My grandma sent me a few letters in the 1990s detailing different times in her life. The snippets I am sharing here happened during the few years they lived in Salinas, California during the Depression.
Better jobs in Salinas
My grandparents, Joao Pacheco Smith and Anna Jackson, married in 1929 days before the stock market crash. Not a great way to start a life together considering Anna was also 6 months pregnant.
They lived in Oakland until my grandfather was laid off. With no work to be found in Oakland, they headed for Salinas where Joao’s brother, Jose, and many cousins lived.
This excerpt is from a letter from Anna (Jackson) Shellabarger to me circa 1991 detailing the move.
“Just a couple of things that happen to us while we were living in Salinas during the Depression as your Grandfather lost his job with Westinghouse Electric Company. We moved to Salinas because your grandfather was offered a job with Spreckels Sugar Mill in Spreckels, California. Spreckels is about 5 miles from Salinas.
During the 1930s, so many men were out of work and jobs for both men and women were hard to find. At this time, your grandfather while working at the sugar mill was making 33 and 1/3 cents an hour. I worked at Salinas Valley Hospital and made $0.35 an hour.
I worked at the hospital for some time and Don wanted me to be with him as he was so lonesome with another family. I decided to do housework because office work wasn’t to be had. I enjoyed the housework as I met so many nice people and Don could be with me. So on 68 and 1/3 cents an hour we got along fine.”
Hard times for people all around
This excerpt details the starving, desperate people who showed up on her doorstep…
“One day, a family of four stopped at the door and asked if I had a crust of bread. (This is true. They were starving.) I was so astonished to see this that I said, “If you sit out there in the back where the benches are, I’ll see what can be done.”
In no time, I fixed up a batch of pancakes with syrup and milk for the kids. Then, in the meantime I filled a bag of sandwiches and cookies and whatever was around I thought they would enjoy. It was amazing how happy they were to get something to eat.
That seemed to start something at our house. In the am I made a big pot of hot mush plus either French toast or pancakes. Needless to say, we had many people coming to our door.
One day some folks stopped by in a broken down car and asked if they could have some water. I filled up a pitcher of water and took some paper cups to the car so they could drink. They drank the water alright and after that they asked if we had a garden hose because the radiator of the car was leaking.
I said yes, but how could you drive a car without water in the radiator? One woman took me aside and said they had a tin can in the car and they all urinated into it and they poured it into the car’s radiator. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Salinas labor strikes
Though Salinas seems to be removed from the problems of the cities, labor strife came with the Depression. On 27 Aug 1934, female lettuce shed packers called for a strike for better pay. They made up 70% of the workforce, but earned less than their male counterparts. White lettuce shed packers and Filipino lettuce cutters joined the strike.
On September 21st, The Filipino Labor Union and the Mexican Labor Union joined forces sending ripples of fear through the business community. The next night a vigilante gang of over 4000 burned down the Filipino labor camps and chased some 8000 Filipinos out of town. The strike ended on the 24th and workers were given a 40 cent raise.
In 1936, workers were agitating once again and another strike was called.
My grandmother remembered this incident during the strike…
“During the Depression, some of the lettuce workers in the lettuce sheds decided to go on strike for more money. Lettuce was one of Salinas’ main vegetables to be shipped to the East Coast. That is why Salinas was called the Lettuce Bowl of the World.
Well, this one day Don and I had dressed your mom all up in her pretty clothes and we were going to take her up town in her baby buggy. We didn’t live too far from Main Street and as we got there I heard a terrible commotion and thought, “Oh oh! I think we had better stay indoors.”
Just then, a big lettuce truck passed us by going into Main Street loaded with lettuce, and in the cab of the truck was the driver, and next to him was a man with a shotgun sticking out of the window. Right behind him were the trucks. At this time we started back home. That was the first time I have ever seen men riding shotgun.”
What’s this got to do with the people my grandma fed?
You might be wondering how these different stories are related. While the 1934 strike was called because of the disparity of wages between men and women, the 1936 strike was called because those Dust Bowl migrants who my grandma fed each morning were dissatisfied with the work conditions. They were barely making it working in the lettuce fields. They’d lost everything, came half way across the country, and they still couldn’t make ends meet.
They were angry. They wanted to do more than just survive.
This strike broke out in September 1936 and it was way worse than the ’34 strike. There were clashes between police and strikers on the 15th with tear gas, 2 shot, and 10 injured.
By the 25th, the violence escalated and picketers attacked strikebreakers and beat them. In October the strikers rioted. There were fistfights and bloodshed. The strike didn’t end until the beginning of November.
A note about Grandma’s timeline
I want to note that either the event my grandmother remembered happened after the strike ended or the little girl she took into town was not my mom. My mom was born 5 Nov 1936, the strike ended a day or two before she was born.
My grandmother babysat for extra money. So she either added my mom to the story, the situation in Salinas was still volatile after November 5th, or she had one of children she babysat with them.
Either way, it’s no wonder my grandparents returned to Oakland in 1937. Seems to me they’d had their fill of upheaval and violence to last them for awhile. They lived close enough to Main Street to feel unsafe during these turbulent times. So, they headed back to the San Francisco Bay Area only returning to Salinas to visit relatives.
You can read more about the 1934 strike on Wikipedia.
You can watch a Reuters newsreel about the riot in 1936.
Also, you can find many articles on the California Digital Newspaper Collection under the search lettuce strike.
This article written for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 4, Witness to History