U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

The United States Commission on Civil Rights is a temporary, independent, bipartisan agency

established by the Congress in 1957 to:

• Investigate complaints alleging denial of the right to vote by reason of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, or by reason of fraudulent practices;

• Study and collect information concerning legal developments constituting a denial of

equal protection of the laws under the Constitution because of race, color, religion, sex,

or national origin, or in the administration of justice;

• Appraise Federal laws and policies with respect to the denial of equal protection of the

laws because of race, color, religio.n, sex, or national origin, or in the administration of

justice;

• Serve as a national clearinghouse for information concerning denials of equal protection

of the laws because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; and

• Submit reports, findings, and recommendations to the President and Congress.

MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION

Arthur S. Flemming, Chairman

Stephen Horn, Vice Chairman

Frankie M. Freeman

Manuel Ruiz, Jr.

Murray Saltzman

Louis Nunez, Acting Staff Director
PEOPLE

WHO

FOLLOW

THE CROPS

A Staff Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights

by the Rocky Mountain Regional Office.

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

TO: MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION

Arthur S. Flemming, Chairman

Stephen Horn, Vice Chairman

Frankie Freeman

Manuel Ruiz, Jr.

Murray Saltzman

Louis Nunez, Acting Staff Director

The Rocky Mountain Regional Office (RMRO) of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, pursuant to its

responsibility to investigate civil rights problems in its region, submits this report on the difficulties

of migrant farmworkers in Colorado and North Dakota.

Through its investigation, the RMRO observes that the problems of migrant farmworkers are perennial.

Public attention is for a while focused on the migrants. Yet, this attention soon lapses into disinterest

because, as followers of the seasons, migrants are soon gone from the public eye. Frequently, migrant

camps are hidden from view and the general public remains unaware of the suffering and deprivation

experienced by these inhabitants.

The staff of the RMRO presents to you this photographic essay to tell the story. We hope it will serve to

gain and stimulate public attention.

By definition, the migrant farmworker is a poor person. In terms of income, housing, health, and education,

the migrant is a victim of abject poverty and social exploitation. These migrants and their children harvest

the food we find so plentiful in the grocery stores. These people who contribute to our well-being are,

themselves, deprived of such bounty. They are kept apart, denied the rights and privileges denied to no

other group of people. Their lives are lived in a 20th century version of peonage.

We urge you to review the plight of migrant farmworkers and initiate a national program enlisting the

aid of the American people to remedy their pain and suffering.

Respectfully,

DR. SHIRLEY HILL WITT

Regional Office Director
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The problems of migrant farm laborers, child laborers in particular, are unremitting. For a short

while public attention focuses on these problems and, when the migrants have harvested the crops and

disappeared, public attention lapses, perhaps until the next season.

For that reason, the staff of the Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the U.S. Commission on Civil

Rights wishes to thank Ron Smith of the Grand Forks Herald for his photographic view of the migrant

worker in Colorado and North Dakota. It tells its own story and refocuses attention.

This study was the principal staff assignment of Lynn Palma, summer intern in the Rocky Mountain

Regional Office, with writing and review assistance from Cal E. Rollins and William Levis. Esther Johnson

and Cathie Davis provided support assistance with overall supervision by Dr. Shirley Hill Witt, Regional

Director, and William F. Muldrow, Deputy Regional Director.

T

he migrant farmworker is, by definition, a poor person. The

massive problems confronting migrants cannot be properly

examined without understanding the poverty affecting them.

The alarming statistics relating to education, health, and housing are the tip of the iceberg. Underneath lies an ugly system of

poverty and social exploitation hidden from general view.

Problems are inextricably interwoven into the migrants' poverty.

Poor health, for example, is related to low income, since medical

services are costly. In turn, when a migrant is sick and does not work,

no pay is forthcoming. In relation to migrant children, poor health

often is the cause of their lack of achievement in school. When they

are sick (or have no shoes to wear), they do not attend school.

Most often, migrant children do not attend school because they

have to work in order to contribute to the family earnings. They may

harvest the crops or care for younger children. Due to absenteeism,

the children's success in school is minimal. This lack of success leads

to negative feedback and loss of interest in academic achievement.

