UMcNlft'
OOM
MEXICAN
MIGRATORY
WORKERS
OF SOUTH TEXAS
FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
DIVISION OF RESEARCH
Division of Research
Work Projects Administration
Special Reports
Legislative Trends in Public Relief and Assistance, December 31, 1929, to
July 1, 1936
Survey of Cases Certified for Works Program Employment in 13 Cities
Survey of Workers Separated From WPA Employment in Eight Areas
During the Second Quarter of 1936
A Survey of the Transient and Homeless Population in 12 Cities, September
1935 and September 1936
Usual Occupations of Workers Eligible for Works Program Employment in
the United States; January 15, 1936
Areas of Intense Drought Distress, 1930-1936
The People of the Drought States
Relief and Rehabilitation in the Drought Area
Five Years of Rural Relief
Age of WPA Workers, November 1937
Survey of Workers Separated From WPA Employment in Nine Areas, 1937
Urban Housing: A Summary of Real Property Inventories Conducted as
Work Projects, 1934-1936
Workers on Relief in the United States in March 1935
Volume I. A Census of Usual Occupations
Volume II. A Study of Industrial and Educational Backgrounds
Former Relief Cases in Private Employment
Changing Aspects of Urban Relief
Migratory Cotton Pickers in Arizona
Rural Regions of the United States
The Pecan Shellers of San Antonio
Mexican Migratory Workers of South Texas
Average General Relief Benefits, 1933-1938 (in collaboration with the
Division of Statistics)
FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY
John M. Carmody, Administrator
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
F. C. Harrington, Commissioner
Corrington Gill, Assistant Commissioner
DIVISION OF RESEARCH
Howard B. Myers, Director
MEXICAN
MIGRATORY WORKERS
OF SOUTH TEXAS
By
Selden C. Menefee
Under the Supervision of
John N. Webb
Chief, Social Research Section
Division of Research
1941
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON
Letter oF Transmittal
Work Projects Administration,
Washingtpn, D. C., July 1, 1940.
Sir: I transmit herewith an analysis of the working and living
conditions of a representative group of Mexican migratory agri¬
cultural workers in the Winter Garden Areaof south Texas. The
activities of this group include the principal types of farm
labor open to the Mexicans.
The Texas Mexicans are one of the largest groups of migratory
farm workers in the Nation. They furnish labor that is essen¬
tial to the agriculture of the Southwest, the Middle West, and
the Plains States. They migrate in family groups from one crop
to another, returning year after year to cultivate and harvest
beets, cotton, spinach, onions, and other crops. Because of the
regularity of their work patterns, developed through years of
experience at this type of work, they had comparatively little
total family unemployment in 1938, the year covered by the sur¬
vey. Their average annual income was also somewhat higher than
the averages for migratory families previously studied in Arizona,
California, and other States. The relationship between regu¬
larity of employment, incomes, and social conditions among the
Mexicans is one of the most interesting aspects of the present
report.
Relief was not a widespread problem among these Mexican migrar-
tory workers in 1938, although during the depression an increas¬
ing number of them had asked for assistance from the Wforks
Progress Administration, the Federal Surplus Commodities Corpora^
tion, and other Federal agencies. For most such f amilies, public
assistance provided a means of getting through the winter and
early spring months until work was available in beets or cotton.
In the future, however, the Mexicans of rural Texas may become
an increasing relief problem if employment in beets and cotton
continues to decline, because of mechanization, as it has done
in recent years. The report therefore includes a brief summary
of the pfospects for Mexican migratory workers in the light of
production trends and the tendency toward mechanized farming
methods.
The study was made by the Division of Research, under the
direction of Howard B. Myers, Director of the Division. The
I I I
IV • LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
collection and analysis of the data were supervised by John N.
Webb, Chief of the Social Research Section. The field work was
supervised by Orin C. Cassmore, and the report was written by
Selden C. Menefee. Special acknowledgment is made to Rebecca
Pfefferman and Beatrice Mathieson, who assisted in preparing
the data for analysis; Grant D. Clark, of the Bureau of Agri¬
cultural Economics; Leslie R. Hawthorn, of the Winter Garden
Experiment Station in south Texas; an^i others who read and
criticized portions of the report in its preliminary phases.
Respectfully submitted.
Corrinoton Gill,
Assistant Commissioner.
Col. F. C. Harrington,
Commissioner of Ifork Projects.
Contents
Page
Introduction _ _ „ _ _ ix
Summary. xiii
Chapter I. Crystal City: the background- ------- 1
The Mexicans and the spinach industry- - -- -- -- - 3
General trends in spinach production --------- 4
Economic trends in the Winter Garden Area ------ 6
Reasons for the decline in spinach production. _ _ _ _ 8
General factors. _________________ 8
Local factors. __________________ 9
The Mexicans of Crystal City 10
Chapter II. Work patterns and earnings of the Mexican
migratory workers 13
Predominant patterns of activity ----------- 13
Spinach work _____________________ 15
Earnings from spinach work 16
Labor policies and working conditions. ______ 17
Sugar-beet work- 19
Seasonality and location of jobs - -- -- -- -- 19
Earnings from beet work. ------------- 21
Government regulation of the sugar-beet industry _ 23
Labor policies and working conditions. ______ 25
Cotton work. 26
Seasonality and location of jobs _________ 27
Earnings from cotton work. ____________ 27
Labor policies and working conditions. ______ 30
Onion work ---------------------- 35
Miscellaneous types of work- ------------- 36
Local farm work- - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 36
Nonfarm work ------------------- 36
Chapter III. Family incomes of the Mexicans in 1938- - - 37
Average annual income. 37
Income by source, family size, and number of workers - 38
Range of incomes 39
Chapter IV. Social conditions among the Mexicans. _ _ - 41
Housing. 41
Health 43
Education. ---------------------- 44
Public assistance- ------------------ 45
V
VI • CONTENTS
Page
Chapter V. Prospects for the Mexican migratory workers- 47
General trends 47
Spinach. 47
Sugar beets- ------------------- 48
Cotton 49
Onions ______________________ 50
Summary of prospects 50
Conclusions- --------------- - - - - - 52
Appendix A. Supplementary tables. ___________ 55
Appendix B. List of tables. ______________ 59
Index, 61
I LLU STR AT I ON S
Figure Figures
1. Selected agricultural regions, south Texas. _ _ _ _ _
2. Spinach production in thousands of bushels, United
States and Texas, 1919-1939
3. Trends in spinach production in Texas, 1925-1939- _ _
4. Carlot shipments of spinach from Texas, Zavala County,
and Crystal City, 1928-1939 ____________
5. Distribution of activities of 300 Crystal City Mexican
families, by month, January-December 1938 - - - - -
6. Destinations of Mexican sugar-beet workers, 185 fami¬
lies of Crystal City, Tex., 1938- ---------
7. Texas cotton production, by county, 1937- ------
8. Routes of travel of Mexican cotton workers, 100 fami¬
lies of Crystal City, Tex., 1938- ---------
Photographs
Cutting spinach _________________ Facing 16
Topping beets — Facing 17
Picking cotton. _________________ Facing 32
Houses of Mexicans in Crystal City. Facing 33
2
4
5
7
14
20
28
29
M exican Migratory Workers
of South Texas
VI I
INTRODUCTION
The problem of migratory agricultural labor, which has received
such wide attention recently, is by no means new. It arose
many years ago with the first development of largerscale,
specialized farming. As many as a quarter of a million American
workers a year did seasonal labor in wheat from 1900 until 1920.
Many of these started with the first harvest in Texas and worked
northward to end the season in the spring-wheat areas of the
northern Plains States and Canada. After 1920, however, this
huge crew of harvest hands was largely displaced by the combine
harvester.1
After the first WorldWartwo new types of agriculture requir¬
ing large supplies of seasonal labor grew increasingly important:
fruit and winter-vegetable growing in the southern climates of
California, south Texas, and Florida; and cotton growing on the
sparsely populated high plains of west Texas and Oklahoma and
in the irrigated valleys of Arizona and southern California.
These crops were not so susceptible to mechanization as wheat,
and as a result the demand for seasonal workers assumed new
proportions, particularly in the Southwest and on the Pacific
coast.
The extension of large-scale farming,a system in which large
ranches are operated as incorporated businesses, has also con¬
tributed to the demand for seasonal workers. High peaks in
labor demand came when the specialty crops of these "factories
in the fields" matured. Often local workers were not available
in sufficient numbers to harvest the crops, so this type of
agriculture came to depend on migratory seasonal workers from
distant areas.
After the onset of the depression the number of migratory
workers began to grow more rapidly than the demand for their
services. This aggravated the "problem" aspect of seasonal
agricultural labor—the maladjustment between labor demand and
supply—and kept wages at a low level. Numerous surveys in the
past decade have shown average cash incomes of $200 to $500 per
year for families in migratory work.
^•Taylor, Paul S., "Migratory Farm Labor In the United States,'Monthly
Labor Review, Vol. 44. No. 3. March 1937, PP. 537-549.
IX
X • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
One result of these low wages was a high labor turnover in
seasonal agricultural work. In addition, many surplus workers,
unable to get relief, medical care, or adequate housing in the
months when no jobs were available to them, suffered from hunger
and exposure.
The problems of the Mexican migratory workers of Texas have
been less publicized than those of California farmworkers, for
several reasons. The Mexicans are of a different racial and
cultural group from other migratory workers;and, partly because
of language difficulties, they are less vocal in their desire
for higher wages and better working and living conditions. But
their status and problems are not essentially dissimilar to
those of migratory farm workers in other regions.
The existence of a reservoir of low-paid Mexican labor just
across the border has been from the beginning an important
factor in the development of large-scale agriculture in south
Texas. Mexicans came across the border by the thousands in the
years just following the World War to work on farms at wages
approximating a dollar per day. In 1910 there were 226,000
Mexicans in Texas; by 1930 the number had increased to 683,000.2
The Texas Mexicans have proved to be a more stable group of
migratory workers than the various racial minorities—Chinese,
Japanese, Hindus, Mexicans—who have been employed in California
agriculture. Most of them have stayed in Texas and are still
doing the same type of work that they did when they first
arrived. They harvest the spinach, onions, and other small
crops in the Winter Garden Area and the lower Rio Grande Valley
during the winter and spring; do most of the State's cotton
work; and shell pecans inSan Antonio, Laredo, and other cities.
In the sugar-beet fields of the North the Mexicans have
largely displaced other groups of workers, just as refugees
from the Dust Bowl have displaced Filipinos and Mexicans in
California. In the Mountain and Plains States Mexicans have
taken the places of German-Russians who blocked and topped beets
early in the century but who have now become farm owners or
tenants; and in the Midwest they have succeeded European immi¬
grant groups such as Belgians and Poles.3
For many years the Mexicans in certain areas have had a virtual
monopoly of unskilled work in sugar beets. A Nation-wide survey
showed that in 1935 two-thirds of all sugar-beet field workers
were Mexicans.4 They seem unlikely to drift away from the beet
2
Bureau of the Census, fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930,
Population Vol. II, U. S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D. C., 193s,
P. 44.
3Taylor, op. cit.
4Johnson, Elizabeth S., Welfare of families of Sugar-Beet Laborers, Bureau
Publication No. 247, U. 8. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, Washington,
D.C., 1939, p. 13.
INTRODUCTION • XI
fields to other, types of work. The farmers like them as field
laborers because they are quiet, hard workers who keep to them¬
selves; because their large families contain several workers
each; and because most of them disappear in the winter "over
the horizon" to their homes in Texas and other Southwest States'.
The Mexicans accept this type of work because the wages in beets
are higher than those paid in cotton and other crops raised in
t he Sout hwest.
Migration has become a way of life with the Mexicans, who have
in turn become accepted as a stable source of labor by growers
of cotton, vegetables, and other crops in Texas, as well as by
sugar-beet growers in the North. The low wages that prevail
in these types of work are partly offset by the fact that several
members of each Mexican family usually work in the fields. In
addition, by migrating from one crop to another, many of these
families are able to find some sort of employment through most
of the year, so that their annual earnings are somewhat higher
than those of most migratory workers in other places.
The present study is one of a series of WPA surveys in the
general field of seasonal and migratory labor. The Texas Mexi¬
cans are important because they constitute one of the largest
groups of migratory workers in the country. Those who make
their headquarters in south Texas are particularly interesting
because of the extent to which they have been able to dovetail
employment in various crops, reducing total family unemployment
to a minimum.
Crystal City, in Zavala County, Tex., was chosen as the
location of the study for several reasons. It is similar
in many ways to the dozens of towns in south Texas where Mexican
migratory workers return each year to spend their winters. It
is a concentration point for Mexican labor employed not only in
spinach but in cotton, onions, and sugar beets as well. Thus it
afforded an exceptional opportunity to study the various work
patterns characteristic of Mexican migratory agricultural labor.
An additional favorable circumstance was the fact that the
Division of Research had just completed a survey of an urban
group of Texas Mexicans, the pecan shellers of San Antonio,
covering the year 1938.5 By extending this study to Crystal
City, the Division was able to obtain similar data from a repre¬
sentative rural group for the same calendar year as that covered
by the San Antonio study. It was then possible to compare the
city and farm groups.
The 300 families interviewed in Crystal City comprised a
random sample of approximately one-third of all Mexican families
5Menefee, Selden C. and Cassmore, Orln C., The Pecan Shellers of San
Antonio, Division or Research, Work. Projects Administration, Washington,
D. C., 1940. Data for all comparisons of San Antonio Mexicans with those
of Crystal City are derived from this survey.
XII • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
in the town and its immediate vicinity. Three Spanish-speaking
interviewers obtained information from the heads of the families.
The material thus gathered was checked against other sources
whenever possible.
The data here presented should prove useful in supplementing
the more general discussions of Mexican labor which have appeared
in recent years.6 With the San Antonio study, they may cast
considerable new light on the Mexican's place in our economy,
his role as a migratory seasonal worker, his wages, and the
conditions under which he works.
6See especially Taylor, Paul S., Mexican Labor in the United States,
University of California Publications In Economics, Vols. 6, 7, and 12,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930-1934.
SUMMARY
CRYSTAL CITY, Tex., is a winter concentration point for Mexican
workers in the vegetable industry of south Texas. It is the
center of the Winter Garden Area, the most important spinach-
producing district in the United States.
The spinach industry first reached large proportions in the
Winter Garden Area about 1924. Production increased steadily
from that time until 1932, when the peak.in shipments of fresh
spinach was reached. During this period of expansion thousands
of Mexican workers came or were brought to Crystal City to har¬
vest the spinach crop.
In 1933 spinach shipments from Texas began to decline. The
drop was greatest in the Winter Garden Area. The major cause
of the decline there was the weed problem, which resulted chiefly
from poor soil management. Other factors included soil depletion
in some areas, epidemics of plant diseases, frosts, and rising
costs of irrigation. Shipments from Crvstal City dropped to
half their former level after 1934. Meanwhile there was a
decided trend toward larger plantings of spinach in the non-
irrigated portions of the State, east of the Winter Garden,
where costs of production were lower.
The decline of spinach production around Crystal City profoundly
affected the Mexican spinach workers. Wages dropped sharply,
and the workers had difficulty in earning enough to support their
large families. By 1938 many of the Mexicans could not find
more than 3 or 4 days' work a week even during the spinach season.
As a result, economic distress increased in the Mexican community.
A few Mexican families moved away from Crystal City, but the
majority continued to return each autumn because a little em¬
ployment in spinach was preferable to no work at all during the
winter season when jobs were scarce.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS OF THE MEXICANS
Most of the 1938 work histories of the 300 Mexican families
studied had one element in common: more than nine-tenths of
the families worked in spinach at some time during the winter
harvest season, which normally lasts from late November to the
XI I I
XiV • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
end of March. When all the spinach was cut and shipped, 19 out
of 20 families migrated north or east to work in other crops.
Almost a third got in a few weeks' work in the Texas onion
harvest before going on to beets or cotton. Over 60 percent of
the families worked in the sugar-beet fields throughout an area
extending from Michigan to Montana. A third of all the family
groups worked at picking cotton from July until late autumn.
Almost half of this latter group also found work in chopping
cotton before the picking season started.
These four crops dovetailed with one another so neatly that
in only one month of the year, April, did total family unemploy¬
ment rise above 4 percent. In spite of this regularity of
employment, however, wages were so low that many of the Crystal
City families were in need at the time of the survey.
The average1 weekly earnings of the Mexicans in spinach work
were $3.13 per worker. Total family cash earnings from this
crop averaged $124 in 1938. Large plantings of spinach are
common in the Winter Garden Area, and the growers usually deal
with labor contractors, who have paid 5 cents per bushel to the
spinach cutters in recent years. Because of dropping production,
there is now a surplus of labor around Crystal City.
Sugar beets are the major source of income for most of the
Mexicans of Crystal City. Average weekly earnings from this
source were $6.33 per worker in 1938, and average family cash
earnings from beet work were $400 for the year. These amounts
would probably have been somewhat lower except for Government
regulation of wages and production in the beet industry under
the Sugar Act of 1937. An increasing number of Mexicans have
sought work in beets in recent years, and in 1938 a surplus of
workers cut into the earnings of beet laborers in some places.
Because of the wages, living conditions, and relative lack of
racial discrimination in the North, the Mexicans consider sugar-
beet work more desirable than cotton work.
