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Victoria Perez
Dr. Shrout
Hist 571: Directed Readings Seminar
December 16, 2016
Final Paper
Orange County: Integration in the Early Citrus Industry
Southern California gradually transitioned from a rural region of ranches into a more urban setting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is attributed to the establishment of industrial agriculture and, specifically, the citrus industry. Overall, scholars studied the citrus industry both in broad and specific terms. Regional and state histories allowed them to view citrus as a whole unit that drove the economic development of Southern California and the state in general. Historians also compiled case studies about the specific communities in early cities, such as those in San Juan Capistrano. Starting from a smaller group of people revealed a more personal perspective of the social and cultural changes associated with the citrus industry. This paper utilized the latter method in order to contribute to the small, but growing, selection of Orange County history.
In general, historians approached this industry by examining either the institutions or the people that contributed to urban development. Understanding citrus from a top-down perspective of institutions like the Fruit Exchange or the railroad established the historical background, but it left out many people. Scholars responded to this issue in the historiography by shifting the focus onto the ordinary people experiencing the region’s development. Histories from this second group understood the narrative from the bottom-up. In the last ten years, workers who migrated to California became more visible in the historical narrative. While citrus did in fact promote the region’s growth, it would not have made such an impact without the daily contribution of people
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who picked and packaged the citrus. Those workers consisted of migrants from other states and countries who created new communities in Southern California. During the early twentieth century, immigration and migration influenced the creation of a diverse population and the development of the citrus industry. In general, scholars approached community development within the context of both local and national migration trends in this period of growth. By working from the bottom up, historians eventually established a narrative that attempted to represent more of the Southern California population.
In addition to describing how the state of the field became more inclusive, this paper will also explain that the historiography should now focus on cross-gender and cross-ethnic interactions in the early Orange County communities. Future research would examine how and why the commingling of women and non-Anglos was significant in the make up of the county’s citrus workforce. This paper will build on previous histories by using photographs to explain how interactions among diverse groups of people affected citrus communities. Historians adding to the narrative should not only recognize the diversity within the citrus workforce, but they should also realize that those workers transformed the social and cultural environment of the citrus industry. Studying these aspects more closely will also develop a history seeking to portray a more relatable past for those living and working in a modern and diverse world today.
Since the growth of Southern California’s citrus industry is multi-faceted, historians tried to analyze it in different ways. Theoretical approaches to this subject ranged from economic history to cultural history. Specifically, scholars who wrote social and cultural histories of Southern California established a more complex story. Historians developed a more dynamic perspective when they acknowledged ordinary people’s contributions to growth, instead of describing their
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impact in brief and general terms. This newer approach from the last ten to twenty years highlighted many aspects of Orange County communities, but it also left out other characteristics that have yet to be fully realized. Historians described ethnic groups in distinct and separate worlds, but they still did not entirely explain one aspect of early integration in the work place. The historical debate most related to this discussion deals with this struggle to understand community, whether it is viewed as a significant participant or only a minor contributor to the citrus industry. How much did immigration or migration play a role in developing Orange County’s communities and how should the ordinary person’s story inform its citrus history?
The historical counterargument to this debate approached the question with considerably less focus on people and immigration. It is important to note that these historians published their works before, and sometimes around the same time as, other scholars who argued for the other side of the debate. Although top-down histories mentioned people, they did not always represent every gender or ethnicity that should hold a place in the narrative. Instead, these scholars drew attention to major institutions and their leaders in order to create a broader understanding of significant changes occurring in Southern California.
While histories from above provided a good foundation for the narrative, they minimized the role of the ordinary person in order to identify general trends in the region’s history. William Deverell, in “The Southern Pacific Railroad Survives the Pullman Strike of 1894,” used this top-down approach to explain the power of California’s railroads and its leaders in the midst of labor strikes.1 Ronald Tobey and Charles Wetherell used an approach similar to Deverell in “The Citrus
1 William Deverell, “The Southern Pacific Railroad Survives the Pullman Strike of 1894.” in Major Problems in California History. ed. Chan Sucheng and Spencer Olin, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 183, 192.
