Working Conditions
Frances Koral
— The only problem, there were no toilets on the field. We had to run into the bushes on the sides. We left very early in the morning and we all got on this truck and the thing I remember about riding on the truck is the wind in our face as we looked, and the coming home exhausted, but not to the point where we couldn't function any more.
Phyllis LeShaw
— Oh yeah.. the only thing that bothered me was when we wanted to go to the bathroom, when we'd knock on the door at some farmhouse. They wouldn't let us in. We were dirty workers. So we couldn't use anybody's bathroom. So you know what we had to do, of course, behind the bushes. It was terrible. That's when we felt the difference and that's when we really could commiserate and identify with workers who were treated as lowly, lowly people. And of course, being educated, we were absolutely appalled. It might have been one of these things also that prompted us to strike.
Frances Koral
— One week, in the next field were migrant workers and we went over to see what that was like. I believe they came from Jamaica and then went back to Jamaica when the picking season was over. Their housing was right on the field and it was exactly what you would expect migrant housing in the '40s, in '43. I suspect it's still like that, terrible housing. They were being paid much less than we were being paid. We just saw. We didn't do anything about it. But that was another lesson to us of what the world is like.
Marjorie Brockman
— We were outraged at the conditions under which the Jamaican migrant workers were living up there. They were living in chicken coops. We worked in the same fields. There were such inequities. For instance, water was brought to the field in a milk can but we had a ladle and separate paper cups, I believe, to drink the water when we wanted a drink. And they didn't. They had to dip their hands in or their hats or something gross and disturbing. They had no indoor toilets. I mean, they were really treated as if they were beasts. And it was very hard to make contact with the Jamaican workers 'cause they were scared to death. They weren't used to brash white people. It was like the freedom marches later on. And we were brash young white people, and we couldn't see why they didn't call a general strike immediately and of course, they didn't know what we were talking about. But they were sensitive to their own mistreatment.
Phyllis LeShaw
— There was a big capitalist farmer by the name of Grove Hinman. So he hired us at very exploitative wages. We had to carry forty pound bushels across a long field, maybe a quarter of a mile and it took two of us to do it. And then somebody would come along, some of Grove Hinman's people, and press down the peas and beans and then there was a lot of space to fill. And he'd send some people back to fill it up. I would get a helper to help me carry a bushel over.
Marjorie Brockman
— We also learned that if you put a couple of flat rocks in the bottom of the bushels you could reach thirty-two pounds much faster. Of course, when they dumped the bushels out they got wise to that, a stop was put to it.
Phyllis LeShaw
— I would have a few bushels a day. I think maybe three or four. But this guy Abe he would have, like, ten, twelve bushels a day. If I had three or four I was very happy to make my two dollars a day. But of course my father sent me money, otherwise I'd starve to death.
Elliot Levine
— It didn't look like I was going to be able to make it and I wrote home saying that. My father immediately sent me a ten dollar check, which I never cashed. I was too proud to cash it. And I brought it home at the end of the season and he said, "All right. This will be your allowance for this week."
Marjorie Brockman
— I have a feeling I got five or ten dollars every couple of weeks from home, 'cause I really was terrible at this. I was on the absolute low end of the totem pole. It was largely a social experience for me. I mean, you know— social in the broadest sense of the term.
Frances Koral
— And most of the people lost money in this because we had to pay for food and lodging. I earned— and I remember 'cause I was very proud— I came home with twenty-five dollars, so I was a good picker.