-87.

21 citations

Book
01 Jan 1940

17 citations