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is an ruling mean no national educational television than one others there are newer meg
unique quiz the chronicle began in a parched bloodless cotton bankrupt southern town with a crew chief andrew anderson seeking to recruit migrant labor to work the potato which crops of eastern long island in new york the years new york
then things began to be quiet he has been to eight million no no
we have to be if you are a regular niala boodhoo reports well you know i would do i would really live in and deliver the new england division
a particularly huge minute been induced to make the journey north they haven't promised good wages steady work and such creature comforts as decent housing shallow facilities and what is called a centrally located restaurant on the grounds of a labor camp then god for the eighteen hundred mile trip will be grueling tour anderson these charges thirty dollars since none can all for the bay or in depth two and roy andersson before the trip begins an hour leverage ahead
churches and also as a migrant labor can do or even back in june at the beginning of the season the labor camp for the scars of endless summers passed one of eighty nine camps in suffolk county is considered better than most by local officials andrew anderson wakes up charlie white one of twenty one thousand migrant workers in new york state the
circumstances are similar to those of a million migrants throughout the united states charlie watts weekly pay averages forty seven dollars promising must pay a weekly round of five dollars for fuel charge of two dollars and a blank a fee of five dollars obama was a fire at this camp several years ago which took the lives of two workers this room is now fireproof the new york state requires fire proofing for buildings housing at least fifteen men only fourteen live in this area and the multiple occupancy dorms labeled bullpen is whether workers are claimed to be fire resistant i try to a living space the new york state codes shows that have the double decker monkeys used in such an
area that shell be at least twenty square feet a poor area treatment for non migrants dakota insists on eighty square feet it goes on to say that every bump bed cardboard box spring mattress sokolow shall be in good condition and every sheet of like a chubby clean the men here by the same as charlie white or red you're going to have to pass by throughout the season almost one hundred member dues somebody so while county officials have managed to amend the state law to outlaw later in the season thirty eight memoir use a single
bathroom and farmers are outraged by county violation report they claimed only twenty five men had to use it own meals are served at the dixie the old tavern a centrally located in charge of the food concessions and mrs andrew anderson breakfast is at five cents usually consisting of the sausage roll right on immigration and occasionally you know the sixties really have cash on hand every charges on credit to be deducted from the bus takes them into their fieldwork every morning around tripoli's one dollar twenty five cents they able to andrew anderson
except when the farmers transport women themselves riding them out in pickup trucks at six am this bus is almost ready to roll it down and go in there last memory as frequently as favorites of recruiting they stay behind in
long been the number three crop in long island harvested from june to all the migrants make ten cents for every quart they pick workers goldstein labor their area director canada via paper tips for a record whether vying to be returned at the end of the day doing up to eight weeks william lynn neary twenty three
many many lindsay's strawberries you close to two hundred dollars on the auction block the migrants who picked it earned a total of twelve dollars for their labor two dollars a piece for six men for six hours of work are made as bell migrant
worker woodrow wilson so he wants to go to a nearby river at today the trip again this wasn't a god punishes transportation will cost three dollars and it would be the new media no one is going to regret this morning charlie white is ready to harvest string beans so as woodrow wilson you know picking a hamper of things pays only a dollar jackie robinson is fourteen says he's been trying to return a lot of realtors who has enabled by its way out others
head in these are the economics of migrant labor charlie white will say and well known he will be paid one dollar empire andrew anderson will take
fifteen cents on each dollar an hour for six hours work charlie white woman one dollar and seventy cents and move too early and you know and i i've much of the polemics of the county is owned by members of the stones for copper which owns and operates the coach of a labor camp leasing it to others the new potatoes that's been very characteristic of their workers'
family and juliet is the president of the east and satoko well yes and cauliflower and strawberry acreage is principal investment is potatoes seventy five acres estimated value almost three thousand dollars an acre and another member of the co op and if you agree to a point to be a pow mr white yeah
no more than nunn glow like you writing about now online only that while it kind of the net oh it is thank
you i won't that they had an open ended the two and we welcome one of them the long process is there's a one in a different in a lot on cable though every day no amount of a
live event in a view that there are just very few or tell your local rockport crowd i don't want you to be in that i run into my mom wouldn't rove about the diameter going to get a better job you have to be worthy of those who cannot yo ma about an iron man i think july fourth a paid vacation day to most americans and the use of a strawberry fields are prominently as innocent tourists and friends of women who had to be whenever they pick for the tourists in this farm are you a rival conference record you'll name
another mammal you do we think the heavenly father ally we think the our father father who ate this morning a father bao who have brought us the online journey is that a great deal of humanity and thanksgiving that we are here this morning we pray every problem that i would use the line at and connects them to reach out lee
now they are many liane the labor situation has it's terrible it's a you know it's the way they are aren't they read it and what they can get on to you know what they can do for you you have somebody that off there and thought my god that i'm not intimately than nothing but dirt they'd ayoub they owe me like i'm like man it may not be more than no no wait the london rock my husband
