The Great Depression actually started long before most of us took notice. I’m not talking about a status-quo cultural landscape of capitalist exploitation and class division. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of subsistance farmers, isolated for generations, cut off from the latest advances in agricultural best practices, turning region after region of fertile land into fallow, erosion-damaged rural slums.
For the Roosevelt administration and those at the forefront of the New Deal, this situation suggested but one solution: RELOCATION! Created for just this purpose, the Resettlement Administration fanned out across the country, spreading the gospel of cooperative farming and planned “greenbelt” communities. But despite the government’s best efforts, farmers insisted on private ownership over collectivism.
Eventually, the RA was folded into the Department of Agriculture’s Farm Security Administration, and — after the necessary purge of a few grumbling hardliners — shifted its focus to providing small farms with loans and agribusiness training. To help disseminate its progressive agenda, the FSA’s Information Division hired some of the greatest photographers of the era to document the face of rural poverty, as well as its relief at the hands of the goverment.
In the process, such notables as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Marion Post Wolcott provided evidence of all the New Deal’s pet ills: land mismanagement, urban blight, inadequate sanitation, poor health conditions, race discrimination, ignorance and so on. Their body of work for the FSA has it all: history, asthetics, ideology, irony, empathy and above all, an incredible attention to detail.
The Library of Congress hosts a huge online collection of these photographs. If you spend enough time browsing this site, you’re left with an awesome, undeniable sense of the nation’s crisis in its full scope. It’s as if the entire country had turned into Jacob Riis’ Fourth Ward.
To make sure you don’t miss the ideological slant of the material, many of the photos sport such evocative titles as “Cheap partly-constructed houses lacking water and sewage, Lockland, Ohio”, “Houses which have been condemned by the Board of Health, but are still occupied by Negro Migratory workers, Belle Glade, Fla” and “The poorer the land, the more frequently one sees religious signs along highways, Alabama.”
Critics of the FSA cite the often transparent staging of some of the scenes, or decry their blatant explotation of human misery to further a political agenda. But we’re not here to debate that point. Whatever the motivations or machinations behind these photos, their sheer, powerful beauty can only be applauded. The only fault I can find with this collection is its sheer volume. I have wasted many an hour pouring through seemingly endless catalogues of decrepit buildings, filthy children and demeaning labor. I have become addicted to photos of people canning tomatos and crating celery.
As the thirties turned to the forties, and the country shifted to a war footing, the photographic unit of the FSA moved over to the Office Of War Information. There, it spent its final years documenting militarty adventures overseas and industrial activity here at home. Ironically enough, the same photographers who began the project taking pictures of the coerced relocation of squalid farm dwellers went on to document the forced relocation of Japanese Americans.
Readers are strongly encouraged to visit the Library of Congress Documenting America site.
Here are just a few samples of what you’ll find:
I came across those same photos a few months ago, they are very powerful and quite amazing. The thing that always fascinates me is that the photographers take photos of people in such poverty and distress for all the world to see. And yet, after the photographers are done, the subjects of the photos are still left in poverty and distress. Granted, the photographers can’t be expected to help out every charity case in the world… you’d just think something good would come as a result of the photos. (Or maybe something good does come, and we just don’t hear about that part.)
I don’t believe that such documentation has no positive effect. I think it can make a huge difference. In fact, I think it can continue to make a huge difference. Why, think of the effect it would have if the public were exposed to the notion of a president that actually said, “your lot in life sucks — here’s what we’re doing about it.” It might actually raise the bar a little!
It’s funny, just the other day I happened to pick up from the Salvation Army a first edition copy of James Agee’s and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
The photo of the family eating dinner could be Van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters”.
As a photo assistant, I travelled to D.C. regularly in the late 80′s. One day, I dragged the photographer I worked for, to the Library Of Congress. He and I were immediately blown away by the collection. We both ordered prints (which you still can). The Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange prints grace my walls to this day.
have wasted many an hour pouring through seemingly endless catalogues
should be “poring” not “pouring.” nice site!
“Poring,” then. But what about “catalogues?” Or “goverment,” or “militarty?”