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Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944.” These three historians did not really consider migration in their analysis of the region’s main factors for growth and success. With an impersonal approach to regional expansion, they argued from the perspectives of company leaders or citrus growers in general terms.2 Unlike histories from below, top-down histories did not emphasize laborers who were unable to make substantial profits from the railroad, real estate, or citrus. However, historians did not try to leave people and immigration out of the story. Instead, they chose to focus on the structures that allowed the region and the citrus industry to flourish. This part of the narrative preceded histories of other people and immigrants because it was important to first understand the environment that drew them to the state. Yet, histories of institutions were still not complete without the laborers who boosted the success of those structures.
Edward Bachus, in “Who Took the Oranges Out of Orange County?: The Southern California Citrus Industry in Transition,” provided another example of how scholars studied community in broad terms, rather than in specific examples of cultural development. Bachus, also argued for a traditional history of institutions that impacted growth, which included irrigation, the railroad, and the Southern California Fruit Exchange. This did not mean that people were not present in the history. As Bachus demonstrated, he included people in the history mostly through statistics.3 Even though statistics revealed a broad understanding of population growth, they did not fully explain aspects of the people’s daily lives. This historical method produced a limited
2 Deverell, “Railroad,” 183-184, 191; Ronald Tobey and Charles Wetherell, “The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995), 9-10, 15, 19.
3 Edward J. Bachus, “Who Took the Oranges Out of Orange County?: The Southern California Citrus Industry in Transition.” Southern California Quarterly 63, no. 2 (1981): 157-73, 160, 164-167, 170.
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perspective that was not inclusive and descriptive enough as a top-down approach. Bacchus and other similar-minded historians recognized ordinary people but did not give them a central role. Since they did not focus on immigration, the history lost a sense of who the non-elite of the community were and their own experiences.
This left room for subsequent scholars to write social and cultural histories that added a personal element to the citrus industry. These scholars considered the alternative perspective to the debate in favor of the community’s influence on the citrus industry. As a reminder, the main question was how much should immigration or migration play a role in developing Orange County communities and should the ordinary person’s story inform the citrus history?
Some scholars identified the impact of people who migrated to Southern California and the United States in general. They argued that it was the labor force, which drove the citrus industry’s growth. Hal Barron supported this perspective in his article, “Citriculture and Southern California: New Historical Perspectives.” He recognized that labor history was a “critical factor” to understanding the region’s diversity.4 In the same way, James Barrett argued, in “Americanization from the Bottom-Up,” that national migration history should be viewed from the perspective of marginalized laborers and immigrants.5 This method allowed him to explain how diverse groups developed into interconnected communities on a national level. These bottom-up interpretations demonstrated that ordinary migrants and laborers should be viewed as central and significant. A history that started with migrants gave new agency to those people and turned it into a
4 Hal S. Barron. “Citriculture and Southern California: New Historical Perspectives.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 3.
5 James R. Barrett, “Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880-1930.” The Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 3, (Dec. 1992), 997-998, 1020.
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more relatable story. They showed that migrants were far from passive characters in the history; rather, they actively made decisions to move to the United States and find work in California.
Other scholars analyzed immigration through the lens of the “California Dream” and efforts to establish communities in the state. Kevin Starr’s Americans and the California Dream discussed “the imaginative aspects of California’s journey to identity” by studying how settlers created and sought after their ideas of the California Dream.6 Many people pursued this dream but economic success came mostly to those who had power, money, or land. In Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, Stacey Smith offered a broader analysis on the state’s labor and slavery history during the 1800s by connecting them to similar national developments. Smith and Starr utilized the immigration theme to show how California’s migrant population influenced the state’s development.7 A variety of people came to the state in pursuit of the dream, but those opportunities were not available to everyone. Smith’s argument brought particular attention to misconceptions about labor practices in the state. These works portrayed specific aspects of migration and labor during the nineteenth century that laid the groundwork for the social and cultural changes in the next century.
Immigration provided a useful, but complicated, approach for historians who wrote history that included ordinary people. Both Douglas Sackman’s Orange Empire and Smith’s book built upon Starr’s history by placing either enslaved or migrant laborers next to other privileged,
6 Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), vii.
