"'Solutions' to Migrant Problem Seen As First Step Towards Bigger Problems" from the December 1, 1960 Door County Advocate, with a response from May 15, 2023
Article by Jim Robertson
Looking Through the Door
By Jim Robertson
'Solutions' to Migrant Problem Seen As First Step Towards Bigger Problems
"Harvest of Shame" turned out to be an excellent documentary on migrant labor on the television show "CBS Reports" last week and I say this even though many of us who employ migrant labor felt the finger of shame pointing at us.
The show dealt with the problem of migrant labor, primarily with poor housing, poor pay, poor food and poor educational opportunities for the children. The way CBS presented it, the harvest of the nation's agricultural crops is truly a "harvest of shame."
We in Door county are well acquainted with migrant labor because it is largely responsible for the harvest of our cherry crop. However, we are not acquainted with it quite as well as other sections of the country where it is employed for longer periods of time.
In fact, many people here will argue that the "harvest of shame" should exclude Door county because we are ahead of most of the other states in our housing and pay scale for the migrants. But CBS did not single out any corner for honorable mention and as its camera swept from coast to coast the impression was left that all farmers are responsible for the sorry lot of the migrant.
And there were times during the program that the truth hit home. One 'example came when a migrant worker complained that the farmer is only interested in the migrant as a source of harvest labor and that "as soon as the work is done he wants us to leave." Few farmers will argue that piece of judgment, especially when the migrants show up as early as a month before the harvest even begins.
The fact that CBS devoted an hour of prime television time to the migrant and the fact that religious and governmental concern is being directed at the migrant means that public opinion is beginning to be molded in favor of the migrant and against the farmer. Few will argue with CBS or with a minister or with anyone else who tells us the migrant should be our Christian or moral concern, because it is an undeniable fact that the migrant is one of the least privileged classes in our modern society. When we think in terms of need, the migrant is much more entitled to welfare legislation, unemployment compensation and other things that people with a higher standard of living accept simply because they are available.
The big problem lies in what can be done about the migrant's need, or how it can be handled. Secretary of Labor Mitchell says a minimum wage is a step in the right direction. Union leaders say unionization of farm laborers is the answer. Farmers say an increase in market prices for the products harvested by the migrant is the only answer. But, as so often is the case, solution or an attempted solution of one problem usually balloons into a bigger problem.
But perhaps the logical thing to do is to start at the base of the migrant problem, or to the things that led to it in the first place. If we are to face the issue squarely, we will probably find our current "population explosion" more to blame than anything. As we all know, and as the television camera reminded us, the migrant is a notorious reproducer. Families of a half dozen to a dozen are commonplace and as such malnutrition and suffering are more apt to happen in a large family than in a smaller one. The oft repeated phrase, "we can't afford to have any more children," that we hear in middle class society does not seem to apply to the migrant. They just keep on having them.
At this point we would like to repeat the statement of Lincoln Day, Columbia University sociologist, who in his article titled "Our Irresponsible Birth Rate" in the November Reader's Digest wrote: "If the population increase continues, even we, in the richest country in the world, must inevitably choose between quantity and quality; vast numbers of people living poorly at low levels, or fewer people, but those few living well."
We might ask if this isn't the inevitable lot of the migrant, if, as their numbers increase, we will find not less of them living at higher levels but more of them living at lower levels.
We can say that this should not happen in a Christian or humane society, and yet if we are to face the real truth we will have to admit we are not living in a Christian society. We are living in a supposedly capitalistic society in which more and more of our so-called Christian or moral concerns, such as today's migrant, are coming to roost lit the socialistic channels of government.
In facing the migrant issue squarely, we should ask ourselves if it can be solved through the unionization, government regulations, welfare programs or even the communistic dream of "liberation for the masses." Life Magazine, in a piece called "It's Time for a Work Break," editorialized that "we must encourage free enterprise to expand. The enterpriser, the tax reformer, the tariff producer can do a lot more to meet the needs of our own and the world's economy than any of the current prolabor proposals such as minimum wage hike, which would increase unemployment by forcing employers to weed out those workers who simply aren't worth more than $1 per hour."
This is another big problem underlying what we consider today's migrant problem. As public opinion is stirred against the farmer, in favor of the migrant, as union leaders harass the migrants and as governmental leaders, both on state and national levels, push welfare programs for the migrant, the eventual result must be considered.