Of the 300 survey families lOOwere employed in cotton in 1938.
Their total cash earnings from cotton work averaged $278 per
family. To earn a weekly average of $4.22 per worker at the
predominant rate of pay (50 cents per 100 pounds), more than
three members per family, including many children under 14 years
of age, worked in the fields. Living conditions of cotton workers
were bad; housing facilities furnished to the pickers were over¬
crowded and unsanitary; and in some places houses were lacking
altogether. Migration of families following the cotton crop
was haphazard, although the Texas State Employment Service was
exercising increasing control over the workers' movements in
order to avoid undue disorder and hardships.
1The term "average" refers to median when used in connection with data on
the 300 Mexican families interviewed.
SUMMARY • XV
Onion work was comparable to spinach work with regard towages
and working conditions. The onion season is very short, however,
and earnings averaged only $43 in cash per family from this crop
in 1938.
Mexican families employed at miscellaneous farm work averaged
$71 in cash from this source during the year.
FAMILY INCOMES IN 1938
The Mexican families studied in Crystal City had average
incomes of $506 in cash—$561 in cash and kind—in 1938.2 Crystal
City families were large (averaging 5.5 persons), and some of
their income was consumed by traveling expenses, since nearly
all the families migrated in 1938. Asa result of these factors,
the average family found it difficult to subsist on its earnings.
Families with beet work as their principal source of income
had the largest total annual earnings, $611 per family in cash
and kind. Cotton families were second, with nonfarm and miscel¬
laneous farm families at the foot of the income scale. Earnings
varied with size of family and number of workers. The range of
incomes in 1938 was wide, with 10 percent of the families earning
under $300, and 4 percent earning over $1,500, cash and kind.
The larger incomes were nearly always those of very large fami¬
lies containing many workers. Most of the family incomes fell
between $300 and $699.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS
The Mexican sections of Crystal City form a large semirural
slum. More than half of the Mexicans own their houses or shacks,
but most of the dwellings in the Mexican quarter are crudely
built and in very bad repair. Few have electricity or plumbing.
The houses are badly overcrowded; there was an average of 2.6
persons per room at the time of the survey.
As a result of low incomes, poor housing, and bad sanitation,
disease is widespread among the Mexicans. Tuberculosis and
diarrhea have taken a particularly heavy toll. The local health
service is unable to care for all of those who need medical
assistance.
Education of the Mexicans is also on a low level, partly because
family migrations make it impossible for the children to attend
school regularly. In 1938 the average 18-year-old youth had
not completed the third grade of school.
The Mexicans have had difficulty in obtaining relief, mainly
because of their lack of citizenship and their employment at
agricultural labor during most of the year.
2Thls was about twice as High as the average for the Mexican pecan shelters
of San Antonio, who were less experienced as agricultural workers and who
had fewer workers per family.
XVI • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
PROSPECTS FOR THE MEXICANS
The decline in spinach production in the Winter Garden Area
is likely to reduce further winter employment among the Mexicans.
A revival of the spinach industry or the growth of diversified
farming might halt this trend, but there are few indications
that either of these two developments is likely to take place
in the near future.
Technological changes in beet and cotton production point to
the gradual displacement of a considerable number of workers
in these crops in the future. Spinach and onions seem less
likely to be further affected by mechanization; but the net effect
of decreased production in these crops, together with increased
mechanization in the beet and cotton fields, will probably be
the growth of a serious unemployment problem.
The present status of the Crystal City Mexicans indicates
that comparatively regular employment in seasonal agricultural
labor may not provide sufficient income for the adequate support
of the workers' families. Such programs as that of the Farm
Security Administration help to improve the situation of the
migrants to some extent. But their cash incomes are not likely
to increase in the near future because the constant flow of
sharecroppers and tenant farmers into the ranks of the day
laborers has produced severe competition for these highly seasonal
jobs. Low incomes among the Mexican migrants will therefore
continue, in all probability, until increased industrial pro¬
duction is able to absorb surplus workers from the farm-labor
market throughout the country.
Chapter I
CRYSTAL CITY: THE BACKGROUND
CRYSTAL CITY, Tex,, has been called the spinach capital of the
world. Located in the Winter Garden Area, about 100 miles
southwest of San Antonio, this town is the center of a rich,
irrigated valley where the climate and soil are particularly
well suited for raising winter truck crops. During the past
decade the shipping platforms of Zavala County, of which Crystal
City is the county seat, have sent to market annually from a
quarter to more than half of all carlot shipments of fresh
spinach in the country.
The spinach industry in the Winter Garden Area (fig. 1) is a
fairly recent development. When the first American settlers
arrived, in the 1860's, they found only a dry, low-lying valley
covered with sprawling mesquite trees. The first irrigation
occurred in 1876, when water was diverted from a small river
by a landholding company. During the 1880's artesian water
was discovered. There was no widespread interest in irrigation,
however, until about 1907 or 1908* At that time the building
of a branch line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad through Zavala
County provided transportation advantages which made irrigated
vegetable farming profitable. The farmers of the Winter Garden
thus were able to make use of the water which was available in
the rivers, lakes, and artesian wells. So many artesian wells
were bored that underground water pressure was greatly reduced,
and pumps had to be installed to obtain water from the wells.1
In spite of this development, however, the growing of onions,
spinach, and other truck crops for the winter and early spring
market was profitable, and acreage in these crops began to
increase. In the winter of 1917-18 about 4 acres of spinach
were grown successfully near Crystal City. The following
1Taylor, Paul S., Mexican Labor in the United States: Dinnit County,
Vinter Garden District, South Texas, University of California Publications
In Economics, Vol. 1, Part V, Berkeley: University of California Press,
July 1930, pp. 293-320: and Smith, Howard M. and others. Soil Survey of
lavala County, Texas, Series 1934, No. 21. U. S. Department o-f Agriculture,
Bureau of Plant Industry, June 1940. PP. 6-7, 33.
319118 0—41 2 I
2 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Fig. I - SELECTED AGRICULTURAL REGIONS, SOUTH TEXAS
rs .
«o
I BLANCO / TRW|S
I /\
/\j MAVERICK I ^ I FR!0 X
LOWER VALLEY AREA^
Brownsville*^
x/y/X Irrigated areas
r ' Selected agricultural regions (approximate)
CRYSTAL CITY: THE BACKGROUND • 3
year 100 acres were planted, and each succeeding year the acreage
increased.2 In the 1923-24 season, the first year for which
records of railway shipments are available, 913 carlots of
spinach were shipped from Crystal City. Two years later 2,555
carlot shipments were sent to market from the town's loading
platforms. Onion shipments also increased rapidly in this
period, rising from 300 to 850 carlots.3 Onion shipments began
to decline sharply about 1930, however, while spinach shipments
continued to increase until 1933.
THE MEXICANS AND THE SPINACH INDUSTRY
The history of the Mexicans of Crystal City is in large part
the history of spinach growing in the Winter Garden Area. The
industry has always depended on Mexican labor. The supply of
Mexican workers has been plentiful because Crystal City is less
than 50 miles from the Mexican border.
Prior to the development of irrigation the present Winter
Garden Area was sparsely populated, and the few Mexicans living
there worked principally for cattle and sheep ranchers. One
present-day Mexican resident of Crystal City said that when he
came to Crystal City in 1914 "they were just colonizing it."
There were at that time only a few houses and tents on the site
of the town. During the next 15 years widespread irrigation
and the resultant increase in the growing of spinach and other
vegetables were to create a need for quantities of Mexican labor.
In the early postwar period south Texas growers imported
Mexicans in large numbers under a seasonal-contract labor system
and opposed all restrictions on Mexican immigration. At the
end of the harvest season many of the Mexicans did not return
to their country.
Migration of Mexicans to Crystal City reached its peak in
1925. After that time the growers found it unnecessary to
import workers from Mexico because there were enough migrants
from other parts of Texas to fill their labor needs. By 1930
Crystal City was predominantly a Mexican town in population:
5,156 out of a total of 6,609 persons were classified as members
of "other races" (than the white and Negro).4
Once they had come to Crystal City, the Mexican workers tended
to return year after year because the spinach harvest occurred
in the winter when employment was lacking in beets and cotton.
The spinach growers were therefore able to obtain a large and
stable supply of laborers, who left Crystal City to follow other
crops when the spinach harvest was completed.
2Hawthorn, Leslie R., Spinach Under Irrigation in Texas, Circular No. 06,
Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station, November 1932, p. 3.
®Data obtained from J. 0. Juvenal, Crystal City agent of the Missouri
Pacific Railroad, 1939.
4The 1930 Census reported only 11 Negroes In Zavala County.
4 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
GENERAL TRENDS IN SPINACH PRODUCTION
Spinach consumption in the United States increased steadily
from 1919 through 1929. This was part of a general upward
trend in the consumption of all types of fresh vegetables,
especially in the winter season. It was further stimulated by
the publicity given to the high mineral content of spinach.
From 1925 on Texas supplied an increasing amount of the Nation's
spinach. The State's proportion rose from 22 percent of all
United States' production during the years 1919-1924 to an
average of 35 percent in the period 1925-1934; but after 1934
the proportion of the Nation's spinach grown in Texas was some¬
what lower.5 (See fig. 2 and appendix table 1.)
Fig.2-SPINACH PRODUCTION IN THOUSANDS OF BUSHELS
UNITED STATES AND TEXAS, 1919-1939
Thousand Thousand
Source: Appendix table I.
The increase in Texas spinach growing from 1925 onwasprinci-
pally the result of large-scale plantings in the Winter Garden
Area. In 1929, according to the United States Census, Zavala
County reported 54 percent of the State's acreage. The large
size of the plantings in the Winter Garden Area is shown by the
Agricultural Marketing Service, production reports on spinach for market
and for manufacture, 1917-1939, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington,
D. C.
CRYSTAL CITY: THE BACKGROUND • 5
Fig. 3-TRENDS IN SPINACH PRODUCTION IN TEXAS, 1925-1939
WEIGHTED INDICES
1930-1934
Index
1 250
1935-1939
1925-1929=100
Bushels per
bushel
Index
250
200
1925-1929
Acres^^
Value of crop
Production^
Source: Appendix table 2. WPA
fact that in 1929 the average grower in Zavala County had 183
acres of spinach, compared with an average of only about 12
acres among spinach growers in the State as a whole.6
From 1930 on the spinach industry was beset by increasing
difficulties. The price paid to growers for Texas spinach
dropped from a weighted average of 47 cents per bushel during
the period 1925-1929 to 42 cents in 1930-1934 and 34 cents in
1935-1937.7 (See fig. 3 and appendix table 2.)
The cost of labor, hauling, icing, loading, containers, and
other items entailed by the harvest also dropped in Texas, how¬
ever. Since labor costs were relatively flexible, wages dropped
more rapidly than other portions of the cost of production.
From 1935 on the growers also felt the full impact of the
"spinach depression." In 1935 the crop was so poor that, in
spite of the abnormally high price of Texas spinach that year
(58 cents), few growers made much profit. From 1936 through
1939 the average price of Texas spinach stood at 30 or31 cents
®Bureau of the Census, fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930,
Agriculture, Vol. II, Part 2, U. S. Department of Commerce, Washington,
D. C., pp. 1488, 1507.
7Agrieultural Marketing Service, op. cit.
6 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
per bushel, leaving at best only a few cents per bushel above
harvesting costtocover cultivating, planting, irrigation, and
various overhead items.8
Throughout the depression Texas spinach growers had kept their
acreage at a high level in spite of dropping prices; a peak of
58,000 acres was reached in 1937. This expansion of acreage,
based on the hope of maintaining profits in spite of low prices,
resulted largely from the extension of dry-farmed spinach at
the expense of irrigated spinach. After 1937, however, spinach
acreage in Texas steadily declined.
As a result of the expansion of spinach acreage in dry-farming
areas, the average spinach yield in Texas fell from 286 bushels
per acre during the years 1925-1929 to 189 bushels in 1930-1934
and 128 bushels in 1935-1939; a total drop of 55 percent.9 The
value of the Texas crop was reduced by one-third, or nearly a
million dollars a year, in 1935-1939 as compared with 1925-1929.
Since the Mexicans were able to cut fewer bushels per day when
the stand was sparse, the lowered yield contributed to the
decline in earnings of the spinach workers.
ECONOMIC TRENDS IN THE WINTER GARDEN AREA
Mexican spinach workers in Crystal City frequently divide the
history of the town into two periods: the "spinach boom" and
the "spinach depression." The first period lasted from 1924
through 1932, when the peak in carlot shipments was reached;
after 1932 spinach shipments from the region around Crystal
City dropped more sharply than those from the State as a whole.
The records of railway carlot shipments (which include only
fresh spinach shipped to market and exclude the canned product)
show that while shipments from Texas in the years 1935-1939
declined 26 percent as compared with the period 1930-1934, ship¬
ments from Zavala County declined 45 percent, and those from
Crystal City dropped 55 percent. The proportion of all Texas
spinach shipments originating in Crystal City dropped from more
than half to less than a third.10 (See fig. 4 and appendix
table 3.)
Part of the decrease in carlot shipments of fresh spinach
from Zavala County is accounted for by the establishment of a
cannery in Crystal City just prior to the sharp decline in
shipments in 1935. In the 1938-39 season the cannery was in
operation for about 4 months and employed some 30 workers, most
8
An background material In this publication which is not supported by
appendix tables or documentary references was derived from correspondence
and other data now in the flies of the Division of Research, Work Projects
Administration, Washington, D. C.
9
Agricultural Marketing Service, op. cit.
10Agricultural Marketing Service, reports on carlot shipments of fruits
and vegetables In Texas, 1928-1938, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Wash¬
ington, D. C.
CRYSTAL CITY: THE BACKGROUND • 7
Fig. 4 - CARLOT SHIPMENTS OF SPINACH FROM TEXAS, ZAVALA
COUNTY, AND CRYSTAL CITY, I928H939
Thousand
carlots
Thousand
carlots
8
Vs
late tot
ol
/
/
/
\
\
/
/
//
f
yL ava
la Cou
ity „
X
Crys
\
tal City
\
\
v
/
/
/
\
\
\
\%
1928 '29 '30 '31 '32 '33 '34 '35 '36 '37 '38 '39
Source: Appendix table 3. w
of whom were Mexicans. It shipped over 100,000 cases of canned
spinach in that year, and it was planned to enlarge the cannery
in the future. This plant, however, used not more than a tenth
to a fifth as much spinach as was shipped to market from Crystal
City, and so its operation explains only a fraction of the
decline in shipments of fresh spinach.
Acreage and carlot shipments increased, however, in the non-
irrigated area near the coast where spinach growing was compara¬
tively insignificant until afewyears ago. In the more important
spinach-producing counties east of the Winter Garden Area ship¬
ments were 68 percent greater in the period 1935-1939 than
in 1930-1934. In the Winter Garden Area and adjoining counties
carlot shipments decreased by one-third in the same period.
It is interesting to note that most of the drop in spinach
production occurred in the Crystal City district and in Dimmit
and Webb Counties. Maverick County, Uvalde County, and La Pryor
(in Zavala County) increased their production during the 1935-
1939 period (table 1). La Pryor, 18 miles north of Crystal
City in the central valley of the Winter Garden, became an
important shipping point in 1929. Spinach shipments from there
reached a peak of 1,122 carloads in 1937 but by 1939 they had
8 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Table 1.—Trends in Carlot Shipments of Spinach, Winter Garden Area Compared With Selected
Spinach-Producing Areas of Texas, 1930—19391
Average,
1930-1934
Annual
carlota,
1905-1999
Texas total
Winter Garden Area2 _
Zavala County - - -
Crystal City
La Pryor
Dimmit County
Webb County
Maverick County -
Uvalde County
Wilsoiv-Karnes Area3 -
Coastal Bend Area*
Lower Valley Area __
5.766
4.050
3,330
720
412
335
630
43
9
371
177
4,696
3,695
2,231
1,407
744
43
56
1,050
126
119
622
199
Agricultural Marketing Service, reports on carlot shipments of fruits and vegetables In Texas, 1931-1658,
U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
jrlncludes Zavala, Dimmit, and adjoining counties of Maverick, Webb, LaSalle, PTlo, and Uvalde.
'includes Atascosa, Karnes, and Wilson Counties.
^Includes Bee, Jim Wells, Live Oak., Nueces, and San Patricio Counties.
Includes Cameron, Hidalgo, and Willacy Counties.
dropped to less than half that amount. Maverick County, on
the Rio Grande west of Crystal City, increased its production
steadily from 1*935 through 1939, reaching 1,556 carlot shipments
and surpassing Zavala County in the latter year. The most recent
upward trend in this area has been in Uvalde County, where car-
lot shipments jumped from 8 carlots in 1937 to 94 in 1938 and
507 in 1939.11
REASONS FOR THE DECLINE IN SPINACH PRODUCTION
The decline of spinach growing in the Winter Garden Area and
the accompanying decline in employment and income among workers
in the spinach industry may be explained in terms of (1) general
conditions affecting the industry as a whole and (2) local
factors operating in the district around Crystal City.
General Factors
The onset of the depression and the resulting drop in purchasing
power in the Nation caused a decrease in the demand for, and a
drop in the prices of, vegetables. This trend was probably
accentuated in the case of spinach by the fact that the public
^The 1940 population figures for the principal Winter Garden counties
(released after the completion of the body of this report) reflect the trends
In spinach production shown in table l. From 1920 to 1930, during the height
of the "spinach boom," Zavala County's population increased 233 percent;
but from 1930 to 1940 It increased only 12 percent (from 10,349 to 11,803).
