Review of Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913, by R.S. Street

Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913. By Richard Steven Street. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Pp. xxv, 904. Illustrations. Paper, $29.95.)Farmworkers in California play a prominent role in some of the more noteworthy literature of the twentieth century. The Grapes of WratKs Tom Joad and his family, for instance, remind us of the painful, seemingly endless suffering of migrant workers. But Joad's story also demonstrates that he was part of a broader community of migrant workers who lived in the Hoovervilles, shantytowns, and drainage ditches that characterized rural California at the time. In Beasts of the Field, the first of his three-volume history of farmworkers, Richard Steven Street describes the story of agricultural migrant workers in California from roughly the 176Os through 1913 to uncover how California farmworkers became a class before the Joads took to the road.Street divides his narrative into six roughly chronological categories. He begins by explaining the colonial and preindustrial infancy of the Spanish missions throughout the region that became California to demonstrate how Spanish officials relied on Indians' labor to make the land productive. By the early nineteenth century, officials had virtually enslaved these laborers by shackling and imprisoning them to keep them in line. To gain greater control of native field hands in the 184Os, farm owners and legislators resorted to passing oppressive laws that turned free, native workers into indentured servants. Growers exploited these workers horribly, fed them little, and provided insufficient housing. Not surprisingly, native workers died at astonishingly high rates, forcing growers to search for new laborers. Bindlemen, who carried their belongings in a bundle strapped to their backs, filled that void. For roughly twenty years, bindlemen choked on dust and dodged hazardous machines nearly continuously from late spring through late fall to bring in crops such as wheat, a job that grew more dangerous as growers began mechanizing production. Bindlemen eventually sought higher wages and safer working conditions, and Chinese immigrants began taking their place.Chinese workers soon dominated the labor pool, particularly after completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 when now-unemployed Chinese workers flooded the agricultural labor market. But the influx of these workers sparked intense racism among white Californians. While lower-sort whites attacked Chinese workers for taking low pay, state and national officials codified anti-Chinese animosity by passing a series of laws designed to restrict workers' movements and to reduce immigration. Despite these racist attacks, Chinese laborers continued to carve out a place for themselves in the fields of California. They did so in part because bosses and growers defended Chinese workers for working hard and accepting low wages, lower in fact than most whites. That said, growers tried to replace Chinese workers with school-aged children. The plan backfired, and Chinese immigrants dominated agricultural labor until the early twentieth century, when their population declined as a result of immigration restrictions and low replacement by natural increase.As the number of Chinese declined, Japanese immigrants filled the open jobs. In many respects, Japanese workers faced the same hardships faced by their Chinese and Indian predecessors-poor pay, unscrupulous employers, bad food, inadequate housing, long hours, dangerous work, and racism. …