The History of Migrant Farm Workers in the 1930s

Dust Bowl

Farm laborers in the Midwest were reluctant to leave their small farms to work on commercial enterprises in the West, but they were left without a choice when devastating droughts occurred in the 1930s. The drought conditions were worsened by over-farming and poor soil management, which led to the devastating dust storms in what became known as the Dust Bowl.

Some states, such as California, took measures to keep dependent migrants out of their states. They created so-called vagrancy laws that allowed them to arrest farmers who came into the state, and then they lent the farmers out to work off their fines. The vagrancy laws were repealed in 1941 when Edwards v. California deemed them unconstitutional.

The federal government set up migrant labor camps that provided food, housing and health services. These were built because farm workers did not stay in a single location for the entire year; laborers had to follow the harvest around the state to make an income throughout the year. They harvested a large variety of crops in California, including potatoes, cotton, lemons, oranges and peas, according to the Library of Congress.

The Oakland Museum of California documents that many Mexicans left their country at the beginning of the 20th century after the Mexican Revolution and the civil wars that followed. By the 1920s, California had 200,000 Mexican or Mexican-American farm laborers. The Mexican government established a labor agreement with the United States that required U.S. farm owners to provide legal contracts that guaranteed work schedules and set wages for Mexican workers.

Mexicans from Mexico and Texas worked as farm laborers in areas outside of California as well. According to a pamphlet from the Wisconsin Historical Society, about 3,000 Spanish-speaking Texas Mexicans came to the state each year during the 1930s as migrant laborers. It was not until the late 1920s and 1930s that Mexican labor became prevalent in Wisconsin.