Floyd Halleck Higgins photographs of Mexican sugar beet workers, 1942.

ArchivalResource

Higgins, Floyd Halleck, 1886-1975. Floyd Halleck Higgins photographs of Mexican sugar beet workers, 1942.

Floyd Halleck Higgins photographs of Mexican sugar beet workers, 1942.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/318552798

In 1942, F. Hal Higgins, a free-lance journalist and Safeway Farm Reporter, was given the job of providing publicity for the Mexicans coming into California to harvest sugar beets. This was a special, informal program funded by the United States government under the Farm Security Administration. It is considered the beginning of what is now called the Bracero System. "The spontaneous and irregular migration that prevailed gave way abruptly to one that was supervised and regulated by government." ("Merchants of Labor; the Mexican Bracero Story," Ernesto Galarza, 1964). The 3000 Mexican men were carefully selected by the Mexican Government, the United States Government, and California Field Crops, Inc. to harvest the sugar beet crop. The sugar beet crop was especially large and there was a shortage of farm workers due to World War II. Also called Stoop Laborers, or Good Neighbor workers by Higgins, the Mexican workers came to top and harvest sugar beets. "Mexican Nationals in California Agriculture, 1942-1949," California Department of Employment, 1959, states, "World War II created conditions and demands which seriously depleted California's farm manpower resources at a time when farmers were being called upon to augment production of food and fiber to maintain civilian and military life... Early in 1942, California farmers faced a critical labor shortage... Sugar beet growers made the first World War II request for Mexican labor..." Higgins explained in a letter that he tried "to catch a lot of the social side in pictures." In "Photographing Farmworkers in California," author Richard Steven Street states that "Higgins followed the braceros out into the countryside, creating a highly original essay on the vanguard of a labor program that would eventually entice one out of every nine Mexican men north." The photographs show many aspects of the workers lives: arriving by train, building of the labor camps, dining and entertainment, and working in the fields. The photographs were taken mainly in the agricultural areas of the California communities of Woodland, Clarksburg, Manteca, Pleasanton, and Salinas. The descriptions contained in some entries were made by F. Hal Higgins.

0.8 linear ft.196 prints and negatives.

University of California, Davis, Shields Library