The Work of Hands
“In these different states that we visit yearly, we do various types of jobs. An example of some of the types of jobs which we do are: weeding, thinning and hoeing sugar beets, soy beans, corn; picking cucumbers and tomatoes; working on the potato harvest; picking strawberries, etc.” (Mattera 113). So writes a migrant farmworker named Carolina Mata, who shared her diary with the Geneseo Migrant Center during the mid-1970s. Compare Mata’s perspective of hands-on labor to the idealized vision of a farm pictured here: it was progressive for its time a century earlier, in that farmers are encouraged to diversify their sources of revenue; still, it literally foregrounds the different livestock and tools while laborers appear as tiny figures in the background. So what kinds of work did hired farmworkers do?
Overgeneralizing, we can say that many hands were required during the harvest of certain crops—like wheat, potatoes, or fruits—whose window of ripeness was narrow. One farmer warned in 1841 that hiring out a threshing machine meant 12-14 hired hands, at least six horses to power the machine, “and such a hurricane of hurry and confusion commences, that it is impossible to do justice to your work” (“Threshing”). Groups of mowers with scythes, field hands harvesting grains or vegetables, and pickers of fruit often traveled to larger farms whose harvests outstripped the local labor market—so much so that this farmer advocated for smaller machines and co-ops of shared equipment in line with the supply of local hired hands.
Again generalizing, fewer hands were required for the long-term work of stumping, digging, plowing, carting, planting, weeding, stacking, and storing; feeding, mucking, milking, and shearing; mowing, pruning, and pressing. Each job or task corresponded to a different farm operation and was needed in different settings. Most of these tasks were tedious; for example, while The Genesee Farmer recommended onions to be a profitable crop, it acknowledged that “in preparing the ground, sowing and weeding, the onion requires more labor than other crops. It is the labor of weeding that farmers most dread” (“Hints for the Season” 106). Because this same journal held that a farmer “is like a great General—his head is worth more than his hands,” we can speculate that physical labor perceived as menial often fell to hired hands, who then were labeled as unskilled ("Hints for May" 118). Yet a migrant laborer named Frank Clifton reminds us of the material realities:
“WITHOUT FOOD THERE CAN BE NOTHING.
WITHOUT THE FARMWORKER THERE IS NOTHING.”
Works Consulted
-- Clifton, Frank. “People Helping People.” In Mattera 155.
-- F. “Threshing Machines.” The Genesee Farmer 3.7 (July 1841): 102. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Hints for May.” The Genesee Farmer 9.5 (May 1848): 118-119. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Hints for the Season.” The Genesee Farmer 17.4 (April 1856): 105-106. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Mattera, Gloria, Robert Lynch, and Sylvia Kelly. “ ‘No One Sees Me, No One Cares’: Migrant Workers Speak.” New York Folklore 13.1-2 (Winter-Spring 1987): 117-160