Factories in the Field

The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California

Carey McWilliams

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN:
  9780520224131
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520925182
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• FACTORIES IN THE FIELD
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Foreword
• 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 (1920–1930)
• 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
• Index