7 Stacey Smith, Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 4; Starr, Americans , 415-444.
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wealthy Californians.8 Sackman appeared to be in the middle of the historical debate because he emphasized the citrus corporations’ marketing as a significant growth factor. However, he also recognized the role of migrant workers. Samuel Truett, in Fugitive Landscapes, is in conversation with Sackman as another scholar of the West. Truett identified immigrants and native peoples as key contributors to the Southwest borderlands’ development.9 Even though his work did not specifically refer to California history or citrus, his methodology is still applicable to those histories that are about the community development of Orange Country. Personal examples in these histories presented a complex and authentic perspective of community life. Starting with people to trace the region’s development allowed historians to give a voice to community members, whose work directly affected the growth.
When people appeared in the narrative, California historians studied them as Anglo or non-Anglo groups in their separate worlds, even though they lived or worked in the same cities. Histories by Sackman, Starr, and also Stephen Gould identified key figures, often men, who shaped communities. However, scholars, such as Stephen O’Neil, Lisbeth Haas, and Gilbert G. Gonzalez, also identified Mexicans and women as important members of the community. Stephen Gould in “Orange County Before It Was A County” and Stephen O’Neil in “The Role of Colonias In Orange County” made general assumptions about communities by drawing examples
8 Smith, Freedom’s Frontier, 5-6; Douglas Cazaux Sackman, Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 8, 123-153, 176-177, 225-261.
9 Samuel Truett. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 129.
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either from elite Anglo families or minority enclaves.10 Lizbeth Haas’ “San Juan Capistrano: A Rural Society in Transition to Citrus” provided examples of men and women who experienced the growing disparities between the Anglos and the californios and Indians in San Juan Capistrano at the turn of the century. She explained that the city’s transition away from subsistence farming and towards industrial agricultural created more segregated urban spaces, such as the workplace, that did not exist in the previously non-Anglo dominated rural period.11 Gilbert G. Gonzalez referred to cross-ethnic interactions, but he only briefly mentioned them in his article entitled “Women, Work, and Community in the Mexican Colonias of the Southern California Citrus Belt.”12 Historical methods that separated ethnicities or emphasized a certain group ensured that people were not left out. Yet, they also created a limited understanding of integrated interactions in the rest of the community.
Three scholars’ specific analysis of gender roles and ethnicity established a good starting point for future interventions in Orange County history. They included Gonzalez, Margo McBane, and Truett. Gonzalez argued that Mexican women who worked in the packing houses also formed social and cultural identities in the colonias, or segregated communities.13 He portrayed Mexican women more as important members of their own society and made only a few connections to their roles in the city they lived in. By contrast, Margo McBane’s article, “The
10 Stephen Gould, “Orange County Before It Was A County,” Proceedings of the Conference of Orange County History, 1988. edited by Robert A. Slayton and Leland L. Estes, (Orange: Chapman College, 1989), 84-88; Stephen O’Neil, “The Role of Colonias In Orange County,” Proceedings of the Conference of Orange County History, 1988. edited by Robert A. Slayton and Leland L. Estes, (Orange: Chapman College, 1989), 114-115.
11 Lisbeth Haas, “San Juan Capistrano: A Rural Society in Transition to Citrus.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 48-51, 56.
12 Gilbert G. Gonzalez, “Women, Work, and Community in the Mexican Colonias of the Southern California Citrus Belt.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 64-66.
13 Gonzalez, “Women, Work, and Community,” 58, 60, 64-66.
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Role of Gender in Citrus Employment,” explained how the labor force of Ventura County’s Limoneira Company included men, women, and multiple ethnicities. Although she identified segregated housing in this California community, the workforce was still integrated in the first half of the twentieth century.14 However, this particular case happened outside of Orange County. Truett also provided a good model for a dynamic cross-ethnic history when he gave agency to the various people living in the diverse Southwest borderland communities.15 McBane and Truett’s approaches to their histories are applicable to the farm and city life within Orange County.
