This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. Factories in the Field—together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck—dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry—Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians—the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions

More than a million men, women, and children work in American agriculture, and yet their stories are rarely told, their low-wage jobs are not included in minimum-wage ordinances or campaigns, and their work remains unorganized by labor unions. This book of oral histories restores to visibility these workers, by telling stories of hardship but also bravery, solidarity, and improvisation in California's farm fields. The majority of American produce is picked in California, while workers there face wage theft and sexual harassment, pesticide exposure and lack of healthcare, the struggle to find affordable housing, and the special risks endured by the undocumented--as many as half of all farmworkers. The book also tells the story of a new generation of labor activists, who are pressing for a national Bill of Rights for farmworkers.

Part 1: Considers. S. 1085, to establish minimum wages for migrant workers. S. 1778 and S. 2498, to register and regulate migrant labor contractors engaged in interstate commerce. S. 2141, to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to repeal child labor law exemptions for agricultural labor. September 28 hearing was held in Lansing, Mich.; September 30 hearing was held in Madison, Wis.; October 1 hearing was held in St. Paul, Minn.; November 30 hearing was held in Trenton, N.J.; Dec. 7 hearing was held in NYC; and December 8 hearing was held in Philadelphia, Pa.; part 2: May 16 hearing was held in Homestead, Fla.; May 18 hearing was held in Clewiston, Fla.; July 8 hearing was held in Fresno, Calif.; and July 11 hearing was held in Sacramento, Calif.