West Morris Central High School
Department of History and Social Sciences
Cesar Chavez Gets Tractored off the Land (1936)
Cesar Chavez, born in Arizona in 1927, became famous in the 1960s as the president of the United Farm
Workers of America, a labor union organized to protect migratory farmworkers, mostly Mexican and
Mexican-American, who harvested many of the crops in the American West. Here he tells of his eviction
from his boyhood home near Yuma, Arizona, in the depths of the Great Depression. How did he assess
the Depression’s impact on his father and the rest of his family? In what ways might the experience of
the Depression have contributed to his later commitment to organizing the farmworkers?
Oh, I remember having to move out of our house. My father had brought in a team of horses and
wagon. We had always lived in that house, and we couldn’t understand why we were moving out. When
we got to the other house, it was a worse house, a poor house. That must have been around 1934. I was
about six years old.
It’s known as the North Gila Valley, about fifty miles north of Yuma. My dad was being turned out of his
small plot of land. He had inherited this from his father, who had homesteaded it. I saw my two, three
other uncles also moving out. And for the same reason. The bank had foreclosed on the loan.
If the local bank approved, the Government would guarantee the loan and small farmers like my father
would continue in business. It so happened the president of the bank was the guy who most wanted our
land. We were surrounded by him; he owned all the land around us. Of course, he wouldn’t pass the
loan.
One morning a giant tractor came in, like we had never seen before. My daddy used to do all his work
with horses. So this huge tractor came in and began to knock down this corral, this small corral where
my father kept his horses. We didn’t understand why. In the matter of a week, the whole face of the
land was changed. Ditches were dug, and it was different. I didn’t like it as much.
We all of us climbed into an old Chevy truck that my dad had. And then we were in California, and
migratory workers. There were five kids – a small family by those standards. It must have been around
’36. I was about eight. Well, it was a strange life. We had been poor, but we knew every night there was
a bed there, and that this was our room. There was a kitchen. It was sort of a settled life, and we had
chickens and hogs, eggs and all those things. But that all of a sudden changed. When you’re small you
can’t figure these things out. You know something’s not right and you don’t like it, but you don’t
question it and you don’t let that get you down. You sort of just continue to move.
But this had quite an impact on my father. He had been used to owning the land and all of a sudden
there was no more land. What I heard…what I made out of conversations between my mother and my
father-things like, we’ll work this season and then get enough money and we’ll go and buy a piece of
land in Arizona. Things like that. Became like a habit. He never gave up hope that someday he would
come back and get a little piece of land.
I can understand very, very well this feeling. The conversations were sort of melancholy. I guess my
brothers and my sisters could also see this very sad look on my father’s face.
West Morris Central High School
Department of History and Social Sciences
A Salesman Goes on Relief (1930s)
Ben Isaacs was a door-to-door clothing salesman when the Depression hit. His weekly income suddenly
plummeted from $400 to $10, and then to nothing. Eventually he had to go on relief. What was the most
difficult part of his experience? What does he think about the surge of post-World War II prosperity?
I was in business for myself, selling clothes on credit, house to house. And collecting by the week. Up to
that time, people were buying very good and paying very good. But they start to speculate, and I felt it.
My business was dropping from the beginning of 1928. They were mostly middle class people. They
weren’t too rich, and they weren’t too poor.
All of a sudden, in the afternoon, October, 1929… I was going on my business and I heard the newspaper
boys calling, running all around the streets and giving news and news: stock market crashed, stock
market crashed. It came out just like lightning. …
We lost everything. It was the time I would collect four, five hundred dollars a week. After that, I
couldn’t collect fifteen, ten dollars a week. I was going around trying to collect enough money to keep
my family going. It was impossible. Very few people could pay you. Maybe a dollar if they would feel
sorry for you or what.
We tried to struggle along living day by day. Then I couldn’t pay the rent. I had a little car, but I couldn’t
pay no license for it. I left it parked against the court. I sold it for $15 in order to buy some food for the
family. I had three little children. It was a time when I didn’t even have money to buy a pack of
cigarettes, and I was a smoker. I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket.
Finally people started to talk me into going into the relief. They had open soup kitchens. Al Capone, he
had open soup kitchens somewhere downtown, where people were standing in line. And you had to go
two blocks, stand there, around the corner, the get a bowl of soup.
Lotta people committed suicide, pushed themselves out of buildings and killed themselves, ‘cause they
couldn’t face the disgrace. Finally, the same thing with me.
…I had two hundred dollar in my pocket. I was going to buy a taxi. You had to have your own car to drive
a taxi, those days. The man said; You have to buy your car from us. Checker Cab Company. So I took two
hundred dollar to the office, to make a down payment on the taxi. I took the money out – he said the
kind of car we haven’t got, maybe next week. So I left the office. I don’t know what happened. The two
hundred dollar went away, just like that. I called back: Did you find any money on the table? He said no,
no money. …
I didn’t want to go on relief. Believe me, when I was forced to go to the office of the relief, the tears
were running out of my eyes. I couldn’t bear myself to take money from anybody for nothing. If it wasn’t
for those kids – I tell you the truth – many a time it came to my mind to commit suicide. Than go ask for
relief. But somebody has to take care of those kids. …
I went to the relief and they, after a lotta red tape and investigation, they gave me $45 a month. Out of
that $45 we had to pay rent, we had to buy food and clothing for the children. So how long can that $45
go? I was paying $30 on the rent. I went and find another a cheaper flat, stove heat, for $15 a month.
I’m telling you, today a dog wouldn’t live in that type of a place. Such a dirty, filthy, dark place.
Wherever I went to get a job, I couldn’t get no job. I went around selling razor blades and shoe laces.
There was a day I would go over all the streets and come home with fifty cents, making a sale. That kept
going until 1940, practically. 1939 the war started. Things start to get a little better. My wife found a job
in a restaurant for $20 a week. Right away, I sent a letter to the relief people: I don’t think I would need
their help anymore. I was disgusted with relief, so ashamed. I couldn’t face it anymore.
… Today we live far away from the rest of our friends. Depression days, that time, we were all poor.
After things got better and people became richer and everyone had their own property at different
neighborhoods, we fall apart from each other.