Review by Choice Review
Using internal documents and reports of federal agencies, Congressional hearings, oral histories, newspaper and magazine accounts of the day, as well as hundreds of books and articles, Hahamovitch describes the evolving relationships among the states, growers, and farmworkers on the East Coast. She discusses the employment of Italian immigrant families in New Jersey cranberry bogs in the 1800s; African Americans traveling north from southern cotton fields during the Reconstruction era and continuing today; workers employed in new agricultural jobs in Florida opened up by the draining of the Everglades; and various federal efforts to provide farm labor in shortage areas during WW I and WW II. She covers the impact of federal legislation that excluded farm workers from various worker protection laws, and of other legislation that protected imported foreign workers but excluded domestic migrant workers. Two sets of factors made the constant exploitation of migrant farm workers possible: their vulnerability to replacement by other workers and the repeated intercession by the federal government on behalf of large growers. Extensive documentation provided in footnotes; comprehensive bibliography. Upper-division undergraduates and above. D. P. Slesinger; University of Wisconsin--Madison
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