Sheesh; I must have written this one in-line, before my browser had a spell-checker installed.
The Working Poor in Hidalgo County During the first half of the 20th Century
Edward Avila History 6303 Dr. Faubian Hidalgo County was colonized by America creating a social paradigm of haves and have-nots. “According to Shary, Colonization was expensive.” I argue that the actions of the past created a self-fulfilling prophecy, which has left this county one of the poorest in the country. Why did people work and yet they remained poor? The seeds of the future were sown through bigotry, racism and classist action. Primary and secondary sources are used to explain the paradigm that created a self-defeating community. One that is dependent on beliefs of social acceptance to degradation and devastation. Segregation and marginalization kept the region from realizing its fullest potential resulting in a county that is under developed and improvised for all. The social structure in Hidalgo County for the first half of the 20th century set a legacy of poverty.
My contribution to the discussion will come from the macro to the micro perspective, a holistic approach of a regional area on a global economy. I will identify definitions and redefine definitions of working poor and poverty. By looking at a large time period in a regional area, we can view the phase from a holistic perspective. I do view poverty in this region as a combination of factors for which this region has stayed improvised due to definitions that dismiss the “we” factor. Population dictations compounded with social resilience, regionalism and with limitations of natural resources dictate a force of exterior and interior controls.
The working poor in Hidalgo County have had to contend with starvation wages in the first halve of the 20th century. I wish to undertake the task of sorting what has changed and what has remained the same for the working poor in this region during the early 20th century. There is no reason for people to be considered working poor but access to market forces is the determining factor for which to view the definition of the phrase, “working poor.”
The working poor are considered the outsiders and the affluent are the insiders. I refer to these definitions as “them and us” for this paper. I expose my biases by referring to the “they and we,” the “them and us,” definitions. I identify with the working poor.
Assuming that the affluent people view the working poor as lazy and ignorant thus assuming that the working poor view the affluent as takers, we can develop a working terminology. A capitalistic society depicts the point of view from which to categorize the terminology of “working poor,” and rationalizes the justification of adverse treatment upon each other. They and we are defining terms when discussing the phrase working poor. The term “they,” is from the viewpoint of not being poor. We are from the viewpoint of people who work and are still poor. In the early 20th century the term working poor applies to people of mostly minority heritage with some Anglos included. As time progressed, the working poor in the county were mainly immigrants and worked in the fields. Progressing to a clear division of haves and have nots thus redefining the phrase of working poor. My research dictates they controlled the social structure through economics. Delineation to definitions of the phrase working poor from federal to market parameters dictates from which position to explain this phrase.
The researcher must set definitions in understanding the phrase of working poor. The definition of working poor was established in 1964.
From the market definition, the phrase of working poor applies to people who work and are not capable of accumulating capital. Both federal and market definitions fit under the umbrella term of poverty. Coming from the they perspective in explaining what other scholars have written about the subject matter, people who are the working poor in a market economy occupy this position due to lack of value to work equation. Were as from the “we” perspective, people who work and are poor suffer from lack of access to economic markets in a capitalistic society.
Through these controls definitions have been used to manipulate the population from gaining full access to market factors of poverty. Discrimination is a phrase used to often and misunderstood as pertaining to poverty. The poor are poor due to the way the population perceive their world and because of the lack of capital available to improve their plight. I dully believe education is a commodity for which Hidalgo County is suffering a lack of and is the reason for people in this region to be considered poor. The working poor or just laborers have been denied access to market forces that is the determining factor to the definition of the phrase, working poor. “Time in school as more similar to productive work(as an investment in human capital undertaken in part to increase future earnings capacity).” Through education, the entire population can gain value in the work equation regardless of regional or natural resource limitations.
The greatest resource, its people were squandered. To understand why the entire population did not receive an adequate economic opportunity, one must look at the history of the region towards some clues. We have to consider the early 20th Century in Hidalgo County from a macro perspective. Modern American life has been characterized by sever medium-term macroeconomic disturbances… entering the 1920… The cohort had just seen a war boom and post war depression. This then be fallowed by the worst economic crisis in American history, lasting over a decade. Then World War II would induct millions of men women into the armed forces and subject the remainder to inflation, rationing and shortages, and a pattern of wage controls and wage lags that enriched some workers while worsening the conditions of others.
