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Betabeleros: The formation of

an agricultural proletariat in
the Midwest, 1897–1930
Dennis Nodin Valdés
Published online: 28 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Dennis Nodin Valdés (1989) Betabeleros: The formation of an
agricultural proletariat in the Midwest, 1897–1930, Labor History, 30:4, 536-562,
DOI: 10.1080/00236568900890341

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 536 LABOR HISTORY

BETABELEROS: The Formation of an

Agricultural Proletariat in the Midwest,
1897-1930
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by
Dennis Nodin Valdes

A great deal of recent scholarly attention has centered on the

study of the historical transformations of the working class in the
U. S. during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. 1Unfortunately,
agricultural workers have been largely overlooked. This neglect
is due to a perception that the most important changes occurred
in urban industries in the forefront of technological innovation.
Yet in agriculture the rapid introduction of machines and ex-
perimentation with different forms of labor also resulted in pro-
found changes. Several studies of the contemporary agricultural
labor process indicate that mechanization has had a pervasive
effect on work. 2 In the Midwest the sugar beet industry was a
leader in agricultural innovation, and in the formation of a
"modern" agricultural proletariat.
The U.S. sugar industry received its greatest impetus from the
industrialization that followed the Civil War, when sugar con-
sumption increased dramatically. The nation's population more
than quadrupled between 1860 and 1920, and its per capita con-

~David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers:
The historical transformation of labor in the United States (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1982); Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work
in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), seminal works on the
topic which avoid agricultural labor.
2Recent works on the contemporary period include Max J. Pfeffer, "The Labor Process and Cor-
porate Agriculture: Mexican Workers in California," Insurgent Sociologist, 10 (1980), 24-
44; Robert J. Thomas, "The Social Organization of Industrial Agriculture," Insurgent So-
ciologist, 10 (1980), 5-23; Miriam J. Wells, "Social Conflict, Commodity Constraints, and
Labor Market Structure in Agriculture," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23
(1981), 679-704.
 BETABELEROS 537

sumption of sugar more than quintupled, from less than 20

pounds to more than 100.3 The rise in sugar consumption en-
ticed entrepreneurs in the U.S. During the late 19th century, most
of the nation's sugar came from Europe (whose beet industry had
become established earlier in the century) and from tropical lands
(that had been producing sugar for much longer periods of time).
As importation of the sweet white grains increased, U.S. capitalists
decided to gain control of production for themselves. They suc-
ceeded largely as a consequence of two distinct actions. First, as
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a result of the war with Spain, the U.S. acquired some of the
world's most fertile cane-sugar producing r e g i o n s - t h e Philip-
pines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Second, research on the produc-
tion of cane and beet sugar in the U.S. increased dramatically.
Research at agricultural experiment stations throughout the na-
tion was financed largely by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and
various state legislatures. Between the 1870s and 1890s agricul-
tural college researchers throughout the nation developed tools
and tested soils, climates and cultivation practices. They also dis-
seminated "free" information on the results of their research.
Meanwhile, local governments offered temporary bounties on
sugar to encourage production. 4
The sugar beet industry expanded very rapidly. Two years be-
fore the Spanish-American War, there were only four operating
beet factories in the country, and none in the Midwest. Between
1898 and 1913, eighty-six new factories appeared, more than half
before 19032 Michigan was the leader in the Midwest, and pro-
duced most of the region's beet sugar in the first decades of the
20th century. Michigan's first factory appeared in 1898, and twenty
three more followed between 1899 and 1903." During this forma-

3U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Ways and Means, Summary of Tariff Information, 1929 on
Tariffof1922, Schedule 4, Sugar, Molasses and Manufacturers of (Washington, DC: Govern-
ment Printing Office [hereafter cited as GPO], 1929), 967.
"J. Fremont Hickman, "Mangold Wurzels and Sugar Beets," Bulletin of the Ohio Agriculture
Experiment Station, 2d Series, 5:2 (Columbus, Ohio Agriculture Experiment Station, 1892),
17-33; Dan Gutleben, The Sugar Tramp-1963-Ohio, M.S.G., Indiana, Illinois (Walnut Creek,
CA: Dan Gutleben, 1963), p. 2; J. A. Huston and A. H. Bryan, "The Sugar Beet in Indiana,"
Indiana AgricultureExperiment Station, Bulletin No. 75 (Lafayette: Purdue University, 1899),
3-8; U.S. Industrial Commission, Report on Agriculture and Agricultural Labor (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1901), X, 535-540.
SLeonard J. Arrington, "Science, Government, and Enterprise in Economic Development: The
Western Beet Sugar Industry," Agricultural History, 41 (1967), 10.
~Dan Gutleben, The Sugar Tramp-1954: Michigan (Walnut Creek, CA: Dan Gutleben, 1954), 5.
 538 LABOR HISTORY

tive stage, sugar beet production concentrated in three states,

Michigan, Colorado, and California. Together they averaged be-
tween 50°70 and 75 070of the nation's annual output.7 As with many
other expanding industries of the era, a few large corporations
quickly gained control of production. 8
While researchers worked hard to develop the latest methods
of factory production, marketing, and distribution, they left the
problems relating to field labor for the corporations to resolve.
The companies experimented with several different forms of labor
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between the turn of the century and the 1920s. Unfortunately,

this experimentation and its consequences have been largely mis-
understood. A closer examination reveals that between the turn
of the century and the 1920s the industry created an agricultural
proletariat, composed almost entirely of Mexican beet workers-
betabeleros.
The proletarianization of field labor in sugar beets was part
of a broader transformation in agricultural labor that dates from
the end of the Civil War. In different places the process varied,
influenced by the interaction of labor demands of employers, their
crops, regional working conditions, and the actual and potential
workers with whom they dealt. In the deep South, proletariani-
zation of cotton field labor occurred gradually, beginning with
the abolition of slavery, followed by intermediate forms of ten-
antry and sharecropping involving ex-slaves and other local rural
workers. It did not reach its final stage until the upheavals of
the Great Depression. In Louisiana, the development of a newer
crop, sugar-cane, resulted in a labor force comprised of ex-slaves
and other rural workers who were proletarianized more quickly
during the late 19th century. In California, a variety of cash crops
appeared in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Lacking a large
body of ex-slaves, but an abundant force of urban and rural
workers of diverse backgrounds (white, Asian, and Mexican), a
wage-earning proletariat quickly appeared with the new crops.
In the case of the Hawaiian sugar-cane industry, workers imported

7U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Progress of the Beet-Sugar Industry in the United States in 1903,
Report no. 74 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1903), 90; Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 103;
Saginaw News Courier, Mar. 23, 1925; Saginaw Daily News, Jan. 3, 1933.
8Alfred S. Eichner, The Emergency of Oligopoly: Sugar Refining as a Case Study (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969).
 BETABELEROS 539

from several locations, particularly Asia, became proletarianized

very quickly in the late-19th century. 9
Sugar beet production was a major industry in three parts
of the U.S.: California, the Rocky Mountain-Great Plains region
centering in Colorado, and the Midwest centering in Michigan.
In each region the proletarianization process varied, the result
of different cultivation practices, land tenure, and organization
of the regional labor force. California stood out for the quick con-
centration of land holdings and the formation of a locally-derived
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wage labor force comprised mostly of single workers. The ethni-

cally-diverse group included whites, Asians, and some people of
Mexican descent in the southern districts. In Colorado during
the same period, the beet companies recruited from greater dis-
tances, but found a smaller variety of workers, including German-
Russians, Japanese, and some U.S. citizens of Mexican descent
from the Southern part of the state and Northern New Mexico.
The companies encouraged family labor and private landholdings
until World War I. In the Midwest, where more traditional family
farms already dominated, the corporations also recruited widely,
from a very diverse group of workers from many European coun-
tries, but none of Mexican descent until World War I. In all loca-
tions the tendency for Mexicanos to take over field labor dates
from World War I. The Midwest was the region most dominated
by "traditionar' farming practices, in
Within the Midwest, the single most important sugar beet
producing area was in the Saginaw Valley and its surroundings
in East-Central Michigan. Other important beet growing loca-
tions included a broad expanse in Southern Michigan, North-

