| Abstract |
"The three chapters of Part 1 explain the evolution and current status of hired farm labor in Canada, Mexico, and the US. Each country's history is different, but the share of employment in agriculture fell sharply in all three countries during the 20th century, especially after WWII. Many of Canada's immigrants in the late 19th century were Eastern Europeans, many of whom became farmers in Canada's western prairies after the completion of Canada's transcontinental railroad in 1885. Eastern European immigrants to the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s, by contrast, mostly filled factory jobs in eastern and midwestern cities because Black sharecroppers were seasonal farm workers in the south and Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians in the west. Canada's climate and geography favored family-sized grain and livestock operations, while the Mediterranean climate of the western US allowed large dryland wheat farms to be converted into fruit farms that relied on migrant farm workers. The Spanish and later Mexican governments made large land grants to elites at a time of relatively little immigration, leading to the creation of feudal estates that housed and employed peasants. Efforts to transform these haciendas into family-sized farms failed in the 1850s and again after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. Instead, the Mexican government created communal ejidos on land taken from large landowners, creating small farmers who could not sell or borrow money against the value of their land. The result was limited investment, widespread rural poverty, and migration to Mexican cities and the US"-- Provided by publisher. |