The population of Crystal City Itself dropped 1 percent, from 6,609 to e, 529,
during the decade 1930-1940. Near-by Dimmit County also suffered a loss in
population. Maverick County, however, showed a gain in 1940 of 65 percent
over the 1930 figure. (Bureau of the Census, Population of the State of
Texas: Pinal Figures, 19U0, Series P-2, No. 46. U. S. Department of Com¬
merce, Washington, D. C., Jan. 11, 1941.)
CRYSTAL CITY: THE BACKGROUND • 9
learned that many other vegetables contained iron and other
healthful minerals.
Increased production in certain northern areas near the cities
which furnished the largest markets for spinach also tended to
affect the Texas growers adversely. For example, the Virginia
spinach area near Norfolk, which shipped more carlots of fresh
spinach to market than did Texas prior to 1924 and which has
consistently held second place since then, increased its ship¬
ments by 21 percent during the years 1935-1938 as compared with
1931-1934; Texas shipments declined 23 percent in the same
period.12
Local Factors
The primary factor in decreasing production of spinach around
Crystal City was the growth of a serious weed problem in recent
years. Under the one-crop system, which provided ideal growth
conditions for weeds that matured at .the same time as the
spinach plants, jointweed, carrotweed,and other pests multiplied.
Since these weeds could be brought under control only by hand
weeding and other expensive methods, some growers abandoned
spinach as a principal crop.
Irrigation costs were also high in the Winter Garden Area,
although this factor was less important than the weed problem.
Some water was taken from the Nueces River, but its flow was
irregular; late in 1938 the river was so low that spinach acreage
along the river had to be reduced considerably. Most of the
water for irrigating was pumped from wells, and the cost of
electricity for pumping was relatively high. As a result, the
cost of water alone in the Winter Garden was $1 to $3 per acre,
and total growing costs prior to harvest averaged $10 to $15 or
more per acre.13 With a production of 200 bushels per acre
this would have been 7 or 8 cents per bushel, or enough to eat
up most of the difference between harvesting cost and market
price in the lean years since 1935. /
More favorable conditions in othjfir places contributed to
the development of successful competition by spinach growers
outside Zavala County with growers in the county. The weed
problem was less troublesome in the more recently irrigated
spinach areas of the Winter Garden, such as Maverick County,
and the Coastal Bend Area of Texas than it was in Zavala
County. The fact that most spinach plantings outside the Winter
Garden Area do not have to be irrigated also helped growers in
Agricultural Marketing Service, reports on carlot shipments of fruits
and vegetables In the United States, 1918-1938, U. S. Department of Agri¬
culture, Washington, D. C.
13Hawthorn, op.cit., p. 10, and correspondence in the riles of the Divi¬
sion of Research, Work Projects Administration, Washington, D. C.
10 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
other parts of Texas and the United States to compete success¬
fully with those in the Winter Garden. Therefore, with the
drop in prices since 1930, and especially since 1935, some
irrigated land was taken out of production in Zavala, Dimmit,
and Webb Counties even while new areas of spinach were being
seeded in other Texas counties and in other States where costs
of production were lower than in the Winter Garden Area.
There are certain other incidental factors which have depressed
the spinach industry in the Crystal City district. In the 1935-36
season an epidemic of curly top reduced the crop considerably.
Blue mold, a fungus growth which recurs sporadically in years
when the weather is unfavorable, also injures the crop and causes
a high proportion of waste. Heavy frosts have occasionally had
an adverse effect. And finally, intensive cultivation of this
single crop over a period of several years has caused the soil
to become somewhat depleted in some places. The net effect of
all these conditions has been the cutting of Crystal City spinach
production—and employment for spinach workers—to less than a
third of the peak level reached in 1932.
THE MEXICANS OF CRYSTAL CITY
Crystal Cityisan excellent exampleof a town which has become
a winter concentration point for Mexican migratory workers. It
differs from other south Texas agricultural centers only in that
its population is relatively stable, the great majority of its
Mexican families having returned each winter for many years to
work in the spinach fields.
The growth of Crystal City as a migratory labor reservoir
has been comparatively recent. More than three-fourths of the
heads of families interviewed in connection with the present
survey came to Crystal City after 1920.14 Most of these—
almost 60 percent—arrived there during the period from 1923
through 1931, when spinach growing was still expanding. Over 80
percent of the Mexicans came to Crystal City to find work, 44
percent of them specifically to work in spinach.
Crystal City was apparently a secondary migration point. Only
a fifth of the family heads came directly from Mexico; 77 per¬
cent had lived in some other part of Texas before they moved
to the spinach center.15 About 85 percent said that their
families had originally come from one of the states of north¬
eastern Mexico; 60 percent of all families had originated in
Coahuila, the nearest border state, which is less than 50 miles
away from Crystal City. About seven-eighths of the heads of
families gave unskilled labor as their usual occupation prior
140nly 38 percent of the San Antonio Mexicans came to that city after
1620. (See footnote 6, p. XI.)
15In San Antonio 41 percent had come directly from Mexico.
CRYSTAL CITY: THE BACKGROUND • 11
to taking up spinach work. Nearly all of these had been agri¬
cultural workers.
Large families were the rule in Crystal City; the average16
family included 5.5 persons at the end of 1938. More than four-
fifths of all families were of the "normal" type, with husband
and wife, with or without children.17 More than seven-eighths
of the families had one or more members who were citizens; most
of the children were American-born.
The families studied had an average of 3.1 workers each
(table 2).18 The number of workers increased in striking
Table 2.—Size of Family and Average1 Number of Workers per Family Among Crystal City
Mexicans, 1938
Size of family
Average
number of
workers
All families _
1 person
2 persons
3 persons
4 persons
5 persons __
0 persons
7 persons
8 persons
9 persons or more.
'Average not computed for fewer than 10 cases.
Median.
2More than 5 workers. Exact median not ascertainable.
progression with size of family. Families of 9 persons or more
averaged more than 5 workers; the largest family, with 18 persons,
had 12 workers.
These are the Mexicans who work in the spinach industry of
Crystal City and the Winter Garden Area. They consider this
south Texas town their permanent home. Year after year they
return to cut, haul, ice, and load spinach for the winter market.
In the last few years their earnings in spinach work have dropped
because of low wages and decreased production around Crystal
City, and a few have moved to other places. But most of them
have continued to spend their winters in Zavala County in order
to get what work they can. They depend mainly on their work
in summer crops for their livelihood and draw on their beet
and cotton earnings in order to live while they are working in
the spinach crop during the winter.
16The tern "average" means median hereafter In this report unless other¬
wise specified.
17Among the San Antonio Mexicans families averaged only 4.6 persons.
Only 57 percent of the families there were of the normal type; 31 percent
were "broken* families.
18This compares with an average of 2.0 workers among the San Antonio
pecan shellers.
Chapter II
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS OF THE
MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS
The mexicans of Crystal City are outstanding among migratory
workers in one respect: because of their winter work in the
spinach harvest they have been able to dovetail work in various
crops so as to reduce unemployment to a minimum. In spite of
low wages this comparative regularity of employment has enabled
them to get along even during the depression years with very
little public assistance.
The Crystal City workers have been more fortunate than most
groups of migratory laborers in securing winter employment. In
the Nation as a whole there are not enough farm jobs to go around
during the winter season, and only a minority of workers can
hopetofind jobs even in such States as California, Texas, and
Florida. The Mexicans of the Winter Garden Area are therefore
representative only of those seasonal workers who achieve some
measure of regularity in employment through extensive migration
each year.
predominant patterns of activity
In 1938 nearly all (92 percent) of the Mexican families of
Crystal City worked in the spinach harvest at some time during
the periods from January 1 through March and from late November
or early December until the year's end. (See fig. 5 and appendix
table 4.) Soon after the season was over, however, most of the
spinach workers traveled northward or eastward to follow one of
two principal work patterns while they were absent from Crystal
City.
(1) Of the 300 families studied in Crystal City, 185 migrated
to the beet fields of the North Central and Plains States in 1938.
A majority of these—140 families—went straight from spinach
to beet work. (The sugar-beet season, which lasts from late
April or early May until about the end of November, coincides
almost exactly with the slack work period in Crystal City.)
Another 45 families—a quarter of the number who went to the
beet fields—worked for a short period in the onion harvest
13
14 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Fig. 5 - DISTRIBUTION OF ACTIVITIES OF 300 CRYSTAL CITY
MEXICAN FAMILIES, BY MONTH
January - December 1938
Percent Percent
1938
Source: Appendix table 4. »pa s«oo
before traveling northward to the beet fields. This group was
composed mainly of families who migrated to Montana, Wyoming,
and other western Plains States where the beet season starts
a few weeks later than in the Midwestern States.
(2) A third of the Crystal City families that were studied—
an even 100—worked in cotton at some time during 1938. About
half of these were able to get work as early as April or May
chopping (thinning) and hoeing cotton in the area around Corpus
Christi. Another 41 families—4 out of every 10 cotton-picking
families—worked for a time in the onion fields before starting
to pick cotton. Some of these worked through April and May, and
a few into June and July, when the onion harvest was completed.
Families who could not get work chopping cotton or harvesting
onions were unemployed most of the time until the cotton picking
started on the Gulf coast in late June or early July. From that
time on nearly all families employed in the cotton harvest worked
fairly steadily until October or November.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 15
The beet and cotton workers usually traveled in family units,
although occasionally a member who had steady work in Crystal City
stayed at home while the rest of the family worked in the cotton
or beet fields. In three cases only, one member of a family
worked in beets while the remainder followed the cotton crop.
Many of the families who worked in cotton and beets in 1939
also had members working at various nonagricultural jobs in
Crystal City during the winter. A few operated stores in the
Mexican section of the town but closed them in order to go to
the cotton or beet fields when over nine-tenths of the Mexican
colony left Crystal City in the spring. Others did automobile
repair work during the winter, or engaged in domestic or other
unskilled types of work which they were glad to leave for farm
labor in the spring.
The net result of this pattern of employment was that during
11 months of 1938 less than 4 percent of the families studied
were totally unemployed more than half the time in any given
month. The exception was in April, after the spinach crop was
gathered and before cotton and beet, worx were in full sway, when
17 percent of the families were totally unemployed during most
of the month. In each of the 4 months of the spinach harvest,
from December through March, only 1 percent or less of the
families were entirely without work.
It should be realized, however, that unemployment is a more
serious problem among the Mexican migrants when considered in
terms of individual workers. Only 25 out of a total of 997
workers—1 in 40—had no unemployment in 1938. Almost 1 in 3
had been unemployed 2 months or more and 1 in 8 for more than
half of the year. This irregularity of individual employment
is partly concealed in the figures for family unemployment by
months.
In spite of the small amount of total family unemployment
among the Crystal City Mexicans, then, individual unemployment
and low wage standards had a depressing effect on family incomes.
As a result, the average migratory family—and 96 percent of the
Crystal City group were migratory—found it very difficult to
pay traveling expenses and still have enough left on which to
live without hardship during the winter.
The basic causes of the conditions existing among the Mexicans
are the wages and working conditions which prevail in the various
agricultural pursuits yhich they follow. Some analysis of
economic conditions in each of these fields is therefore a
prerequisite to an understanding of the problems of Mexican
migratory workers.
SPINACH WORK
There are several reasons why the Mexicans of Crystal City
return to that locality year after year in spite of the decline
16 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
in spinach production and in wages in the Winter Garden Area:
spinach harvest work begins just after the close of the sugar-
beet and cotton seasons; it provides some income during the time
of year when employment is slack; and it gives the Mexicans a
chance to live in the Southwest, where the climate is warm and
where they can live with their own people during the winter.
Work in the spinach crop is highly seasonal. Prior to harvest
time little hand labor is needed in the spinach fields because
tractors and field machinery are widely used. In the summer,
when the weather is too hot for many vegetable crops, the land
is cultivated to prevent the growth of weeds. Late in August
or early in September the first plantings are made. The seed,
although sown with a grain drill, is in effect broadcast by
means of an attachment to the drill. The borders, or ridges
which separate the beds, are usually built up by the use of a
disc cultivator. From planting until harvest—SO ,to 90 days,
depending on the weather—little labor is required except for
controlling the flow of water through the fields. No weeding
is done, as a rule. Planting continues periodically until the
end of the year, so that the harvest is almost continuous during
the winter season. The industry depends heavily upon the large
and mobile supply of labor furnished by the Mexicans during
this period. During the first 3 months of 1938, as noted above,
more than 9 out of every 10 Crystal City families found their
principal employment in spinach.
At least nine-tenths of the spinach laborers are "cutters"
who work on their knees in the fields, clipping the mature
spinach plants and sorting out defective leaves and weeds. The
cutters, although they do the most fatiguing type of work, are
the lowest paid of the spinach workers.
Earning* Froa Spinach Work
An adult cutter, under favorable conditions, can harvest 15
to 20 bushels of spinach per day. In recent years, however,
"favorable conditions" have become comparatively rare: decreasing
yield per acre, irregularity of employment, and the setting of
higher standards of quality by the growers have made it difficult
for the cutters, paid at the rate of 5 cents per bushel, to
average much more than 50 cents per day.
During the calendar year 1938 the average weekly earnings of
Crystal City workers in the spinach harvest amounted to $3.13
per person in cash and kind.1 (See appendix table 5. ) One
spinach job in six paid $5 or more per week, and one in twenty-two
paid $10 or more. A quarter of the jobs paid less than $2.50
per week to each worker.
1The year covered by this survey, 1938, Included most of the 1937-38
spinach season (early part of 1938) and the first few weeks of the 1938-39
season (late fall and early winter of 1938 through December 31).
Farm Security Administration (Lee).
Cutting Spinach.
Farm Security Administration (Lee).
Topping Beets.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 17
This weekly average included not only "cutting" but also
the bettei>paid types of work, such as loading spinach onto
trucks, hauling it to the loading platforms, unloading it, icing
it, loading it into freight cars, and icing and sealing the cars.
Several who worked on the loading platforms said that they earned
$1 to $1.50 per day when work was available. In one family
five members warked in the local spinach cannery and each earned
an average of about $3.60 per week.
Thegreat majority of workers, however, were employed in cutting
spinach, and they reported earnings much lower than this. Many
cutters averaged only $2 per week apiece. These earnings show
the effect of irregular employment; some of the Mexicans were
unable to get steady work even during the peak of the 1938-39
season. Many averaged 4 days of work or less per week through
most of the season; this accounts for the fact that the workers
as a group averaged only 40 hoursperweek in spinach, which was
far below the average for past years.
Less than one-tenth of the spinach workers reported spinach
as their chief source of income in 1938. The average cash income
of Crystal City families from spinach work was $124. Almost 4
out of every 10 families earned less than $100. Figuring an
average of 2.5 workers per f amily in spinach work during the har¬
vest season (a conservative estimate), this was less than $50 per
worker for a season averaging 3to4 months in length (table 3).
Table 3■—Cash Income of Crystal City Mexican Families From Spinaeh Work in 1938
Cash income from spinach work
Number of
families
Total
277
Percent
distribution
100
10
27
24
19
12
Q
2
$50-$99 _
$150-5199
$2D0-$299
$3CO-$499
Only 17 families reported any income in kind from spinach work,
and this was assigned an average value of $16 for the season.
It consisted mainly of free housing furnished in Crystal City
by some labor contractors to their workers.
Labor Policies and Working Conditions
Prior to the depression some of the growers sent directly to
Mexico for workers each season. Others encouraged Mexicans from
parts of Texas outside the Winter Garden Area to make their
permanent winter homes in Crystal City.
319118 0—41 3
18 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
For the past decade the spinach growers have had an abundant
labor supply and have almost stopped recruiting workers outside
the district. Occasionally, however, they have shown a desire
to revert to the policy of bringing in outside labor. In 1936,
for example, the Texas Farm Placement Service in San Antonio
received an order from a contractor in La Pryor for 100 spinach
cutters, with free transportation to La Pryor to be furnished
by the contractor. An investigation showed that there was no
shortage of local labor in La Pryor and, further, that there
were hundreds of spinach cutters available around Crystal City,
18 miles away, because of a slack period in the harvest there.
Other workers were available at Eagle Pass, which is only 50
miles from La Pryor, while San Antonio is 130 miles away. The
order was not filled. If workers had been sent in from San
Antonio, the labor market in the Winter Garden would have been
glutted to an even greater extent than it was already.8
Both growers and contractors desire to see the Mexican colony
in Crystal City maintained at its present size, in spite of
increasing slackness of employment during the spinach season, as
insurance against a possible future labor shortage. They voice
some uneasiness, however, on two counts. An increasing need for
public assistance has been felt since 1935, and there has been
some talk of labor organization among the Mexicans. At the
time of the present survey, however, no labor organization of
consequence had appeared on the local scene.
Most of Zavala County's spinach crop is produced by large
growers who plant from 500 to 4,500 acres each. Although a
field of spinach can sometimes be left in the field for a week
or two during cool weather and harvested when market prices are
most favorable, when the weather is warm it must be harvested
within a few days of the time the crop is mature. Since large
numbers of workers are needed by individual growers for short
periods when the harvest is in full swing, the growers find it
desirable to deal with Mexican labor contractors to obtain their
labor force.