actually and today i have found that like the puerto rican the thing with combat the migrants from the labor camp i think they come from our own that we and that quite a few of them and the name on the hemorrhage make me feel that way before that they appreciate what i go for him the farmers spend more money on track to repair and fertilizer than they do on migrant housing if resent what they call outside do gooders if too many people trying to do too much for the needle not knowing the problems of farmers have to face with them away help me but i love to get them reitman and then that human being also works alone muffled destructive than people and paul have any idea what they'll like i want to do all the fighting for their the conniving campaign if you were given like a week and then then there would be only one one on that and we can screen goes up and they put windows and they will back a
couple bravely and then take it out and then go back and put him back in a cake and how they reflect on these problems actually affect your production will be undone exactly your and our production but it may come in the camp of that for some of those are beginning to be fewer than the north fama the amount of the best run around people are talking to eliminate this time around only in advance and i think they think he's find an official fall for the in the middle of a few but the only thing the migrants are confused about the way they get paid at a plant nursery where they receive a dollar and thirty five cents per hour working in a nursery down the road it being
paid a dollar and seventy five cents as the men go out to work on this day they will discuss going to crew chief and has been demanding to know why they are being paid less but of the ten man abe will decide against a direct confrontation the remaining two will then feel that since they do not have the strength of numbers rick perry as on every day throughout the long season the complaints against andrew hours and we'll go on pows and unanswered questions you know
today melvin the way to do it these people fb
video they were good wages let's be very clear i'm david
greene a pop there was no knives about all the lives that we care for them it's really just played the island all season long in the earlier june the september crew is there to receive them the
pittsburgh has been there will be new customers and there are now six new workers from the farmers will pay a bounty of sixty cents ahead each day through andrew and years in september the early harvesting of potatoes begins the steel fingers if you combine this interview and send the rioting know mr tom bouncing up the chute where migrants got the rinds of rubber and natural victory in potatoes are made
some pork one of the one hundred richest counties in the nation in farm income just by the rainy weather all season the first topless seems endless member of the bill's details are troubled by farmers to breeding shed in this next phase of marketing is the processor who takes over his role was to have at the tables washed greater than hacked by migrants and shipped to new york's to supermarkets and two other clients including fashionable hotels and restaurants jama mr setzer here is one of the largest in the country i'm a member of the eu oh good oh you read the vulnerable will
provide for you for the love and all of our reviewer the informant lunch for the migrants arrived three hours later they had been working since seven this morning again only ozone from the concession belonging to the crew chief and his work it's better to pay it's been
the case the poet in the sheds a supposedly a dollar and sixty cents an hour but is the crew leader who determines the man's time and it is the crew leader but that's twenty five cents from their hourly pay as in most churches whenever the machinery stops because of mechanical breakdown on mental processing a case perhaps of many shed workers are bona fide members of the union hulu will only last year i don't want to call that you got to do get sick
and they all say yeah you need to be a political figure but if you do not do that worth to you and all that you have taken in nineteen sixty and a contract signed between the workers and the eastern sagal co operative there was a guarantee of at least one hundred sixty hours of work a month forty hours a week but in nineteen sixty seven in a contract negotiated between the teamsters union local two oh two and the potato process or the work we guarantee was cut to twenty six hours when the same contract berrigan came to know and a guarantee of
transportation without charge back to the workers' destination another clause in the contract talks to the existence of a shop steward as well as the agreement that the contracts will be posted in a conspicuous place in those petitions visited by an eating journal the contracts were nowhere to be seen feel the responsibility for paying for the union is a labor contract you have the contractors and their contracts the same hugo good lawyers and that important and it can't escape the case it takes place like it takes place or are people being as
beakman traditional payday at the camp one migrant called the dust of the world when a man want a forty or fifty hour week your average paycheck it's forty seven dollars twenty five cents on each artisan to talk about the crew leader workers cash their checks were really nervous and because i have no transportation town bank besides payday is on friday or saturday evenings after banking hours room and board adopted according to the crew leaders bookkeeping mr anderson photo of rebuilding combine room and board have too many of our critique the paper when he used this anywhere who appears mainly get paid and wine are classic partners in his cap for all the wrong reasons and counterpoint of twister sells for fifty one cents
at the campus of our government is quick therapy but also finds the memory concerned what was charged up and what was not former minister maliki the parish alone not happy all right well you know it you're matt you gave him leave now for her wrath get your gun i can't hear
guardian et on tv of view that i had that i think the view thank you it is you write that the us shouldn't get a view on it you know they'll be available at our lives are going to