9Among the most valuable works discussing the proletarianization of agricultural workers are
Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind o f Freedom: The economic consequences
o f emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Thomas Becnel, Labor,
Church, and the Sugar Establishment: Louisiana, 1887-1976 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1980); Linda C. Majka and Then J. Majka, Farm Workers, Agribusiness
and the State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Ronald Takaki, Pau liana: Plan-
tation Life and Labor in Hawaii 1835-1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983).
=°On the sugar beet industry see Harry Schwartz, SeasonalFarm Labor in the United States (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1945); Reynold M. Wik, "Some Interpretations of the
Mechanization of Agriculture in the Far West," AgriculturaIHistory, 49 (1975), 73-83; Paul
S. Taylor, "Hand Laborers in the Western Sugar Beet Industry," Agricultural History, 41
(1967), 19-30. All dismiss the role of workers in transformation of industry or of the changes
in social relations involving beet field labor.
 540 LABOR HISTORY

western Ohio and Northeastern Indiana; Eastern Wisconsin and

the Southern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; and South-
eastern Minnesota and Northeastern Iowa centering around the
Minnesota River Valley. The final important beet growing area
in this non-irrigated region, the Red River Valley of Western Min-
nesota and Eastern North Dakota, began to produce a signifi-
cant volume of beets only after the construction of a factory in
East Grand Forks, ND in 1926.11
Beet production took place in locations that entered commer-
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cial agriculture comparatively late. The Southern Michigan zone

was delayed because of the state's earlier reputation as being too
swampy for farming. Originally the Central Michigan and Wis-
consin beet areas were forested and swampy, and were ready for
agriculture only in the late 19th century. The Red River Valley
was far from important population centers. Conditions in all these
places were ideal in climate and growing conditions and were at-
tractive for the youthful industry because they were sparsely
populated. 12
In locations where agriculture was more firmly entrenched,
land prices were higher and growers' prior success made them
more reluctant to adapt to growing sugar beets. Also the compli-
cations of dealing with corporations, which reduced their inde-
pendence, and of the intensive labor demands convinced many
growers to avoid the crop. As a result, farmers in Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois grew sugar beets only in relatively small amounts.
The industry failed to gain a foothold in established places like
New York, despite relatively favorable growing conditions and
the efforts of companies to set up operations. 13
From the beginning corporate practices throughout the U.S.
were dominated by a handful of producers. By the mid-1920s four
companies controlled roughly 90°-/0 of production in the upper
Midwest. They were the Michigan and Columbia (later Monitor)

"U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Farmer Cooperative Service Information Bulletin 98, American Crystal
Sugar: Its Rebirth as a Cooperative (1975), 1; Grand Forks Herald, May 13, 1923.
12U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, Hearings,
(hereafter NationalDefense), 75th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1941),XIX, 7934.
I~U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Progress o f the Beet Sugar Industry in the United States in 1903
(Washington DC: GPO, 1904), 42; U.S. Industrial Commission, Report on Agriculture, 556 ff.
 BETABELEROS 541

Sugar companies in Central Michigan; Continental (later Great

Lakes) Sugar in Southern Michigan, Indiana and Ohio; and the
American Beet Sugar Company (later American Crystal) in Min-
nesota, Iowa and North Dakota.
Another common force in the industry was the U.S. Beet Sugar
Association (USBSA), formed after World War I as an outgrowth
of sugar beet interests in the American Farm Bureau Federation.
USBSA secretary Harry Austin reported in 1927 that the Associ-
ation represented over 90% of beet sugar production in the nation,
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including all the important Midwestern sugar beet companies.

Members of the USBSA, whose stated purpose was to look out
for the interests of the industry, were directly involved in recruit-
ment and other aspects of beet field labor. Furthermore, sugar
beet knowledge spread rapidly because of constant movement of
personnel from one company to another and the common polit-
ical efforts made on behalf of the industry to governmental ad-
ministrative and legislative bodies. 14
Sugar beet growing and labor practices in the Midwest were
influenced not only by broader corporate strategies and the Mid-
western climate but also by growers and workers in the region.
Local farmers typically ran their own operations and with their
families performed most of the necessary labor. Their holdings
ranged in size from roughly 90 acres in Ohio and Michigan to
170 acres in Minnesota, averages which remained fairly constant
into the 1940s. is At the turn of the century the region's farmers
had few established relations with agricultural corporations and
did not take directions regarding planting, cultivation, or field
labor practices. They seldom employed non-local sources of labor,
as they grew few labor-intensive crops. Apart from local workers,
hired hands, and the relatively short-lived army of white, mostly
male grain harvesters on the Great Plains, which largely bypassed

1"Harry Weston to National Sugar Manufacturing Co., Sept. 25, 1922, National Sugar Manufac-
turing Co. Papers (hereafter NSMC), Correspondence and Documents, f: Invoices, Colorado
State Historical Society (hereafter CSHS); Harry A. Austin to National Sugar Manufac-
turing Co., Aug. 27, 1927, NSMC, f: U.S. Beet Sugar Association--Statistics, CSHS; Scotts-
b l u f f Star-Herald, Dec. 17, 1920.
'sU.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics o f the United States: Co-
lonial Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1975), Series K 17-81,461.
 542 LABOR HISTORY

the Midwestern beet-growing areas, there was no established agri-

cultural working class in the region. 1~
Older farmers hesitated adopting sugar beets, and those in
the more recently established agricultural zones required en-
couragement and support from the beet companies to take up
the new crop) 7 The corporations enticed them by offsetting the
high cost of investment, demonstrating the profitability of the
crop and guaranteeing them a field labor force. They sold seeds,
provided technical assistance, and directed planting, cultivation,
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and harvesting operations through their fieldmen.~S They rented

machines including drills to plant, cultivators, plows, and har-
vesters, all for a modest fee per acre. For an additional sum, they
even planted seeds. Beet corporations guaranteed credit and often
helped to set up prospective farmers who were willing to grow
sugar beets. As a further inducement the companies agreed to
purchase the crop at a contracted price before it was planted. The
companies had to make sure that sugar beet growing would be
a fairly secure and profitable venture for the farmers in order to
receive enough beets for their factories to operate successfully.
Yet Midwestern growers continued to express reluctance because
of arrangements that made them subject to direct corporate con-
trol, a relationship to which they were not accustomed. ~9
Initially Midwestern farmers planted sugar beets cautiously,
in small tracts of one, two, or three acres3 ° Michigan plots were
much smaller than those of the Western states. In 1905, for ex-
ample, the average Michigan farmer planted 3.2 acres compared
with 9.0 in Nebraska, 9.15 in Colorado and 15.0 in California. 2~