If a grower receives an order for several carloadsof spinach,
he calls his contractor or contractors, who receive a flat rate
per bushel to cover cutting the spinach and hauling it to the
loading platform. If only a few carloads are ordered on a given
day, the cutters may work only a few hours, while on other days
they may work from early morning until darkness sets in.
Most of the spinach workers live in Crystal City and are
transported to the fields each morning in the labor contractors'
trucks. Some of them travel as far as,La Pryor, returning at
o
Farm Placement Service, Survey of farm Placement in Texas, 1936 and 1937,
Texas State Employment 8ervlce, Austin, 1036, pp. 31-32.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 19
night to Crystal City. One company, however, maintains several
camps at strategic points on its property. Water and fuel are
furnished to the residents by the company. Money and groceries
are advanced to the families in some cases when work is slack
because of inclement weather.
In recent years the Texas Farm Placement Service has operated
as a clearing house for spinach contractors and workers in Zavala
County. The Crystal City office of this agency made 7,756
placements during the 1937-38 season.3 These were distributed
through the season as follows:
Children as young as 10 years of age work in the spinach
fields with their parents. In 1938 about 11 percent of all
spinach workers were under 14 years of age. The proportion of
child labor in spinach is much higher than in beets but lower
than in cotton. The fact that the entire spinach harvest occurs
during the school year tends to lessen the extent of child
labor in this crop.
Work in sugar beets is the most important single source of
income for a majority of the Mexican families in Crystal City.
Early in April each year the first of the beet workers pack
their cars with blankets, dishes, clothes, and children and
head for the beet fields. From that time until late in May a
continual stream of workers flows northward.
Beet work is highly seasonal, although it provides continuous
employment for a longer periodof the year than any other impor¬
tant crop. The hand work donebythe Mexicans falls into three
main operations, two of which require long working hours while
they last. The operations are as follows:
(1) Blocking and thinning. Blocking consists of chopping out
overcrowded plants from the rows of beets so as to leave a tuft
of beets every 10 or 12 inches. Thinning consists of pulling
out by hand all but the strongest plant in each tuft. This
work is done in the late spring, usually in May and June, under
great pressure of time.
(2) Hoeing. Usually one or two hoeings are required during
the summer to keep the soil loose and free from weeds. There
is less hurry about this operation.
December.
January-
February
March
550
2,823
2,497
1,886
SUGAR-BEET WORK
Seasonality and Location of Jobs
^Annual Report of the farm Placement Service, Texas, 1938, Texas State
Employment Service, Austin, 1939, p. 8.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 21
(3) Pulling and topping. This is the harvesting process,
usually involving pulling up the beets after they have been
loosened by a horse-drawn lifter, cutting off the tops with a
long knife, and tossing the roots intp piles. This is done in
October and early November as a rule.4
The work is contracted for on an acreage basis. Payments are
made after each major operation, according to a standard rate
per acre, and a bonus is usually paid if production per acre
goes above a certain level.
The average beet job5 lasts between 6 and 7 months—28 weeks
in the case of the Crystal City workers in 1938—although the
work itself is somewhat intermittent in the middle of the season.
All but a few of the Crystal City beet workers left for the
beet fields in April and May. The largest group left in April,
going principally to the midwestern sugar area; 41 percent of
all beet families went to Michigan, 17 percent to Minnesota,
and smaller numbers to Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, and
Nebraska (fig. 6). Last to leave were those who went to Montana
(12 percent), Wyoming (11 percent), and North Dakota; in this
areathebeet season is about a month later than in the Midwest.
Until recently a considerable number of Texas Mexicans worked in
Colorado, the largest beet-sugar-producing State in the country,
but only two Crystal City families went there in 1938.
Almost half of the beet workers traveled in their own cars,
a quarter paid for their passage on other workers' trucks, a
fifth traveled with labor contractors, and the rest rode with
friends or relatives. The fare charged by truck drivers and
contractors ranged from $10 upward per family, according to the
beet workers; the usual rate was $10per adult and $5 per child.
One family of 12 paid $87.50 for a one-way passage to Iowa.
Under this type of arrangement from 20 to 45 persons or more
were sometimes crowded into a single truck, and the trip north
was made in 40 to 50 hours without stopping except for gasoline
and oil. At the end of the season several families who had
gone north in trucks bought used cars in which to return to
Texas.
Earnings From Beet Work
Weekly earnings reported by individual beet workers in the
Crystal City group averaged $6.33 for 49 hoursof work per week.
(See appendix table 5.) Working hours were much longer than
4Abbott, Lewis, Report for the Committee on Labor Conditions in the Crowing
of Sugar Beets, Washington, D. C., March 1934, p. 26.
5The term 'Job "Is used throughout this report to mean continuous employ¬
ment of one or more members of a family at one type of work In one locality.
This definition was necessary because Mexican families usually work and draw
their pay as a unit and because (in cotton and spinach) the workers often
change employers every few days in following the harvest. A detailed work
history covering all employers and employees separately would have been
Impossible to obtain in most cases.
22 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
this during the periods of peak activity in the spring and fall.
Earnings in beet work amounted to 13 cents an hour, or just over
$1 a day.
Almost 28 percent of the beet workers earned less than $5 per
week during the season, while 10 percent averaged more than $10
per week.8 These figures include both cash and kind; they take
into account all periods when beet work was done but exclude
periods of employment at other jobs during slack times in the
middle of the beet season.
The average cash earnings of Crystal City Mexicans from wrk
in beets amounted to $400 per family, or $135 for each individual
worker in 1938. One family in eight earned less than $300 from
beet work (table 4). Income in kind (covering such items as
Table 6.—Cash Income of Crystal City Mexican Families From Beet Work in 1938
Cash income from beet work
Number of
families
lxe
Percent
distribution
100
13
23
14
16
7
12
6
9
$800-3999 _ ____ ___ _
^Total Includes 3 beet workers from families that derived their Incomes principally from cotton.
rent, wood, and water) received while doing beet work brought
the average earnings from this source up to a total of $439 per
family. The average size of family among the beet workers was
5.6 persons.
During the 1930's beet wark was much more profitable than it
has been in recent years. In 1924 three studies in Colorado
showed average incomes of $782 per family from beet work. In
1933, however, the average income from sugar beets among Colorado
field workers was $78 per individual, or $312 for a f amily contain¬
ing four workers.7 In 1935 the earnings of 374 families of beet
workers in Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota, and Michigan averaged
$340, with almost a third earning less than $200.® Thus, the
6
The beet workers among the San Antonio Mexicans reported average Individual
earnings of only $4.80 per week at beet work In 1930. There were only 22
families In the San Antonio group who followed this type of work, however,
and the Crystal City workers were on the whole a more experienced group.
7AUbott, op. cit., p. 3.
® Johnson, Elizabeth S., keif are of families of Sugar-Beet Laborers, Bureau
Publication No. 247, U. S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, Washing¬
ton, D. C.. 1939, P. 4.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 23
1938 earnings as reported by Crystal City Mexicans indicate a
somewhat higher income level than that which prevailed in 1933
or 1935 but a much lower level than that of 1924.
The Bureau of Home Economics of the United States Department
of Agriculture in 1933 prepared a minimum cash budget for a family
of Mexican beet workers consisting of six persons. The total
estimated as necessary was $565 per year, allowing nothing for
rent and only $1.80 for recreation.9 Since that time prices
have risen, and the minimum income requirement for a similar
budget would consequently be somewhat higher. More than half
of the 175 Crystal City families whose principal source of
income in 1938 was sugar-beet work had cash incomes from all
sources totaling less than the minimum cash budget of the Bureau
of Home Economics.
Some efforts have been made to organize the beet workers into
unions but these have been for the most part ineffective. Union
organization has been most widespread in the Rocky Mountain
beet area, notably in Colorado and Wyoming. The United Cannery,
Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (CIO) has
strong locals with several thousand members in these States.
The union has had difficulty, however, in persuading the proces¬
sors and growers to enter negotiations regarding wages and
working conditions.10
Government Regulation of the Sugar-Beet Industry
Since 1934 wage levels in beet labor have been set each year
by the Federal Government. Without such control, earnings of
beet workers would undoubtedly be much lower than they are
today.
During the depression a protective tariff on sugar had stimu¬
lated domestic production to a point where the price structure
was threatened with collapse. From 1929 to 1933 sugar consumption
decreased, but beet-sugar production actually increased by 51
percent, and prices and wages in the industry fell sharply.
To remedy this situation, the Jones-Costigan Act was passed in
1934, placing sugar on the list of "basic agricultural commodi¬
ties" covered by the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. The
production-control agreements signed under the Jones-Costigan
Act included the first uniform provisions for regulating child
labor and wage payments to beet workers. This legislation
expired in 1937 and was replaced by the Sugar Act of the same
year, which wrote into the law labor provisions similar to those
which had been incorporated in the growers' contracts under
the earlier act.
9Abbott, op. cit., appendix II, p. 27.
10Quinn, Walter, The Conditions of Sugar Beet Workers in 1937, unpublished
ms., Division of Research, Statistics and Records, Works Progress Adminis¬
tration, Washington, D. C., 1938.
24 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Under the 1937 law payments were made to growers who agreed
to comply with certain soil-conservation policies, to limit
acreage, and to observe labor standards set by the law. These
standards prohibited children under 14 years of age fromworking
in the fields, limited working hours of children 14 to 16 years
to 8 a day, and required the payment in full of wage rates set
by the Secretary of Agriculture after due notice and opportunity
for public hearings.11 The various regulatory provisions were
embodied in two types of written contracts used throughout most
of the industry: those between the beet-sugar factories and
the growers, setting prices and acreage and giving the companies
the right to supervise the growing of the beets and the time
of harvest; and those between the growers and their workers.
Table 5-—Basic Wage Rates per Acre for Hand Labor in Sugar-Beet Fields in Selected trees,
1935-I9391
Area
Wage rates per acre
1935
1936
1937
1936
1939
Montana2 and northern Wyoming
Colorado and Nebraska?
Michigan and Ohio4
Minnesota5
$21.50
19.50
19.00
15.00
$21.50
19.50
17.20
IS. 00
S5888
8888
$23.10
21.®
13,00
17.40
, i
Data from Lisa, Samuel, ProUction of Sugar Beat field Workers Under the federal Soger Control Bets of
19SU and 1937, unpublished ms., U. S. Department of Agriculture, Para Security Administration, Washington,
D. C., 1039.
-Data for 1936 through 1996 Include only southern Montana; 1939. only southern sad eastern Momtaaa.
sData for 1936 through 1937 Include only northern Colorado and western Nebraska,
±Data for 1936 through 1997 include only southern Michigan.
6Data for 1936 through 1937 Include only southern Minnesota.
The effect of this system of Federal control was to reverse
the downward trend in wage rates which had prevailed for several
years. In Colorado the rate paid per acre had dropped from an
average of $33.71 in 1920 and $23.72 in 1924 to $12.37 in
1933.12 In the United States as a whole the average rate per
acre fell from $23 in 1921-1923 to $14 in 1933.1 When the
Jones-Costigan Act first became operative in 1935, the rates
set ranged from $15 in Minnesota to $21.50 in Montana and
northern Wyoming. Under the Sugar Act of 1937 the rates rose
still further (table 5).14
It is estimated that an experienced man can work 10 acres of
beets per season, a woman 7 acres, and children smaller amounts.15
Lias, Samufel, Protection of Sugar Beet field Iforkers Under the federal
Sugar Control Acts of 1931 and 1937, unpublished as.. U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Farm Security Administration, Washington, D. C., 1939.
12Abbott, op, ctt., p. 3.
13
Ham, William T., "Sugar Beet Field Labor Under the AAA," Journal of
far* icononics, May 1937, p. 846.
14
Llss, op, cit,
15Taylor, Paul S., Mexican Labor in the United States•' falley of the
South Platte, Colorado, University of California Publications In Economics,
Vol. 6, No. 2, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1929, p. 146.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 25
The average Crystal City family, with just under three workers,
contracted for approximately 20 acres of beets in 1938.
Labor Policies and Working Conditions
Growers of sugar beets, like Texas spinach growers, wish a
labor supply large enough to avoid the danger of shortages
during harvest seasons, Mexicans are the great bulk of the
workers in the beet fields, although many German-Russians are
still found in Michigan, Nebraska, and other States. The Mexi¬
cans are encouraged to return year after year to the same area
and the same grower. This makes it unnecessary for the growers
to advertise for labor and lends a degree of stability to sugar-
beet work.
One device for insuring The return of Mexican workers is to
furnish financial aid to them at the beginning of the season.
Several Crystal City beet workers said that their expenses on
the trip northward were paid by the sugar companies and the
fare deducted from their checks later on.
Wages are higher in sugar-beet work than in cotton and spinach
work. As a result, in recent years an increasing number of
Mexicans have gone to the beet fields to work. In some cases
this trend has resulted in hardships among the Mexicans who
have been employed in beets for several years. Several families
who had worked in the northern Plains States reported that so
many migrants were looking for work that the acreage allotted
to each family in 1938 was cut to a low level. Where this
occurred there was not enough work to keep adult members of the
family busy. Some of these families expressed the intention
of going north a month earlier the following year in order to
get "plenty of acres."
Several Montana beet workers said that a fair amount of acreage
had been allotted to them at the beginning of the season
but that more workers had arrived during the harvesting season
and their acreage had then been cut considerably. The motive
for such policies, considered unfair by the workers, is the
desire of the growers and processors to harvest the crop as
rapidly as possible so that the sugar content of the beets will
be at its peak when they are taken to the factories.
A considerable minority of beet workers still work under a
labor contracting system by which a Mexican agent undertakes to
supply labor to one or more growers. He gets several families
to sign contracts with these growers. In some cases he trans¬
ports the workers to the fields in his truck, as noted above,
usually at their own expense but sometimes at the expense of
the processing companies. The contractors are not allowed by
the sugar companies to let their workers leave the sugar-beet
farms to work elsewhere during the busy season. In slack periods,
however, the companies permit the workers to take outside jobs.
26 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Beet workers sometimes earn as much as $10 per week duTing the
time between beet operations by picking tomatoes, cucumbers,
and other truck crops.
Multiworker families are preferred to small family groups by
the beet growers. Labor contractors try to select families of
four workers or more because the cost per worker of transporting
and housing such families is comparatively low. Families with
only one worker do not usually go to the beet fields because
the cost of transportation eats up most of their earnings.
Child labor wasonce very prevalent in the sugar-beet fields.
In 1920, among Michigan beet workers, over two-thirds of all
children aged 6 to 16-worked in the fields. Most of them had
started doing field labor before they were ID.16 In 1922, 800
beet workers out of 2,247 studied, or 36 percent, were under
16.17 By 1933 only 13 percent of the country's beet workers
were under 16.18 Since that time the provisions of the two
Federal sugar-control acts and the stricter enforcement of
school attendance regulations for children under 14 in Michigan
and other States have combined to effect a further decrease in
child labor. In 1938 only 2 percent of the beet workers in the
Crystal City group were under 14, while 15 percent were from
14 to 18 years of age.
Living conditions among the beet workers leave much to be
desired. Growers are required to provide housing for their
workers without charge, but the houses usually consist of one-
or two-room shacks without conveniences. Families ranging in
size from 2 to 12 persons or more live in these houses. The
average amount of income in kind was estimated by the beet workers
to be only $6 per month in 1938. This included water, wood, and
such other items as may have been supplied in addition to housing.
The Crystal City Mexicans, however, find both wages and living
conditions much better in beets than in cotton or other work
available to them. They also enjoy the relative lack of racial
discrimination in the North.
COTTON WORK
In normal years about one-fourth of the Nation's cotton is
grown in Texas. In 1938 Texas produced 3,125,000 bales of a
total of 12,008,000 bales raised in the United States.19 Cotton
accounted for 54.9 percent of the State's cultivated acreage
^Children's Bureau, Child Labor and the Fork of Mothers in the fleet Fields
of Colorado and Michigan, Bureau Publication No. 115. U. S. Department of
Labor, Washington, D. C., 1923, p. 62.
17
Armentrout, W. W. and others, Child Labor in the Sugar Beet Fields of
Michigan, Publication No. 310. National Child Labor Committee, New Torx,
1923, p. 13.
40
Ham, op, dtmf p. 644.
19
Data from the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 0. s. Department of
Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 27
in 1937. Mexican labor is used for most of the seasonal work in
the cotton crop; it is estimated that more than three-fourths of
all migratory workers within the State of Texas are Mexicans.20
Cotton is second in importance only to beets as a source of
summer employment among the Mexicans of Crystal City. In 19258,
100 families spent some time in. chopping or picking cotton, and
for 87 of these families cotton was the chief source of income.
All work in cotton involved migration, since practically no
cotton is grown in the area around Crystal City. (See fig. 7.)
Seasonality and Location of Jobs
The cotton season starts in April in the Coastal Bend Area
around Corpus Christi, and a few Mexicans go there to chop cotton
at that time. Less than half of the Crystal City cotton workers
found employment in this type of work. Most of the others went
to the cotton fields of the Coastal Bend Area in late June or
early July, when the picking season started. Many then migrated
north and west f rom the Coastal Bend Area as the crop matured in
the higher, cooler regions, reaching northwest Texas or the
El Paso district in October or November and often working until
late in December. None of the Crystal City families went out¬
side of Texas to pick cotton in 1938. (See fig. 8.)