Despite the existence of segregation in Orange County, there needs to be more historical analysis on commingling among different genders and ethnicities as it related to migration. This would recreate a complex and dynamic view of those communities. For example, historical photographs of Orange County citrus workers suggested that Anglos and non-Anglos worked in the same spaces, rather than being separated into two places. When future scholars give more attention to this diversity, the interpretation of community life will change from a narrative focused on segregation to one that will now consider the integration of men, women, and minorities in Orange County history.
Overall, there was a historiographical turn around the 1990s towards more of a social and cultural history of California’s growth. Rather than viewing the history mainly through major institutions and themes like the railroad or the “California Dream,” scholars reconstructed the story to shift the focus onto ordinary people and the spaces they inhabited. Yet, the historiography
14 Margo McBane, “The Role of Gender in Citrus Employment: A Case Study of Recruitment, Labor, and Housing Patterns at the Limoneira Company, 1893 to 1940.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 69, 73, 76, 78-81.
15 Truett, Fugitive Landscapes, 7-9, 30, 108, 140.
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still lacked analysis that connected all of the types of people associated with the citrus industry in Orange County. Scholars considered each of these individuals on their own, but further research needs to examine how those individuals worked together as a diverse whole to establish the community. It is necessary to study the relationships between community leaders, non-Anglo workers, and women workers, to name a few, to understand the dynamic growth of the region. This move towards greater complexity in citrus history will provide a relevant connection between an old historical instance of integration and the increasingly diverse modern world.
Photographs of packing house workers in Orange County will help historians establish the complex story of integrated work spaces. So far in Southern California citrus history, historians identified railroad corporate leaders, citrus growers, and citrus workers as important individuals.16 While some historians gave Anglo men credit for developing the citrus industry, others, like McBane, recognized the substantial role of women in the citrus work force.17 One photograph from the city of Orange, entitled David Hewes’ Packing House Interior With Workers, ca. 1905, depicted the direct role of women in the early years of the industry.18 During the 1900s, the need for workers in this growing industry encouraged not only American, but also Mexican migration to the area.19 Another photograph in 1933 Irvine, Employees of the Irvine Valencia Growers Packing House, revealed that over time more Mexicans worked alongside Anglo men and women in the packing environment. Both photos are in the archive of the Orange Public Library
16 Deverell, “Railroad,” 191-192; Tobey and Wetherell, “Corporate Capitalism,” 8, 17; Bachus, “Oranges,” 161-165.
17 McBane, “The Role of Gender in Citrus Employment,” 69-70.
18 David Hewes’ Packing House Interior With Workers, ca. 1905. 1905. Orange Public Library Collection, Orange Public Library and History Center, Orange, CA.
19 O’Neil, “The Role of Colonias In Orange County,” Proceedings, 114-115.
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Collection. With these images, I identified who was in the picture and the genders and ethnicities represented in them. Using a bottom-up approach, I analyzed how immigration affected packing house workers and how those workers also impacted the citrus industry. These two photos suggested that the historical narrative should incorporate the diversity of citrus workers into a more cross-gender and cross-ethnic view of the Orange County citrus industry.
Since the Hewes’ picture came from 1905, it represented the early years of the county’s citrus industry. It captured three Anglo men and eight Anglo women posing next to tables and crates filled with lemons and other produce at the El Modena packing house in Orange, California. The crates in the foreground held produce that was unprocessed, while a few boxes in the background looked already packed.20 In general, Sackman explained that Anglo women occupied about half of the packing house jobs by 1913 and their numbers grew from then on. Women may have worked in the packing houses, but they were often characterized as symbolic figures in citrus advertising. In addition to using efficient packing methods, workers needed to use great care in packaging citrus that was shipped throughout the United States. Because citrus growers viewed Anglo women as having a more “nurturing touch,” they did not initially hire Mexican women around this time.21 The Hewes’ picture supported Sackman’s analysis because it showed that both men and women worked in packing houses together in 1905. This early photo displayed cross-gender Anglo work spaces before the later inclusion of non-Anglo workers.
Why did the Hewes’ photographer choose these people for the image? It is interesting that the photographer stood further back to include men, women, and produce crates in the picture.
