Grove Labor
Who Picked the Oranges?
Grove owners and their families performed most of the orange grove maintenance, especially in the early years of citrus production. Lee Pitzer, a rancher in the Claremont area, did "all of his own work: it kept expenses down. The packing house always furnished the picking crews." [2] Clifford B. Pitzer, Lee's son, remembered how the Hindu workers on his family's ranch would join him and his friends when they went swimming in the irrigation reservoirs after work on hot days.[2] The work was good, and there was some time for leisure. Unfortunately, the jobs could not compete with other available jobs in the California agricultural sector. The Southern California citrus ranches had only one or two harvest seasons per year. By contrast, a picker or field laborer could easily find work all year round in the farms in the Central Valley. Clifford B. Pitzer described the difficulties with finding workers: |
Figure 1. A man picks oranges in a grove in Claremont. He has a bag for holding the oranges slung over his shoulder. [1]
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You can't get domestic help to stay here. In the Central Valley they call them "fruit tramps." That type of person won't stay here. They will go up in the valley, where they can do fairly well because there is picking the year around. But here we have an orange season and then we are all through. We do pick lemons pretty much the year around, but it goes way down through parts of the year. During the summer period we have only one or two gangs. [2]
The hired workers often came from the various ethnic camps that sprung up in the area. According to the ranchers most common ethnic groups in the Pomona-Claremont area were Hindus, Japanese, Filipinos, Mexicans, and Native Americans. [2] Clifford B. Pitzer remembered that, "Any American white person who did that type of work got out of it as fast as he could." [2] The fact that White Americans avoided the work points to deeper issues with immigration and racial stigmatism present in the region in the 1930s. Grove owners hired groups of "picking gangs" from these ethnic camps to pick the lemons and oranges. Clifford B. Pitzer, who was still ranching citrus in the 1960s, recalled the camps and the workers who had picked for him over the years:
I still have Mexican-American labor. There was a period around 1918 to 1920 that we had Japanese labor working for us. Near Foothill and Garey there was a Japanese camp and then it was converted to a Filipino camp. The La Verne Fruit Exchange had that camp. They had three or four picking gangs. They had the Japanese at first, but they were an ambitious bunch and wouldn’t stay very long. Then the Filipinos came in, and they had that camp up until just a few years ago. [2]
Lee Pitzer paid pickers five cents a box, and he paid his hourly workers twenty-five cents an hour.[2] Over the years, pay rates changed, but even as late as the 1960s, grove owners determined pay rate by some function of the number of boxes picked, the number of hours the field laborer worked, and the number of trees he picked. In heavy picking seasons, the packing houses would recruit pickers. Claremont had 8 to 10 houses furnished by the packing house for workers to live in.
Later in the life of the citrus industry, the ranchers came to rely on the Bracero Program. The program established a way for Mexican workers to come to America for a specified time to do work on American farms. The government created the Bracero Program because American farmers worried that they would have no workers accepting agricultural jobs for low wages during World War II. [3]
Later in the life of the citrus industry, the ranchers came to rely on the Bracero Program. The program established a way for Mexican workers to come to America for a specified time to do work on American farms. The government created the Bracero Program because American farmers worried that they would have no workers accepting agricultural jobs for low wages during World War II. [3]
FOOTNOTES
[1] "Citrus Grove." Boynton Collection of Early Claremont. Honnold Mudd Library, Special Collections.
[2] Clifford B. Pitzer (Claremont Citrus Rancher), interview by Enid H. Douglass and Caroline Beatty, 1964.
[3] Bracero History Archive. Center for History and New Media: 2014. Web. Last accessed 12 Nov 2014. http://braceroarchive.org/about
[1] "Citrus Grove." Boynton Collection of Early Claremont. Honnold Mudd Library, Special Collections.
[2] Clifford B. Pitzer (Claremont Citrus Rancher), interview by Enid H. Douglass and Caroline Beatty, 1964.
[3] Bracero History Archive. Center for History and New Media: 2014. Web. Last accessed 12 Nov 2014. http://braceroarchive.org/about