A ready means of transportation is essential for cotton
workers, since they must frequently be on the move. Three out
of every five Crystal City families following the cotton crop
had their own cars, usually of ancient vintage. Of the remain¬
ing two families one rode with friends or relatives and the
other paid fare on a truck or traveled with a labor contractor.
Cotton workers thus own their own cars in a higher proportion
of cases than do beet workers.
Earnings From Cotton Work
Cotton workers reported average weekly earnings of $4.22 per
worker in cash and kind, for an average of 47 hours per week,
during periods of employment at chopping and picking cotton in
1938. This was a third less than the average wage reported in
beet work. More than a quarter of the cotton jobs paid less
than $3 per week, while 3 percent paid over $10 per week.21
The predominant wage for cotton pickers in 1938 was 50 cents
per 100 pounds in most parts of Texas, although rates of 40
cents or less were reported. Judging from average earnings of
Crystal City cotton workers, the average amount of cotton picked
daily per individual during the 1938 season must have been
about 140 pounds.
20Farm Placement Service, Survey of tare Placement in Texas, 1938 and 1937,
pp. S, 82.
21San Antonio cotton pickers reported weekly earnings averaging only $3.22.
This difference may be due partly to the greater experience of the Crystal
City group.
28 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Fig. 7-TEXAS COTTON PRODUCTION, BY COUNTY, 1937
Number of boles
□ Less than 3,000
] 3,000 to 10,000
IU 10,000 to 20,000
| More than 20,000
Source; Adopted from mop appearing in Farm Placement
Service, Survey of Form Placement in Texas, 1936 and 1937,
Texas State Employment Service, Austin, 1938 (appendix).
WPA i374
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 29
FIG. 8-ROUTES OF TRAVEL OF MEXICAN COTTON WORKERS
100 FAMILIES OF CRYSTAL CITY, TEXAS
1938
The average cash income of Crystal City families from cotton
work amounted to $278 in 1938. Almost a third of the cotton-
picking families earned less than $200 from this work (table 6).
This was much lower than average income from sugar beets, in
spite of the fact that there were 3.7 workers in the average
cotton-picking family as compared with less than 3 workers in
the typical family employed in beets. Annual earnings per worker
in cotton averaged $75, or a little more than half as much
as the average earnings per worker among Mexicans employed in
sugar beets.
The low remuneration in cotton work is strikingly brought out
by the experience of one family of nine persons, one member of
which went to the beet fields while the rest of the family,
including six workers, followed the cotton crop. The one beet
worker earned $230, while the other six workers together earned
only $440 in picking cotton.
Including income from all sources, the 87 families whose
principal source of income was cotton work had total cash incomes
30 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Table 6.—Cash Income of Crystal City Mexican Families From Cotton Work in 1938
Cash income from cot ten work
Number of
families
All families __
300
29
24
30
IB
$500-^599 _ -- -
10
$000-$799 _
7
2
3
averaging $508 in 1938, or only a few dollars less than the
beet workers' incomes. This is a substantially larger figure
than other surveys have shown. In 1936, for example, a study in
Karnes County, Tex., showed that the Mexican cotton workers in
that area had average total incomes of $168 between September 1,
1935, and August 31, 1936.88 White families who picked cotton
in Arizona during the 1937-38 season reported an average family
income of $393 in cash from all sources during 1937.85 The
difference between the Crystal City and Arizona cotton pickers
in this respect was due in part to differences in size of family
and number of workers in the two groups. The Crystal City
Mexicans had an average of 3.7 workers per cotton-picking family,
compared with only 2.5 workers per family among the Arizona
cotton pickers.
Labor Policies and Working Conditions
A large supply of labor is needed by cotton growers during
the chopping and picking seasons. Prior to the depression the
labor of Texas Mexicans was supplemented at harvest time by the
importation of workers from Mexico on a temporary contract
basis. When this source of supply was no longer available,
because of restrictions on immigration, the cotton farmers
placed their emphasis upon discouraging Texas Mexicans from
leaving the local labor market to work in sugar beets or other
crops. The Texas Farm Placement Service has also followed this
policy, in spite of the fact that the Mexicans who work in beets
earn higher wages than do those who work in cotton and in winter
vegetables within the State. Says the Farm Placement Service:
During the cotton season In Texas, all available labor Is needed, and It Is
highly undesirable from a social as well as an economic viewpoint, for the
migrant agricultural laborers of this State to move Into adjoining States.
It has, therefore, been the policy of the toployment Service to discourage
88Vasey, Tom and Folsom, JoslahC., Survey of Agricultural labor Conditions,
lames County, Texas, U. 8. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural
Economics and Farm Security Administration, Washington, D. C., Hovember 1957,
p. S.
23Brown, Malcolm and Cassmore, Orln, Higratory Cotton Pickers in Arizona,
Division of Research, Works Progress Administration, Washington, D. C.,
1939, pp. 14, 26.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 31
tiiese long treks, which would Inevitably result In labor shortages In cer¬
tain parts of Texas, as well as work a hardship on the transients.24
To discourage the transporting of Texas labor outside the
State, the legislature in 1929 enacted the Emigrant Agent Act,
requiring any person or firm sending labor out of the State to
pay an annual State tax of $1,000, execute a bond of $5,000,
and pay an additional graduated tax to the county of operation.25
Few Mexican beet-labor contractors could afford these fees during
the depression, but they continued to transport workers northward,
often crossing the State line at night to avoid conflicts with
the authorities.26
Because of the fear of a labor shortage, the opening of the
cotton season in various parts of Texas is usually accompanied
by much excitement. According to the Farm Placement Service:
Meetings are held by growers; the yield Is usually overestimated, the labor
shortage grossly exaggerated; and the price set for picking is low. Every
cotton grower in the valley wants to pick his crop In a day, if possible.
Clv^c bodies, anxious to render service to their respective communities,
use the press freely, and paint distressing pictures of the need for thou¬
sands of cotton pickers. Often they telephone cities five hundred miles
distant urging assistance In harvesting an "unprecedented" crop.27
One case reported by the Farm Placement Service illustrates
the problems this agency has encountered in trying to regulate
the movements of migratory laborers. The Placement Service had
received a long distance telephone call stating that farmers in
a certain community were in need of 2,000 cotton pickers. An
employee of the Service hurried to the scene. He asked the
names of growers who were most in need and was told that "every
farmer in that trade territory was seriously in need of labor."
Unable to secure any specific information as to labor demand,
however, he made an immediate and thorough survey of the labor
situation in the community. He found that there was actual
need for only 85 cotton pickers.28
This type of situation is still encountered by the Farm Place¬
ment Service according to its report for 1938:
Difficult to cope with still Is the large grower or planter Interested only
In securing an abundance of labor to harvest his crop. He, In most cases,
24Farm Placement Service, Survey of tarn Placement in Texas, 1936 and 1937,
p. 80.
Z5Ibid., pp. 76-77.
Oft
According to Information received after the completion of the body of
this report, by 1940 there were four licensed emigrant agents, three In
San Antonio and one in Crystal City, all representing Michigan sugar-beet
growers. These agents were responsible for 6, 000 out of an estimated 10,000
Texas Mexican workers who went to the beet fields of Michigan In that year.
Workers hired through emigrant agents must pass physical examinations re¬
quired by Michigan State law before they leave Texas, and they are assured
of employment when theyarrlve In Michigan. (Interstate Migration, Hearings
Before the Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of
Destitute Citizens, 76th Cong., 3d sess., Part 5, Oklahoma City Hearings,
Sept. 19 and 20, 1940, pp. 1844-1846. )
Ollf
Farm Placement Service, Survey of Farm Placement in Texas, 1936 and
1937, p. 44.
Zeibid., p.45.
32 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
is not interested in getting only enough workers, but actually desires a
labor surplus in the community, a condition ifclch will eventuate in his
having to pay much lower wages than would otherwise be the case.
The Service stated that in 1938, however, there was noticeably
less claraorbythe growers to the effect that there was a "short¬
age of labor" and that immigration officials should let down
the barriers so that Mexicans from across the border could
harvest the crop.29
The Farm Placement Service has achieved considerable success
in its attempt to minimize the waste of time and labor by
migratory workers between jobs in Texas. It has worked out
certain lines of travel and has estimated the number of workers
needed in various areas at different times of the year. It
makes every effort to see that the local labor supply is absorbed
before a community imports outside labor. In 1938 it made
403,035 placements, of which 362,480 were in cotton.80 Only a
minority of the Crystal City cotton workers reported obtaining
work through the Farm Placement Service, however, in 1938.
Control of the labor supply is complicated by the fact that
the growers have a pronounced preference for contractors and
laborers from outside their own communities. The reason for
this is found in statements that "local contractors are too
exacting at times in the amounts they receive for hauling, and
they pickup and move their gangs out without warning." People
brought in from distant points cannot easily return to their
homes and are therefore more likely to accept such wages and
conditions as may prevail.31
Because of the hiring of large groups of laborers from outside
the localities where cotton is grown, Mexican labor contractors
are numerous. This is especially trueofthe Coastal Bend Area,
where the managers of many large ranches are unable to speak
Spanish and so prefer to deal with their workers through
Mexican contractors. As in spinach work, the contractor makes
contacts with the employers and serves as business agent for
his workers. He is usually given the responsibility of weighing
Annual Report of the farm Placement Service, Texas, 193$, Texas State
Employment Service, Austin, 1939, PP. 9-10, 22. Hie report of tbe Farm
Placement Service for 1939, received arter the completion or the body of
this report, said that "During the entire year there were no instances of
disturbances resulting from * * * maladjustments In the labor market of local
communities." (Annual Report of the Pare Placement Service, Texas, IMS
Texas State Employment Service, Austin, 1940, P. 7.) '
30
Annua I Report of the Para Placement Service, Texas, 1933, p. 31. Accord¬
ing to the 1939 report of the Farm Placement Service, Issued subsequent to
the completion of the body of this report, 550,074 placements were made in
1939, an estimated 417,000 of which were made during the cotton season. This
represented an Increase of about 15 percent In placements of cotton workers
as compared with the previous year, although cotton production was lower in
1939 than in 1938. (Annual Report of the Pare Placement Service, Texas,
1939, P. 29.)
31 Farm Placement Service, Survey of Pare Placement inTexas, 1936 and 1937,
PP. 36-37.
Picking Cotton.
Farm Security Administration (Lee).
Houses of Mexicans in Crystal City.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 33
and hauling the cotton and collecting the workers* earnings
from the farmer. For these services he receives from each
worker 5 to 10 cents for each 100 pounds of cotton picked.38
From the grower he may receive $1.50 per adult for transporting
workers to the farms, $1 per bale for overseeing the work, and
extra pay for weighing cotton. He is held responsible for any
losses in groceries or picking sacks advanced by the grower
if any of his workers leave before they have worked out their
debts.
Many Mexican workers express resentment against the contract
system, saying that the amounts collected by the contractors
are often exorbitant. Short-weighing of cotton is said to be
frequent. When grievances arise, the workers claim that the
grower and the contractor try to pass the responsibility to
each other, so that the complainants seldom secure satisfaction.
In 1938, however, only a minority of the Crystal City cotton
pickers worked under contractors; the majority depended on their
own cars and their knowledge of the crop and migrated as
independent family units or in small groups of families.
The Farm Placement Service is dealing with the labor contrac¬
tors to an increasing extent, helping to route the migration of
contractors' gangs of workers more efficiently so as to prevent
an oversupply of migratory labor from piling up in any part of
the State. This agency reported in 1939 that
* * * the so-called labor 'contractor* Is gradually realizing that a
service Is being rendered him as well as his workers in directing them to
areas of actual labor shortages.33
Child labor is prevalent in cotton; 17percent of all Crystal
City cotton workers included in the survey were under 14 years
of age. This accounts in part for the large numbers of workers
per family in this group.
Housing conditions are very inadequate in most of the cotton
areas, especially at the peak season when such facilities as
exist are greatly overtaxed. Truck loads of workers often camp
by the side of the road, cooking by campfires and sleeping in
the open. Towns with a winter population of two or three
thousand are doubled in size almost overnight by job seekers.
Overcrowding, exposure, and lack of sanitary facilities result
in the spread of disease.
At present a majority of the pickers find living accommodations
of some sort on the ranches where they work. Water is usually
furnished, and in northwest Texas, at least, fuel as well.
Income in kind, mainly housing, was assigned an average value
of $23 per family for the entire 1938 cotton season by the Crystal
City cotton pickers.
a2Hamllton, C. Horace, the Social Effects of Recent trends in Mechanization
0f Agriculture, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station,
December 1938, pp. 9-10.
Annual Report of the Par* Placenent Service, Texas, 1938, VP. 9-10.
319118 o—41 4
34 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
In some cases the houses provided by the growers are clean,
although small and without conveniences; but in a majority of
cases they are extremely poor and inadequate. A typical cotton
picker's shack has one room, perhaps 10 by 16 feet in size. It
may be divided in the center by a curtain, with one family of
several persons living on each side of the curtain. Often no
furniture is provided; each family brings its own dishes and
blankets and sleeps on the floor. One toilet may accommodate
50 persons or more of both sexes. In the Pecos area, according
to the families who worked there, only families with children
were given tents in 1938; others kept their belongings in their
cars or trucks and slept on the ground.
The Farm Placement Service has helped to remedy this situation
by encouraging the establishment of camping grounds near the
more congested centers where migratory workers gather. Camps
with running water and sanitary toilets have been provided by
city and county officials in Robstown, Sinton, and El Campo.
"Concentration lots" or camping grounds of some sort have also
been provided by the communities of Levelland, Lubbock, Lamesa,
and Plainview, in west Texas.34 All these camps are able to
provide for only a small minority of the State's migratory
workers, however.
The Farm Security Administration, the Federal agency most
directly concerned with housing conditions among migratory
workers, has also made some provision for housing of Texas
seasonal farm workers. In 1938 a preliminary investigation by
FSA disclosed a definite need for migrant camps and low-cost
"labor homes" in Texas.36 Farmers and business organizations
there were quickto see the benefits of the FSA program in terms
of greater stability and better social conditions among migratory
workers, and the Federal agency was encouraged to build camps.
By the close of 1939 the FSA was constructing four migrant
camps in Texas, at Raymondville, Robstown, Weslaco, and Sinton.
They were to include 888 "shelters," 44 tent platforms, and
147 labor homes. Each camp has modern sanitary facilities, a
recreational and educational program, a medical clinic operated
in cooperation with local health agencies, and provisions for
self-government by the camp dwellers. The labor homes, which
rent for about $8 per month, are more permanent than the shel¬
ters; they consist of two- or three-room cottages with modern
conveniences.36 The four FSA camps in Texas, together with four
more which were to be built in 1940, will contribute to the
34Ibid,p. 41.
35
Sllvermaster, Gregory, Summary and Recommendations an Migratory Labor
Problems in Texas, unpublished ms., U. 8. Department of Agriculture, Farm
Security Administration, Washington, D. C., 1938."
pro
Farm Security Administration, Migratory Labor Camp Program as of Jan. 1,
1910, U. 8. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
WORK PATTERNS AND EARNINGS • 35
raising of living standards among at least some of the Mexican
cotton and onion vorkers.
ONION WORK
The Texas onion crop ranks next to beets and cotton as a source
of work for migratory Crystal City Mexicans. Until about a
decade ago large quantities of Bermuda onions were produced in
the Winter Garden Area, and the Mexicans of Zavala and Dimmit
Counties were able to find considerable employment in onion
production without leaving their homes. As late as 1931 Zavala
County shipped 417 carlots of onions to market, and near-by
Dimmit County, 639 carlots. By 1938, however, the shipments of
these two principal Winter Garden counties had declined to 122
and 254 carlots, respectively.37
Nearly all of the Crystal City Mexicans who found work in the
onion harvest in 1938 migrated to the lower Rio Grande Valley
and the Coastal Bend Area. Willacy County, which is the largest
onion-producing section in the world, attracted a considerable
number of them, while others went to Floresville, Karnes City,
Kenedy, and other places.
The onion harvest begins in south Texas at the beginning of
April and reaches its peak in May. In north Texas it lasts
into July. The average duration of onion jobs was less than 2
months, however, in 1938. Most of the workers who harvested
onions before leaving for the sugar-beet fields worked only in
April, while most cotton workers did not leave the onion fields
until late in May.
In 1938, 89 of the 300 Crystal City families worked in onions.
They earned an average of $43 in cash from this work, plus $12
in perquisites. Twenty-nine percent of these families earned
less than $25 from onion work (table 7). The wages reported
by individual workers usually ranged from $3 to $4 per week,
Table 7.—Cash Income of Crystal City Mexican Families From Onion Work in 1938
Cash income from onion work
Number of
families
Total.
Total._
Less than $25
$25-$49
$50-$99
$1D0-$199
$200 or more .
Percent
distribution
29
27
21
15
8
37Agrlcultural Marketing Service, reports on carlot shipments of fruits
and vegetables In Texas, 1931 and 1938, U. S. Department of Agriculture,
Washington, D. C.
36 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
although one family reported average weekly earnings of only
$2 per worker, and another with three men at work reported
weekly earnings averaging $8 per worker- Only two families
gave onions as their principal source of income from migratory
work.