be on both until now oh oh oh i think i should win i want to put it you think you can be only republicans legally and then went back into this freeway don't have you know all the victims one of the video footage of the other you know you a tournament though it atlanta people just a humiliation of being without is to the work of an actuary believes every day the
cia the head today
opera by migrant chairman cobb county human relations commission co chief is doing that a violist workers and inspired the air and you know that bank of people if they don't behave really wasn't you know sununu is one of the more sophisticated pruitt he's convinced that what he's doing is probably more the women only about how he's able to recruit men for the kind of work it only can go down to pay off in our own ritual and you want to why obviously you're not in the story and i'm in wages of arnaud vial of the people down there are already exploited to the point where they received forty seven we will and when i can write about
thirty five are about fifty an hour up here to let that come and kind of be a little bit more lenient financial difficulties last couple of years getting four wives cup for the first time and thirty when the making of good color the kind of power that would probably multiply my income by four were talking about forty thousand dollars a year for family worker charlie white is interviewed by an eighties more money in and landed a cut of a man with a specific political there aren't you know
the regional regain that you know are you so good about abortion now the un won't be a revival will regard to read that you don't get that good argument my world light of a global world by multiple i read it i had a moment where the one i knew that window as the season drew to a close oh yeah and i mean that i haven't guessed
yet remain low down around the value of the tree and normally the end of the mainland who beamed to said that we have been cheated out of something that was convenient and they're concerned in the end were written concern in the living conditions for migrant workers are the responsibility of the chief of housing and camp sanitation stop the county department of health sydney backward that particular camp verde is not one of our better ones it does have a precedent look through it but it is global in that though when we issued the permit it meet the minimum core requirement but i think of that of that is we've been told by the folks that have been touring the camps throughout the state
that is virtually every year they only because there's been a history of the inadequate maintenance inadequate one winner which is unfit to be the housekeeping off and i would certainly have to and that that then because of inadequate supervision i think the three three items various problems that we find in the sand from time to time the department has recommended that that can't be torn down and that they would thought that until the modern era and snap back to nineteen fifty six they applied for federal funds in the form of a federal grant come through and so they scrapped their plan was to backwards was asked if he thought the farmers would be willing to spend their own money to rebuild of
the camp well i would and my thing i don't believe they're interested in doing and not worry mr becker that makes coats a minimal enforcement methods ineffectual but farmers delay in collecting violations of that going to court is futile the camp was closed and two more difficult to get convictions when you no longer have a violation in late november of the potato and was plowed out of i was well it was the worst season in years that they got a dollar fifty per hundred weight as opposed to a two twenty five breakeven price so vocally urge them to use seasonal labor mechanize too expensive the board of directors of the east and some pop cop composed of these farmers was asked if it was satisfied that migrants were receiving decent living and working conditions waited up prevailing and often they didn't meet the requirements of the
local involvement of hell ok julie ruin meanwhile a clinical but that that's quickly corrected all problem is to get that factory workers before that rodrigo primary debate in the bp pleaded out there the thirty seven in the morning at ten o'clock and thirty our labor commonality that i got a back a lot and i want to get it back to the canyon he can laugh about mike crapo all what he made we're going to do it and maybe about thirty thirty five years
exploit it can wear of that time was a polish immigrant was brought by members of his own family before that out of these people are exploiting their family members were appointed by the yankee clubhouse greek monolith overthrow worth half mast the lay of the land obama on one of the women in the back to back i know the curfew we had that the volunteers were if you took all of the plumbing little longer for six years ago the judgment on the four days
nobody went to the health department offices in riverhead and there's you know a fundamental right they complain that the camp were on the promise was that they had men had broken the system down with the americans we found outside with a very powerful way to a room because the hype leading into the room was broken and that the man had the scandinavian you could think in doing anything that i'm just pure frustration anger the conditions that what we would have done by the residents and i think very unfair board members who were the nation at those people that they wish to have and fail not why go to the bathroom and their own employment while ago i thought that at home in my own clean lily white haze which i hate you
me so by all means and we're going to say that the health of an industry is more important than the value of human life the fourth thing had done then eventually encompass all of us we have to be concerned about him because he is a us at the cap itself one worker explosives while another outrage over the un legal talent a couple of the liturgy in that women have that kind of
investment i really really season which began in the nineteen oh now i mean really worry about them and will on the last
day this legacy these orders these noises these silences three manpower to go home there were almost six months on the fields are leading and are irrevocably mired in others who really with money we were five or ten dollars the bus trip back to arkansas will now cost fifteen dollars which they will try to work all when andrew anderson takes along the florida the citrus crop eight years ago in a memorable cbs documentary harvest of shame the late edward r murrow urgent wage help and housing reforms for migrant workers eight years later the migrant conditions still the shame of the nation the migrant field workers minimum wage of a dollar and fifty cents an hour when he can find work is far below the national standard the availability of medical services to him is often lacking is that right like tuberculosis alone is more than double that of most other american worker