The low income from sporadic and poorly paid labor forces migrant

families into inadequate housing. They pay for and receive unsatisfactory health care and lack proper nutrition. The migrant worker,

then, from childhood is locked into a position that limits earning

power. Such migrants, for the remainder of their lives, seem able to

do nothing else but migrate and work, work and migrate.




"Migrants: Who Are They?"

No group of people I have worked with—in the South, in

Appalachia, and in our northern ghettoes—tries harder to work,

indeed travels all over the country working, working from sunrise

to sunset, 7 days a week when the crops are there to be harvested

[than migrant workers].

There is something ironic and special about that, too. In exchange

for the desire to work, for the terribly hard work of bending and

stooping to harvest our food, these workers are kept apart like no

others, denied rights and privileges no others are denied, denied even

halfway decent wages, asked to live homeless and vagabond lives,

lives of virtual peonage.

Robert Coles, Testimony before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor

of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearing

on the Migratory Subculture, July 28,1969.






The average income for migrant farmworkers is well below the

poverty level. One government publication estimates that migrant

workers average 138 days of work during the year for an average of

$17.70 per day or $2,457 per year.1 Other estimates are lower.2

HEALT

H

The migrant laborer's life expectancy (male and female) is 49 years.

For migrants, infant and maternal mortality is 1-1/4 times the national

average. The death rates for migrants who succumb to influenza and

pneumonia are twice the national average, while 2-1/9 times the national

average succumb to tuberculosis. Malnutrition among children of

migrant workers is 10 times the national rate.

3

According to the National Safety Council, agriculture is the third

most dangerous industry nationally in terms of serious injuries and

death.

4
HOUSING
It appears that no working group suffers from worse housing than

migrants. The growers, who traditionally furnish the housing, view

improved living quarters as economically infeasible due to the limited

time the housing is occupied and the costs involved to improve it.

As a result, labor camps have become virtual prisons for the migrant

families who occupy them.5 According to Dr. Raymond Wheeler:

[HJousing and living conditions [are] horrible and dehumanizing . . . without heat, adequate light or ventilation, and containing no plumbing or refrigeration, each room [no larger than

8X1 4 feet] ... the living space of an entire family appropriately

suggesting slave quarters of earlier days

 6


EDUCATIO

N

On the average, migrant children attain only an elementary school

education. Even this level can be misleading, since migrant children

usually are 6 to 18 months behind their classmates in achievement.

While 80 percent of all other children enter the 12th grade, only

11 percent of migrants get that far.

7

THE

STRUGGLE

TO LEARN

Each spring, as the migrant children leave their home bases with

their families to look for work, they also leave their classrooms. Not

many children will enroll in new school systems for the remainder

of the academic year.

The few migrant children who do enroll in another school for the

rest of the academic year may undergo curricular and cultural shock.

For example, migrant children may be taught mathematical division

before they are taught addition as a result of their enrollments in a

number of different school districts.

A number of studies have discussed the relationship between educational failures of migrant children and the economic and social

situation that forces them to work in the fields.

In recognizing the unique problems inherent in education of

migrant children, Congress accepted responsibility for ensuring that

such children receive compensatory education by amending the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to specially include

children of migratory agricultural workers. In a joint report on that

legislation, Congress described the problems:

The children of migratory agricultural workers present a unique

problem for educators. Migratory workers travel from community

to community in order to work. They often settle in a single

community for two months or less. Consequently, their children

are seldom in school long enough to participate in school activities; some spend only two to six weeks in any one school district

during the harvest season. Well over half of all migrant children

are not achieving at their grade level, a substantial number of

them are two years or more behind in their schooling.8

Almost a full 8 years after the amendment had been implemented,

after the States had had time to use imagination and resources in

designing programs, a private evaluation of these programs, conducted

under contract with the Office of Education, reported very little

improvement in opportunities for migrant children. Among the

important findings emerging from the evaluation were:

• Migrant students, despite some gains, are still functioning at a

lower level than expected for their grade or age group. As they

advance, the gap in grade equivalents expected for their age

group continues to widen.

• The average migrant students are from 6 to 18 months behind

what would be expected of their age group.

• When compared to the student population as a whole a

significantly higher percentage of migrant students are enrolled

in grades 1 through 6 and a significantly lower percentage

in higher grades 7 through 12.