Housing and working conditions in onion work are similar to
those in cotton and spinach work.
MISCELLANEOUS TYPES OF WORK
Local Farm Work
Many Crystal City families obtained some farm work other than
work in spinach, beets, cotton, and onions. There were 35 fami¬
lies who reported income from such work in 1938, averaging$71
in cash per family. Some of the Mexicans worked at irrigating
spinach and other vegetables, earning from 50 cents to $1 per
day. A few worked at clearing land (grubbing out mesquite
brush), earning about $25 per month. Others picked pecans,
harvested carrots or tomatoes, worked as general farm hands,
or cut wood.
Nonfarm Work
One family in six (forty-nine in all) reported some earnings
from employment in nonfarm work. This work paid an average
of $97 per family in 1938. Twelve other families reported
earnings averaging $137 from WPA employment, and one family
had a son in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Most of the nonfarm employment was obtained in Crystal City
during the winter. From December to April, 7 to 9 percent of
all families were employed mainly in such work, while the num¬
ber dropped to 3 percent or less from July to September, at
the peak of the migratory labor season.
For the most part, only menial, unskilled types of work at
wages little higher than those for agricultural labor were open
to the Mexicans. The occupation reported most frequently by
women in Crystal City was that of maid or general houseworker.
Typical earnings in this work were $2 per week plus $1 in kind.
Among the men, wages in nonagricultural occupations were
somewhat higher. Several reported having earned $10 to $15
weekly working in an ice factory or hauling ice to the loading
platforms during the spinach season. Auto mechanics and helpers
earned from $1.50 to $7.50 per week. A service-station attend¬
ant and a gasoline-truck driver earned about $10 per week each.
Several Mexicans had businesses of their own. The most pros¬
perous of these, a store owner, reported net earnings averaging
$100 per month through the entire year. Average earnings from
miscellaneous work in Crystal City, however, were not much
greater than average income from agricultural work.
Chapter III
FAMILY INCOMES OF THE MEXICANS IN 1938
average annual income
The average cash income of the 300 Mexican families studied in
Crystal City totaled $506 in 1938. The figure was increased
to $561 per family when perquisites such as housing, wood, and
water received by the migratory farm workers were included.
Since the families averaged 5.5 persons, the average yearly
income among the Mexican migrants was approximately $100 per
person in 1938 (table 8).
Table 8.—Cash and Total Income of Crystal City Mexican Families From All Sources, 1938
Income
Distribution of families by—
Cash income
Total income1
Total families ,
Total families
Less than $300 ,
$300-$399
$400-$499 -
$500-$599 -
$600-$799
$800-$999
$1,000-$1,499
$1,500 or more
2
Average income
300
300
Percent distribution
100
100
15
17
15
13
10
11
10
3
10
17
10
11
18
12
12
4
$506
$561
^Includes Income In cash and kind,
median, based on more detailed distributions than those given above.
Average weekly earnings from all types of work, both migratory
and nonmigratory, were approximately $4.50 per worker in 1938-1
This figure is weighted to take into account the varying duration
of jobs in different crops or types of work.
^hls was somewhat higher than the average weekly Incomes of $3.01 per
worker on all Jobs, and $3.60 per worker on agricultural Jobs alone, reported
by the urban Mexican group in San Antonio. The low wages paid to pecan
shellers cut down the San Antonio average for all Jobs.
37
38 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
The average annual income of the Crystal City Mexicans was
about twice that of the urban Mexican group studied in San
Antonio.® The Crystal City group had larger families, however—
an average of 5.5 persons as compared with 4.6 in San Antonio.
In addition, 96 percent of the Crystal City families did some
migratory work in 1938, compared with only 22 percent of the
San Antonio group. Since the expense of traveling to the cotton,
beet, and onion fields amounted to a considerable sum in the
course of a year, the income remaining for actual living expenses
was somewhat lower than the amount indicated.
Other studies of migratory workers in recent years show lower
average annual incomes than were reported by the Crystal City
group. A California study, for example, showed that family
earnings of migrants in that State dropped steadily from an
average of $343 in 1930 to $261 in 1935.3
The higher earnings of the Crystal City Mexicans in 1938 were
the result of several factors: (1) Wages in sugar beets, from
which this group received the largest proportion of its income,
have increased somewhat as a result of the Sugar Act of 1937,
and were unusually high in 1938 because of good crops and
resultant bonuses. (2) The Mexicans studied were experienced
agricultural laborers and were able to obtain employment almost
the year round my migrating from one crop to another. (3) The
Mexicans had a relatively large number of workers per family.
INCOME BY SOURCE, FAMILY SIZE, AND NUMBER OF WORKERS
Families who derived the major part of their incomes from beet
work had on the average larger annual incomes than any other
group. Cotton workers were not far behind; both groups earned
over $500 cash per family in 1938. Families whose major source
of income was other farm work (including spinach) around Crystal
City had average earnings of $400 in 1938. Nonfarm employment
in Crystal City was intermediate between local farm work and
migratory farm labor as a source of income. (See table 9 and
appendix table 6.)
Table 9■—Average1 Income of Crystal City Mexican Families, by Principal Source of Income, 1938
Principal source of income
Number of
families
Average
cash
income
Average
cash
and kind
300
$505
$561
175
515
611
97
506
559
26
400
400
12
425
475
Median.
p
The San Antonio Mexicans reported an average family income of $251 In
cash and kind.
3Dlvlslon of Special Surveys and Studies, Migratory Labor in California,
State Relief Administration of California, San Francisco, 1836, P. 121.
FAMILY INCOMES OF THE MEXICANS IN 1938 • 39
Table 10.—Average1 Income of Crystal City Mexican Families, by Size of Family, 1938
Size of family
Percent
distribution
of families
Averagg
income
All families
1 person
2 persons __
3 persons __ _
4 persons
5 persons -
9 persons
7 persons —
S persons --- —
9 persons
10 persons or more-
100
$501
*
8
13
15
14
15
12
7
9
10
t
338
403
409
473
070
630
780
950
1,107
*Leas than 0.5 percent.
^Base too small for representation.
^Median.
Includes cash and kind.
Table 11.—Average1 Income of Crystal City Mexican Families, by Number of Workers In
Family, 1938
Number of workers
Percent
distribution
of families
Average
Income2
All families- _ _ _ _ __
1 worker __ __ - _ _ _ ___ _ _
2 workers __
3 workers r
4 workers
5 workers or more .
100
»
$501
16
23
21
10
24
344
410
550
714
963
^Median.
^Includes cash and hind.
Total family incomes varied in striking correspondence with
size of family and number of workers. Two-person families had
average incomes of $338 in cash and kind, while families of ten
persons or more averaged over $1,100 in 1938 (table 10).
One-worker families averaged $344 in cash and kind in 1938,
while families with five workers or more averaged $983 (table 11).
RANGE OF INCOMES
The great majority of Crystal City's Mexican families manage
to live and travel from job to job on earnings of a few hundred
dollars per year. In 1938, 53 percent of all families earned
from $300 to $699 in cash. Many of these families lived under
conditions of extreme poverty during the winter, depending for
their food and shelter on a few days of work each week in the
spinach harvest.
The Crystal City families showed a surprisingly vide range
of incomes, however, in 1938. At the bottom of the scale were
15 percent of the families who received less than $300 in cash,
while at the other extreme were 10 percent who earned from
$1,000 to $1,500 per family, and 3 percent who earned $1,500
or more. (See table 8, p. 37.)
Generally speaking, the families with very low incomes were
employed principally in spinach, cotton, or miscellaneous farm
40 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
work. Usually they were families with only one or two wage
earners. Often one or more adults in such families were dis¬
abled by sickness. Finally, low incomes were associated with
periodic unemployment. The following case history illustrates
how a combination of such circumstances affected family earnings:
Josfi Vasquez had worked at cutting spinach since he was 11 years old. In
1938 he was the only worker In a family of four. He and his young wife
formerly worked together In the beet fields, but for 6 months after their
second baby was born early In 1938 his wife was very sick, so they had to
stay In Crystal City. Jos£ worked In spinach from the first of the year
until the end of March, earning $3 a week, or a total of $39. After a
month of Idleness In April, he got a 2-month Job picking onions, at which
he earned $50 and housing estimated to be worth $4. In July he was un¬
employed again. Then from the first of August through October he earned
$1 a day, or a total of $80, Irrigating spinach, in Hovember and December
he went back to cutting spinach, earning $36 in 2 months. Hl3 year's earn¬
ings totaled $205 In cash.
At the other end of the income scale were the 13 percent of
Crystal City Mexican families who earned $1,000 or more during
1938. Nearly all of these were families of labor contractors,
storekeepers, or beet workers. The exceptions were one or two
large, families who found work in spinach, onions, and cotton
throughout the year. The families who earned comparatively
high incomes from beet work were also very large, with many
workers, and most of them put in a full work year in 1938.
These facts are brought out even more clearly by a considera¬
tion of the 10 families who earned $1,500 or more in 1938.
Each of these families was very large, consisting of 8 to 18
persons, with 5 to 12 workers per family. Nine were beet
workers' families, with supplementary income from work in
spinach and onions. One family of this group also earned $500
on the side by transporting workers to and from the beet fields
in its truck. The tenth family was that of a labor contractor.
None of these families lost much time in unemployment in 1938-
The following example is typical of the circumstances under
which the largest incomes were earned:
The Moreno family consisted of 18'persons—an elderly couple, their 9 sons
and daughters, aged 16 to 39, a daughter-in-law, and 8 grandchildren.
Twelve members of the family worked In the beet fields In 1938, earning
$2,161 in cash. A car and a truck were required to transport the family
and its possessions to and from Wyoming. During the winter they lived in
a modern three-room house In Crystal City. They earned $154 during 1938
by working In the spinach harvest. This brought their total cash Income
up to $2,315 for the year.
From the standpoint of earnings per worker and per family
member, families such as this one were not very far above
the average Crystal City family in earning power. (See appendix
table 7.1 The wide range of total family incomes in Crystal
City was therefore largely a result of wide variations in family
size and number of workers.
Chapter IV
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AMONG THE MEXICANS
The mexican quarter of Crystal City is divided into two main
parts, covering roughly a square mile. The larger section,
called "MexicoGrande," is located north of the business section;
the smaller section, "Mexico Chico," extends to the south
and east of the center of the town. There is also a smaller
settlement at River Spur, a little more than a mile from the
town. These areas are crowded with the houses and shacks of
the Mexicans in spite of the abundance of open land near by.
They have no modern improvements; sewers and street lights are
lacking. The unpaved streets are dusty in summer and muddy in
winter.
Within this Mexican section are found the social maladjust¬
ments that usually accompany poverty. The ramshackle houses
are overcrowded, health conditions are bad and medical care is
inadequate, school attendance is poor and unenforced, relief
is not available to many of those who are unemployed, and the
social life of the Mexicans is hedged about with economic and
racial restrictions.
housing
The houses of the Crystal City Mexicans are mostly unpainted
one- or two-room frame shacks with single walls, the cracks
being covered on the outside with narrow strips of lumber. A
few are adobe huts, a cheap and durable type of sun-baked brick
construction used widely in Mexico. The majority have dirt
floors; only comparatively prosperous families possess houses
with wooden floors. Tin roofs predominate, often with no ceil¬
ings below, so that in sunny weather the insides of the shacks
become very hot. Most of the houses have one or two glass
windows, but some have only cheese cloth or flour sacks over
the window openings to keep the insects out. Flies, attracted
to the Mexican quarter by the open toilets and the lack of any
system of refuse disposal, find their way into the houses in
spite of such safeguards.
The poorer houses are patched together from scraps of lumber,
old signboards, tar paper, and flattened oil cans. They usually
41
42 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
have one room, with a lean-to kitchen in some cases. Some of
the occupants do not have stoves, but cook outside over open
fires in warm weather and in open washtubs inside when the
weather is cool. Many of these shacks were built by squatters
on public land or on land rented for 50 cents per month.
Less than a tenth of the 300 dwellings visited had electric
lights, and still fewer had indoor plumbing. The usual pro¬
cedure in obtaining water was for several families to share a
single outdoor water faucet, each paying 50 cents to $1 per
month water rent for this privilege. About 1 family in 10
used wells, cisterns, or river water.
Most of the Mexicans' houses were filled to overflowing, there
being an average of 2.6 persons to the room.1 As size of
family increased, the number of rooms per house failed to keep
pace; 2-person families averaged about 1 person to the room,
while families of 10 persons or more had an average of more
than 4 persons to the room (table 12). Fifteen families of 10
persons or more lived in one- or two-room houses.
Table 12.—Crystal City Mexican Faml1les, by Size of Family and Number of Rooms per Family
Dwelling, 1938
Size of family
Total
1 person
2 persons
3 persons
4 persons
5 persons
6 persons
7 persons
8 persons
9 persons
10 persons or more
^Base too smaT^To^repreaentatlon.
^Median.
More than two-thirds of the houses in the Mexican section had
one or two rooms, 19 percent had three rooms, 7 percent four
rooms, and 2 percent five rooms or more. The result of this
overcrowding was to be seen in the unsanitary conditions which
prevailed. Children slept on dirt floors, rolled up in quilts;
clothing was kept in boxes under beds or cupboards; and although
most of the Mexican housewives strove for neatness and cleanli¬
ness, these were qualities impossible to achieve in the face
of such obstacles.
A majority of the Mexicans—54 percent—owned their own homes
in 1938. Most of them had bought their houses during the "spinach
boom" of the twenties and early thirties, when spinach cutters
! Avera
Jr1
Ntcnber of
number
of
families
rooms
per
family
300
2.1
1
t
25
1.8
39
2.0
45
2.0
41
2.1
43
2.2
35
2.2
22
2.3
19
2.4
30
2.5
■"•The Mexicans of San Antonio averaged 8.2 persons to the room. The maxi¬
mum number compatible with health and deoency Is usually estimated to be
1 person per room.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AMONG THE MEXICANS • 43
were earning 10 cents or more per bushel. In this period, in
order to insure a steady supply of labor, the growers and real-
estate agents encouraged them to buy land and settle down. A
local lumber company cooperated by selling lumber on installments
to those wishing to build their own houses. Prices paid for
the houses ranged from $25 for a makeshift shack built during
the depression to $640 for a four-room house purchased during
the "spinach boom." Many of the home owners were heavily in
debt to the bank or behind in their taxes.
The 32 percent of the families who rented their houses paid
an average of a little over $3 rent per month. Rented houses
averaged only 2 rooms, as compared with 2.3 rooms in houses
owned by the occupants. One family in seven paid no rent, but
lived with relatives or in "colonies" owned by spinach-labor
contractors. One such group of dwellings consisted of 20 one-
room houses with 6 outdoor privies and 2 water faucets to serve
all of the residents.
HEALTH
Because of low incomes, poor housing, unsanitary conditions,
and inadequate medical care, sickness and disease are common
among the Mexicans of Crystal City and the Winter Garden Area.
According to a relief official in a neighboring town, the
tuberculosis rate is extremely high in the Winter Garden because
the Mexicans have been undernourished over a long period of
years. Enteritis, tuberculosis, and other diseases are wide¬
spread in the Crystal City area.
From April to July of 1939 there was an epidemic of diarrhea
in Zavala County. At least 2,000 persons became ill. When one
member of a family contracted the disease, almost invariably
all other members would catch it. Several infants died before
a doctor could reach them. By the end of June, 16 persons, 15
of whom were Mexicans, had died of diarrhea in the county. All
of these but one were babies less than a year old. This epidemic
was directly traceable to poor sanitation in the Mexican com¬
munities.2
Many cases of tuberculosis were reported among the 300 families
studied. In the first 10 months of 1939, 25 persons died of
tuberculosis in Zavala County; this is equivalent to about 290
tuberculosis deaths per 100,000 population per year.3 The
Mexicans reported great difficulty in gaining admittance to a
State institution for the treatment of tuberculosis because
beds were not available except for the most advanced cases.
2Data from Earle T. Norman, Director, Uvalde-Zavala County Health Unit,
Uvalde, Tex.
3By way of comparison, the tuberculosis death rate In the city of San
Antonio was 129 per 100,000 population in 1938, and that of the San Antonio
Mexicans alone was about 247 per 100,000.
44 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Illness was very common among small children, partly because
of the hardships accompanying extended periods of migration to
the beet and cotton fields. Not only the long trips but also
the unsanitary housing and living conditions prevalent in agri¬
cultural work had especially deleterious effects on the health
of the children.
Many of the families complained that they could not afford
the $2 fee charged for each visit by private physicians and
that the public health services available to them were inadequate.
EDUCATION
Almost 22 percent of Zavala County's population was illiterate
in 1930.4 Nearly all illiteracy was among the Mexicans. The
older generation is limited by its background of recent immigra¬
tion and low economic status; and the younger generation is
further handicapped by inability to attend school regularly
when following migratory agricultural work.