"Paul S. Taylor, "Migratory Farm Labor in the United States," Monthly Labor Review, 44 (1937),
538.
~rU.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Progress of the Beet Sugar Industry in the United States in 1900,
Report no. 69 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1901), 6, U.S. Industrial Commission, Report on
Agriculture, 562 ff., 586.
IsU.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Progress of the Beet Sugar Industry in the United States in 1901,
Report no. 72, (Washington DC: GPO, 1902), 19 ff.
19U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigrants in Industries, Part 24 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1910),
570; U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, SeasonalAgricul-
tural Laborers From Mexico, 69th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, DC" GPO, 1926), 117, 124.
2°Michigan Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, 17th AnnualReport (Lansing: Robert Smith,
1900), p. 99; Michigan Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, 19th AnnualReport (lansing:
Wynkoop Hallenback, 1902), 451.
2~U.S. Department of Agriculture, Progress of the Beet Sugar Industry in 1905 (Washington DC:
GPO, 1906), 116.
 BETABELEROS 543

The smaller plots in the earliest years enabled Midwestern farmers

and their families to perform much of the work themselves. As
growers became more established and their acreages increased,
however, they refused to engage in hand labor any longer and
they turned to other sources.
The Midwestern farmer's principal source of non-family labor
at the turn of the century was the hired hand. The hired hand
did not belong to an entrenched proletariat, but was more of an
apprentice. He was part of the "agricultural ladder," and his ap-
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prenticeship was considered temporary. Once he had served his

time, learned how to farm and saved his money, he then moved
up the ladder. Generally the social and cultural distance between
farmer and hired hand was not great. Employer and laborer often
worked side-by-side, ate at the same table, and participated in
common community functions. 22Hired hands, however, were in-
adequate for the needs of the beet fields. The work was extremely
unpleasant, it was labor intensive and demand peaked at precisely
the times when hired hands were busiest with employers in other
activities. The corporations turned to alternative sources for the
unhealthful and brutalizing stoop labor in the beets. 23
The labor process in Midwestern sugar beets involved three
distinct sets of tasks between May and December, during which
time workers spent an average of 60 to 100 days engaged in field
labor. The first involved blocking and thinning. Workers walked
down rows either stooped over or on their knees, removing the
unnecessary and weakest plants in order to encourage maximum
growth of those left in the ground. Because farmers staggered
plantings, the operation lasted about six weeks. Hoeing followed
after a usual wait of a week or two during which time there was
no need for field labor. This less onerous task involved removing
weeds once or twice in the late spring and early summer, and gener-
ally lasted about three to four weeks. A lull followed for at least
six weeks from late July or early August until late September or

22Allan C. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming in the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the
Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 62-64; David E. Schob,
Hired Hands and Plowboys: Farm Labor in the Midwest, 1815-1860 (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1975), 209-233, on the agricultural ladder.
23U.S. Department of Agriculture, Progress o f the Beet Sugar Industry in 1903, 33.
 544 LABOR HISTORY

early October, when harvesting began. The farmer first "lifted"

the beets by mechanical means, cutting the tap roots and loosening
the plants from the ground. Then the worker "topped" them, cut-
ting the leafy tops from the rest of the plant using a foot-and-a-
half long topping knife. Topping lasted from late September or
early October to November, or early December in the more
southerly areas.
The companies were not able to induce the farmers, their fam-
ilies, or the hired hands to perform labor on the small plots after
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the first years. Sometimes farmers found local or nearby workers,

but increasingly relied on the companies to procure labor for them
from nearby towns and cities. The companies advertised in news-
papers and in public places that potential workers frequented,
and they hired recruiters to acquire labor from nearby sources.
In the earliest years the companies hired the workers for brief
periods and organized them as gangs.
Gang labor in the Midwest previously was employed on small-
scale truck farms and in the harvest of grains and corn. In the
sugar beet industry gang labor consisted mostly of women and
children from nearby towns. If the numbers were insufficient,
the industry then recruited unemployed men from the larger
nearby cities. In 1899 Bay City area employers hired local Polish
women and children specifically because they could be paid less
than adult males. ~4 In 1901 sugar beet expert and director of the
Michigan Agricultural College, Clinton D. Smith, testified on the
importance of these workers to the state's industry. He observed
that beets "furnished employment to a large number of boys who
would otherwise have been idle, and possibly a still larger number
of women, who were sorely in need of money thus earned." The
companies typically hired an experienced overseer to supervise
them. 2s
Recruitment was fairly haphazard in the earliest years. Farmers
commonly drove their wagons to specific locations in nearby towns
and cities where women and children lined up each morning,
waiting for work. The Lansing Journalin 1903 observed a lineup

2"U.S. Industrial Commission, Report on Agriculture, 574.

2sU.S. Industrial Commission, Report on Agriculture, 574; Dan Gutleben, The Sugar Tramp-
Indiana (Walnut Creek, CA: Dan Gutleben, 1958), 6.
 BETABELEROS 545

each morning at the corner of Ottawa St. and Washington Ave.

where "crowds of children huddled together, barefooted, and heads
almost uniformly covered with broad-brim peak-crown straw
hats." These groups waited for farmers to pick them up, take them
to the fields where they would work all day, receive their pay, and
be returned to the same spot at night. On some occasions workers
were recruited for as long as a week but seldom longer. 2~ The
Detroit News in 1903 noted that the Detroit Sugar Company
recruited single men for its fields near Rochester and Flint from
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"habitu6s of the river front," and paid them $1.50 per day without
board or $1.00 per day with board. 27 The gang workers were part
of the reserve industrial labor force, although sometimes they were
portrayed differently. A Grand Rapids newspaper in August 1900
wrote:
An instructive lesson may be read by witnessing the behavior of a crowd
of juveniles as they receive their weekly pay for weeding beets. Some o f
the tots are so small that their chins hardly reach the level o f the paying
clerk's desk, but each receives his wages and marches off, a capitalist. 2.
This early gang labor was paid by the day or the week, had
no written contract, and seldom stayed for more than a few days.
Local gangs soon proved to be inadequate to meet the dramatic
expansion of production, and the high turnover rate was a con-
stant headache for farmers. They soon deferred to the corpora-
tions for labor recruitment, as they already had on growing, cul-
tivating and harvesting operations and on labor supervision. 29
The 1902 season appears to be the first time the corporations
recruited gangs of adult male foreign workers. Those field workers
came from both nearby and distant cities, such as Detroit, Toledo,
Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. While the workers
represented many nationalities, Belgians became the most impor-
tant of the single male gang workers. 3° During the latter years
of the decade, corporation recruiters secured them for the Eastern

2~Lansing Journal, July 22, 1903;U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Progress of the Beet Sugar Industry
in 1905, 13.
27Detroit News, May 26, 1903.
28Cited in Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 109.
29U.S. Industrial Commission, Report on Agriculture, 562 ff; U.S. ImmigrationCommission,
Immigrants, 571.
3°U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigrants, 566, 571-73.
 546 LABOR HISTORY

