Social Aspects of Farm Labor in the Pacific States.

In the Pacific Coast States, which have long been accustomed to seasonal labor not only in agriculture but in lumbering and fishing, transient farm labor has become a problem of major proportions. A lag yet exists, however, in the way in which the farm labor problem is being met. Unlike problems of urban industry it has not been approached from the social viewpoint, the philosophy of the rural economy still being that each man is responsible for his own sins and is capable of carrying his own burdens. Social legislation designed to underwrite the risks of the socially inadequate embraces chiefly the urban-industrial classes, even though the farm laborer on the West Coast has long been subject to as much exploitation and as much uncertainty in his mode of life as has any urban-industrial group. A highly unstable agricultural industry is not able to carry full responsibility for the security of farm laborers; therefore, programs designed to stabilize agriculture should ultimately effect an improvement in the lot of the laborer. There is room for a great deal of improvement in the social and economic conditions of the various types of agricultural workers, conditions which not only endanger health and general welfare in the Western states but also threaten the West's reputation for social equality. Among the important gestures of groups interested in problems of farm labor are two recent measures of the Farm Security Administration: a socialized health program for the lower strata in agriculture in California; and the development, on an experimental basis, of a chain of sanitary farm labor camps up and down the coast, both of these programs being financed chiefly by the federal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]