We, the working poor, were denied a proper education and some of us were even kept in a system pf perpetual servitude. The history of the region fallows a pattern of transition from a feudalistic society to that of a capitalistic society complete with socio-economic cast paradigm.
Hidalgo County once being a cattle country had a social structure of feudal ranchers who controlled the actions of its population through means of inclusion and peonage. Most of the wealth being held by Anglo-Americans marked a change of who occupied the top echelons of the socio-economic paradigm. The changed from Spanish decedents to Anglo-Americans came at a cost the peon and the working poor. By 1904, the land boom was on. Land that had sold for twenty-five cents to one dollar per acre before the railroads came had risen in 1906 to ten to fifty dollars. By 1910, the same land was bringing $100 to $300 per acre… John Sherry was the number one colonizer from 1910 to 1920 and was responsible for the settling of over 50,000 acres of Valley land, predominantly in Hidalgo County.”
Spanish-Americans failed in securing the railroad, political or financial backing to secure the new cost of taxes or agricultural innovations and lost considerable control over the valley and its inhabitants.
What happened to the inhabitants most commonly known as the peons? These people generally became marginalized and continued their place in society as the working poor.
Texas-born Mexicans’ functioned as an intermediary between Anglo employers and Mexican laborers. ‘Foreign-born Mexicans’ they may have been skilled laborers in Mexico, were forced to take the lowest form of labor because they knew little English.”
A class system was enacted were the ranch owners who were able to retain their land competed in a loosing battle with Anglo new comers for control of the region. The population who resided in the Rio Grande Valley under the Spanish-American Ranchers was known as Mexican-Americans. The Mexican-Americans became the overseers of new immigrants into the region. Foreign-born Mexicans were placed on the bottom of the social paradigm.
From the bottom up, the foreign-born Mexican bared the brunt of the capitalistic social structure. These accepted social norms were the beginning of a self-defeating structure of division leading to degradation.
South Texas counties and towns where Mexican workers had been subjected to brutal force, including instances of whipping and murder…’we were under contract to go and pick cotton in a camp in the Valley of the Rio Grande… the planter gave us an old hovel which had been used as a chicken house before… give us a house which is a little better [or] we will go… he told us to go… the sheriff fell upon us…they told me that if I didn’t pay they would take my wife and my little children to work. The ledgers of Shary show that a chicken house was sold on November 1915, to Author J. Loud for the cost of cost $2.50 not to say that Author was the person who treated Mexicans in this manner. Just that this was the value assigned to the laborer. In this respect, a capitalist market placed greater worth on a chicken house then for a family. An ax was sold to W. H. Blixco for $0.75 were a laborer was considered nothing more then tool to gain a profit from.
Debt peonage is a tricky term for the implication is that a person who is trapped in this kind of social labor arrangement has some semblance of self-control. I argue that debt peonage is used as another term to justify slavery. Just putting a nicer twist on it, the African-American slaves’ endured greater humiliations, this is dependent on varying interpretations.
“Debt peonage was not unknown… We [Anglos] pay them out when we take them over from somebody else to get them free.”
Debt peonages existed as a form of keeping the poor, poor for the purpose of keeping cheep labor and retain higher profits.
“Finally, The Mexican vice-council in McAllen reported similar experiences in deep South Texas in the 1930s. In a letter addressed to an inquiring Mexican congressional deputy, the vice-council noted that in his region the landlord “rentistas” have studied innumerable ways of legally breaking their contract with their Mexican croppers and, with this in mind, look for some difficulty so they can remove him from his work-“por supuesto, cuando este ya esta terminado.”
This practice of social labor arrangement operated not only through force but also out of acceptable social norms. The population of the Rio Grande Valley would state, “that’s just the way it is.” with the sense and implication of helplessness.
