Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California
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This book was the first broad exposé of the social and ...)
This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field―together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck―dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry―Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians―the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions
(For New condition books in our store; You will be the fir...)
For New condition books in our store; You will be the first user. You will be the first to open the book cover. For Used condition books in our store; It shows signs of wear from consistent use, but it remains in good condition and works perfectly. There are no problems in page content and in the paper. There are no problems except minor faults. All pages and cover are intact , but may have aesthetic issues such as price clipping, nicks, scratches, and scuffs. Pages may include some notes and highlighting. For all our books; Cargo will be delivered in the required time. 100% Satisfaction is Guaranteed!
North from Mexico; The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States.
(The history of Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest U...)
The history of Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest United States, tracing the evolution of Anglo-Hispanic relations in America as a case study in ethnic acculturation
Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader (California Legacy Book)
(A collection from one of the twentieth century's great ac...)
A collection from one of the twentieth century's great activist journalists
''It suddenly occurred to me that, in all the world, there neither was nor would ever be another place like this City of the Angels. Here the American people were erupting, like lava from a volcano; here, indeed, was the place for me: a ringside seat at the circus.''--Carey McWilliams, in Southern California Country
Carey McWilliams (1905-1980)--lawyer, activist, historian, and editor of The Nation for two decades--wrote the history of California as no one else could, or would. Alternately scathing, amusing, and disturbing, his sharp and literate accounts shatter the myths meant to obscure the real workings of the state, revealing always the relationship between the exploited and those who would exploit them.
Readers will find that McWilliams's writing on history and the issues of his day is still relevant--in fact, it is the basis for the field that we now call California studies. His painstakingly researched accounts on topics ranging from racism to the intricacies of commerce, from farm labor to the cults of California, have opened the door for generations of writers and thinkers.
Introduction by Gray Brechin; Preface by Wilson Carey McWilliams
North From Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States; Updated by Matt S. Meier, 2nd Edition (Contributions in American History)
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Carey McWilliam's North From Mexico, first published in...)
Carey McWilliam's North From Mexico, first published in 1949, is a classic survey of Chicano history that continues to have a major influence on studies of the Mexican-American experience today. Widely used in college courses on Chicano and Southwestern history and culture, the volume provides a comprehensive general history of the Mexican experience in the United States, beginning with the early aboriginal inhabitants. Now fully updated by Matt S. Meier to cover the period 1945 through 1988, North From Mexico explores all aspects of the Chicano experience in the United States including family, employment, education, assimilation, political, cultural, and economic issues. Particularly valuable is the inclusion of current statistical and census data on immigration patterns, educational and voting characteristics, and social and economic trends in the Hispanic population.
Material new to this edition includes an overview of the development of Mexican-American organizations and leaders and the struggle for greater acceptance in American society that has characterized the Mexican-American experience in recent decades. Particular attention is focused on the movimiento, the movement for civil and political equality with other Americans. Meier stresses the cultural aspects of the movement and profiles key leaders. Among the other issues central to the Mexican-American experience since 1945 which receive detailed coverage are the immigration and naturalization of Mexicans, the social and economic role of undocumented workers from Mexico, and the effects of the Simpson-Rodino Immigration Reform and Control Act. Meier also contrasts the considerable achievements of Mexican-Americans in the political and cultural spheres with the persistently high rates of unemployment and poverty that continue to plague the Hispanic population. With the addition of Meier's perceptive analysis of the past four decades, North From Mexico stands once again as the definitive source on the historical experience of Chicanos in the United States.
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In 1949, lawyer, historian, and journalist Carey McWill...)
In 1949, lawyer, historian, and journalist Carey McWilliams stepped back to assess the state of California at the end of its first one hundred years―its history, population, politics, agriculture, and social concerns. As he examined the reasons for the prodigious growth and productivity that have characterized California since the Gold Rush, he praised the vitality of the new citizens who had come from all over the world to populate the state in a very short time. But he also made clear how brutally the new Californians dealt with "the Indian problem," the water problem, and the need for migrant labor to facilitate California's massive and highly profitable agricultural industry. As we look back now on 150 years of statehood, it is particularly useful to place the events of the past fifty years in the context of McWilliams's assessment in California: The Great Exception. Lewis Lapham has written a new foreword for this edition.
Carey McWilliams was an American writer and social critic.
Background
Carey McWilliams was born on December 13, 1905 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He was the son of Jeremiah Newby McWilliams and Hattie Casley. His father, who served in the Colorado state senate, prospered as a cattle rancher and land dealer during World War I but lost heavily in the aftermath of the wartime boom.
Education
In 1922, McWilliams was expelled from the University of Denver for his involvement in a St. Patrick's Day celebration that got out of hand; he then enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC), earning money for his education with a full-time job in the business office of the Los Angeles Times. He delighted in shunning the school's institutions, including fraternities and its prized football team, and gravitated to other students who shared his unconventional attitudes. Especially interested in literary criticism, he participated in several student literary endeavors despite the demands of his job. He continued at USC for both his undergraduate and law degrees, which he received in 1927.
