WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION 447

Ralph H. Taylor, secretary of the California agricultural legislative committee,
who has been active in opposition to the restriction of Mexican immigration,
stated in Ogden, Utah, at a recent meeting of the western division of the United
States Chamber of Commerce that itinerant labor can be successfully employed.
“In California, and this is reasonably true of the Southwest generally, we produce
over 180 distinct commercial agricultural erops of different kinds. The peak
loads of these crops usually cover, in any one place, a period of from two to four
weeks or sometimes more. Taken over the entire territory, however, and for
all the crops, they cover a period of 10 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 10 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 itinérants
profitably employed for practically 12 months out of the year.” He admitted,
however, that this is not being done and that a permanent solution of the problem
calls for coordination of effort by employers.
Granting these things to be true, the question arises as to why there should be
a need even under existing eircumstances for a never ending flood of immigration
from Mexico to meet this demand for itinerant labor in California in view of the
vast number of Mexicans in the cities of southern California who are available
but apparently unwilling to work. :
It is said that Americans will not work at this class of labor and that climatic
conditions are such as to make it impossible for white labor to do the work. Dr.
Paul 8. Taylor and a host of persons who have worked under the most trying
climatic conditions in California refute the latter claim, Doctor Taylor states:
“It is sometimes maintained that white labor can not do heavy work under
(Imperial) valley conditions, but while the- temperature is very high’ during
cantaloupe-picking season and consequent discomfort is great, the absence of
white pickers at the present time can not be laid to inability to endure the heat.
Statements to this effect by reliable white persons who have themselves picked
melons in company with many other whites are corroborated by the observations
of early labor investigators.”
Indeed, it was not until 1917 that Californias agricultural interests turned
seriously toward Mexican labor as a main factor in production. Since then white
labor has been of declining relative importance. Why? .
The California lobbyists maintain that it is not because Mexican labor is cheap.
One such person declared that ‘cheap’ labor is a misnomer. “Wages for the
Southwest are higher than for the rest of the country, and wages in California,
where the Mexican is employed in large numbers agriculturally, are higher than
those paid in any other State of the Union for agricultural labor, and the spread
is so great as to prove once and for all that Mexican labor is not cheap labor.”
Another stated: ““California’s agricultural labor gets 80.6 per cent higher wages
than the average in the United States. There is no cheap labor employed.”
Yet in explaining the continued need for more Mexican labor he stated: “Our
Mexican labor is in many cases lost to us through overbidding by Middle West
and Northern States who require them to work their truck crops and beet industry.”
 This is indeed an illuminating statement when reliable data indicates that
a Mexican family income from working in the beet fields is approximately $700
per year, or from $100 to $200 per worker since the family will average five or
more members who work in the beets.
Dr. Paul 8. Taylor points out that ‘high daily earnings are not a very reliable
index of seasonal earnings * * * A fair estimate .of the annual earnings of
a Mexican laborer of Imperial Valley is from $600 to a possible $800.” Prof.
R. L. Adams gives data that indicates the wages paid Mexicans and whites
range very close together. It is to be noted that it does not follow from this
that Mexicans are paid wages according to the American standard. Indeed,
the total annual income received by such laborers, as stated by Doctor Taylor,
seems to indicate beyond the possibility of rebuttal that the wages of the American
laborers have been pulled down to the Mexican level, Lo
These facts not only seem to indicate that Mexican labor in California is
after all really “cheap” labor, but they also tend to explain why white labor is
anwilling and unable to work in agricultural production in California. .
Truck farming in California is no dirtier than truck farming anywhere else in
the. United States. Picking fruit is no more difficult in California than it is in
other sections of our country where it is done entirely bv white labor. = Picking