The population had residuals of fear compounded and reinforced by accepted social norms. Hidalgo County could have been considered as the title of Rudolph Acuna’s book Occupied America would suggest, a population subservient to a colonizing force. The laborers were had to endure the unjust right of an occupying culture by doing the labor and reaping none of the fruits of their labor.
Now, it was not just the peon who was subjected to social class rules of the time. Mexican-Americans had to comply with the paradigm accompanying the class structure. Being one degree above the foreign born Mexican still regulated them to the Mexican cities of the county.
In the Valley town of Weslaco, segregation was instituted in 1921, the town’s inaugural year. A municipal ordinance allocated the area north of the Missouri Pacific Railroad tracks to industrial complexes and Mexican and Anglo was ensured by the sales policies of the McAllen Real Estate Board and the Delta Development Company… Mexican towns of corrugated tin shacks, dirt roads, and out door privies… In the lower Valley, the towns of Edinburg, Harlingen and San Benito segregated their Mexican school children through the fourth and fifth grades… Once sufficient numbers began passing the sixth grade in the 1920s, the segregated system was expanded and Mexican junior and senior high schools began to appear.
The Mexican-American and Mexican were regulated to third and forth class citizen, respectively. Not even entitled to the basic needs of decent living conditions that resulted in their futures being stolen away from them and their children. The actions of people from the past who resided in this county created a setting and a president for accepted social norms in the future.
Who occupied the second-class status of the region? We can break down the social structure of Hidalgo County further by explaining the conditions of the working poor of the Anglo populations. For in no means was the Anglo-American population homogenous in a capitalistic socio-economic paradigm. Farm owners, tenant farmers and farm labors… The tenant farmer provided the rest- the seed, equipment, a team of horses or mule, his own labor, and usually the labor of his wife and children as well.
The Anglo-American working poor were subject to capitalistic demands of a global market and did not fare much better then the Mexican-American or Mexican themselves. Labor was generally paid on the market demand by being able to keep half or thirds of the crop as it was produced.
Shifting a little more from the socio to the economic perspective we review what was transpiring during the first half of the 20th century in Hidalgo County.
Transition from ranch community to farm community, Mexican Communities owned the ranches and Anglos owned the farms. Agricultural speculators made the county go through the fastest growth during the decade of 1920-1930s. Citrus production in 1922-1923 went form $445,000 to $4 million in 1930. By 1930, Hidalgo County was one of the ten wealthiest counties in Texas with a worth amounting to over $52 million. Anglos were the bankers and the newspaper publishers. They also ran the school board. In 1927 the schools were regulated to segregationist attitudes.
As an individual who has a goal, human nature dictates that a person will generally take the path of least resistance. If are willing to do just about anything to get money then why not? They made a profit off of selling the land. They did what ever it took to sell the land; one example is what the pamphlets that were used to attract the Midwest Anglo-American Farmer and Investors. The Lower Rio Grande Valley is, in fact, the Delta of the River- that very limited region which has been formed in ages past by the gradual deposit of the rich alluvial silt carried in its waters … Its location is equally advantages in the rapidly developing international commerce between the United States and Mexico… Land any were is always enhanced in value by irrigation…There is in the Lower Rio Grande Valley a truly remarkable combination of five conditions not found together anywhere else in the United States; a climate almost immune from frost; a soil unsurpassed in fertility; a practically unlimited supply of river water for irrigation; an abundance of Mexican farm labor at from 50 to 75 cents per day (they boarding and lodging themselves), and a location, while most southern of any in the United States, yet fifteen hundred miles nearer the great markets of the country than California.
After reading this information and being a farmer, this place seamed to be a laden with gold. Land speculators would buy the land and have the Mexicans clear it for $9 an acre, which would take fifteen days amounting to $.50 a day for the labor and their family.
For a man or a family with a work ethic, the land can be turned into gold. Literally, with the puritan work ethic of hard labor, one can build a fortune and eventually have others work for them. After all, this was the Anglo-American capitalistic dream of the time.
The servant problem for the household chores was solved with Mexican labor… A well-trained Mexican servant gives good satisfaction under firm, kindly treatment. A fair and friendly dealing with a Mexican usually begets loyalty and dependability, a response to whatever is received.