• While the average student has an 80 percent chance of entering

the 12th grade, the migrant student has an 11 percent chance

of doing so. Most principals consider economic pressures to be

the greatest cause of students' dropping out.

• Eighty-three percent of the students reported attending no more

than two schools during the year; they follow the crops and

the seasons but may not attend school.

• It takes 3 years for the average migrant student to move from

third to fourth grade, after which time they never are able

to catch up.

• The majority of the students polled reacted positively to

schooling. However, of those wanting to drop out, 53 percent

stated that they needed to work.

• Migrant parents are supportive of the schools and want their

children to get an education.9

The Cycle of Life

The cost in human lives is too great., the waste of human potential

too much. ... To argue that the farm is different, to call the fields

lush and cool and the air unpolluted, is a callous effort to mask

the truths. . . .

Ronald B. Taylor,

Sweatshops in the Sun





; &
In the spring of each year, many of the 800,000 children employed

in commercial agriculture join their migrant farmworker parents as

they journey north from Florida, Texas, Arizona, or California to

harvest crops in all corners of the Nation. The tour begins in March

and continues until October or November. The lifestyle is one of

transiency and poverty.

Migrant children can be Chicanes from Texas, California, or the

Midwest; blacks from Florida or the Southeast; Puerto Ricans from

the Northeast; Native Americans from the Southwest; or whites

from all parts of the country. Some 27 years ago, the President's

Commission on Migratory Labor (1951) reported:

Child labor has all but disappeared from American industry.

Only in agriculture does it remain a serious problem. Children

work in agriculture today primarily for the same reason they

formerly worked in industry—because of poverty in the family.

The child's earnings are needed. This is the same reason given

years ago why child labor could not be eliminated in industry.10







ONE FAMILY

OF MANY

There are four dwellings next to the railroad tracks on the grower's

farm 2 miles outside of Draton, North Dakota, a small farming town.

During the sugar beet harvest, all the dwellings are occupied by the

Hernandez family, which includes the grandfather, his three sons, a

widowed daughter, and their children. Gilberto, age 37, is the oldest

son and leader for the four families. He and his wife, Lile, live in one

trailer with their four children. Two other trailers, along with a tworoom house, are occupied by relatives.

It is July and a trail of rose clouds hangs low in the sky. Gilberto

Jr., going on 11, climbs out of his trailer and makes his way toward

the two-room house of his cousins a little down the road. The schoolbus is soon to be there. He is sleepy. The crowing of a rooster is picked

up here and there all around him. From the sounds he knows it must

be nearly 6. He and his cousins must hurry to catch the bus that will

take them to the migrant summer school. Gilberto, at 10, is the eldest

of 12 children in his extended family. His brother, Jessie, is 13 and an

adult, since he works all day in the sugar beets.

In the house of Gilberto's cousins, there are six adults and four

children. By the time Gilberto leaves his trailer, he knows his cousins

are awake. He hears a baby cry. Adults are moving around readying

themselves for the day. Gilberto is greeted by his grandfather walking

toward the outhouse. The children wash up at the water tank.

The schoolbus arrives and the 12 Hernandez children, including

two of 5 months, board it. The families live 17 miles from the public

school in Grafton, but it takes at least an hour to shuttle the children

one way over the back roads. They will eat breakfast at school.

The adults, along with Jessie, go off to work in the fields without

breakfast. Lile said, "No one could eat so early." She puts rice and

beans in a thermos to be eaten at work. They fend off mosquitoes

and flies beneath the sweltering sun when eating a quick meal.

Because the harvest of sugar beets is mechanized, the adults are

hired to do the preharvest work leading up to the harvest, thinning

and clearing the weeds in two separate hoeings. The Red River Valley

Sugar Beet Association has suggested a wage of $25 an acre for the

first hoeing and $18 for the second. An acre consists of seven to eight

rows, each 1 mile long.

Lile explained that, from a distance, beet hoeing looks no more

difficult than raking leaves. But to do it right, you must take off your

shoes and roll up your pantlegs. You soon grow accustomed to the

hazard of stepping on thistles as you make your way through the

chunks and mounds of black earth.

Migrants usually work the fields for 12 hours. Lile gets home at

6 p.m. to meet the schoolbus. Her husband works an extra hour. The

days are hot and humid. With sweat pouring down the workers' faces,

Lile observed, it is difficult to distinguish weeds from beet leaves.