Wisconsin and Southern Michigan-Northwest Ohio areas. The

recruiters scoured ethnic neighborhoods, often making arrange-
ments with local shopkeepers, saloonkeepers, grocers, barbers,
and other small businesses that ethnic workers frequented. The
companies also ran advertisements in Detroit's foreign language
newspapers, offering employment, free transportation and lodging
if necessary. 31
The gang labor of single European-born males became pre-
dominant in the Midwest by the second half of the first decade
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of the century. This new labor force contrasted with the gang labor
of women and children. The adult males tended to stay in the
beet fields for longer periods, and while still paid by the day in
some instances, were increasingly paid at a specific rate per acre
for each field operation. They received their pay on the comple-
tion of specific tasks, commonly twice or three times in the spring
and once or twice in the fall2 2 During the summer slack period
between hoeing and topping, they often returned to the urban
neighborhoods where they resided. There they found employment
in the factories and on the railroads to meet summer labor de-
mands which then, as later, tended to be at their seasonal peak. 33
While gang labor of local women and children and of male
adult foreigners dominated the Midwestern beet fields during the
first decade-and-a-half of the industry, it was unable to meet con-
tinued rising labor demands. Turnover was high, particularly be-
tween the different field tasks. Beet work paid poorly, working
conditions were unattractive, and individual adults could not save
much money working alone. The industrial boom of the first and
second decades of the 20th century in Detroit, Milwaukee, Chi-
cago, Toledo, and the smaller cities of the region siphoned off
many former beet workers. Even temporary urban work or jobs
that averaged only two or three days per week attracted workers
who might otherwise have remained in the beet fields. 34Further-

31U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigrants, 569; J. E Thaden, "Mexican Migratory Workers

in Michigan," Michigan State College, State Archives of Michigan, John E Thaden papers,
Acc. 68-69, B223, f: 2.
32U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigration, 492, 567.
33U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigration, 565, 570, 573; Michigan Bureau of Labor and
Industrial Statistics, 24th Annual Report (Lansing: Wynkoop, Hallenback and Crawford,
1907), 437.
3"U.S. Cong., Senate, Restriction of Western Hemisphere Immigration, 70th Cong. 1st Sess.
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1928), 138.
 BETABELEROS 547

more, for single men the social and cultural life of the big cities
contrasted favorably with the lonely, isolated conditions of the
beet fields. As single workers stayed away, the corporations turned
to another form of labor, that of European immigrant families.
The industry first made conscious efforts to recruit European
families for the Midwestern sugar beet fields in 1902. By the second
decade of the 20th century such families became the dominant
form of labor throughout the region. 35The first and, in most lo-
cations, the most numerous were the German-Russians, German-
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speaking Lutherans who migrated from the Volga region of Russia

to many locations in the Midwest and Plains states in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. They came to the fields of the Grand
Island, Nebraska factory district shortly after it was established
in 1890. Later they went to beet growing locations throughout
the Great Plains-Rocky Mountain region and the Midwest. In
the former they dominated beet work for much of the first quarter
of the 20th century. In the Midwest they were the most numerous
of a more diverse group of Eastern European workers, which also
included people from Bohemia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and
other countries. 36They and their largely native born children were
the most important group of field labor in the Midwestern sugar
beet industry during the 1910s and the early 1920s.37A few other
groups also worked in "the beets," the most important of whom
were Hollanders with established colonies in Southwestern Michi-
gan and Southeastern Minnesota. 38
The corporations favored families over gangs for three prin-
cipal reasons. First, the presence of women and children in the
fields reduced their labor costs. Second, parents assumed respon-
sibility for supervising the work of their children. It was difficult
to maintain discipline over youth. A U.S. Dept. of Labor investi-
gator reported being told by a boy in the Michigan fields in 1920
that his parents started him in beets at age five, "but they had

3sSaginaw News, April 23, 1902; National Defense, XIX, 7865.

~'U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigration, 567; North Kossuth Record, Oct. 26, 1922;
Owen R. Lovejoy, "The Child Problem in the Beet Sugar Industry," U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, Bull. no. 323 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1923), 31.
~TU.S. Cong., House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Seasonal Agricultural
Workers From Mexico, 69th Cong. 1st Sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1926), 154, 177.
3BU.S. Cong., House, Seasonal Agicultural Workers, 29, 31.
 548 LABOR HISTORY

to lick me a lot to make me do it. ''39 A final attractive feature

was that families reduced problems of recruitment. The corpora-
tion preferred large families because they could work greater
acreages and would be more likely to stay the entire season. 4°
The contracts, which specified conditions of employment, were
verbal in the earliest years but increasingly became written. Con-
tracts in the 1910s involved more complicated relations between
employers and workers than existed a decade earlier. The con-
tracts were made with the head of the productive unit rather than
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each individual worker. They stipulated wage rates per acre for
each of the several tasks to be performed in the beets and paid
workers at the end of each task rather than daily or weekly, typi-
cally four times per season. Increasingly during the second de-
cade companies also began to withhold a fraction of the pay for
each task until the end of the season in order to compel laborers
to stay until the end. 41 Contracts also offered indirect perquisites
that often were not necessary for daily gang labor. They included
free transportation to and from the fields, the provision of fur-
nished housing, a stove and utensils for cooking and eating, and
cots or straw mattresses for sleeping, at no direct charge to the
field workers. 42
The companies also arranged with farmers to provide free
garden plots located near the field workers' dwellings. There the
workers could grow vegetables including beans, tomatoes, onions,
and other crops for their own consumption. The gardens helped
keep wages down and induced families to stay for the entire season.
Work on the family garden plots concentrated during the slack
periods. In the spring, before beet cultivation, workers prepared
the plots and planted the crops. In the late summer, between beet

39U.S. Dept. of Labor, Children's Bureau, Child Labor and the Work o f Mothers in the Beet
Fields o f Colorado and Michigan (Washington, DC: GPO, 1923), 94.
"°Walter W. Armentrout, Sara A. Brown, and Charles E. Gibbons, ChiM Labor in the Sugar
Beet Fields o f Michigan (New York: Child Labor Committee, 1923), 13.
41U.S. Cong., Senate, Committee on Immigration, Restriction o f Western Hemisphere Immigra-
tion, 139; U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigrants, 565, 574; Theresa Wolfson, "People
Who Go to the Beets," The American Child, 1 (1919), 226.
'2Armentrout et. al., Child Labor, 33; U.S. Immigration Commission, Immigrants, 568; Wolfson,
"People," 218.
 BETABELEROS 549

hoeing and topping, they harvested and canned the crops from
their small gardens. 43
The companies and farmers preferred the contract system for
several reasons. First, it created a captive labor force. It ensured
captivity by withholding part of the workers' wages and by infre-
quent payment. It forced most workers into debt and compelled
them to purchase goods on credit at nearby country stores, 44 a
form of control. Second, the indirect perquisites of the system
reduced the direct wages that companies had to pay. Third, as
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criticism from reform groups on the use of child labor in the beet
fields gained momentum during the 1910s and 1920s, the corpo-
rations transferred the onus of hiring children to the parents, ar-
guing that the contract was made with the father, and consequently
the parents decided whether children worked. Yet as one set of
investigators concluded in their 1923 report on sugar beet labor
in Michigan: "the sugar companies carry large families of chil-
dren out to the country for one p u r p o s e - t o work. ''4s
For the families, employment in the beet fields had certain
attractive features. It provided work for many who were unable
to find anything better. A large household could contract for sub-
stantial acreages and earn more than an adult male employed spo-
radically in unskilled labor in the city. It was one of the few re-
maining occupations where all members of the family still could
work. The labor reform movement of the early 20th century led
to laws that restricted the work of women and especially children
in urban industrial tasks. No such regulations prohibited them
from working in the sugar beet fields. 46
Most importantly, the sugar beet fields offered the induce-
ment of upward social m o b i l i t y - namely the opportunity to rent
and ultimately purchase a farm. In several locations, especially
those with sparse populations, beet companies encouraged im-
migrant families to settle, often providing loans and equipment

43Wolfson, "People," 218, 224.