20 David Hewes’ Packing House Interior With Workers, ca. 1905.
21 Sackman, Orange Empire, 89-92, 146-151.
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The women also wore long dresses or skirts that must have made it challenging to do their work.22 Perhaps the photo was an advertisement that emphasized the able-bodied men required to move heavy crates for the women, the nurturing and orderly-looking women to handle the fruit, and the company’s abundant amount of fruit. Citrus workers in this photo might not have had the right to consent to the picture. Maybe the packing house owner, David Hewes, expected them to agree to it or maybe they wanted their picture taken at a time when it was not so common. According to this 1905 image, women had the opportunity to work in a public environment outside of the private sphere of the home. It was also an example of them working alongside men in a packing house. Considering gender roles, women still appeared to remain under the men’s authority and the physical constraints created by their clothing. Although women had these limitations, one consequence of this photo was that it portrayed women in a more public and social setting. Because the photographer took this particular shot, the result was an image that preserved a record of their role as citrus laborers contributing to the economy.
While the Hewes’ photograph exemplified one working environment in Orange, I also found the Employees photo among several citrus worker images from the library’s archive. The Hewes’ photo showed mostly Anglo women, but other photographs identified a variety of people that included men, women, Anglos, and Mexicans working in packing houses and the fields. I chose these two images from different decades in order to examine how the labor force changed over time during the development of the Orange County citrus industry.
The Employees photo from 1933 represented a distinct ethnic shift among the packing house workers. It showed presumably all seventy workers at an Irvine packing site and the
22 David Hewes’ Packing House Interior With Workers, ca. 1905.
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archival record identified almost all of people in the photo. Of the fifty-two women workers sitting down, several were Hispanic. One of the eighteen men was also Hispanic.23 By the 1930s, around 35,000 laborers, including women, came from Mexican families that formed their own villages in Southern California.24 It is possible that the pictured non-Anglos, or Hispanics, came from ethnic backgrounds of either Mexican, Spanish californio, or Indian heritage. However, it is also important to note that non-Anglos could now work in the packing house, a place where they could not work earlier on. Sackman’s history described that workers of various ethnicities came to California, but he did not really elaborate on how they worked together.25 Overall, this photograph suggested that a diverse group of laborers eventually became associated with the citrus industry by the 1930s.
What was the second photographer’s reason for choosing these people for the same picture and organizing them in a certain way? It is fascinating that all of the people, except two, were separated by gender but not by ethnicity. The two men in the front row wore nicer clothes; so, they might have been the managers or owners of the packing house. The women sat in three rows, the men stood behind them, and the work tables were not clearly visible. The women also wore shorter, more practical dresses.26 Even though the photo distinguished between men and women, the small and practical changes to the women’s clothing showed that gender roles became less constricting by the 1930s. The people might have consented to be in the photo because
23 Employees of the Irvine Valencia Growers Packing House. 1933. Orange Public Library Collection, Orange Public Library and History Center, Orange, CA.
24 Gonzalez, “Women, Work, and Community,” 58.
25 Sackman, Orange Empire, 127-135.
26 Employees of the Irvine Valencia Growers Packing House.
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they had to. On the other hand, maybe everyone wanted to be in the picture with their friends, which would explain why Anglo and non-Anglo women sat together, rather than separately.
Another consequence of the photo was that it suggested citrus employers eventually hired more Mexicans for the skilled positions. It represented what the workforce possibly looked like when Mexicans consisted of fourteen percent of Orange County’s population after 1930.27 Based on the historical narrative, this example of a multi-ethnic environment did not entirely fit with previous scholars’ interpretation of the citrus industry. The two ethnicities perhaps lived in different parts of the city, but, by reading against the grain, one purpose of the Employees photo might be to demonstrate the diversity among citrus packers. This image indicated that the historical field should consider this and other early instances of labor integration in their understanding of Orange County. Diversity is now a common occurrence in the United States, but this photo proved that integration existed as early as the county’s citrus industry during the 1930s.