According to Silvia-Bewley, Bently, Max writes in the Harlingen Star, “We see lounging in the shade of a the beautiful mission style depot at Harlingen, a peon. As the heat grows intense he languidly moves the brim of his sombrero to shade his eyes.”
They wanted to bring people who had cash to buy the land. Cash is king and the over all goals were to get the land sold, work the land and make a profit from the land.
Land developers actively sought to bring only Anglos to the region in 1912-1916 and rationalized it by stating they had the proper work ethic. WWI fallowed by post war depression and bandits curtailed the development for a period of time their. A valley citrus grower, believed that there was nothing “”That will make a man rich in less time than a grape fruit {sic}. If I had ten acres of grape fruit {sic}, I would not worry about the future.””
Infrastructure of roads and irrigation coupled with farming not ranching is what improved the county. Crops such as onions, cabbage, cotton, potatoes, carrots, beets, green corn, tomatoes, endive, romaine lettuce, shallots and chicory were grown.
By the 1920s, cotton had become one of the most prolific products, but farmers were able to plant hundreds of acres successfully mainly because of the ‘unlimited’ supply of Mexican labor in the valley.
First farmers came then businessmen came in the mid 20s. During the time of prohibition, crossing the border was used as a means of acquiring hooch for the afternoon legally. The pay started off at thirty dollars per month in 1934 through President Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps for Americans outside of Hidalgo County. After the Anglo-American farmer arrived and found out how the social structure did not appreciate their labor, the flow of money slowed. Profits started to dwindle. Most of the bankers and big businessmen saw their fortunes tied with the success of commercial farming and thus usually aligned themselves behind the growers… The small farm laboring man whishes the Mexican were out of the country… A lot of white men would come down from the north and set onions, but they can’t do it at Mexican prices, and we can’t afford to pay more at the present prices of onions.
They, the moneymen also advertised to the investor. With gold in their eyes, profits put above and beyond humanity, the investors saw the same advertisements and were buying.
Five hundred thousand acres, semi tropical, mesquite, ebony, prickly pear Sugar cane, corn, hay, banana, walnut, citrus fruit, vegetables, alfalfa, fig, grapes, dates, pineapples, papilla’s, guavas, almonds, flowers, grown in winter are cauliflower, lettuce, cucumbers, string beans, tomatoes, egg plants, radishes, beets, turnips, peas, roasting ears, celery, asparagus, Irish and sweet potatoes, peppers, pumpkin, squash, watermelons, cantaloupe and strawberries. Cattle, fish and deer, sugar mills, cotton gins, ice factories, brick yards, lumber yards, plaenning mills, cigar factories, steam laundries, bottling works, machine shops and mercantile establishments, cotton makes from one to two bales per acre, 30 cents per pound, corn yields two crops per year and finds a ready market at from 75 cents to $1.00 per bushel. White corn is a staple article of diet with the Mexican laborers; Alfalfa is cut form six to ten times per year and should yield a ton of more each cutting. It finds a local market at from $15.00 to $18.00 per ton.
Cabbage this winter, hauled from the fields and loaded into refrigerator cars in bulk, brings the grower from $300.00 to $600.00 per acre. It yields form 20,000 to 40,000 pounds to the acre and Bermuda onions one carload per acre, which yields the farmer a net profit of from $200.00 to $300.00 Profits are what drove the American population to the Rio Grande Valley. The idea and dreams of obtaining the American dream of profits and profits is what they gained. The investors pored in.
Land speculators started to make marketable changes in the region. What power did the elite wiled over the rest of the population? Land speculators where the same people who bought the land in northern Texas for resale and kept a good portion of the population from working it in hopes of the land gaining in value. Thus in turn forcing the sharecroppers off and allowing it to go fowl great portions of the population out of work and creating conditions of the great depression. An underlying logic can be discerned if the colonization projects are dissected into their constituent bits and pieces… Those who settled before 1920 had farm backgrounds and those who settled afterward came from business and urban background.
