ABSTRACT
The major labor question in the evolution of California agriculture is how California agriculture developed large farms growing labor-intensive fruits and vegetables while offering low wages and part-year work in fast-growing California. The availability of Chinese labor just when California agriculture found it profitable to switch to labor-intensive fruit farms established patterns that have persisted for 100 years: crop specialization, large farms, and seasonal workers who migrated from farm to farm. The Midwestern recruits refused to keep themselves available for seasonal farm jobs when they could earn higher wages in year-round urban jobs, and their experience helped to firmly establish the status of California agriculture as a last resort occupation for American workers. In 1917 and 1918, farm labor shortages resulting from the exodus to nonfarm jobs were remedied by the employment of Mexicans in California agriculture. Many of these Mexican farmworkers were not recruited actively by farmers but came north to escape the disruptions of the Mexican civil war.
