Workers Union
The painting shown here is a portrait of César Chávez, who along with Dolores Huerta helped to found National Farm Workers Association in 1962. Five years later the organization evolved into the United Farm Workers (UFW), and through direct actions--strikes, boycotts, marches, informational campaigns--successfully negotiated a union contract. Those pay increases, health care, and improved working conditions always were resisted by farmers, sometimes violently. The painting’s emphasis is not only upon Chávez, but also more than forty agricultural workers we see in the fields behind and surrounding him. It probably echoes a UFW poster created during a lettuce and grape boycott during the 1960s. The artist behind this work was Juan Cavazos, who was born in Mexico and migrated to New York in 1985. For several years his paintings were shown in local galleries through the assistance of the Geneseo Migrant Center and the MollyOlga Center in Buffalo. Many of his works depicted the life of agricultural labor; in fact, it’s possible that some of the larger figures in this painting were people known to Cavazos, who early on in his career would draw portraits of fellow migrant farmworkers. Chávez is a centering presence for all of the migrants who desire justice.
The vision of agricultural labor uniting in its own interests has been a longstanding ideal, but largely unsuccessful. Even the Medieval craftsman guilds--organized to protect labor against wealthy trade guilds--almost always excluded farmers and migrant workers (Ogilvie). As mentioned elsewhere in this exhibit, newly appropriated indigenous land in the Americas changed the structure of ownership and economic power: “In this country the term Farmer has a different meaning than in the old world. Here the general signification is, one who tills the soil which he owns, and not one who works the land of another” (Ogden 205). With an estimated three-quarters of Western New Yorkers meeting that criterion in the 1840s, discourse in The Genesee Farmer framed political organization around yeoman landowners--not their hired laborers.
There were appeals to “a sort of brotherhood” of fruit growers across the states, creating a trade association (“Pomological” 285). Agricultural societies at the county and state levels organized conventions, disseminated scientific knowledge, and at least theoretically represented farmers in the legislative process. Farmers decried the “monopoly” of higher education accessible only to the wealthy and advocated for the creation of state agricultural colleges (Darius). In this spirit, The Genesee Farmer extolled the sharing of information among farmers, comparing their democratic project to the free libraries and cultural sharing advocated by Alexandre Vattemare (“Acknowledgments”). Individuals who “have worn the badges of their different sects or parties, for a time lay them aside and mingle together as the brotherhood of the soil… bind[ing] together those from different parts of our Union” (“Progress” 203). But another source of farmers' solidarity was their adversarial relation to labor. Complaining of $3.00 daily rates for wheat harvesters, it was suggested that their employers "should endeavor to accommodate each other all they can, by changing help, so that there would not be any necessity for paying such exorbitant wages" ("Labor").
What was often characterized as “the great agricultural interests” excluded workers who didn’t own land. Editors of The Genesee Farmer wrote, “We have no sympathy with those who, because they can not get as high wages as they think they are entitled to, prefer to live in idleness than to work for low wages. Every honest man will surely prefer to work even for nothing but his board and lodging than to beg” (“Spirit” 306). With a wage floor this low, it's not hard to imagine the editors’ view of early unionization efforts in America like the National Labor Union (1866), Knights of Labor (1869), or the American Federation of Labor (1881/1886). Ironically following the practices of farm owners, labor unions usually resisted the membership of women, non-white men, and immigrants. Today, efforts to unionize farmworkers remain elusive, with organizer David Bacon summarizing inequalities that resemble those of two centuries ago: “The people who labor in U.S. fields produce immense wealth, yet poverty among farmworkers is widespread and endemic. It is the most undemocratic feature of the U.S. food system.”
Works Consulted
-- “Acknowledgments.” The Genesee Farmer 18.12 (Dec. 1847): 290. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- Bacon, David. “A Democratic Food System Means Unions for Farmworkers.” Convergence 21 April 2021. Link to article
-- "Labor." The Genesee Farmer 25.8 (Aug. 1864): 258. 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
-- Ogilvie, Sheilagh. “The Economics of Guilds.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28.4 (Fall 2014): 169-192. Link to article
-- “The Pomological Convention.” The Genesee Farmer 13.9 (Sept. 1852): 284-285. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Progress of Agricultural Improvement.” The Genesee Farmer 9.8 (Aug. 1848): 202-203. Courtesy of Internet Archive
-- “Spirit of the Agricultural Press.” The Genesee Farmer 22.10 (Oct. 1861): 306-308. Courtesy of Internet Archive