<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So how did you find out about Utah?

GN: Word gets around that some company was looking for workers to work out in the farm. And I was determined to get out first chance I get, you know. So I went to the recruiting place to listen and see what they were wanting to do. And this recruiter was pretty nice, and he was working for Amalgamated Sugar Company. And he says, "We'll put you up in a house, and you help the farmers harvest apricots, and work in the beet fields and stuff. We got plenty of work to do, we're short of labor."

TI: So was he looking specifically for farmers or would anyone...

GN: Anyone, really, but nobody but farm kids went out.

TI: So how many of you went and did that?

GN: I think there was about six of us.

TI: So why not more? I would think that more people would have done this.

GN: There were some Sacramento kids, you would think they would, but they didn't go. Sacramento kids, I don't think any of them left at first. I don't know whether... once I left, I never came back. Never went back into camp again. So I don't know how many of them... the first year, there was very few of us out there.

TI: And so going back, so what did the recruiter promise you? So he said it'd be a nice place to...

GN: A place to stay.

TI: And then what about wages and stuff like that? Did he promise anything?

GN: He said "prevailing wages."

TI: "Prevailing wages"? [Laughs]

GN: Something to that effect. We didn't even ask 'em what the price was. We didn't know if it was thirty cents an hour. No, we told him we want thirty cents, and he said, "Never heard of such a thing. Never paid anybody that kind of money."

TI: So you got there, and then are you negotiating with the Amalgamated Sugar, or the farmers, or who's hiring you?

GN: Well, the agent was doing the negotiating between the farmers and us.

TI: And so they offered you thirty cents an hour.

GN: They didn't offer us that, they wanted us to work by piecework, so much an acre. And when they, when we picked the apricots, that's the first, they paid us twenty cents or something like that, we said, "We're not working for that kind of..."

TI: Twenty cents like a bushel or something?

GN: No, an hour. They were not going to pay thirty cents an hour. But we said, "We're not working for that."

TI: But first, and let me back up. So first they wanted to pay you piecemeal.

GN: By the acre.

TI: By the acre.

GN: Yeah. So about six of us got, we worked like heck, we worked about twelve hours that day, worked hard.

TI: And you figured out how many acres you did.

GN: Yeah, we came home and figured out how many acres we did, because there was, this batch was so many acres, and we ended up getting, came out to less than ten cents an hour or something like that. We said, "We're not doing that." We wanted to try to see how much we can get done. We worked like heck, and that's about all. They weren't going to pay us that, but finally they agreed to pay us thirty cents an hour.

TI: Okay, and how would that be for prevailing wages? Was that pretty much what other workers would get?

GN: The canneries were paying thirty-five cents an hour. I don't know what they were harvesting, canning, but they were canning apricots probably, that's the first fruit that comes out.

TI: Now in general, would fieldworkers get paid less than cannery workers?

GN: Yeah.

TI: So cannery workers get paid a little bit more.

GN: Cannery workers always got paid more.

TI: Okay. So thirty cents an hour is probably a prevailing wage then.

GN: That's what they said, but I can't believe it. You can only... but they did pay us thirty cents an hour.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.