“Our job is to get it picked”: Volunteerism, coercion, and the California farm labor crisis of 1942

“Our job is to get it picked”: Volunteerism, coercion, and the California farm labor crisis of 1942

On September 9, 1942, the members of the Merchants Association of Fresno, the largest city in California’s San Joaquin Valley, called an emergency session to respond to a burgeoning crisis. For much of the year, farmers and ranchers in the Valley—among the most productive agricultural regions in the United States—had struggled to secure sufficient hands to tend to their crops and herds. This labor shortage became particularly acute in early September, when checkups revealed that more than half of the region’s highly perishable raisin grape crop remained unpicked.

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