Only about 17 percent of the children aged 7 to 10 years and
about 40 percent of those from 11 to 13 years attended school
for the full year in 1938 (table 13).5 Of the remainder almost
Table 13-—School Attendance of Crystal City Mexican Children, by Age at Last Birthday, 1938
School attendance
Tot ad
Age in years
7-10
11-13
14-18
535
156
112
265
Percent distribution
100
100
300
100
65
16
19
53
30
17
32
26
42
64
6
10
Attended part of the time.
half were in school during part of the year; many attended only
during the spinach season, from November or December through
March. The rest did not go to school at all in spite of a
legal requirement that all Texas children 7 to 16 years of age
must attend school for at least 120 days each year.6
The schooling offered in Crystal City consists of a grammar-
school course and 4 years of high school. Most of the Mexican
children go to a grade school on the edge of the town. There
A
Bureau of the Census, fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Popula¬
tion Vol. Ill, Part 2, U. S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D. C., 1932,
P. 1010. In San Antonio the percent of Illiteracy was 7.7.
5The San Antonio children of migratory families had a much better record
of school attendance, half of all those aged 7 to 10 and 62 percent of those
aged 11 to 13 having attended full time In 1938.
8General Laws of Texas, 1939, 46th Legls., ch. 4, p. 227. Earlier legis¬
lation Included similar provisions.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AMONG THE MEXICANS • 45
Table li.—Years of School Completed by 18-Year-Old Crystal City Mexican Youth, 1938
Highest school grade completed
Number of
youth
Total.
61
Percent
distribution
Total
Less than 1 grade
First grade
Second grade
Third grade
Fourth grade
Fifth grade
Sixth grade
Seventh grade
Eighth grade
Ninth grade
Tenth grade
22
IS
18
18
ID
5
2
3
2
is an implicit understanding that the Mexicans shall attend
this school, partly because of their language difficulties and
their peculiar attendance problems.
Few Mexican children go beyond the third or fourth grade.
The usual reason for dropping out is the necessity of migrating
with their families. The Crystal City high school is open to
Mexican students but few attend. Only the children of the most
prosperous families are apt to go beyond grade school, and these
are likely to be excluded from most of the high school's social
activities.
The years of school completed by Crystal City Mexican youth
by 1938 increased progressively from an average of 1.3 years
for 8-year olds to 3.0 years for 14-year olds. Among 18-year-
old youth, who had had time at least to enter high school, the
average number of school grades completed was only 2.6. (See
appendix table 8.) One in five had never completed the first
grade and one in seven had completed five grades or more
(table 14).7
Because of their poverty and inadequate schooling, American-
born Mexican youth have scant opportunity to find employment
except in the migratory agricultural work followed by their
parents.
PUBLIC ASSI STANCE
Only one Mexican family in five reported having received
public assistance of any type since 1932. The largest number
of these first went on relief in the period from 1934 to 1936.
The reasons for this small amount of dependence upon public
assistance were: (1) Most of the Mexican families managed to
find work of some sort, even though wages were low, throughout
most of the year. (2) Various legislative and administrative
7ln San Antonio 18-year-old youth averaged 5.2 school grades completed;
only 5 percent had not completed the first grade.
.46 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
requirements operated to prevent the Mexicans from qualifying
for public assistance.
In 1938, although total family unemployment was comparatively
low, about 22 percent of the individual workers were unemployed
for 150 days or more during the year. Only 9 percent of all
families, however, reported any income from public assistance
in 1938- About half of these were recipients of work relief,
and the rest obtained surplus commpdities. (There had been no
direct cash relief in the State of Texas since 1936. )
The average income during 1938 from all types of public assist¬
ance, including WPA, was estimated by the Mexicans at $24 per
family receiving assistance. Surplus commodities were assigned
an average cash value of $4 per family per month, and consisted
of such items as butter, flour, beans, and prunes. The minimum
wage on WPA (the rate at which the Mexican project workers in
Zavala County were paid) was approximately $30 permonth in 1938.8
At the time of the survey only two WPA projects were in opera¬
tion in Zavala County. The great majority of project workers
were Americans of European stock rather than Mexicans. The
requirement that all WPA employees must be citizens excluded
many heads of Mexican families from this type of assistance.
Surplus commodities were more readily available to them.
Almost all of the Mexicans were excluded from coverage by
the unemployment compensation and old-age insurance provisions
of the Social Security Act because they were agricultural workers
throughout the year. Many elderly Mexicans were also excluded
from the old-age assistance program because they were not American
citizens.
g
In 1938, under an act of Congress reaulrlng a revision of WPA wage rates,
the minimum In Zavala County was Increased to $39.40 per month.
Chapter V
PROSPECTS FOR THE MEXICAN MIGRATORY
WORKERS
The immediate future of the Mexican migratory workers of Crystal
City and south Texas depends to a great extent on the amount of
employment available in the crops new requiring large quantities
of Mexican labor. An analysis of employment prospects in these
fields entails.not only an examination of trends in production
but also an estimate of the probable extent to which hand labor
will be replaced by machines in the near future.
GENERAL TRENDS
Prospects for employment among the Mexicans are primarily
dependent upon trends in four important crops: spinach, sugar
beets, cotton, and onions.
Sp I n ach
The decline in production of spinach around Crystal City is
a trend not likely to be reversed in the near future. A severe
weed problem, competition from other spinach-growing areas, and
depletion of local soil and water resources are behind this
trend. To alter the situation and bring about increased employ¬
ment in spinach, prices would have to rise and steps would need
to be taken to restore the efficiency of spinach growing in
the Winter Garden Area. Such steps might include: (1) control
of weeds through more careful cultivation of spinach, plowing
of the fields immediately after the harvest, and burning of
weeds along fence rows; and (2) making water accessible more
cheaply by building along the Nueces River a series of dams,
already projected, which would raise the water table and provide
river water for irrigation the year round.
Where the weed problem is too far out of control, it would
be desirable to introduce a system of crop diversification,
replacing some spinach acreage with other vegetables which can
more easily be cultivated; and where the soil has become depleted
through years of one-crop farming, rotation of spinach with
alfalfa or other soil-building crops may be necessary to restore
47
48 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
fertility. Such policies as these would in the long run help
to stabilize the region's economy. Crop diversification and
rotation would hardly bring increased employment, however, un¬
less they involved chiefly the growing of new types of vegetables
which would require more field labor than do present crops.
Mechanization is not likely to affect the spinach workers to
any great extent. The harvest operation could not easily be
mechanized: a machine could hardly select the healthy, mature
spinach plants and discard the others and the weeds. Since
planting is already done by machine, and spinach is seldom hoed
or weeded, there is little immediate possibility of further
mechanization.
Sugar Beats
As long as the sugar-beet industry is protected by Federal
legislation against competition from foreign cane sugar, it is
probable that it will remain stable and moderately prosperous
and that no sharp reduction in the demand for beet labor will
be felt by the Texas Mexicans. However, technological improve¬
ments in the growing of sugar beets have had, and probably will
continue to have, the effect of gradually decreasing the amount
of labor required in this crop.
Mechanization has been most marked in the blocking of beets
by means of cross-cultivation with a tractor-drawn cultivator
equipped with special shovels. This process is estimated to
reduce the hours of hand labor involved in blocking and thinning
from an average of 41 hours to 26 hours per acre. The method
is particularly well adapted to flat, nonirrigated areas, and
is already extensively used in Iowa and Minnesota.1 The wage
rate set in these States under the Sugar Act of 1937 was $2.50
per acre less when the beets were cross-cultivated than when
the blocking was done by hand.8
As early as 1893 at least two mechanical beet harvesters had
been invented, but no such device has yet come into general
use. The most efficient harvester now in existence lifts the
beets, tops them, andthrows them into windrows with the expendi¬
ture of only 5 to 8 man-hours per acre, as compared with about
20 to 30 hours required by hand methods. The overhead and
operating costs of the machine, however, were $7 to $10 per
acre in 1936, so that it was almost as expensive as hand labor.
Few growers may be expected to invest money in beet harvesters,
therefore, so long as a cheap labor supply is available.8
*wacy, Lorlng K. and others, Changes in Technology and labor Bequireuents
in Crop Production: Sugar Beets, Report No. A-l, National Research Project,
Works Progress Administration, Philadelphia, Pa., August 1987, p. 24,
9
Llss, Samuel, Protection of Sugar Beet Held Porkers Under the federal
Sugar Control Acts of 1Q3U and 1B37, unpublished ms., 0. S. Department of
Agriculture, Farm Security Administration, Washington, D. C., 1939.
^acy and others, op. cit., p.26.
PROSPECTS FOR THE MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS • 49
Cotton
Employment in cotton has been declining in recent years be¬
cause of both decreasing product ion and increasing mechanization.
The decline in production has been due to a number of factors,
including drought, the crop-control program, and low prices.
Dropping prices were in turn caused largely by the shrinking
world market for American cotton as large-scale production
increased in South America, Egypt, the Soviet Union, South
Africa, and China and by the use of cotton substitutes such
as cellulose fibers.4 These trends do not seem likely to stop
in the near future.
As in the case of beets, the trend toward mechanization in
cotton has taken place mainly in the preharvest operations.
A study of 141 representative farms in the high plains area
of western Texas showed that the proportion of cotton farmers
using tractors rose from 25 percent in 1934 to 79 percent in
1937.6 When a farm owner buys a tractor and takes over farms
formerly operated by tenants in order to cultivate them him¬
self, the number of tenant families displaced by a single
tractor usually ranges from 2 to 10 or more.6 The proportion
of farmers in the western semiarid section (Texas and Oklahoma)
who used multirow cultivators rose from 16 percent in 1919 to
69 percent in 1929 and 82 percent in 1936.7
This striking trend toward mechanization and large-scale pro¬
duction of cotton in the western high plains area so far has
had a direct effect chiefly on tenant farmers who were employed
to plant and cultivate the cotton before the harvest. Most of
the tenant farmers in northwest Texas were white persons of
European stock, although some were Negroes and a few were
Mexicans. The principal effect of the mechanization of pre¬
harvest operations upon the Mexican migratory workers has
therefore been an indirect one: in thousands of cases the
tenant farmers who have been "tractored off the land" in Oklahoma
and northern Texas have become migratory workers, competing
with the Mexicans for jobs. The results, as reported by the
Mexicans of Crystal City, have been low wages and decreased
opportunities for employment, especially in northern Texas.
4Cannlng, J. B., Memorandum to the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties
and the Sights of Labor, California Subcommittee Hearings, December 19,
1939, PP. 25-26.
5Bonner, C. A. and Magee, A. C.t "Some Technological Changes In the High
Plains Cotton Area of Texas," Journal of farm Economics, Vol. XX, No. 3,
August 1938, PP. 605-315.
®Taylor, Paul S., "Power Farming and Labor Displacement in the Cotton Belt,
1937," Monthly Labor feview, Vol. 46, No. 3, March 1938, p. 8.
7Holley, William C. and Arnold, Lloyd E., Changes in Technology and Labor
Requirements in Crop Production: Cotton, Report No. A-7, National Research
Project, works Progress Administration, Philadelphia, Pa., September 1938,
p. 43.
319118 O—41 5
50 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Mechanization has also had a direct effecton Mexican laborers
in cotton, especially in the chopping (thinning)process. Multi-
row cultivation and the increasing use of mechanical cotton
choppers have reduced considerably the number of jobs available
to Mexicans prior to the picking season. But thepicking process,
in which most migratory labor is employed, remains unmechanized.
If a satisfactory mechanical cotton picker should be developed
in the future, its impact on the migratory cotton workers would
be tremendous. It would have a particularly great effect on the
Mexicans, because it would be used most widely in the flat
areas of Texas and the Mississippi Delta, where tractors and
large-scale farming are most common. It has been estimated
that if picking machines were used on half of the Nation's
cotton acreage, as is by no means impossible, some two million
cotton pickers might be displaced.8
It is not likely, however, that the use of the mechanical
cotton picker would immediately spread throughout the Delta
and western cotton areas, even if it were extremely efficient
and if it were marketed without restrictions by the manufacturers.
The capital outlay involved in buying such a machine would be
too high for most farmers, at least as long as cotton can be
picked by hand for as little as 50 cents per 100 pounds.8 The
principal inroads on Mexican cotton labor in the near future
will probably result from (1) intensified competition for jobs
from dispossessed white and Negro tenant farmers and (2) further
mechanization of preharvest operations.
On Ions
Total onion production in Texas has been on the increase for
the past two decades, but in the Winter Garden Area it has
declined sharply. This fact, together with the short duration
of the onion season, makes it unlikely that the onion crop will
be an increasing source of employment for the Crystal City
Mexicans in the future.
Summary of Prospects
In short, employment opportunities for the Mexicans may
be expected to decrease if there is a continued decline in
spinach and onion production in the Winter Garden Area and in
cotton production in Texas and in the Nation as a whole, and if
the trend toward mechanization of beet and cotton field labor
continues.
The drop in spinach production in the Winter Garden Area is
the most important single factor affecting the employment of
8IUd., pp. 48, <51-82.
8See Home, R. L. and McKlbben, E. 0., Changes in farm Pouter and iquipment:
Mechanical Cotton Picker, Report No. A-7, National Research Project, Works
Progress Administration, Philadelphia, Pa., August 19 37, p. 18.
PROSPECTS FOR THE MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS • 51
the Crystal City Mexicans. This will continue to be important
since little has been done to control the weeds or remedy the
other causes of the decline.
Eventually, diversification of vegetable farming may supplement
employment in spinach, providing more stable employment not
only in the winter but also at other times of the year. Crops
such as lettuce, carrots, and broccoli were being grown on an
increasing scale at Carrizo Springs, near Crystal City, in 1939.
If this trend becomes important in other parts of the Winter
Garden Area, new types of local farm work may become available
to the Mexicans.
But such a readjustment would take time; and meanwhile some
workers will no doubt move to other winter quarters, as hundreds
have done already, in the hope that work will be more plentiful
elsewhere. Winter work is scarce almost everywhere, however,
and a majority of the Mexican families are closely tied to
Crystal City by personal and property bonds; therefore most of
them are likely to return each year, even if winter employment
opportunities are shrinking. As long as the downward trend in
spinach continues, an increasing labor surplus will probably
pile up in the towns and cities of the Winter Garden Area. 10
It is frequently suggested that the problem of surplus Mexican
labor can be solved by sending unemployed workers "back where
they came from. " As a matter of fact, the tide of migration
has been predominantly southward into Mexico ever since 1930,
when voluntary repatriation began to predominate over immigra¬
tion from Mexico. Of the Mexicans now in thiscountry, a majority
aire citizens, a whole new generation having acquired citizenship
by birth. Almost 9 out of 10 of the Mexican families in Crystal
City contained 1 or more citizens of the United States.
The Mexican Government established in 1939 a program of repa¬
triation for its nationals in this country. The plan called
for a broad farm resettlement program to provide homes for
^In 1939 there was a sizable surplus of labor In the Crystal City spinach-
growing area. Acreage had been abandoned in Zavala County because of a lack
of water for Irrigation, and someof the early crop was damaged by high winds
and Insects. In addition, packing sheds had been built at Uvalde and an
Increasing amount of spinach was being shipped from that point. It was
estimated that there were at least 800 surplus workers In and around Crystal
City. Some workers were sent to Maverick County, where production was
Increasing, but employment was not found for all of the Crystal City workers.
(Annual Report of the farm Placement Service, Texas, 1939, Texas State
Employment Service, Austin, 1940, P. 21.)
In 1940 large-scale reemployment In defense Industries resulted In the
absorption, at least temporarily, of part or the surplus Mexican laborers
In Texas. Many sugar-beet workers failed to return to Texas in that year,
preferring to remain in the North where wages were higher and work was
becoming more plentiful. Others found employment In Texas defense Industries.
No real shortage of farn labor occurred, however, and there was no reason
to believe that the problem of surplus Mexican labor had permanently been
30lved. (Farm Placement Service, Origins and Problems of Texas Migratory
farm Labor, Texas State Employment Service, Austin, September 1940, PP. 37,
77-78.)
52 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
19,500 Mexicans now living in the United States under conditions
of economic distress. Some 200 families per month were to be
returned to Mexico during 1940.11 This number, however, would
account for only a small minority of the needy Mexicans in
this country.
CONCLUSIONS
The situation of the Mexican migratory workers of Crystal City
is a striking exampleof the relationship between low-paid labor
and the development of certain types of agriculture. Spinach
and onion farming reached their present proportions in south
Texas largely because of the presence of thousands of Mexicans
who have customarily worked for wagesof a dollar a day or less.
Most of the Crystal City workers were able to live on these low
wages only because they found employment in cotton, sugar beets,
and other crops during the rest of the year, returning to the
Winter Garden Area for the spinach harvest.
The experience of the Crystal City group has demonstrated two
things: (1) It is possible for some migratory families to find
employment throughout most of the year; and (2) even when con¬
siderable regularity of employment is attained, average family
incomes of migratory workers are below the minimum required to
provide adequately for the necessities of life, especially when
families are large, as among the Mexicans.
A permanent solution for the problems of the Mexican agricul¬
tural workers cannot be found as long as the migratory labor
market is constantly flooded with recruits from deserted farms
and from industrial centers where unemployment is widespread.
The incomes and living standards of the Mexican migratory workers
will continue to be low, therefore, as long as the general
problems of unemployment, low wages, and an unstable agricultural
economy remain unsolved in the Nation as a whole.
llIhe Evening Star, Washington, D. C., October 11, 1939. Subseiuent Infor¬
mation reveals that from January 1, 1939, to September 1940 a total of 4.4S1
Mexican agricultural writers had been returned to Mexican farm projects
from the lower Rio Orande Valley. (Farm Placement Service, Origins and
Problems of Texas Migratory fare Labor, Texas State Baployment Service,
Austin, September 1940, PP. 78-79.)
