ABSTRACT
This was an unprecedented intervention into the agricultural landscape in California. Before World War II, the preferred method of assuring the constant mobility of workers in California agriculture consisted of a dual strategy. The emergency provision of Farm Production Council (FPC) housing had been vital to meeting this need and thus to setting the records. In the years 1943-1945, $2.5 million was expended on the construction and improvement of agricultural and railroad camps in California, an unknown portion of which was paid by FPC. PL. 298 provided that the camps should be sold to public or semi-public agencies, or to associations of farmers, but could not be sold to labor organizations or other community groups. Its transformative effect on the landscape, and the system of agricultural production, in the state was profound. Governor Earl Warren wondered, in 1946, why braceros were being imported into the state when unemployment was a growing crisis.
