Migrant Workers in Agriculture

Excerpts from the Report: The farm laborer at best is a young man who is working as a hired laborer only temporarily, while he is accumulating enough capital to buy a team of horses and some farm machinery and to obtain experience which would enable him to start farming as a renter. He is perhaps one of the neighbor boys who is working for a man whom he has known all his life. He probably lives as a part of that man's family. This is the typical hired man, a figure rapidly disappearing from the agricultural scene as he is being replaced more and more by the seasonal worker and by the use of time- and labor-saving machinery. At worst these laborers are part of that great mass of migratory farm workers whose paths weave a net work over three-fourths of the States of this country. Little is known about migratory farm laborers except that many of them move almost ceaselessly throughout the year in search of work and that this search takes them not only great distances but in some cases into a number of States. Many of them are small farmers seeking to supplement their income at seasonal work. Others were farmers, owners and tenants who for reason of drought, foreclosure, declining incomes and other reasons resorted to migratory farm labor. Still others have been recruited from non-faming occupation because of unemployment and the general depression of the early 1930’s. Widespread interest and concern with the problems of migrants have been evident, but much remains to be learned about their numbers, qualifications, reasons for migration, and about the length of time that the individual remains in the category of a migrant farm worker. Some significant studies have been made from time to time of special groups in areas selected by various governmental agencies. The Bureau of Agricultural Economics, cooperating with other agencies, is now engaged in a broad study of the migrant problem as it exists in Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. This study is being made in cooperation with the Farm Security Administration and the State Agricultural Experiment Stations of Arizona, Washington, and Oregon.