148 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

melons and other products from the field is done everywhere else by white
American labor. Picking walnuts in California is a picnie for the Mexican and
ais family who usually camp under the trees. If anything, picking fruit, walnuts,
ete., is less difficult in California than elsewhere. To argue, therefore, that white
laborers are unable to do the work is to ignore the fact that the work is done
elsewhere by such persons and that it was done by them in California prior to
the Mexicanization of agricultural production in the latter State. One must
took, therefore, to the wage scale, to living and housing and sanitary conditions,
to the permanence and stability of the work and a host of related factors to find
the explanation for the inability to secure a sufficient supply of white labor.
That the annual earnings of the average Mexican family is extremely low even
in California is obvious from the dats already referred to. Nor is that all.
Sometimes laborers in California complain to the labor commissioner that they
have been paid less than is due them. Often they receive little or no pay.
Dr! Paul S. Taylor states it thus: ‘The chief reason for nonpayment of wages
is the inability of employers to pay. These employers are usually lessees and
contractors rather than owners. The position of a lessee, particularly a share
tenant, is precarious. Frequently he is without property, his crop fails—sometimes
 physically, more often financially. He has no interest beyond that of the
crop which has failed, and no assets to attach. The owner is not liable for the
debts of the lessee, the latter and the contractor have nothing and the laborer
ets nothing. The laborer has no lien upon the crop he has helped to harvest.
Frdeed, a lien upon a car of cantaloupes picked in the morning, loaded, iced, and
an route east before the picker left the field at nightfall, would do little good.
Probably nothing short of a bond for the payment of wages would fully protect
the wage earner.” Under these conditions is there any wonder that white labor
is unwilling to labor for nothing, to be exploited for the benefit of a small group
of California farmers and absentee landowners? If the Mexican protests or
undertakes to protect himself he is immediately threatened by his exploiters with
deportation from the United States. Thus he is clubbed into submission in a
cowardly manner. Obviously the white laborer would never submit to such
inhumane treatment. Furthermore, it would seem that we have here the basic
reason why even the Mexican who drifts to the city refuses again to be ‘the goat.”
When the Mexicans in Imperial Valley undertook to protect themselves in
April, 1928, through the formation of a ‘‘umnion,” under the title ‘Mexican
Mutual Aid Society of Imperial Valley,” the employers left no stone unturned
to break it up. ;
Doctor Taylor states: “In addition to the pressure from the sheriff's office
fo break the strike, unsigned circulars were published, presumably by the growers,
to break the morale of the Mexican laborers. The arguments presented in
these circulars were various. It was suggested that Federal officers were
watching the situation with a view to possible deportation of participants;
tliat the Mexicans should be grateful to Imperial Valley growers, who
have fought restriction of Mexican immigration and who resisted deportations
 from the valley by organizing the Associated Labor Bureau, and that they
should take care lest these same growers use money and influence to deport
Mexicans and prevent their return to the United States; that the organizers of
the union were working solely to enrich themselves at the expense of the workers;
and that large numbers of Mexicans from Texas and Arizons were readily availhie
 204, worl be introduced if Imperial Vallev Mexicans did not quickly go
0 work.
Here we have a confession that an available supply existed elsewhere in the
United States. The following paragraph, taken from a circular used to break
the strike, seems directly to acknowledge a violation of our contract labor law.
Indeed, such violations are known to be extensive and numerous:
“Remember this. If you fail to cooperate, the same men who have given
their time and money to get you into this country and to protect you here, the
same men will turn against you. They will use their funds and their influence
to have you brought back to your country, and your chances for seeing the
United States again will be rather remote.”
No evidence could be found to indicate that the Mexicans were stirred up or
led by agitators or that the union was “red” and communisticc. When the
Mexicans themselves are thus driven to protest against the existing conditions,
is it any wonder that white American laborers can not be found to do the work
under similar conditions? Does not the argument of the opposition become
flimsy, indeed? All its schemes and manipulation of data can not hide the truth
from the American people. If the activities of those opposed to restriction of