Growers Hit 'Meddling' With Bracero Program
October 23, 1963

TRACY—"All the do-gooders love the bracero, but they want to take away his livelihood."

Speaking was a grower who feels that "meddlers," especially clergymen and "ignorant city slickers," are trying to kill the bracero program out of hypocritical sentimentality.

The end of the bracero program, many growers contend, will bring more social problems than it will solve.

This is debatable but growers, domestic farmhands and union organizers seem to agree that the bracero "is a good guy" caught in a bad situation.

All along the San Joaquin you hear domestic agricultural workers complain about the bracero system, but immediately temper this with "of course, I have nothing against the bracero himself."

Therein lies a touchy human problem which agricultural workers, mostly Mexican-Americans, hate to face.

"I suppose it's wrong in a way to want the bracero program to end," said Juan Contreras, an unemployed farmhand. "It means the end of jobs they probably need very much."

"But they sure have loused up the valley so a guy can't make a living. Or did they do it? I really don't know."

Racial Brothers

Because Mexican-Americans and braceros are racial brothers, the former are sensitive about opposing the bracero program.

"After all," Contreras said. "many of us and our parents came from Mexico not too long ago."

But that's not the point, according to the Committee to Aid the Farm Worker, which sees it more from the economic and social point than from the emotional.

Suppose, said the committee whose membership includes John Steinbeck and Carl Sandburg, that Congress had enacted a law drafted by consumers for the purpose of "stabilizing food prices." Suppose it provided that whenever U.S. farmers failed to furnish American consumers with fruit and vegetables, at the "prevailing price," the Secretary of Agriculture was authorized to import fruit and vegetables from foreign countries and sell them directly to housewives' associations.

The "prevailing price," continues the committee, would mean whatever the housewives' associations were accustomed to and willing to pay.

Under those circumstances the price of food would be "stabilized," the committee said. It might even decline. Housewives could always find reasons why they could not afford to pay more. The Secretary of Agriculture could always find cheap produce overseas, the committee contends.

"The price of everything else might go up steadily, but the price of food would not," the committee said. "American farmers might com-

plain that this was bitterly unfair, large numbers of them might have to leave their farms and go on welfare in the cities, but the Secretary of Agriculture would point to the law and say 'that's the law.'"

"A bad dream?" asks the committee. "A nightmare?" Of course. It could never happen . . . . In 1951, however, strange to relate, the U.S. Congress did enact such a law—except that workers rather than vegetables were the commodity involved, growers rather than housewives were the consumers, and the Secretary of Labor rather than the Secretary of Agriculture, the purveyor.

"Public Law 78 (bracero law) says in effect, 'we shall artificially add to the supply of farm labor without influencing the price of farm labor.'"

If Congress wants to extend the bracero law it should then try "to demonstrate how the law of supply and demand can be successfully repealed. The burden should be upon the Department of Labor to prove how the hundreds of thousands of braceros it certifies can possibly have anything but an adverse effect on the hundreds of thousands of Americans denied those jobs."

Also, other opponents of the bracero law say, the bracero is not only "dragging down" Mexican-Americans but in many cases the bracero himself is "being dragged down too."

"I was a federal compliance officer for the bracero law last year," says Mariano Arevalo.

"I got sick of it. Though I was supposed to see that braceros were protected under the law, pressure was always applied by growers and I was often instructed to take it easy."

"After all, the bracero could not hurt me and the grower might." At a recent Community Service Organization debate here, a program proponent challenged an opponent to show "how the bracero is dragging down the Mexican-American."

The answer was a quote from Congressman Henry Gonzalez of Texas who says that the "language problem is always blamed for Mexican-Americans' lag educationally, economically, and socially."

Yet, Gonzalez argues, these same people don't see any "inconsistency in importing thousands of unassimilable braceros most of whom are illiterate."

According to Samuel H. Cavanaugh, a retired Tracy farmer, the bracero has helped stop the "undesirable" from coming to California.

"From the human side, too, let's remember that you don't see as many labor shanties, barefoot and hungry children as you did when I was farming."

Tent Cities Gone

"You also don't see those dusty tent cities that were so common in the San Joaquin Valley in the 30's. If the bracero program ends you'll see a lot of 'undesirables' coming from Texas, Oklahoma and the Deep South."

"And you know what? They'll be on relief—at the taxpayers' expense—in no time."

Not so, says the Committee to Aid Farm Workers, which claims that "an increase of many thousands of local domestic field workers boosted the California farm labor force during the past year."

"Statistics based on a count of Social Security accounts as reported by employers show that an average of 35,000 more American farm workers had worked in agriculture between October 1, 1962, and March 31, 1963, than during the period October 1, 1961, and March 31, 1962."

This proves, says the committee, that a domestic labor force is available if recruited. But it never will be if the bracero is there to compete with.