Persons Who Labor
Since the early 2000s, public writing about slavery has undergone important changes in its methods. At National Park Services historical sites and the National Archives, there is recognition that “the assumptions embedded in language…have been passed down and normalized” through the use of terms like slave, master, or runaway slave. In a community-sourced document facilitated by literary historian P. Gabrielle Foreman, it's suggested to consider using enslaved as an adjective—rather than slave as a noun—in order to disaggregate “the condition of being enslaved with the status of ‘being’ a slave. People weren’t slaves; they were enslaved” (Forman, et al.). Similarly, master or planter were (and remain) terms that camouflage their violent practices.
No history of American agriculture would be complete without acknowledging the shadow of slavery long after the Civil War, both in the South and the North (Wright; Mawutor; Quintana). What hierarchies of labor are experienced as unexceptional or even “natural” enough to pass without comment? Who are the laborers, under the direction of whom? Even in New York state, the distinction between migrant laborer considered as a noun vs. an adjective changes our understanding of agriculture. Never mind explicitly dehumanizing contemporary labels like wetbacks or illegals; most of the 19th-century terms revisited in The Genesee Farmer also obscure personhood behind designations. Casual allusions to a gang of hands, the common Irish laborer, twelve grown hands, a hired girl, or ordinary laborers usually occur in a context of logistical problems to be solved, financial calculations to be made (“Irrigation”; Valley Farmer; Fanny; Rand). Objecting that, unlike slaves, temporary farmworkers “had a choice” simply points to more granular questions about financial precarity, closed labor markets, social coercion, and how history is written.
Four images from a series of 25 photocopied prints, which are accompanied by a post-it note reading "A variety of photos that might gain responses." They may have been brought by Geneseo Migrant Center staff to meetings with farmworkers--perhaps in writing workshops, perhaps some other forum. Most date to the 1970s-80s, and appeared in other GMC publications. Link to full series
In the images above, it’s important to remember that migrant laborers didn’t build the substandard housing they inhabited and weren’t okay with it; they made do as best they could. The laborers didn’t think of themselves as symbolic or tragic while working in fields. Fortunately, some of their own thoughts were recorded in poems, narratives, and visual arts facilitated by the Geneseo Migrant Center. What can be done for their 19th-century predecessors? Using Foreman’s criteria, they can be considered persons who labored within economic and social structures not of their own making. It contextualizes the function of all those derogatory words used to bemoan hired laborers, and blaming them for their own circumstances as this writer did:
A large portion of this class of our inhabitants [i.e., farm laborers] have never had, and never will have without a little assistance, a home of their own; and many of them depend upon shifting their quarters as regularly as the spring returns. The idea of ever owning a home seems to them an impossibility….A man who never expects to earn faster than he spends, will have but little calculation or economy; hence it is that those persons who live in daily want of the necessaries of life, usually spend more time and money at parades, exhibitions, and for all sorts of sight-seeing, than those who have comfortable fortunes. This miserable habit of continually shifting quarters doubtless begets those thriftless, untidy, and not unfrequently dishonest habits, which are almost invariably found connected with extreme poverty. (L.T.C.E.)
It's equally difficult to disaggregate the range of meanings associated with Farmer. The word seems to neutrally encompass a range of agricultural activities. But in the Middle Ages it meant “one who collects taxes” and derived from the Old French fermier, or lease-holder. Another way to understand Farmer, then, is through land ownership—a class status—that’s just as integral to its meaning (the exception of “tenant farmers” proving the rule). A Penn Yan politician named D.A. Ogden acknowledged this history but, as of 1845, argued that the “system of renting, or of tenantry, so universal in most countries, is comparatively unknown” in America and that there could be “little doubt of the beneficial influence of a diffusion of landed property” (205). Agricultural workers who didn’t own property, especially as farm estates increased in size, found themselves unrecognizable when described by farmers.
Works Consulted
-- Foreman, P. Gabrielle, et al. “Writing about Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help.” Community-sourced document, accessed 11 June 2024. Link to document
-- “Irrigation.” The Genesee Farmer 15.5 (May 1854): 143-144. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Mawutor, Samuel. “It’s Juneteenth, But These American Companies are Still Profiting from Slavery.” Mongabay 18 June 2021. Link to article
-- Fanny. “Farmers’ Homes, Wives, and Daughters.” The Genesee Farmer 2.1 (Jan. 1841): 30-31. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Farmer.” Online Etymology Dictionary, 12 June 2024. Link to page
-- L.T.C.E. “Homes for the Poor.” The Genesee Farmer 13.6 (June 1852): 181-182. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Ogden, D.A. “The Farmer—His Position, Responsibilities, and Duties.” The Genesee Farmer 7.9 (Sept. 1846). Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Quintana, Maria L. Contracting Freedom: Race, Empire, and U.S. Guestworker Programs. University of Pennsylvania, 2022. Link to limited preview
-- Rand, George D. “Design for a Small House.” The Genesee Farmer 20.12 (Dec. 1859): 370. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Valley Farmer. “A Missouri Farm.” The Genesee Farmer 19.8 (Aug. 1858): 247. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Wright, Gavin. “Slavery and American Agricultural History.” Agricultural History 77.4 (2003): 527-552.