Every means of production was used to achieve their goal of profit. The working poor were manipulated for the purpose of competing with mechanization in a global market. The movers and shakers of the county would stack the cards of life in their favor. By lowering the wage level, contract foreign labor not only handicaps American agricultural labor, but also those farmers who, together with members of their families, supply a major part of their own manpower requirements.
They would secure a ready supply of cheap labor by subjecting the peons with force if necessary. They would manipulate the working poor to accept the social norms of degradation and subjection by allowing the Anglo-Americans to enjoy a sense of privilege over the peons. Ignorance is bliss, keep the work force uneducated and they will be content on working for little wages for the purpose and be grateful for the job.
He, the peon, doesn’t belong. A step away in {sic} Mexico, but this is American country The peon was made to believe the social structure was normal and acceptable. “As and any father would, Shary would give liberally, asking only for loyalty and love in return” This was to excuse the fact that the majority of the people who were poor were their by the actions he took in fixing the labor prices for the benefit of greatest return. Give out tokens of appreciation in return he would receive status of paternalism for which the region was accustomed to operating in. And when these tactics sis not work, then they reverted to violence. Federal, State, County, farm owner, agribusiness interests had their goal of keeping a ready supply of cheap labor for high profits.
Agribusiness ran the country, state, county and people. They used the ploy of divide and conquer with one goal in mind, profit. After all this is the American dream for them. For us, the working poor in Hidalgo County, Anglo-American, Mexican-American, or immigrant, we had our wages manipulated and controlled.
Expense ledger, July 2, 1919 $12 monthly salary = 12 divided by six days divided by four weeks = $0.50 a day, John Crawley, December 1914 $12.00 salary for a month wage, Joe Wood $10.00 Texas Citrus Fruit Growers Exchange, the movers and shakers of the country lived in the valley, the same people who treated their workers so bad. The irony of land speculators being the ones who created the depression turned out to be the ones who President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed to the State Advisory Board for Public Works. The committee, composed of four men, was responsible for examining public works applications and recommendations to Washington those that merited funding.”
The future for the population was stolen as well in the county level. This occurred in the form of bonds sold and the funds taken out in the name of public improvements that were never done. One example is available in the Special Collections Department at University Texas Pan America where the funds taken out in 1909 that were not paid pack got rolled over in another bond sale to be paid in 1949.
Amount issued $100,000.00 Rate of interest 5% Date of Maturity August 10, 1949 Maturing after January 1, 1933 $99,000.00 Sinking Fund required January 1, 1933 $56,500.00 Securities $78,218.24
When the county wanted improvements it would invest in the form of bonds to be sold and repaid, some bonds that where taken out and were to be repaid did not have sufficient funds to do so, so they would mark as “sinking fund” and issue another bond to cover the difference at a latter date. Some bonds were carried till now, living on credit for a hundred years.
By controlling the federal, state and local policies with token, little or no oversight, they were able to control the wages for Hidalgo County in the early 20th century.
Now, the interesting thing about the ‘prevailing’ wage in Mexican program is that it is determined ahead of the season before any wages are paid, and further up until August 1955, it was determined solely by growers conferring together.
These actions taken by them were implemented over time. And this was not enough, they had to secure their place in society. We, the working poor, were divided by color, race and class lines. In August 1942, as a war time emergency manpower measure, an executive agreement was singed with Mexico providing for the admission of Mexican contract labor for work on farms and on railroad maintenance –of-way.
In 1944, large numbers of poverty ridden Mexicans ‘discovered’ the United States. Men and families came to earn dollars primarily by chopping and picking cotton, by thinning and harvesting sugar beets and by picking fruit. The single woman came to earn money in restaurant jobs, as household maids, or by supplying the red-light districts of the border cities…. According to the GI forum of Texas, ‘The vast majority of wetbacks are plain agricultural workers including women and children, mostly from the peasant class of Mexico. They are humble, amenable, easily dominated and controlled, and accept exploitation with the fatalism characteristic of their class. He accepts good or bad treatment, starvation wages, diarrhea and other sickness for his children from contaminated drinking water and unsanitary living conditions… He does not think in terms of native labor displacement, lowering of economic standards and socio-economic effects of his presence in the U.S. Ideologies are beyond his comprehension.