Because almost thirty years separated the two photos, they displayed many significant differences. All of the individuals in Hewes’ were Anglo compared to the second one that had a mix of Anglo and Hispanic workers. There were also more workers in the second picture. This might have been because all the workers were available to pose for the photograph, but it also made sense because the booming citrus industry needed a larger workforce by the 1930s. It is possible that previous historians did not write about non-Anglos because those people did not always have the same opportunities. For example, San Juan Capistrano’s californios struggled to diversify their investments when agriculture became more industrialized around the turn of the
27 O’Neil, “The Role of Colonias in Orange County,” Proceedings, 115.
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century. On the other hand, Anglos moving to the area had money to invest in the land.28 What the Hewes’ photo did not show in 1905 were the growing amount of immigrant Mexican field workers picking the produce seen in the packing house.29 Although the Employees photo came later, it portrayed a more integrated group of people. This integration occurred over time, most likely because more Mexicans migrated to Southern California by then. The images provided a visual representation of how immigration contributed to the diverse community in Orange County.
These photos enhanced the historian’s view of migration, which played a significant role in the histories of Southern California and the United States. Americans attempted to fulfill their ideal dreams, with mixed results. They sought after ideas such as connecting back to nature, a return to health, happiness, and “self-fulfillment.” These were not always possible once they started living in the state.30 For foreigners, life had its own challenges. Immigrants to the United States attempted to maintain their own cultures in the midst of Americanization. Barrett explained that others viewed “Americanization” as the “social control” of immigrants, but he referred it as the immigrant’s adaptive process to their new situation.31 Both American migrants and Mexican immigrants hoped to establish new lives in the United States. By connecting Barrett’s theme to Truett’s related discussion of agency and adaptability, the citrus community also appeared to adapt to their working environments.32 Specifically, as more Mexicans moved to
28 Haas, “San Juan Capistrano,” 48, 50-51, 54.
29 O’Neil, “The Role of Colonias in Orange County,” Proceedings, 115.
30 Starr, Americans, 434-444.
31 Barrett, “Americanization from the Bottom Up,” 997.
32 Truett, Fugitive Landscapes, 29-30, 129-130.
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Southern California, they met the labor needs of the citrus industry. Perhaps, packing house owners adapted to the demographic shift by allowing managers to hire more non-Anglos and fill the need. The two packing house pictures supported a more complex view of the past where workers adapted to the hard work and employers also adapted to demographic changes in the community.
Examining two packing house photos demonstrated that not all twentieth century workers in came from one gender or ethnic group. Rather, the Orange County work force included a mix of people working together to pack citrus boxes. Women and Mexicans had the opportunities to become active and vital members of the citrus community. These individuals were much like Truett’s Americans, Spaniards, and Mexicans who created “hybrid spaces” in the Southwest copper borderlands during the same time period. 33 The photographs also provided an example of an increase in “wage labor” in the citrus industry.34 Men and women of different races received wages and contributed to the success of the citrus industry in their shared work spaces. Previous historians studied different gender and ethnic groups separately in the citrus industry. So, it was surprising that primary sources pointed out that Anglos and non-Anglos worked in the same places. This discovery might lead to other examples of integration for historians to research. If they worked along side each other in the packing houses, then were there any other integrated community spaces at that time, such as churches? Photographs portray aspects of society not always shown in the written record. In this case, they provided a more complicated view of social and cultural integration within Orange County.
33 Truett. Fugitive Landscapes, 22-23, 43, 120, 140.
34 Haas, “San Juan Capistrano,” 47, 54-56.
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In addition to photos, there are many other primary sources associated with Orange County’s citrus industry. Two relevant archives are the Center for Oral and Public History at California State University, Fullerton, and the Orange Public Library Collection. Photos, oral histories, and newspaper articles from these collections will be useful to reconstruct the integrated communities of the citrus industry. With these sources, historians might utilize more of a bottom-up approach to Orange County’s early community life to discover other aspects, like the interactions between people of different genders and ethnicities. For instance, Gonzalez and Haas included photos of Mexican colonias and citrus workers in their articles to provide visual evidence of those people’s active roles in the community. 35 Future scholarship should build on their analysis by considering what other available photos described about the social dynamics among workers. Community interaction and the integration of non-Anglos and Anglos were not well-represented in Orange County history, which is a possible future direction for the existing historiography.