"4Wolfson, "People," 227.
4s"Child Labor in Michigan Sugar Beet Fields," The American Child, 5 (1923), 1-3; Lovejoy,
"The Child Problem," 27-37; Kalamazoo Gazette, June 2, 1923; "Children With the Hoe,"
Literary Digest, 77 (May 5, 1923), 15; Armentrout et. al., Child Labor, 5.
46"Child Labor," American Child, 1; Lovejoy, "Child Problem," 31.
 550 LABOR HISTORY

on favorable terms. 47 As a result, many German-Russian, Bohe-

mian, Polish, Hungarian and Dutch workers became renters and
ultimately owners. L.B. Thompkins of Columbia Sugar reported
in 1926 that most German-Russians recruited by his company in
earlier years already were owners. These former field workers were
more likely to continue growing beets for the corporation than
the older, more established Anglo-American and German farmers
of the region. 4s
World War I meant higher wages, more favorable working
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conditions, and increased employment alternatives in the cities;

large numbers drew away from agricultural labor. 49 But those who
remained in the fields also received higher earnings. The war en-
abled many of them to save money to make a down payment and
ultimately purchase farms, s° Like their predecessors, once they
became farmers, they refused to do stoop labor any longer, sl The
war also offered the agricultural workers a degree of leverage in
protesting against unfavorable working conditions. In 1918 in-
vestigator Theresa Watson noted in Michigan that "the feeling
of unrest passing over the entire industrial world is now evident
in the beet industry," as scattered work stoppages and strikes oc-
curred in several parts of the state. 52 As a result of the improved
position of workers resulting from the war, the industry searched
for a new group to exploit. This time it turned to Mexicans.
The sugar beet industry and other employers sought a solu-
tion to their problems by obtaining hired hands ("braceros") from
Mexico. Agricultural and railroad interests of the Southwest and
the beet industry nationally engaged in a concerted lobbying ef-
fort to convince the Dept. of Labor to grant them an exemption
from restrictions and the U.S. Congress to pass labor importa-
tion legislation on their behalf, s3 The lobbyists included W. H.

47National Defense, XIX, 7866; U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Immigration and Naturaliza-
tion, SeasonalAgricultuml Workers, 103, 176-80; Port Huron Times, May 12, 1907; Saginaw
News Courier, June 27, 1926.
48National Defense, XIX, 7867; United States Daily, July 27, 1927; U.S. Cong., House, Com-
mittee on Immigration and Naturalization, Seasonal Agricultural Workers, 122, 180.
49Detroit Free Press, Aug. 22, 1919.
5°U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Immigration From Coun-
tries, 554.
5~U.S. Cong., House, Seasonal Agricultural Laborers, 117; National Defense, XIX, 7912.
52Wolfson, "People," 226.
 BETABELEROS 551

Wallace of Michigan Sugar Co., who in May 1918, wrote to Her-

bert Hoover, who was then head of the U.S. Food Administra-
tion, responsible for meeting wartime food needs. Wallace claimed
that he was "scouring the country" for more workers, without
whom he claimed the industry in Michigan would lose several
thousand acres of beets. The corporate argument contended that
production needs could be met only by importing workers from
Mexico. The sugar companies convinced the government to sus-
pend restrictions on contract labor as well as the literacy and head
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tax provisions expected of foreign immigrants. This led to the

first significant entry of Mexicanos into the Great Lakes region
of the U.S. Most braceros worked in the sugar beet fields, while
smaller numbers worked on the railroads and in certain indus-
tries. The bracero program was temporary, expected to last only
for the duration of the war. 54
Most braceros who came to the Midwest worked in the more
industrialized locations, Michigan and Ohio, where industry si-
phoned off former beet laborers. By the 1920 season the railroads
brought in almost 5000 workers from Mexico for the Michigan
Sugar Company, and smaller numbers for the others. 55 Braceros
worked as gangs under supervision, like the male gang workers
who largely disappeared during the 1910s. Unlike the families,
the braceros worked as single individuals. The companies usu-
ally recruited workers under contracts for stipulated periods of
time, typically an entire season, providing free housing and paid
transportation to the Midwest and return fare after topping ended.
The beet companies liked the braceros and pushed to extend
the contract program after the war ended. They succeeded until
the postwar depression of 1920-1921 drew European workers back
to the fields. Returning Europeans displaced the betabeleros. Fur-
thermore, many unemployed Mexicans in the Midwest applied
for public relief, s6 In light of the relief problem, the companies

53Mark Reisler, By The Sweat o f Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States
(Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975), 27.
54j. H. Clark to Anthony Caminetti, Feb. 28,1921, RG 85, 55091/6, National Archives (hereafter
NA); Reisler, By the Sweat, 26 ff; W. H. Wallace to Herbert Hoover, May 29, 1918, RG
85, 54261/202, NA.
ssClark to Caminetti, Feb. 28, 1921, RG 85, 55901/6, NA.
56Wallace to Hoover, May 29, 1918; R. Artemis to Clark, February 22, 1921, RG 85, 55091/6,
NA; Clark to Caminetti, December 23, 1920, RG 85, 55091/6, NA.
 552 LABOR HISTORY

could no longer argue that there was a labor shortage in the beet
fields. The depression in effect curtailed the bracero program of
World War I.
Shortly after the war the Midwestern sugar beet corporations
learned of another growing pool of Mexican labor already residing
in the United States. In the absence of direct Federal government
intervention, they tapped this labor pool. As early as the 1920
growing season the corporations hired field agents to go to the
older railroad colonias of the Midwest- Kansas City, and St. Louis,
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as well as the larger centers in Texas, particularly San Antonio,

Fort Worth, and Dallas, and along the Mexican border, s7 There
company agents encountered large reserves of unemployed and
underemployed Mexican immigrants, and devised a system to re-
cruit and contract families to the northern beet fields. There was
practically no need for recruitment during the 1921 and 1922
seasons because of the economic downturn. But in 1923, as the
industrial boom accelerated and again lured Europeans back to
the cities, recruitment of Mexican families from within the U.S.
increased sharply. During the mid-1920s the population of the
Midwestern Mexican colonias expanded, and the beet compa-
nies' recruiters soon appeared in those cities as well. ss
By the middle of the decade the Mexican families dominated
sugar beet field labor throughout the Midwest. In 1927 they
comprised an estimated 75-90 percent of the field labor in the
different Midwestern beet growing zones. That year a U.S. Dept.
of Labor investigator reported that there were almost 15,000 Mex-
ican workers in the Midwestern fields, s9 By adding "non-workers,"
as children were inaccurately called, one can conservatively esti-
mate their numbers at more than 25,000.

