WESTERN HEMISPEERE IMMIGRATION 141

Mr. Brair. They have regular places to work in the North, and
they know what time our crops start and they are readv to work on
them.
The CHAIRMAN. And they are there with their children and their
families?
Mr. Brair. Yes, sir; and they have their cars.
The CrarrRMAN. And do they have with them a number of children?
Mr. Brair. Yes, sir.
The CratrmaN. And they are the future citizens of your valley?
Mr. BraIr. Yes, sir; I suppose they would be.
The CrairMAN. Proceed.
Mr. Bratr. Our crop-preparation season begins again in September
or October, so if a Mexican wishes to follow our crop from Imperial
Valley through the State and back again, he needs be unemployed
only in transit. Unskilled labor which they perform pays $3.25
per day and up, depending upon whether the wage basis is hourrate
 or contract work.
In our packing and shipping sheds we employ only whites. They
also are often what is known as “fruit tramps ’’; that is, the migratory
white of roving disposition who likes to make big money for a short
time job at piece rates, spend it, and either return for another job
or pass on to another part of the State where some kind of perishable
fruit or vegetable crop is maturing all the year round—a condition
which makes steady employment or semi-idleness optional with the
worker himself.
Our Mexican workers by contrast spend their wages on their
families, as a rule— often supporting several old people, their own
and perhaps the children of relatives. They help each other in misfortune
 in a way I wish our thriftier white workers would copy.
Too often, Americans spend all their money on themselves and this
prevents their becoming steady types willing to settle down and
amount to something.
A neighbor told me just before I left, about hiring three jobless
white men, who told him, with tears in their eyes how hungry they
were. He believed them, for they had walked from Los Angeles.
They collected the first day’s wages from the foreman of the lettucepacking
 shed, but failed to show up next morning. Two days later
a noise on top of the shed attracted attention. There lay one of
these three white and independent Americans, dead to the world,
beside an empty tin of “canned heat’ —a favorite vice with the professional
 vagabonds who infest our Pacific coast highways, and who
draw a great deal of misplaced sympathy by telling untrue tales of
being jobless. They are the type who tell sob stories about themselves
 while laughing in their sleeves at ‘gullible investigators’ of
labor conditions, when they later gather in groups in the jungles
over their “mulligan stews,”
Mr. Scavenger. Do you prefer wage or contract work?
Mr. Brair. I prefer the contract work.
Mr. ScanEiDER. You get the best of that?
Mr. Brair. No, sir; we have no foreman then.
Mr. Scuneiper. But you are responsible if they are on contract
to plan for how they shall live and so on?
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