They, the agribusiness got what they wanted, an ample supply of labor to force the wages down. The economic and social consequences of this illegal Mexican immigration were sever, disruptive, and harmful. Specifically, they involved displacement of American workers, depressed wages, increased racial discrimination toward Americans of Mexican ancestry, illiteracy, disease, and lawlessness… Because of wages and working conditions which illegal Mexican workers accepted-wages of ten, twenty, and thirty cents an hour from sun-up to sun-down…Ranchers want cheap labor… Thus, the Lower Rio Grande Valley cotton growers got their cotton picked for approximately one-half the wages paid by the cotton growers of Texas.
Yes, the bankers were happy, they got plenty of cheap labor and huge profits. In agriculture, labor does not have the legal right to organize and bargain collectively… They are not covered by unemployment compensation… Agricultural workers are outside the Fair Labor Standards Act; in about one-third of the states, they can be covered by Workers compensation… Labor in agriculture with out the protection of labor standards legislation.
But at what expense, at the expense of the working poor. The sharecropper, Anglo-America was pushed out. The Mexican-American was divided and in bad health.
But the employment of children for hire on large scale farm too often means long hours of hard monotonous work with little time during the day for food or rest. Such toil in early youth may be so damaging to a child’s health and social out look that it may show its effects though out all his later life… then, too. The low rates of pay and the irregularity of farm employment are two of the chief reasons why children have been drawn into the family working force. Often even when all members of the family work, young and old alike, their combined earnings are not enough to make a decent healthful life possible for them.
The descendent of Hidalgo County were controlled in every aspect of their public life that affected their personal life.
Hidalgo County’s population became behind in what would eventually become a global market that put a premium on educated skills.
Draft board have had to postpone the military service of large numbers of men and boys. Many have been deferred for illiteracy-largely due to lack of educational opportunities in childhood. Many more have differed for preventable physical and mental handicaps that have their roots in poverty, neglect, uncared-for illnesses, and overworked in childhood… One cause of the low-income levels, poor working conditions, and prevalent child labor found among farm workers in certain parts of our country is the absence of effective legislative control over wages, working hours, and the employment of children in agriculture.
The cost of educating the population was to change the social norms of the peon. The immigrant would of have to change the viewpoint of being able to understand and obtain an education. The Mexican-American would of had to change their opinion of the cast system. The Anglo-American would of had to incorporate the descendent of Hidalgo County as being equal Americans.
Had these actions been taken, then the population might have been able to competitive in the future.
Analysis, the cost of schooling are treated as an investment, and the higher wage rate earned by a graduate as the return to his or her investment. Investment in education is undertaken to increase the price of time, or wage, of graduates. If, successful, the investment in schooling may also yield a smaller increase in the graduate’s lifetime wealth.
South Texas fails in this endeavor. Large portions of the population were forced to work beyond their natural abilities in order to survive on subsistence living.
Hidalgo County could have rented and turned large portion of land in this region into productive agriculture for market.
Of course, securing a renter could be a problem. There was an abundant supply of Mexican laborers who could readily do the job, but land was not leased to them. In these early years, Mexicans were hired only for labor purposes. Instead the population socio-economic paradigm of them and us prevailed.
In summery, Hidalgo County went through drastic changes in the early 20th century. Change from a feudalistic cattle culture to a socio-economic cast peon and class agricultural structure. The working poor have had to contend with starvation wages that were tantamount to slavery. Lack of proper foresight and discriminatory social structures kept some of us, the working poor, from obtaining a decent education. Some portions of the working poor, Anglo-Americans and Mexican-Americas were pushed out based on wage structure. The practices of the affluent in profit taking resulted in short selling their future earnings by setting a race structure that perpetuated the class structure for the greatest return on their investments for generations to come.
The population of Hidalgo County was divided along class and race lines. Large portions of wealth in the form of future human capital were sold short. The precedents of the social structure that was implemented in the past will prevail into the future. The conditions of the working poor were set from a self-defeating cycle of poverty that produces less taxable income thus resulting in less return for the affluent in the county.