STMcCallto Caminetti, Feb. 3, 1921, RG 85, 55091/6, NA; La Vanguardia (Austin), 31 marzo 1921.
SSMason City Globe Gazette, May 4, 1921;Des Moines Register, May 15, 1923; Anita Edgar Jones,
"Conditions Surrounding Mexicans in Chicago" (MA Essay, University of Chicago, 1928),
94; U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Immigration from
Countries, 468.
SgMinneapolis Tribune, Aug. 12, 1932; United States Daily, July 23, 1927; St. Paul Pioneer Press,
Dec. 23, 1926; U.S. Cong., House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Immigration
from Countries, 456; George T. Edson, "Mexicans in Our Northcentral States" (1927),
161, Bancroft Library (hereafter cited as BL).
 BETABELEROS 553

Whether recruited in the Midwest or in Texas, almost all the

adult workers and many of the children were born in Mexico. 6°
Most of them crossed the border in Texas, where they stayed for
periods ranging from a few days to a few years. Enganchadores
(labor contractors) then recruited them for the companies, often
through private employment agencies, and arranged for their
transportation to the Midwest. 61 Some individuals entered sur-
reptitiously. A 1920 Immigration report uncovered an organized
gang of smugglers near Laredo, bringing people in "wholesale
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lots" to Texas, then shipping them north via employment bureaus.

This recruitment declined by the late 1920s, as the flow from South
Texas and the growing Midwestern colonias became increasingly
self-sustaining.62
Conditions among Mexicans and their European predecessors
had certain similarities. Initially both were recruited by the cor-
porations according to a contract and worked as a household unit
in the fields of individual farmers. The technical aspects of beet
labor did not change significantly between the first and third de-
cades of the 20th century. But there were important differences
in the details of recruitment, hiring and contracts, all of which
affected the labor process and relations of the two groups of
workers with the non-beet working population. One difference
involved transportation. In the case of the European families, the
companies paid for transportation both ways between their homes
and the beet fields. After the war, the companies paid transpor-
tation but recovered costs by offering reduced wages to the workers
for whom they provided transportation. It became standard policy
for the Midwestern corporations to pay workers five dollars per
acre more if they provided their own transportation. 63

6°Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labor in the United States: Chicago and the Calumet Region, 7 (1932), 48.
~lOral Interviews of Manuel J. Contreras Prieto, July 16, 1975, and Alfonso de Leon, July 8,
1975, Minnesota Historical Society, Archives and Manuscripts (hereafter cited as MHS);
B. A. Hartz, Michigan Sugar Co., "A Nuestros Amigos de Texas," American Beet Sugar
Co., East Grand Forks, Aug. 19, 1926, Paul Taylor Papers, Collection of Notes Concerning
Mexican Labor (hereafter PT Coll.), BL.
62Artemis to Clark, Feb. 22, 1921, RG 85, 55091/6, NA; U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on
Immigration, Restriction Western Hemisphere Immigration, 140; George Edson, "Mexicans
in Toledo, Ohio," PT Coil, BL.
63U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Immigration from Coun-
tries, 455; Interview of Jesus Mendez, MHS; La Prensa (San Antonio), April 10, 1927; Edson,
"Mexicans Northcentral," 153.
 554 LABOR HISTORY

Another change occurred in beet planting procedure. Between

the 1900s and early 1920s, companies staggered plantings in order
to allow workers the opportunity to contract larger acreages. Stag-
gered plantings declined sharply during the 1920s, meaning that
Mexicanos worked fewer acres than their predecessors. 64
The form of payment for work also changed from the earlier
flat rates per acre paid for each task. For hoeing and thinning,
Mexicanos received acreage rates dependent on the number of
rows per acre. For topping, they were paid not merely by acreage,
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but also according to a formula based on tonnage and sugar con-

tent of the beets. The formula assumed that if workers performed
tasks more carefully the yields would be higher. 6s A related pay-
ment, the bonus, became popular during the 1920s. The bonus
paid workers an additional sum if the fields they worked had un-
usually high yields. In fact, bonuses were rare, and totalled less
than one percent of worker income in the late 1920s. These new
forms of payment of the 1920s assumed that such restrictions
could result in higher yields, assumptions that later proved to be
wrong. The tonnage per acre depended almost entirely on the
field preparation and planting practices of the farmer, the quality
of the soil and the weather, and not on the physical appearance
of the field as a result of the performance of the hand laborer.
In good seasons the yields everywhere were high, while in poor
seasons they were low. The more exacting methods demanded of
field labor in the 1920s did nothing to increase yields. They did,
however, further shift the risks of production to the workers and
reduce the acreages they could handle. 66
Still another change was the reduction of payments from four
to three and then two times per season during the 1920s. 67 Fewer

6"Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 126; U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization, Immigration from Countries, 556.
~SR. S. Washburn, L. A. Moorhouse, T. H. Summers and C. O. Townsend, Farm Practices in
Growing Sugar Beets in Michigan and Ohio, U.S.D.A. Bull. no. 748 (Washington, DC: GPO,
1928), 3.
~6National Defense, XIX, 7889; U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Immigration, Restriction
Western Hemisphere Immigration, 137; R. H. Cottrell, ed., Beet Sugar Economics (Cald-
well, ID: Caxton Printers, 1952), 192-193.
6"American Beet Sugar Co., Mason City, Agreement for Hand Labor on Sugar Beets for the
Year (1927), in Ysidro Campos a Alvaro Obregon, November 1, 1938, AGN, Fondo Obregon-
Calles, 822-M-1, (Anexo); Michigan Contract, "Agreement for Hand Labor on Beets," 1927,
in Elmer Cornelius Koch, "The Mexican Laborer in the Sugar Beet Fields of the United
States" (M. S. thesis, University of Illinois, 1928), appendix; National Defense, XIX, 7881.
 BETABELEROS 555

payments meant that the companies withheld wages for even

longer periods of time and forced the workers into greater in-
debtedness.
Another difference not evident in the contracts was housing.
While contracts still guaranteed "adequate" housing, inadequate
conditions were on the increase. Workers lived in the same tem-
porary shacks constructed during the first decade of the century
and observers noted that there was very little maintenance and
almost no new construction. Housing traditionally had been com-
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pany responsibility, for acreages alloted to individual farmers

could not sustain a single family for a season. Contracts between
growers and farmers at Columbia Sugar Co. in the mid-1920s,
for example, assessed growers 50 cents per acre for providing
housing for them. In other cases the companies provided housing
when farmers needed it at a flat rate. While companies urged
farmers to maintain housing for workers, such pleas understand-
ably fell on deaf ears. Furthermore, companies continued to pro-
vide essential items like cooking utensils, stoves and tools, but
increasingly charged the workers for rental or purchase. 6s
Still another important difference was that beet field wages
dropped sharply between the 1910s and the 1930s. Wages in Mid-
western beet work fell from an average of $35 per acre in 1920
to $23 in 1925.~9 They were further diminished by the more ex-
acting work methods demanded and the smaller acreages allotted
Mexicans in the 1920s. As a result, the families of betabeleros
earned less than their European predecessors. Wage declines were
further compounded by the decline of the garden plot or oppor-
tunities to perform wage labor outside of agriculture/°
The deterioration of agricultural wages also occurred in com-
parison to factory earnings. A general estimate is that in 1915,
common labor in agricultural work was paid about 70% that of
the factories, while by 1930 that percentage fell to less than 500/0.71
In the 1927-29 period, U.S. Dept. of Labor investigators in the

~SAmerican Child, "Child Labor," 2; Armentrout, Child Labor, 6.