Career
McWilliams joined the prestigious Los Angeles law firm Black, Hammack and Black but was still able to enjoy a bohemian life-style. He practiced law for a decade while developing the literary interests he had shown as a student. He contributed to such publications as L. A. Saturday Night, the San Franciscan, and the Overland Monthly. Encouraged by H. L. Mencken, McWilliams undertook a biography of the satirist Ambrose Bierce. The product of careful research, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (1929), was widely and favorably reviewed. The onset of the Great Depression led to a period of social protest in California that increasingly engaged McWilliams's attention. A longtime friend of social critic Louis Adamic, he took a special interest in strikes by agricultural workers and studied the farm labor question. McWilliams gathered enough material to write Factories in the Field, published in 1939, the same year as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Inevitably the two books were compared, the New York Times reviewer calling Factories "equally masterful. " Earlier in 1939 McWilliams had given up his law career to accept appointment as head of the California Division of Immigration and Housing. Newly elected Democratic governor Culbert Olson gave McWilliams a mandate to revive the agency that had become moribund under Republican governors. He had authority to investigate migrant labor, immigrants, and some forms of rural housing. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, McWilliams arranged for the House Committee on Inter-State Migration (the Tolan Committee) to hold hearings in California on the situation of the Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast. He hoped this would buy time and that the animosity then so evident against the Japanese-American community would diminish. McWilliams underestimated the depth of feelings, and when the hearings were held (too late to head off the clamor for relocation), even liberals such as Governor Olson spoke against the Japanese. During his four-year tenure, McWilliams became involved in disputes over wages and working conditions and made important political enemies. The election of Republican Earl Warren as governor in 1942 ended any chance McWilliams had of remaining in office. He turned to writing, completing seven major studies within the decade. Ill Fares the Land (1942) reflected McWilliams's interest in migrant labor.
Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and California: The Great Exception (1949) undertook a wide-ranging and provocative analysis of the Golden State. The remaining four dealt with the social problems of minority groups. One of them, Brothers Under the Skin (1943), became a best-seller, in part because its publication coincided with the zoot-suit riots in Los Angeles. Prejudice (1944) looked in some depth at the long-term resentments behind the relocation of Japanese Americans, as well as the prospects for resettlement; A Mask for Privilege (1948) was an investigation of anti-Semitism; and North from Mexico (1949) discussed Mexican Americans in the United States. McWilliams's recognition as an authority on the sociology of prejudice brought him many speaking engagements and radio appearances. In 1945, McWilliams accepted a position as West Coast contributing editor to the Nation, an important journal of opinion. The post was not demanding and offered only a token stipend, but as the years passed it brought him more in touch with the magazine's staff, then headed by Freda Kirchwey, and with eastern liberalism. The Nation was in the thick of the controversies that raged between liberals and the Right in postwar America and that also created fractures within American liberalism. McWilliams moved to New York City in early 1951 to become associate editor, which gave him an ideal forum for addressing the domestic and international questions that engaged American intellectuals. In 1948, McWilliams supported Henry Wallace's Progressive candidacy for president, believing that Wallace, far more than President Harry Truman, identified the issues that mattered. McWilliams succeeded Kirchwey as editor in 1955 and endeavored to solidify the magazine's finances and to freshen its list of contributors. Hunter Thompson, James Baldwin, Willie Morris, and Ralph Nader were among the young writers he introduced to readers of the Nation. Financial constraints kept McWilliams from practicing investigative journalism on a consistently large scale, but he was able to increase the use of special issues to give more substantial coverage to topics such as civil rights, FBI abuses, the Central Intelligence Agency, corruption in New York City, and the emergence of the radical Right. The periodical was a consistent critic of the death penalty, inhuman prison conditions (Patrick Buchanan, later a prominent conservative, wrote an article in this series), America's Vietnam policies, and the military-industrial complex. In 1975, McWilliams retired, having spent four decades identifying many of the questions that engaged American liberalism. He died on June 27, 1980 in New York City.
On many occasions, McWilliams was called a socialist, a Communist, and a soft-headed liberal. He was not any of these, he insisted in his memoirs, but rather a Western radical, a radical who was concerned with issues rather than with the theoretical precision of his own arguments.
Views
McWilliams was appalled by the persecution of suspected Communists that began under Truman and grew even more outrageous after the issue of anti-Communism was coopted by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Although McWilliams believed that McCarthyism posed the greatest threat to civil liberties, he also jousted with the American Civil Liberties Union, which he felt was tepid in its defense of civil liberties, and with what he considered the "chic" anti-Communism of organizations like the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (which had been receiving Central Intelligence Agency subsidies, he later discovered). The Nation escaped direct attack by McCarthy, but its position was always financially precarious and McWilliams devoted much time to assisting Kirchwey in fending off threats to the magazine.
McWilliams sympathized with the goals of the 1960's protest movement but did not like its violence and disagreed with its rhetorical style.
Connections
McWilliams married Dorothy Hedrick in 1930; they had one child and were separated in 1935. They were divorced thereafter. In 1941, McWilliams married novelist Iris Dornfeld; they had one child.