Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of The West by Mark Wyman (2010)

 OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 reviews Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West by Mark Wyman Hill and Wang, New York, 2010. Maps, notes, index. 368 pages. $28.00 paper. The agricultural labor history of the American West is a fascinating intersection in which farm, worker, and environment converge. Mark Wyman does a remarkable job of crafting a social history that brings us closer to understanding the dynamic nature of this convergence.Using extensive primary research andmarshallingawealthof excellentsecondary literature,Wyman takes readers on the laborer’s journey through wheat fields, apple orchards, and hop yards. The scope of his history runs roughly from the 1870s to the 1920s, using railroad expansion as the means by which to follow the more mobile segment of the rural western working class until the advent of the widespread use of the automobile. Wyman takes on the entire region without being overwhelmed by it as he focuses on specific areas that relied heavily on temporary, seasonal laborers. Wyman’s major argument is that without this labor supply, the success of agriculture in the West would not have been possible on the scale that farmers and early agribusiness attained. Moreover, despite the necessity of harvest workers to western agriculture ,laborers rarely experienced good working conditions or adequate compensation.In other words,labor exploitation was inherent in commercial agriculture. Wyman begins his history with the expansion of railroads deep into the western interior. It was railroad access that made commercial agriculture possible, for now farmers could produce for a cash market. Subsistence agriculture did not dominate regions of the West as it had in the Midwest,South,and Northeast. TheAmericanWest was almost born as a commercial sector of extractive industries. As the cattle industry reached a plateau of sorts in the Great Plains, wheat production made its way west into the short-grass country. With the introduction of particular strains of wheat and other grains that could withstand the environmental conditions of the region, farmers could experience bumper crops. They quickly experienced a chronic problem, however, that farmers continue to encounter in the present day: a labor shortage. The population of the West could not adequately supply necessary labor for the harvest of crops.Wheat farmers of the plains and farmers of other regions of the West therefore had to rely on migrant harvesters , or hoboes, as they were sometimes called. One of the most interesting chapters in Wyman’sbookisachapteronthewesternhobo. Here, the author sketches characteristics of these itinerant workers of the West, who emerged as a major source of labor in the late nineteenth century. It is clear from Wyman’s analysis that this was a diverse class of men who had to travel great distances between areas of employment. Stealing rides on freight trains was the primary form of transportation for these workers, who also had to hold up in “jungle”camps while waiting for crops to ripen or to seek refuge from sheriffs and police,eager to enforce vagrancy laws. In the Pacific Northwest , white native-born hoboes did supply the temporary, seasonal labor needs of farmers, although Native American wage workers predated hoboes by several decades. Wyman is quite expansive in his treatment of laborers in this part of theWest,examining the ethnic and gender diversity of the workforce.As hop yard, berry field, and orchard agriculture proved increasingly more profitable and necessary to  Reviews the economy of the Pacific Northwest, Native Americans,Asians,European immigrants,and native-born white workers — whether men, women, or children — were essential to the successful harvesting of these crops. That diversity of labor extends to the Southwest, where Wyman examines the westward expansion of cotton from east Texas. As farmers adopted different strains of cotton that could handle the growing conditions of the arid region, temporary, seasonal laborers again proved necessary for crop cultivation and harvest.Building on a tradition of AfricanAmerican labor, cotton farmers, especially in west Texas and Arizona,used Mexican labor to fill the labor void.Mexican workers found work picking cotton as well as laboring in railroad construction throughout the Southwest. With the introduction of sugar beets in the Great Plains, Mexicans as well as European immigrant families supplied the necessary...