69Koch, "Mexican Laborer," 46; United States Daily, July 23, 1927.
7°U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Immigration from Coun-
tries, 438, 441,455 if; Elizabeth S. Johnson, "Wages, Employment Conditions and Welfare
of Sugar-Beet Laborers," Monthly Labor Review, 46 (1938), 339; NationalDefense, XIX, 7886.
7~Schwartz, Seasonal Farm Labor, 13.
 556 LABOR HISTORY

region reported that entry-level unskilled labor averaged 47 cents

per hour in the automobile industry, 39 cents in the foundries
and 27 cents in railroad work. Many beet companies were reported
to operate from five to eight months per year, while operations
such as the Ford Motor Co. kept employees busy for 12 consecu-
tive months. 72 Based on a very conservative estimate of seven
months' employment per year (identical to the sugar beet season)
and a 30-hour week, individuals would earn $148.36 for the 1926
sugar beet season, and they would earn $385.40 per year in the
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automobile industry, $327.60 in the foundries, and $226.80 in rail-

road work. Why did people remain in the sugar beet industry?
They did so because of lack of urban alternatives and because
of family labor, the key to survival for many households. Women
and children had few opportunities for urban employment, but
if they worked alongside the male head of household, total family
income in the sugar beets might equal that of unskilled male
workers in the cities.
A final difference between the Mexicans and the earlier Eu-
ropean beet workers was a decline in opportunities for upward
mobility. Companies adopted contrasting policies for Europeans
and Mexicans. They typically recruited European families with
the lure of being able to rent and ultimately purchase land. From
the start, the companies encouraged them to become part of the
communities where they first worked as field laborers. 74They did
the opposite with Mexicans, hiring the braceros of the World War I
period under seasonal contracts to ensure their departure after
topping ended. The Mexican families of the 1920s also were dis-
couraged from remaining. The local press nurtured denigrating
stereotypes that Mexicans were rough and dangerous, that they
fought and carried knives and brought diseases with them. 7s The
stereotypes strengthened separation of betabeleros from local com-

72"Wages and Hours of Labor: Entrance Wage Rates for Common Labor," Monthly Labor Re-
view, 25 (1927), 127-28; L. E. Keller to E H. Fljozdahl, Feb. 20, 1930, in U.S. Senate, Com-
mittee on Agriculture and Forestry, Agricultural Labor Supply, 71st Cong., 2d Sess
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1930), 117; "Standard of Living of Employees of Ford Motor Com-
pany in Detroit," Monthly Labor Review, 30 (1930), 11 ff; Interview Javier Tovar, PT Reports
and Field Notes (hereafter PT Reports), Carton 12, BL.
73Calculated from Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 162.
7"Interview W. H. Baird, Mason City, PT Reports, BL.
,s Wells Mirror, July 16, 1922; Edson, "Mexicans in Toledo"; Interview Miss Eva Gibbons, PT
Reports, BL; Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 30.
 BETABELEROS 557

munities. Mexicans were excluded from social participation in

community affairs and generally segregated in public places. In
spite of school attendance laws, Mexican children almost never
attended rural schools in the beet growing areas where they
worked. 76
Local residents, politicians and scholars also expressed fears
that if Mexicans remained, they would become a burden to charity.
They nurtured still another stereotype that Mexicans had a pecu-
liar racial aptitude for stoop labor but were not clever enough
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for more highly skilled and higher-paying work. Such stereotypes

were accompanied by overt discrimination, as T. B. Gallagher, V.P.
and general manager of Continental, admitted of the Mexican:
"It is true that he does not mix, nor will he be treated as well
as the other nationalities by the farmers.""
It also was an issue of control, as several corporation managers
and executives confirmed. George Morgan, an American Beet
Sugar field man in Mason City stated: "You can tell a Mexican
how to do it and they will do it that way." John Carmody, of
the Holland-St. Louis Sugar Co., said local farmers preferred Mex-
icans, "because of their willingness to work in the mud, weedy
ground and bad weather without threatening to quit unless they
got more pay." T. G. Gallagher reported that the older Europeans
were "not as efficient as the Mexicans, primarily because most
of them have been in the country quite a long time and under
the old contract by which they were paid so much per acre they
did not care. ''78
The stereotypes and discrimination discouraged Mexicans
from settling in the rural areas. Local residents even pressured
the companies to pay workers' transportation back to Texas if
they were stranded. 79Force ensured the departure of betabeleros

76Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 32-33, 66; Edson, "Mexicans in Aurora, IUinois," PT Coll,
BL, Interview C. M. Brading, PT Coil, BL; Interview W. H. Baird, PT Coil, BL.
"'National Defense, XIX, 7942; U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee to Investigate the lnter-
state Migration of Destitute Citizens (Washington, DC: GPO, 1940), III, 113t; WarrenSheaf,
Mar. 8, 1928; U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Im-
migration Western Hemisphere, 557-58.
'8Interview George Morgan, n.d., PT Reports, Carton 12, BL; Edson, "Mexicans in Rural In-
diana," PT Coil, BL; U.S. Cong., Senate, Committee on Immigration, Restriction Western
Hemisphere Immigration, 141.
'~Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 153; Edson, "Northern Sugar Beet Mexicans (North Dakota,
Minnesota and Northern Iowa)," PT Coil, BL.
 558 LABOR HISTORY

in many communities. Representative Woodruff of Saginaw, in

the 8th Congressional District of Michigan, observed in 1926 that:
I have not k n o w n a n y [Mexicans] w h o r e m a i n e d d u r i n g the winter. T h e
C o l u m b i a S u g a r C o m p a n y , w h e n t h e season is closed, gets t h e m t o g e t h e r
a n d returns t h e m to the M e x i c a n border. I d o n o t k n o w w h e t h e r u n d e r
t h e law y o u c a n c o m p e l t h e m to go. 8°

The companies automatically cut off credit from the local stores
at the end of harvesting season. Welfare departments commonly
denied relief to Mexicans and sometimes turned workers over to
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the police to be deported. In other instances the local police en-

gaged in searches as soon as harvest ended to locate Mexicans
who remained, rounded them up and shipped them out of the
region, usually at company expense. 81 In sharp contrast to the
treatment of Europeans, the residents of rural beet-growing com-
munities prevented Mexicans from settling and acquiring lands.
On the related matter of upward mobility, Mexican betabeleros
also did not fare as well as their European predecessors. Several
observers blamed Mexicans for their comparative lack of success.
They alleged that the workers from Mexico were not ambitious,
were spendthrifts and, because of their backgrounds, were not
capable of competing with the "more aggressive" Europeans. Yet
they failed to recognize that the principal reasons for the com-
parative failure were deteriorating conditions of work in the 1920s
and conscious discrimination against Mexicans. 8~
It is also clear that the betabeleros were not passive in their
response to such treatment. They blamed the "soulless corpora-
tions," according to U.S. Dept. of Labor expert George Edson,
for "extracting the pound of flesh.''83 In discussing field workers
he knew, Gallagher of Continental admitted: "They were some-
what profane in the way they describe the beet fields." Former
beet worker Esiquia Monita, reflecting on her memories in the

~°U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, SeasonalAgricultural

Laborers, 271.
8'R. Artemis to Clark, Feb. 22, 1921, RG85, 55091/6, NA; Grand Forks Herald, October 20,
1927; U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Seasonal Agricul-
tural Laborers, 271; Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 143.
S2Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 32, 35, 96; Edson, "Mexicans in Waukegan, Illinois," PT Coil,
BL; Edson, Mexicans in Aurora, Illinois."
83Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 50.
 BETABELEROS 559