She said that she and Jessie would cry from the burning sun, blistered

hands, and sweat running down their faces.

Last night, Gilberto Jr. heard that there were tornado warnings.

Tonight, he watches the lightning zigzagging the sky. Thunder keeps

the adults awake. He knows the fields will be damp and most of the

workers will not go to work. His parents want to go on to pickle

picking in Wisconsin, so they will trudge out into the muddy fields

to finish the beets. Everyone is behind schedule and the rows are

full of weeds. What ordinarily should take 3 days will take a week

now, he's heard his mother say.

The Hernandez children under the legal work age attend the

migrant summer school program. The program is one of 100 nationally that are federally funded under Title I of the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act to provide special education to migrant

children. The migrant summer schools in North Dakota's Red River
' J^rttSr-^-S

^gMt*!--; - *•>-- •"-- - <i.-'.A

Valley offer classes from preschool to seventh grade. After the seventh

grade the children are sent to work in the fields.

The Hernandez family learned of the summer school program

through an outreach worker from the school district who came to the

farm and expressed enthusiasm about it. "Years ago, before the summer

program, we had to leave Jessie, the older one, in the car all day

while we worked," Lile explained. "I could hear his baby cries from

the other side of the field. It was so hot, and the mosquitoes would

bite him. It would take me a long time to work down the rows back

to him. Before I could change his diapers he'd be a sad mess."

The family feels strongly that the education the children are getting

is important. Gilberto Sr. only finished the third grade, while Lile

completed the eighth. Both have difficulty speaking English and want

their children to learn the English language to make a better life

for themselves.

Their son, Xavier, age 8, says he wants to be a dentist when he

grows up because the dentists he has known make many children cry.

He feels that when he becomes a dentist he can make them happy.

Jessie wants to be a lawyer. He wants to help all of his people to

"plead not guilty," he says.

The Hernandez family can be considered luckier that most migrant

families. They have work they can count on when they leave their

home in Crystal City, Texas, to travel the 1,400 miles to North

Dakota's Red River Valley. For the past 7 years they have worked

with the same farmer.

They work in the sugar beet fields for 7 weeks and then travel to

Wisconsin for the cucumber harvest. Their lives are not as easy in

Wisconsin, however. The farmworkers live in boxcars on the owner's

property and work much harder. The labor involves constant stooping.

The pickles, as the workers call the cucumbers, prick when touched,

wearing out the pickers' gloves, swelling their hands, and making

their fingers bleed.

Most of the Hernandez family will return to the North Dakota farm

for the potato harvest in September. They will not vacation on the

way back to North Dakota, because they are concerned that the

children, who are now school age, do not miss the beginning

of regular school.







Dyads

Chicano parents . . . know to wait until their children are 11 or 12,

say, before they sit down /or ... the talk. After that moment is over,

various fantasies no longer get spoken: ideas for vengeance upon

Anglos; thoughts about amassing money and power, using both

against sheriffs or school officials; dreams of acquiring large homes

like those owned by Anglo growers and large, air-conditioned cars,

like those that foremen use, when they are not driving the grower's

truck. After that there is the final loss of faith—an acquiescence that

delights Anglos. . . . A "boy" has "grown up and settled down."

A "girl" has begun to "grow up and come to her senses."

Robert Coles, Eskimos, Chicanos, Indians

ife




\
PALISADE PARK:

A PLACE

TO FIND WORK

Palisade Park, near Grand Junction, Colorado, is home to many

migrant families waiting to find a day's work. Families often sleep

in their cars under bridges next to the river or out in the peach

orchards. The city park provides a few shade trees as relief from the

sun while the children wait for their fathers who are seeking jobs.

The park also provides the only restroom facilities, although only the

women's side has running water. The gas station across the street

directs the "fruit tramps," as they are called by some, to the park.

On an August day, one can observe the migrants stopping in the

park to wash their hair and their dishes. According to Norma, a

migrant who had made the park her second home during the first

weeks of August, the city has given up cleaning the restrooms. Norma,

herself, had cleaned the toilet after she learned that one of the children

in the park carried an infection. She attempted to involve the student

health team operating out of a mobile unit near the park, requesting

that they find shower facilities for the migrants. She felt their response

to be callous. "We leave that up to them [the migrants]," they

reportedly told her.