Ultimately, perhaps, these things could have good effects. The farmers, at least those who survive, would be forced to price their products in accordance with their cost of production, not throw themselves on the mercy of the markets as they do now.
It is common knowledge that when steelworkers strike, the wage increase is eventually absorbed by people who buy new cars, not by the steel companies or by the auto companies. This same situation could prevail in the food industry; when the farm union strikes the farmer and storekeeper could pass the cost on to the consumer in the form of higher food prices.
Government controls might be another answer. Take price supports off products where machines do all the work and human need is not involved and put them on the crops that employ migrant labor. Assure the cherry grower 10 cents a pound and maybe he will be willing to pay the migrant three or four cents a pound for picking his cherries.
The only hitch to all these "solutions" is that the employer of migrant labor is not destined to let things go that far. Faced by public opinion, more government regulation and by big unions, he has become a worried man. With his back to the wall he is looking more and more to the mechanization with which industry and other farmers have used to overcome their labor problems. Right at this moment cherry shakers, bean pickers and tomato pickers are being perfected to handle the chores once handled by migrants.
And when the day arrives that farmers turn machines instead of migrants into their orchards and fields, the bigger problem we mentioned earlier will have arrived — what to do with the migrants when they are no longer migrants.
In response to Jim (& for those who knew him, here today):
What do migrants understand that others don't? That every community succumbs to groupthink and lies to itself in some ways is inevitable. A migrant's perspective can be one way out of it.
You describe concerns as being from different perspectives. Yet no matter which ethics one employs, it remains that the meek inherit the earth. Had a decent percentage of migrants in 1960s Door County been convinced that there were good opportunities, maybe they would have stayed. In that case, their many children would have inherited a sense of ownership in Door County's future come 2023 and beyond. Instead, the population stagnated, which enabled state bureaucrats to get away with exploiting it. Not by a single fell swoop, but in a multitude of details, each one contributing in its own way to the process of boiling the frog.
Migrant children in twentieth-century Door County didn't have to worry about being taken away and put in cages. Many went to the beaches with their families while in the area. Yet they were exposed to lead-arsenic pesticides, and not everyone was nice to them.
In following CBS, you degraded "the migrant" as a "notorious reproducer", but it isn't notorious for a migrant family to have many children. It is notorious to have large, well-funded corporations paying for the painful death and dismemberment of little babies before they are born, since they might cause increased worker turnover or scheduling conflicts. In 1960, CBS criticized migrants for having children, but now in 2023 CBS promotes killing children before they are even born. You wondered about the question of "what to do with the migrants when they are no longer migrants". The answer in many states, but thankfully not Wisconsin at the present, gives the same answer for migrants and for everyone else. Abortion is death, in a way so that the State can wash its hands of culpability — an answer which broadly degrades Americans.
The specifics of the prolabor and welfare proposals attempted since your generation especially helped larger urban areas and a small number who were already wealthy. You begin to admit that the media might not be your friend when you couch the program as the "way CBS presented it", yet you could have explored why one should be concerned about CBS. One hole in CBS's reasoning was not looking at the sum of all the past and ongoing military and political interventions in Latin America, and about how that contributed to present issues.
For people who run things today, young Door County-ites make suitable future migrants for the workforce shortages in cities with below-replacement births. If they end up sterilized from gender-related drugs before leaving Door County, they are more likely to be better workers without distractions from raising children. Some corporations, including Target, Walmart, Pick n' Save, Walgreens, CVS, Shell, and BP, even pay for the painful, out-of-state slaughter of their employees' offspring, including travel expenses. But for now at least, Fleet Farm will not pay to kill unborn babies in Wisconsin.
It feels naïve for you to not have realized that the government decisions and mass media treatments in the 1960s were intended to take advantage of you and your readership. I have a similar impression of naivety when thinking about the free money the government gave the Menominee and other tribes in 1827 at Lake Butte des Morts. I don't think the migrants were as naïve about who was on their side.
Twentieth-century migrants could have helped the area avoid naïve groupthink, and to avoid caring about which things don't really matter. Maybe today's migrants are fulfilling that role already in various ways, and will do so someday more broadly.
Article courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Posts relating to honor or shame:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/honor-or-shame