Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California / Edition 1

by Carey McWilliams, Douglas C. Sackman

Overview

This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field—together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck—dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry—Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians—the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520224131
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/15/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	363
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Carey McWilliams's books include California: The Great Exception (California, 1998), Ill Fares the Land: Migrants & Migratory Labor in the U.S. (1942), Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (1929), Brothers under Skin (1943) and Southern California:An Island on the Land (1946). Douglas C. Sackman teaches history at Oberlin College.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Douglas C. Sackman

I Introduction
II Land Monopolization
III Empires and Utopias
IV The Pattern Is Cut
V The Chinese
VI The Factories Appear
VII "Our Oriental Agriculture"
VIII Social Consequences
IX The Wheatland Riot
X The War Speed-Up
XI The Postwar Decade (1920-J930)
XII The Land Settlements: Delhi and Durham
XIII The Great Strikes
XIV The Rise of Farm Fascism
XV The Drive for Unionization
XVI The Trend toward Stabilization
XVII The End of a Cycle

Bibliography
Bibliographical Essay by Douglas C. Sackman
Index

Editorial Reviews

One of the most significant books ever published about California, and its return to print is a welcome development.

Sacramento Bee