The park is also an employment agency for many of the migrants

looking for work. Norma's husband, Woody, found his job of

weeding on a ranch while lie was living in the park. Norma and her

husband had spent all the money they had to get to the park area

to search for a job. They borrowed money from the Migrant Ministry

for gasoline. After that was exhausted, Woody hitched the 20-mile

round trip to the Grand Junction Job Service Center to look for

employment.

Yet, they felt themselves lucky. They had a job and not many

children, and they weren't treated as poorly by the job service center

as the Anglo family across the park. Norma stated that she saw the

family pull up to the job office in Palisade to be told, "This is not

a job office until Monday."

That family is one of the many migrant families using the Palisade

City Park as a refuge. Ted and Marie are traveling with their cousin,

Larry; a sister, Lynette; and several children. "We have five, with one

on the way," commented Ted. "We don't know when though. But

that makes six." They are traveling in a Ford from the 1950s pulling

a U-Haul trailer. The smallest children sleep inside the car at night,

the next oldest on top of the trailer. The adults make bedrolls

on the ground.

The workers who come to Palisade to pick fruit on the western

slopes of Colorado are a mixture of cultural and ethnic groups. Ted

comes from a family of "Okies" who followed crops during the 1930s

dust bowl migrations. Norma also worked crops as a child in California. Woody, her husband, is a Chicano born in Texas. There are

young white "hippies" who like to call themselves fruit tramps.

Navajos travel up from New Mexico. A number of the workers are

from California and Florida. But Palisade also has a greater number

of undocumented aliens.

According to Norma, a busload of Navajos arrived while she and her

family were waiting for work. She said:

A couple of the Indians came over and showed me what looked

like a three-page contract and asked me to translate, because it was

in English and they couldn't read it. It was an interstate clearance

order from the employment office. This whole busload had been

sent up to work here from New Mexico when there wasn't even

work for the people waiting here. The clearance order had the

name of a grower in the area and even mentioned the kind of

housing they could have. But one of the Indian men said he

couldn't find any place to stay.

On August 3, 1977, 39 workers arrived in Palisade Park from




Gallup, New Mexico. The next day, 46 workers arrived from El Paso,

Texas. These workers were observed by the many migrant families

waiting for work in the park area. The workers had been transported

to the area pursuant to a clearance order.

The peak for standard peaches is August 18 through Labor Day.

Last year, the peak lasted 5 days because of an unusual season. Due to

rain followed by a period of hot weather, the early peach and the

standard peach season coincided. All fruit matured at one time—from

August 18 through August 25.

During the second week in August, observations and interviews with

migrant farmworkers indicated no work was available. Wally Diede,

applicant services supervisor for Colorado Job Service in Grand

Junction, confirmed these observations that very limited work was

available at that time. Yet, for weeks, the Colorado Job Service

Bulletin, which is published weekly from April to November by the

Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, solicited workers to

arrive in the area earlier than the season warranted.

The migrants are anxious to work when they reach a new area. But

sometimes the crops are delayed because of unusual or unpredictable

weather conditions. Occasionally, growers wait to see what turn the

price of their crops will take. If the price is right, they profit by discing

under the lettuce crop, for example, and claiming farm losses.

Sometimes there is no work because the grower had the workers come

early to the area. In the meantime, migrants waiting for work have no

protection.

In the Palisade area of Colorado during the first week of the August

1977 drought, migrant workers and their families arrived to find that

work wouldn't start for 2 additional weeks. The employment service

had brought 85 workers under the interstate clearance order into the

area.

John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath described job order abuses that

were prevalent 40 years ago. On the basis of a job clearance order,

processed through the employment offices, workers still travel thousands

of miles to work. It is essential to the well-being of those workers that

the information they receive be accurate and up to date. Once the

employment service has lent its support to the employer's recruitment

efforts, it would seem incumbent upon it to monitor the entire

recruitment process, clear the departure and arrival of workers, verify

the continuing need for workers, and assist those workers who may be

terminated for reasons such as lack of work.

THE ENDLESS FIELDS

Many migrant farmworkers do not know how much money they will

be paid upon completion of their jobs. A law student working for

Colorado Rural Legal Services (CRLS) confirmed this:

Half the time my clients don't know what they are getting paid.