Appendixes
53
Appendix A
SUPPLEMENTARY TABLES
Table I.—Trends in Spinach Production in the United States and Texas, 1919-19391
United States
production
(thousands
of bushels)
Texas
Production
(thousands
of bushels)
Acres in
spinach
Bushels
per etc re
Price per
bushel of
spinach for
market2
5,486
0,395
8,535
10,260
13, 469
13,935
13,978
10,797
18,904
19,376
26,076
15,596
17,379
14,094
15,542
10,106
16,104
20.149
22,274
10, 691
18,669
15,955
1,560
1,606
2,105
2,299
2,549
2,740
4,751
5,130
6,457
5,120
8.595
5,463
7,074
0,468
5,720
0,035
3,780
0,777
8,154
5,866
5.955
5.266
4,800
5,620
8,320
8,210
9,440
8,700
,14,400
rie,82o
19,450
25,600
328,650
25,060
27,850
30,800
44,000
35,500
36.000
54,400
58,000
48,000
41,400
37,900
325
300
253
280
270
315
329
305
332
200
300
218
254
210
130
170
105
125
141
122
144
139
>.95
.80
.55
.65
.50
.75
•65
.50
.50
•45
.35
• 57
.38
.46
.35
• 37
• 58
.30
.30
.30
.31
.60
U. J5. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
figures are for ^spinach for marKet only. Spinach for manufacture (canning) was reported only from 1938
on, and was excluded In calculating average price per bushel.
3Includes some acreage not harvested, because of market conditions, which was excluded in computing total
value.
^Data obtained subsequent to the completion of the body of the report. 8ee Agricultural Marketing Service
releases on spinach for market and for manufacture in 1940,0.. 8. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.,
Dec. 18, 1940.
Table 2.—Trends in Spinach Production in Texas, 1925—19391
Item
Annual averages
1925-1929
1930-1934
1935-1939
Production (thousands of bushels) ........
Bushels per acre
Price per bushel (weighted average3) -----
Value of crop-(thousands of dollars)
20,984
2 6,011
286
$0.47
$2,286
32,642
0,152
189
$0.42
$2,602
47 ,560
6,106
128
4 $0.34
$1,940
Indices
Production
Bushels per acre
Price per bushel ...
Value of crop —
100
100
100
100
100
156
102
06
89
114
227
102
45
72
85
1Data from Agricultural Marketing Service, crop reports on spinach for market and for manufacture, 1926-1939,
U.-S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
Includes some acreage not harvested, because of market conditions, which was excluded in computing total
value.
3Welghted to take Into account the size of the crop each year.
4?lgure Is for spinach for market only. Spinach for manufacture Is excluded.
55
56 • MEXICAN MIGRATORY WORKERS OF SOUTH TEXAS
Table 3.—Carlot Shipments of Spinach From Texas, Zavala County, and Crystal City,
1928-1939
1920
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1930
1937
1938
1939
5.395
6,007
7,062
0,502
0,950
5.061
5,570
3,843
5,050
5,196
4,362
4,351
Zavala County
2,040
3,775
4,729
4,396
4,000
3,036
3,223
1,004
2,966
3,260
1,903
1.423
*Data from Agricultural Marketing Service, reports on carlot shipments of fruits and vegetables in Texas,
1028-1930, U. 8. Department of Agriculture, Washington, C.
Table 4.— Percent Distribution of Activities1 of 300 Crystal City Mexican Families, 1938
Month
Jan.
Fteb.
Mar.
Apr.
May
June
July
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Total
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
Spinach
90
90
89
24
5
5
1
1
3
4
50
81
Beets
—
—
—
17
58
00
59
59
59
59
17
1
Ctotton
*
*
1
9
10
20
29
33
30
30
21
0
Onions
—
—
—
22
11
4
1
—
—
—
—
Other farm
2
2
2
4
4
4
4
3
3
3
3
2
Nonfarm
7
7
7
7
4
3
3
3
3
3
0
9
Unemployed2
*
*
1
17
2
4
3
1
2
1
3
1
*
Less than 0.5 percent.
When 2 activities or more appeared in i family in a single month, the activity of longest duration In
terms of man-hours was used.
Unemployment was defined as total family unemployment for a major portion of a month.
Table 5. — Summary of Average1 Earnings and Hours in Various Types of #ork of Crystal City
Mexicans, 1938
Type of vork
Number of
families
esployed
Average
family
cash
earnings
Average
Individual
weekly
earnings
Average
hoars per
week
Average
duration
of Job
(days)
Total
Spinach
Beets
Cotton
Onions
Other farm
Nonfarm:
Private employment
Emergency Government
employment
300
$506
$4.53
43
96
277
198
100
89
35
49
13
124
400
279
43
71
97
208
3.13
6.33
> 5.43
3.75
£6.00
40
49
47
46
49
30
79
196
85
44
90
132
pMedlan.
Allows for time lost.
SUPPLEMENTARY TABLES ® 57
Table 6.—Distribution of Incomes of Crystal City Mexican Families, by Principal Source of
Income, 1938
Total family income
Principal source of income
All sources
Cash
only
Cash
and
kind
Cash
only
Chsh
and
kind
Cash
only
Cash
and
kind
Cash
only
Chsh
and
kind
All families:
Number
Less than $200-_
$300-$899
$300-$399
$400-$499-
$5OO-$509
$700-$799.
$900-$899.
$1,000-$1,249 _
$1,250-$l, 499 _
$1,500-$1,999 _
$2,000 or more.
Average1 annual inccme $506
$561 $515
$611
100
$508 $559
$400
23
27
27
7
4
$400
Median, based on more detailed distributions than those given above.
Note.—Distribution of Incomes of 12 families whose principal source of Income was nonfann work omitted
because of the small number of cases. ttielr average cash Income was $425; cash and kind, $476.
Table 7.— SizeofFamily and Number of Workers in Relation to Income Distribution, Crystal
City Mexican Families, 1938
Total family income
Percent
of families
Average1
family
size
Average
number of
workers
Total
$200-$299
$30O-$399
$400-$499 — -
$500-$599
$600-$699
$700-$799
$800-$899
$900-$999
$1,000-$1,249
$1,250-$l,499
$1,500 or more
^Median.
Tfore than 4.5 workers
3.8
3.8
4.5
5.1
5.4
6.5
6.9
7.5
8.8
8.8
9.0
(0)
(?)
(2)
1.8
1.8
2.3
2.6
3.2
3.6
4.3
Table 8.—Years of School Completed by Crystal City Mexican Children 7 Through 18 Years
of Age, 1938
Age at last birthday
Number of
children
Average1 number of school
grades completed
Both sexes
Male
Female
Total
535
2.1
2.1
2.2
42
_
42
1.3
1.0
1.4
32
1.6
1.9
1.4
42
1.7
1.7
1.7
35
2.0
2.2
1.9
32
2.4
2.4
2.4
45
2.6
2.2
3.0
46
3.0
3.2
2.9
58
2.8
3.0
2.7
46
2.9
3.3
2.6
54
3.3
3.2
3.3
61
2.6
2.7
2.2
1Medlan.
Appendix B
LIST OF TABLES
Table TEXT TXBLES Page
1. Trends in carlot shipments of spinach, Winter Garden Area compared
with selected spinach-producing areas of Texas, 1930-1939 _____ 8
2. Size of family and average number of workers per family among Crystal
City Mexicans, 1938 __________ 11
3. Cash income of Crystal City Mexican families from spinach work in 1938 _ 17
4. Cash income of Crystal City Mexican families from beet work in 1938 _ 22
5. Basic wage rates per acre for hand labor in sugar-beet fields in selected
areas, 1935-1939. ... __ 24
6. Cash income of Crystal City Mexican families from cotton work in 1938 _ 30
7. Cash income of Crystal City Mexican families from onion work in 1938 _ 35
8. Cash and total income of Crystal City Mexican families from all sources,
1938 - 37
9. Average income of Crystal City Mexican families, by principal source
of income, 1938 ___________ ............... 38
10. Average income of Crystal City Mexican families, by size of family,
1938 - 39
11. Average income of Crystal City Mexican families, by number of workers
in family, 1938 ------------------------- 39
12. Crystal City Mexican families, by size of family and number of rooms
per family dwelling, 1938 42
13. School attendance of Crystal City Mexican children, by age at last
birthday, 1938- - - 44
14. Years of school completed by 10-year-old Crystal City Mexican youth,
1938 45
SUPPLEMENTARY TABLES
1. Trends in spinach production in the United States and Texas, 1919-1939 55
2. Trends in spinach production in Texas, 1925-1939. ---------- 55
3. Carlot shipments of spinach fromTexas, Zavala County, and Crystal City,
1928-1939 - 56
4. Percent distribution of activities of 300 Crystal City Mexican families,
1938 - 56
5. Summary of average earnings and hours in various types of work of Crystal
City Mexicans, 1938 - - _ - --------------- 56
6. Distribution of incomes of Crystal City Mexican families, by principal
source of income, 1938. 57
7. Size of family and number of workers in relation to income distribution,
Crystal City Mexican families, 1938 ---------------- 57
8. Years of school completed by Crystal City Mexican children 7 through
18 years of age, 1938 ------- --------------- 57
59
Index
61
INDEX
Page
Abbott, Lewis 2In, 22a, 23a, 24n
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 23
Agricultural Economics, Bureau of 26n
Agricultural Marketing Service 4n, 5n, 6n, 8n, 9n, 35n, 55n, 56n
Armentrout, W: W 25n
Arnold, Lloyd E 49n, 50n
Beet work. See Sugar-beet work.
Bonner, C. A 49n
Brown, Malcolm 30n
California State Relief Administration 38n
Canning, J. B 49n
Cassmore, Orin C xin, 30n
Census, Bureau of the xn, 5n, 8n, 44n
Child labor. See specific types of work.
Children's Bureau, U. S 26n
Citizenship. See Mexicans of Crystal City.
Coastal Bend Area:
Cotton season 27
Location 2
Spinach shipments 8
Contract labor system (see also Emigrant Agent Act; Emigrant agents) 3, 18,
25, 32-33
Cotton production:
Texas 26, 28
United States - 26
Cotton work 14, 26-35
Child labor 33
Earnings - 27 , 29-30
Employment prospects 49-50
Family income 30, 38
Hours per week 27
Labor policies 30-33
Living conditions 33-35
Location of jobs 27
Mechanization 49-50
Rates paid contractors 33
Wage rates 27
Workers per family 29
Crystal City (set also Mexicans of Crystal City):
Location 1
Mexican quarter 41
Onion shipments 3
Population &1
Sources 3, 10
Stability 10
Schools.. - - 44-45
Spinach shipments 3, 6-7, 8, 56
63
64 • INDEX
Page
Defense industries, effect on labor surplus 51n
Dimmit County:
Onion shipments 35
Population 1940 - 8n
Spinach shipments 7, 8
Duration of jobs (««« alto specific types of work) 58
Earnings. See Income; Family income; specific types of work.
Education. See Crystal City; Mexicans of Crystal City.
Emigrant Agent Act 31
Emigrant agents 31n
Employment opportunities. See Mexicans of Crystal City, work patterns.
Employment prospects. See specific types of work.
Evening Star, The 52i
Family employment, by type of work 56
Family income (see alto Income; specific types of work):
All sources 37, 30-40 , 56 , 57
And number of workers 39. 57
And size of family 39-40 , 57
By type of work 38
Farm Placement Service, Texas 18n, 19n, 27n, 28n, 31n, 33o, 51a, 52i
And labor contractors 33
Attitude toward out-of-State migration 30-31
Placements 19, 32
Farm Security Administration (see alto Migrant camps) 34n
Folsom, Josiah C 30n
Ham, William T 24n, 26o
Hamilton, C. Horace 33n
Hawthorn, Leslie R 3o, 9b
Health 43-44
Holley, William C 49n, 50n
Home Economics, Bureau of 23
Home ownership. See Mexicans of Crystal City, housing.
Horne, R. L SOn
Housing. See Mexicans of Crystal City; specific types of work.
Immigration U«« also Crystal City, settlement by Mexicans; Mexicans of
Crystal City):
Recommendation of Farm Placement Service 32
Restrictions 30
Income (see also Family income; specific types of work):
Crystal City and San Antonio Mexicans compared 36
In kind 17 , 22. 26 , 33, 37 , 38 . 57
Per person 37
Irrigation. See Winter Garden Area.
Job, definition 21n
Johnson, Elizabeth S in, 22k
Jones-Cost ig an Act 23, 24
La Pryor, spinach shipments 7t g
Labor organization. See Unionization.
Labor policies. See specific types of work.
Labor shortages exaggerated 31
Liss, Samuel 24n, 48n
Living conditions. See Mexicans of Crystal City; specific types of work.
Location of jobs. See specific types of work.
Lower Valley Area:
Location 2
Spinach shipments g
INDEX • 65
Page
McKibben, E. G 50n
Macy, Loring K 48n
Magee, A. C 49n
Maverick County:
Population 8n
Spinach shipments 7, 8
Mechanical cotton picker. See Cotton work, mechanization.
Mechanization. See specific types of work.
Menefee, Selden C xin
Mexican Government, repatriation program 51-52
Mexican migratory workers (see also Mexicans of Crystal City; specific types
types of work) x-xii
Characteristics x-xi
Displacement of other groups by x
Mexicans in Texas, number x
Mexicans of Crystal City (see also Crystal City; specific types of work):
Citizenship 11, 51
Bducation of children 44-45, 57
Housing 41-43
Size of family 11, 38
Usual occupations 10-11
Dork patterns 13-15
Workers per family 11
Migrant camps 34-35
Migratory labor routes. See Cotton work; Sugar-beet work, location of jobs.
Miscellaneous farm work 36
Moreno family, earnings 1938 40
Nonfarm work 15, 36
Norman, Earle T 43n
Old-age assistance 46
Old-age insurance 46
Onion production. See Crystal City; Winter Garden Area; Zavala County.
Onion work 13, 14, 35-36
Duration of jobs 35
Earnings 35-36
Employment prospects 50
Family income 35
Pecan shellers of San Antonio):
Earnings from beet work 22n
Education of children 44n, 45n
Family income 38n
Housing 4ai
Immigration after 1920 lOn
Size of family lln, 38
Wages from cotton work 27n
Weekly earnings 37n
Workers per family 11"
Public assistance 45-46
Quinn, Walter - 23"
Rent. See Mexicans of Crystal City, housing.
San Antonio Mexicans. See Pecan shellers of San Antonio.
Schools. See Crystal City.
Scope of survey xi-xii, 16n
Silvermaster, Gregory — — 34n
Size of family. See Mexicans of Crystal City.
Saith, Howard 111
319118 O 41 6
66 • INDEX
Social Security Act. Set Public assistance. Pag*
Spinach prices 5-6
Spinach production:
Affected by weeds - 9
Climatic conditions ID
Costs — - 5
Irrigation 9
Plant epidemics- ID
Soil depletion 10
Texas 4-6, 55
United States 4, 55
Virginia spinach area 9
Winter Garden Area 1, 3, 6-10, 47
Yield per acre 6
Zavala County 4
Spinach shipments (s«e also names of specific localities):
Texas - - - - 6, 56
Virginia spinach area 9 -
Spinach work 15-19
Child labor 19
Earnings 16-17
finployment prospects 47-48, 50-51
Family income 17, 30
Hours per week 17
Labor policies 17-19
Mechanization 43
Transportation 18-19
Types 16, 17
Sugar Act of 1937 23, 24
Sugar-beet industry:
Government regulation 23-24
Labor policies 25-26
Wage rates 24
Sugar-beet work 13, 19-26
Acreage per family 24-25
Child labor 24, 26
Duration of jobs 21
Earnings 21-23
Employment prospects 48
Family income 22, 38
Hours per week 21
Living conditions 26
Location of jobs 20, 21
Mechanization 48
Methods of hiring 31n
Size of family 22
Transportation 21
Types 19, 21
Wage rates 24
Workers per family 25
Surplus commodities. Stt Public assistance.
Surplus labor. See Winter Garden Area; Defense industries, effect on labor
surplus.
Taylor, Paul S ixn, xn, xiin, In, 24n, 49n
Texas, General Laws 1939 . 44n
Transportation to migratory jobs. See specific types of work.
Tuberculosis death rate, San Antonio (sae also Zavala County) 43n
Unemployment 15, 45
Unemployment compensation 45
Unionization 18, 23
INDEX • 67
Page
United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America 23
Uvalde County, spinach shipments 7, 8
Vasey, Tom 30n
Vasguez, Jose, case history 40
Wage rates. See specific types of work.
Webb County, spinach shipments 7, 8
Wilson-Karnes Area, spinach shipments 8
Winter Garden Area:
Development of spinach industry 1, 3
Irrigation 1, 9
Location 2
New types of farm work , 51
Onion production 35, 50
Population 1940 8n
Spinach shipments 7, 8
Surplus labor, 1939 5to
Works Progress Mministration (see also Public assistance):
Employment 36
Wage rates 46
Zavala County (see also Spinach production):
Illiteracy 44
Onion shipments 35
Population 1940 8°
Spinach shipments 6-7, 8, 56
Tuberculosis death rate 43
WPA projects 46
WPA wage rates 46n