his living conditions too often do not respect the sanctity of the man for the most part he does not have effective union protection the shame about migrant condition must be shared by all of us are as reverend bryant said the migrant is the day the season vanishes like the migratory bird that's right this would be the government of the women making profound love and the value of a latino from home
only in here well i usually when i want to put it you think you can be only republicans legally and then when everyone don't have enough thank you i mean i'm yours head
no other men are men and indian next week on a meaty journal where spanish port strike the california migrants struggle to gain union recognition on ruined man no national educational television i don't know it's
been
Series
NET Journal
Episode Number
172
Episode
What Harvest for the Reaper
Producing Organization
National Educational Television and Radio Center
Contributing Organization
Thirteen WNET (New York, New York)
Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/75-074tmqqp
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Description
Episode Description
What Harvest For the Reaper is an unflinching study of the exploitation of migrant workers, filmed at a labor camp on Cutchogue, Long Island. (Cutchogue is a community less than two hours drive from New York City and half an hour from the Hamptons and other pleasure beaches of Long Island.) There, the migrants come from Southern backwaters under the promise of wages they could never receive at home -- and which they never collect in Cutchogue. The program follows two groups -- one brought in for summer strawberry and string-bean picking, the other imported for the potato season in the fall. Cameras follow them as they work in the fields, live in the mean camps, and learn some economic facts of life as taught by Andrew Anderson, crew chief and camp manager. It is Anderson who goes to Arkansas to recruit workers, promising "extra money for Santa Claus," and returning with the men on a bus ride for which they will later be billed; it is Anderson who rents them blankets, charges for the fuel that warms the shacks, bills them for the bus ride to the fields each morning, and provides the credit for room, board, gambling, and small loans; and it is Anderson who keeps the books and deducts his portion from each check. Though the men resent Anderson and attempt to challenge his hold over them, their efforts are futile. They've been down too long and most of them back out of a planned confrontation. Similarly, during the potato harvest, they pay their union dues but don't know how the money is used or why they can't gain representation. To farmers who own and operate the labor camp, the workers are "destructive," "not men but two-legged animals" who are "interested in what they can get out of you, not what they can do for you"; who "like this type of travel, this type of work, and don't want responsibilities." To the potato processor, who also gains from their labor, they are men "exploited" not by the potato industry, but "by their own kind." The workers express their fear and their disillusionment. Some lament the lack of money to get back home. Others wish for a better life for their children. But most will be forced on to the next migrant camp, where the "economics of exploitation" await them. (These economics provide, for instance, that the landowner collects $200 for a product which reaps $12 for six workers.) The Rev. Arthur Bryant, head of the migrant committee of the Suffolk County Human Relations Commission, deplores the fate of the migrant ("He is us") in a society that values the "health of industry, not human life." In conclusion, the program notes that in the 10 years since Edward Murrow's 'Harvest of Shame," the migrant worker remains victim of a system he never made. "NET Journal -- What Harvest for the Reaper" is a production of National Educational Television, produced and written by Morton Silverstein. This hour-long piece, recorded on videotape, aired as NET Journal episode 172 on January 29, 1968 and as NET Journal episode 194 on July 1, 1968. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Broadcast Date
1968-01-29
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Documentary
Topics
Economics
Employment
Rights
Copyright National Educational Television & Radio Center January 29, 1968
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
01:00:07
Embed Code
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Credits
Director: Silverstein, Morton
Producing Organization: National Educational Television and Radio Center
Writer: Silverstein, Morton
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_3251 (WNET Archive)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Master
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_7459 (WNET Archive)
Format: Betacam: SP
Generation: Master
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_20750 (WNET Archive)
Format: 1 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1950280-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 16mm film
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1950280-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1950280-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 1 inch videotape: SMPTE Type C
Generation: Master
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1950280-4 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1950280-5 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1950280-6 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Color: B&W
Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
Identifier: [request film based on title] (Indiana University)
Format: 16mm film
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Citations
Chicago: “NET Journal; 172; What Harvest for the Reaper,” 1968-01-29, Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-074tmqqp.
MLA: “NET Journal; 172; What Harvest for the Reaper.” 1968-01-29. Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-074tmqqp>.
APA: NET Journal; 172; What Harvest for the Reaper. Boston, MA: Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-074tmqqp