Minnesota fields during the 1920s, commented, "Now that I

remember, I get the chills. . . . It is enough to go crazy. ''s4 They
frequently complained about work, walked off the job, and with-
held their labor when their contracts were violated or they felt
they were abused by the farmers, the fieldman, or the corpora-
tions. Javier Tovar, an employee of the Mexican consulate in
Detroit reported that they "abandon contracts by the score," and
use Comisi6n Honorifica (a body created by the Mexican consu-
late) to investigate claims of wage discrimination,s5 They were,
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however, limited in the range of alternatives, and they realized

that they had few opportunities to acquire farms in the Midwest.
Their success would be of a different type.
Most Mexicans who went to the Midwest between World War I
and 1930 first worked in the sugar beet fields. They considered
such work as an opportunity to secure transportation and em-
ployment in the north. Yet for a majority the ultimate goal was
not the farm, but the city. They wanted to obtain urban jobs in
Michigan and other northern states where they could earn more
money. Michigan had a justifiable reputation in the 1920s as
having among the highest wages in the nation. For Mexicans get-
ting there and finding work were serious problems, for they could
not afford transportation costs and had few urban contacts. The
easiest way to get a start to the north was to contract with the
beet companies in Texas.
Many Mexicans who worked in the beets stayed for a season,
then headed for cities like Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Toledo, Gary,
Indiana Harbor, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. They sought
employment on the railroads, in the packing houses, steel mills,
and automobile factories, s~ For many the beet fields were a step-
ping stone to other unskilled but less brutalizing, more stable and

S41nterview Esiquia Monita, MHS.

ssj. W. Fordney to Caminetti, Mar. 14, 1921, RG 85, 55091/6, NA; George K. Apple to Inspector
in Charge, May 16, 1919, RG 85, 54261/202-H, NA; F. W. Berkshire to Inspector in Charge,
Jan. 21, 1919, RG 85, 54261/202-F, NA; Wolfson, "People," 227; E. P. Kirby Hade to Elmer
R. Peterson, IV/241 (73-31)/7, Archivo Historico de la Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores,
Mexico City.
S6R. Artemis to Clark, Feb. 22, 1921, RG 85, 55091/6, NA: J. A. Flukey to Caminetti, May 19,
1919, RG 85, 54261/202-H, NA; Detroit News, Feb. 2, 1921; Edson, "Mexicans in Toledo";
Edson, "Mexicans in Flint, Michigan," PT Coil, BL.
 560 LABOR HISTORY

better-paying jobs. s7 Many Mexicans even broke their contracts

in the fields during the season when there were opportunities,
while still others actually jumped the special northbound trains
shortly before they arrived at their final destinations. The high
turnover concerned beet company executives. Michigan Sugar Co.
President William H. Wallace even complained that the beet com-
panies augmented automobile and other industries' profits by ar-
ranging and paying for Mexicans' transportation to the north3 s
A small number of former betabeleros managed to settle in
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rural Midwestern communities, purchase land, and become small

farmers. Edson noted that a handful of families in Northern
Indiana were settling, acquiring land and "being lost to the 'ban-
dera mexicana."89 Small numbers of them also remained in Cen-
tral Michigan, Northwestern Ohio, Eastern Wisconsin and South-
ern and Western Minnesota. Most of those who settled in the
rural or urban regions near the fields, however, did not become
landowning farmers3 ° With corporate encouragement, they set-
tled in company-constructed colonias near the fields or in the
shacks originally intended to serve as summer housing. The com-
panies' interest was not in forming Mexican farm communities
but in creating a settled population of agricultural workers in order
to lessen the troublesome task of recruitment. 91
More often, however, betabeleros tried to settle in Detroit,
Chicago, St. Paul, Des Moines, Toledo, Saginaw and other smaller
towns. In the more impersonal cities, they were not under the
watchful eye of local sugar beet company fieldmen, farmers, or
inquisitive small-town residents. Most of these families did not
return to the fields except when they were desperate. They fol-
lowed the footsteps of other Mexicans who came north to do beet
work but quickly sought less onerous, higher-paying factory em-

87John McDowell, A Study o f Social and Economic Factors Relating to Spanish-Speaking People
in the United States (New York: Home Missions Council, n.d.), 12; Interviews of George
Galvin, Romaldo Jimenez, Louis G. Medina, Esiquia Monita, MHS; Interview Javier Tovar,
PT Coil, BL.
88Detroit News, Nov. 10, 1932; Wolfson, "People," 226; Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 50.
SgEdson, "Mexicans in Rural Indiana (Decatur), PT Coll., BL.
9°Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 35, 42, 43; Koch, "Mexican Laborer," 58, n.71; Edson, "Northern
Sugar Beet Mexicans."
9'American Beet Sugar Company, El Cultivo de Betabeh Manual Para los Trabajadores (Amer-
ican Beet Sugar Company, 1929), 5, 8; Edson, "Mexicans in Rural Indiana"; Edson, "Northern
Sugar Beet Mexicans."
 BETABELEROS 561

ployment. 92The presence of thousands of families in the betabel

each year augmented the resident, entrenched Mexican popula-
tion in the northern cities. Those settlers encouraged further popu-
lation increase as they developed an informal network of com-
munication with families and friends in Texas and Mexico, often
encouraged by their employers.
A third group of Mexicans who worked in the sugar beet fields
of the Midwest returned to Texas during the winter. After the
beet season some of them found employment in San Antonio,
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Dallas, Fort Worth, and smaller cities and towns in Texas. Many
continued to do agricultural work in the Winter Garden area and
other parts of the state in crops like cotton, spinach, onions,
asparagus, lettuce and citrus fruits. The money they earned in
the Midwestern beet fields often served as a down payment on
a home in South Texas and the hope of abandoning migrant agri-
cultural work entirely.93
One informed estimate of 1927 suggests that each season about
15% of workers remained in the sugar beet areas, 35% returned
directly to Texas, and 50% went to nearby cities to find work.
Of the last group, half were in Texas or along the Mexican border
by the following spring. Many from Texas would return the fol-
lowing year, to repeat the same pattern of dispersion at the end
of the season. 94 This suggests that Mexicans perceived the beet
fields as a chance to find their way to the cities. A smaller propor-
tion of them ultimately settled in Midwestern cities than their
European predecessors, suggesting a partial uncoupling of farm
work from beet work in the 1920s. Yet many stayed, to become
the single most important source of population for most Mex-
ican colonias in the region.

9~lnterview of Louis G. Medina, MHS; Robert N. McLean, The Northern Mexican (New York:
Home Missions Council, 1930), 10; Employment Office-Madison Street-Chicago, PT
Reports, Carton 12, BL.
93Making Sugar From the North Dakota Sun." A Study o f the Beet Sugar Industry in the Red
River Valley (Grand Forks: Holt Printing Company, 1930), 18-19; Selden Menefree, Mex-
ican Migratory Workers o f South Texas (Washington, DC: GPO, 1941),xiii-xv; Paul S. Taylor,
Mexican Labor in the United States: Dimmit County Winter Garden District, South Texas
6:5 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), 419, 420, 430.
94Edson, "Mexicans Northcentral," 156.
 562 LABOR HISTORY

The sugar beet industry was one of many in the forefront of

agricultural labor relations in the United States in the early 20th
century. It accomplished its end not by frequent changes in ma-
chinery and technology, but instead by experimenting with
different groups of workers under distinct arrangements. By the
1920s it had created a wage-earning proletariat, sharply differen-
tiated from the farmers and other established residents of rural
Midwestern communities, consisting of Mexicano betabeleros.
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