They don't know the employer's name. They want a job and they

don't care about anything else. They're not going to ask the

grower's name. They just go to work and they know someone

will come by with a paycheck or they hope someone will come

by with a paycheck.

A Federal minimum hourly w

r

age was guaranteed most industrial

workers in 1937 through enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act

(FLSA). For 30 years following the passage of this act, farmworkers

were specifically excluded. Under the act, farmworkers were not to be

given payment equal to that of other workers until 1978.

The FLSA contains a 500-workday exemption for agriculture.

Minimum wage protection extends to workers of growers using more

than 500 workdays of agricultural labor in a calendar quarter.

Department of Labor statistics indicate that the act covers less

than 1 percent of the Nation's almost three million farms.11

Because the 500-day stipulation applies to the calendar quarter, most

farms escape coverage by the minimum wage laws. The months of

June and July are usually the period of highest demand for labor.

June falls into the second calendar quarter and July into the third.

While crop activity begins in the spring, the work is not continuous

until fall. There are numerous interruptions in work schedules as

crops mature at different periods or as certain phases are mechanized

and no longer require manual labor. Given 90 days in a quarter,

including Saturdays and Sundays, a farm would need to employ

five to six workers full time to fall within the 500-day requirement.

In view of the nature of agricultural production, only the

largest farms are covered.

In one of the wage claim cases handled by CRLS, the farmworker

was not paid at all by the crewleader. The worker told CRLS that

she thought she was owed $145. CRLS filed a wage claim suit in the

State court, helped the farmworker complete a written complaint to

the State division of labor, and approached the crewleader on

her behalf. Realizing the farmworker would press her legal claim,

the crewleader paid the $145 amount he owed her.

The crewleader in this case simply did not initially pay the worker.

He could be out there now not paying workers. The worst threat

to him is that, every once in a while, a worker will press a legal claim,

and he will have to pay what he owes. There are no sanctions other

than getting caught, and no reasons for him not to cheat

his workers again and again.

Luis Jaramillo, director of the Colorado Migrant Council (CMC),

said that one of the typical problems during the summer of 1977 was

the threat of workers being replaced by cheaper labor. Farmworkers

were consistently being told if they did not agree to do the work

at a lower price, the grower could find other workers. One family that

CMC tried to assist was working for a grower at $13 an acre. The entire

family was working in the fields and living in the grower's housing.

They were informed by the grower that he had found "wetbacks" who

would do the work for $11 an acre. The family then consented

to work for the lower rate.

Wages for working the preharvest of sugar beets in the summer

of 1977 were erratic, according to the CRLS law student. Growers

were paying between $12 and $25 for thinning an acre, which takes

about 10 hours to complete, and about $6 to $8 for the hoeing,

which requires about 6 hours. The law student's supervisor,

Richard Ginsberg, agreed, adding:

The work hasn't gotten any easier this year and the fields aren't

any less dense of weeds, but the wages have dropped considerably.

Last year $25 an acre to thin was considered a reasonable price.

If it took approximately 10 hours to thin the acre, the worker

earned about $2.50 an hour. This summer the workers are getting

to $16 for the same work and for the same amount of time.

Even where laws exist for the protection of the worker, few resources

for enforcement of these laws exist. In Colorado, the State labor and

employment division has only two people to deal with migrant

wage complaints and registration of crewleaders.

Senior Labor Investigator Art Gallegos closes up his

Colorado Springs office each spring and tells his staff to take messages

until November. He then travels thousands of miles crisscrossing

the State, personally contacting at least a hundred growers to register

crewleaders or farm labor contractors. During the summer of 1976,

the State register recorded 131 crewleaders, each of whom was

responsible for an average crew of 40 to 50 workers. In such crops

as lettuce, one crew can average 125 workers.

Until 1973, the Federal Government had in fact registered only

3 crewleaders out of the estimated total of 150 in Colorado.

Gallegos believed that, even with the stepped-up efforts of the State,

more investigators are needed to do the job of registering.