Although photographs add another dimension to the story, it will be helpful to include different types of primary sources, such as oral histories or newspaper articles. Pictures described what the community looked like, but they make it difficult to determine how that cross-gender and cross-ethnic integration happened. Interviews will offer another personal perspective similar to the packinghouse photographs. In particular, the Anglo oral histories on Orange’s early growth portrayed their understanding of life at the turn of the century that is useful for comparison with other sources. Interviews and newspapers will reveal how people from that time period remembered or explained community interaction. They will also provide insight into parts of the community
35 Gonzalez, “Women, Work and Community,” 60, 63, 67; Haas, “San Juan Capistrano,” 53, 55, 57.
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aside from packinghouses and orchards. This primary source evidence will enhance the historical record because it will present a more complex perspective of Southern Californian community life.
The history of the citrus industry considered several approaches and themes in order to fully comprehend its significance. Historians analyzed the implications of institutions and the people who supported them in Southern California. They also demonstrated that immigration is one of the main factors for the success of the citrus industry and the development of Orange County. The ordinary person entered the historiography more recently in a way that is more inclusive of everyone in the community. However, the historical narrative did not yet have enough analysis regarding integration in Orange County. Photographs from a local archive presented this cross-gender and cross-ethnic view of labor, especially in the 1930s. It is crucial to acknowledge the laborers in the story, but it is even more important to identify social and cultural developments among the laborers themselves. The success of the citrus industry may have influenced migration, but, in return, the industry had to adapt its standards to accept the increasingly diverse Orange County citrus workers in the early twentieth century. Future researchers should consider both sides of this adaptability and agency in the story of Southern California communities as they continue to debate the significance of the citrus industry.
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Bibliography
Bachus, Edward J. “Who Took the Oranges Out of Orange County?: The Southern California Citrus Industry in Transition.” Southern California Quarterly 63, no. 2 (1981): 157-73.
Barrett, James R. “Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880-1930.” The Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 3, Discovering America: A Special Issue (Dec. 1992), 996-1020.
Barron, Hal S. “Citriculture and Southern California: New Historical Perspectives.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 2-5.
David Hewes’ Packing House Interior With Workers, ca. 1905. 1905. Orange Public Library Collection, Orange Public Library and History Center, Orange, CA. http://history.cityoforange.org/awweb/main.jsp?flag=browse&smd=1&awdid=16
Deverell, William. “The Southern Pacific Railroad Survives the Pullman Strike of 1894.” An essay in Major Problems in California History: Documents and Essays. ed. by Chan Sucheng and Spencer Olin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1997.
Employees of the Irvine Valencia Growers Packing House. 1933. Orange Public Library Collection, Orange Public Library and History Center, Orange, CA. http://history.cityoforange.org/awweb/main.jsp?&awdid=3&smd=1&flag=browse
Gonzalez, Gilbert G. “Women, Work, and Community in the Mexican Colonias of the Southern California Citrus Belt.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 58-67.
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Gould, Stephen. “Orange County Before It Was A County.” Proceedings of the Conference of Orange County History, 1988. edited by Robert A. Slayton and Leland L. Estes. Orange: Chapman College, 1989.
Haas, Lisbeth. “San Juan Capistrano: A Rural Society in Transition to Citrus.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 46-57.
McBane, Margo. “The Role of Gender in Citrus Employment: A Case Study of Recruitment, Labor, and Housing Patterns at the Limoneira Company, 1893 to 1940.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 68-81.
O’Neil, Stephen. “The Role of Colonias In Orange County.” Proceedings of the Conference of Orange County History, 1988. edited by Robert A. Slayton and Leland L. Estes. Orange: Chapman College, 1989.
Sackman, Douglas Cazaux. Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Smith, Stacey L. Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Ebook.
Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Tobey, Ronald, and Charles Wetherell. “The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944.” California History 74, no. 1 (1995): 6-21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25177466.
Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.