Embedded Files
Filipinos cutting lettuce. Salinas, California. 1935.
Photographer: Dorothea Lange. From Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [Reproduction number: LC-DIG-ppmsc-00238]
"I moved on and dug another hole"
It was autumn, the season for planting cauliflower. I went to the field at six in the morning and worked until six in the afternoon. It was tiresome, back-breaking work. I followed a wagon that carried cauliflower seedlings. The driver stopped now and then to drop a handful of the seedlings between the long furrows. I picked up the seedlings with one hand and dug into the ground with the other; then, putting a seedling into the hole, I moved on and dug another hole. I could hardly move when six o’clock came. I climbed into the wagon that took me slowly to the town.
—Carlos Bulosan, describing Santa Maria, CA. America is in the Heart (1946)
The large numbers of immigrants from the Philippines came to America with the vision of freedom and endless possibility. What they found was hard, dusty work on the crop fields of California. The growers were eager to exploit this new source of cheap labor. They banked off the ignorance of the immigrants to limit rebellious acts in response to the hardships bestowed upon them. However, the Filipinos were anything but ignorant. They quickly learned that the grower was useless without the laborers. The Filipinos had power and they were willing to use it.
Learn more:
Labor contractors. This section briefly describes the roles that labor contractors played in the lives of migrant laborers.
Unions. Most Filipinos in the 1930s were wage-laborers, who were also used by growers to drive down wages. Though originally perceived as docile workers, Filipinos established ethnic labor unions when other unions would not accept Filipino workers. In Salinas, Guadalupe, and Pismo Beach, the Filipino Labor Union was well organized and fought for better working conditions.
Strikes. Salinas and even San Luis Obispo county were the settings for major strikes organized by Filipino laborers. This section includes images of articles from the Daily Telegram (San Luis Obispo county's newspaper) so that you can follow the coverage of the strikes as they were unfolding in the 1930s.
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