WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 231

which will be ideal, and does not run counter to hard realities, which we must
face, it seems to us that we can not blindly destroy the economic status of a tremendous
 group of American citizens without determining fairly and squarely
what the alterative shall be. We should like to have you ask yourselves which
of these alternatives you choose. We see no other and have heard no other
proposed.
ITINERANT LABOR CAN BE SUCCESSFULLY EMPLOYED
Then we will be asked how we can arrange for the profitable employment of
itinerant laborers as suggested.
In many States of the Union all the commercial agricultural crops may be listed
on the fingers of one hand, or both hands. In California, and this is reasonably
true of the Southwest generally, we produce over 180 distinct commercial agricultural
 crops of different kinds. The peak loads for these crops usually cover, in
any one place, a period of from 2 to 4 weeks or sometimes more. Taken over the
entire territory, however, and for all the crops, they cover a period of ten or more
months of the year. In other words, the major portion of the itinerant labor
supply of this great area can be kept busy practically ten months of the year, moving
 from one locality to another to meet these successive peak labor demands.
With a proper coordination of transient labor demands of the producers of these
farm commodities and of those who transport them, viz., the railroads, it is possible
 so to adjust the demands for this type of labor as practically to iron out all
peaks and keep all itinerants profitably employed for practically 12 months out
of the year.
We grant this has not yet been done. On the other hand, there is no question
at all that great improvement has been brought about in this regard in the last
few years, and in the future still further progress can and will be made.
Under these circumstances there is no reason at all why America should
not continue to prosper if a safe supply of transient labor which will be satis-Ged
 to perform that type of labor can be found and maintained.
We could profitably spend some time citing specifically where and when these
crop peaks develop and how the movement of this labor might effectively be
handled, but as time prevents may I refer you to the hearings of the House
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization held February 21 to 25, 1928?

TRANSPORTATION NEEDS OF TRANSIENT LABOR
We have just referred to the railroad’s use of transient labor. The farmers
21ave a very definite interest in this for two reasons.
In the first place, the 300,000 carloads of perishables which we mentioned a
few moments ago as being shipped out of this southwest territory must, in
large measure, cross great expanses of hot, barren desert. If the cars are to reach
their destinations the railroads must be kept up. Experience has demonstrated
beyond a question, as it has in regard to agriculture, that white labor can not be
secured in anything like sufficient quantities to do this type of work, and the
proponents of the quota application themselves admit that no white man should
be expected to remain at that tvpe of work where he can not have and develop
a home of his own.
In the second place, if transportation and other costs are forced toc high the
consumers in our great centers of population will more and more tend to send
abroad to satisfy their agricultural requirements. The cumulative effects on
American business of such a move is obvious. It is impossible to believe that
the consumers will not go to Mexico for vegetables, to Central and Southern
America for fruits, to the Argentine and Australia for wool, and so on down
the line. We do not have the slightest comprehension of the ultimate effect of
such a procedure or of the magnitude of the disaster that would follow. True,
the Government would undertake to correct the difficulty, after the major portion
 of the damage had been done, but whether it could at that late date or not
is very much of a question. Now is the prover time to foresee these difficulties
and nrevent their occurrence

CLIMATIC LABOR PROBLEMS

We have said that the American will not work at this class of labor in the
Southwest. He not only will not, but, in many instances, can not, Unfornately,
 many of our most productive areas have such hot summers, when these
erops are being cared for and harvested, that it is impossible to find American