At three or four the children are boisterous, eager, impatient to

experience the next ride, the next camp. Between five and ten those

same children experience an ebb of life, even a loss of life. They move

along all right; they pick themselves up again and again, as indeed

they were brought up to do, as their parents continue to do. They

get where they are going, and to a casual eye they seem active enough,

strenuous workers in the field. But a change is taking place. Once

wide awake, even enterprising, they slowly become dilatory, leaden,

slow, laggard, and lumpish.

Robert Coles, Testimony before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor

of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hearing

on the Migratory Subculture, July 28,1969.





It does take . . . desperate spirit on the job, for a mother and father

to let their children know—without qualification or omission—what

the world is like. Chicano parents may keep their silence so long that,

ironically, their children are made even more curious: why do we

[Chicanes] live like this when they [Anglos] do so much better? . . .

"What shall we say of Anglos to our children?"

Robert Coles, Eskimos, Chicanos, Indians


NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, Federal and State Statutes

Relating to Farmiuorkers, prepared for the Subcommittee on Agricultural Labor of the Committee on Education and Labor, October

1976, p. 110 (hereafter cited as Federal and State Statutes).

2. U.S., Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Children

at the Crossroads (1970). The children of America's migrant farmworkers are born into some of the worst poverty in this country. The

family income averages $1,400 per year. Many, of course, make far less.

U.S., Department of Agriculture, The Hired Farm Working Force

of 1974, Agriculture Economic Report No. 297, Economic Research

Service (July 1975). Migrants as a group performed an average of 78

days of farm wage work in 1974 and earned $1,688 ($21.60 per day);

nonmigratory workers worked an average of 88 days on farms and

earned $1,427 ($16.25 per day).

3. U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee <5n Labor and Public Welfare,

Health Services Act of 1974, S. Rept. No. 93-1137, p. 22.

4. National Safety Council data show farming to be the sixth-ranked

industry group by frequency of accident and second only to mining

by severity of accident. Accident Facts (1971), p. 23.

5. Federal and State Statutes, p. 107.

6. Dr. Raymond M. Wheeler, testimony in hearings before the Senate

Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, Committee on Labor and Public

Welfare, 91st Congress, 1st and 2nd Sessions, "Who Is Responsible?"

July 20, 1970, Part 8-A, p. 5063.

7. Evaluation of the Impact of ESEA Title I Programs for Migrant

Children of Migrant Agricultural Workers, vol. 1 (Exotech Systems:

1974), pp. 6-8 (hereafter cited as Evaluation of the Impact}.

8. U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, H.R. Rept. No. 1814,

Joint Report, 1966, p. 10; S. Rept. No. 1674, pp. 14-15.

9. Evaluation of the Impact, pp. 6-8.

10. President's Commission on Migratory Labor, Migratory Labor in

American Agriculture (1951).

11. U.S., Department of Labor, Employment Standards Administration, Hired Farm Workers (1972), p. 37.

Coles, Robert. Children of Crisis, vol. II, Migrants, Sharecroppers,

Mountaineers. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971.

. , vol. IV, Eskimos, Chicanos, Indians. Boston: Little,

Brown and Co., 1977.

-. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor

of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Hearing

on Migratory Subculture. July 28, 1969.

Evaluation of the Impact of ESEA Title I Programs for Migrant

Children of Migrant Agricultural Workers, vol. I. Exotech

Systems: 1974.

McWilliams, Carey. Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory

Farm Labor in California. Santa Barbara: Peregrine Publishers,

1971.

National Committee on Education of Migrant Children. Wednesday's

Children: A Report on Programs Funded under the Migrant

Amendment to Title I of the Elementary and Secondary

Education Act. New York: 1971.

Taylor, Ronald B. Sweatshops in the Sun. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. The

Hired Farm Working Force of 1974. Agriculture Economic Report

No. 297. July 1975.

U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Children at the

Crossroads. 1970.

U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.

Senate Report 93-1137. 1974.

U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Education and

Labor. Federal and State Statutes Relating to Farmworkers.

October 1976.

Wright, Dale. The Harvest of Despair: The Migrant Farmworker.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.

•&U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1978 O— 727-30! REGION 3-1

U

. S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

WASHINGTON, D. C. 20425

OFFICIAL BUSINESS

PENALTY FOR PRIVATE USE $300

FOURTH CLASS MAIL

POSTAGE AND FEES PAID

U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

PERMIT NO. G73