Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913

by Richard Steven Street

Overview

Written by one of America's preeminent labor historians, this book is the definitive account of one of the most spectacular, captivating, complex and strangely neglected stories in Western history—the emergence of migratory farmworkers and the development of California agriculture.

Street has systematically worked his way through a mountain of archival materials—more than 500 manuscript collections, scattered in 22 states, including Spain and Mexico—to follow the farmworker story from its beginnings on Spanish missions into the second decade of the twentieth century. The result is a comprehensive tour de force. Scene by scene, the epic narrative clarifies and breathes new life into a controversial and instructive saga long surrounded by myth, conjecture, and scholarly neglect.

With its panoramic view spanning 144 years and moving from the US-Mexico border to Oregon, Beasts of the Field reveals diverse patterns of life and labor in the fields that varied among different crops, regions, time periods, and racial and ethic groups.

Enormous in scope, packed with surprising twists and turns, and devastating in impact, this compelling, revelatory work of American social history will inform generations to come of the history of California and the nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804738804
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	04/07/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	936
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Richard Steven Street is an independent scholar and writer. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and has also been a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. He earned his doctorate in American labor history at the University of Wisconsin, and has been an award-winning photographer and journalist specializing in California agriculture and agricultural labor. He is the author of Organizing for Our Lives: New Voices from Rural Communities (1992). He is currently finishing a multivolume history of California farmworkers.

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	xiii
	Preface	xv
Book 1	Foundations in Conquest
Chapter 1	In the Nets of Heaven: The Campesino on the Spanish Frontier	3
Chapter 2	Bird Herders, Stirrup Boys, and Naked Winemakers: Assembling a Labor Force	21
Chapter 3	Always Trembling With Fear: Controlling Mission Farmworkers	38
Chapter 4	No Longer Keep Us By Force: Accommodation and Resistance Among Mission Field Hands	60
Book 2	The Meaning of Free Labor
Chapter 5	Not Free to Be Idle: Life and Labor on the Mexican Ranchos and American Farms	89
Chapter 6	To the Highest Bidder: Native Field Hands and Gold Rush Agriculture	115
Chapter 7	They Have Filled Our Jails and Graveyards: The Decline of Indian Labor	135
Book 3	Golden Harvest
Chapter 8	Between the Teeth of the Cylinder: The Emergence of Migratory Labor and Farm Technology	161
Chapter 9	Open-Air Factories: Industrialization of Labor on the Bonanza Wheat Farms	178
Chapter 10	Hell's Fury and Liquid Fire: The Coarse Culture of Wheat Harvesters and Threshers	205
Book 4	Immigrants from the East
Chapter 11	Trustworthy Laborers: Chinese Infiltration into Irrigated Agriculture	235
Chapter 12	Bought Like Any Other Commodity: China Bosses and Gang Labor	258
Chapter 13	The Chinese Must Go! Community, Chinatowns, and the Anti-Chinese Movement	286
Chapter 14	More Manpower from a Pint of Rice: Sugar Beets, Short-Handled Hoes, and Chinese Exclusion	307
Chapter 15	Snapping Their Fingers in Our Faces: Human Pesticides, Labor Shortages, Child Labor, and the Response to Exclusion	334
Chapter 16	Worn out, Bent, and Discouraged: Chinese Labor (Almost) Disappears from the Fields	371
Book 5	Japanese Farmworkers
Chapter 17	Running From Vine to Vine: Japanese Farmworkers and the Beginning of Labor Militancy	407
Chapter 18	Blood Spots on the Moon: The 1903 Oxnard Sugar Beet Workers Strike	440
Chapter 19	Exact Everything Possible: Keiyaku-nin, Mexicans, Sikhs, and the Quest for Labor Stability	470
Chapter 20	Handle the Fruit Like Eggs! The Japanese Shift from Field-Workers to Farmers	497
Book 6	Bindlemen
Chapter 21	Blinky Joe, Red Mike, and Hobo Sam: Bindlemen on the Move	527
Chapter 22	As Rotten as Ever: Jungle Camps, Slave Markets, and the Main Stem	548
Chapter 23	The Privilege of Quitting: Death, Discontent, and Alienation	572
Chapter 24	I've Been Robbed: The Struggle to Organize Farmworkers	596
	Abbreviations	629
	Notes	635
	Acknowledgments	871
	Index	877

Editorial Reviews

"In Beasts of the Field, [Street] synthesizes thirty years of research into a compelling and highly readable account written with insight and empathy."

History Workshop Journal

". . . [Street] has produced a work of monumental scholarship."

Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Richard Street's two books offer a new benchmark in the history of agricultural labor, with a perceptive, fascinating Californian focus. Only 1,283 pages? I wanted to look and read further."

Anthropology of Work Review

". . . [Street] has produced a work of monumental scholarship."

Los Angeles Times Book Review

". . . [Street] has produced a work of monumental scholarship."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Street's] meticulous research comes alive with his passionate prose as he documents the march of history from the "bottom up" in the tradition of E.P. Thompson's The History of the English Working Class.—California History

"In Beasts of the Field, [Street] synthesizes thirty years of research into a compelling and highly readable account written with insight and empathy."—History Workshop Journal

"Richard Street's two books offer a new benchmark in the history of agricultural labor, with a perceptive, fascinating Californian focus. Only 1,283 pages? I wanted to look and read further."—Anthropology of Work Review

From the Publisher