Two Braceros Harvest Potatoes
The majority of braceros who came to the United States performed the most difficult types of agricultural labor: planting, tending, and harvesting crops. This type of work was called "stoop work" because it required laborers to spend all day bent [...]
Migratory Mexican field worker's home on the edge of a frozen pea field. Imperial Valley, California.
During the Great Depression, migrant farmworkers from Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Mexico poured into California's rich, agricultural valleys in search of jobs. They worked long hours, were paid only a pittance, and lived in squalid conditions [...]
Female Garment Workers Labor in a New York City Tenement
Concentrated in New York City, the garment industry developed side by side with the sweatshop system of labor. Sweatshops employed a handful of workers, almost all of whom were immigrant Jewish or Italian women. They were supervised by contractors [...]
A Lector Reads to Cigar Workers
The lector, or reader, was an institution in Tampa cigar factories. Elected and paid by the workers, the lector read material of their choosing aloud as the workers assembled cigars. Lectores read newspapers, current affairs publications, and even [...]
"Workers leaving Pennsylvania shipyards, Beaumont, Texas"
Beaumont, Texas, like many U.S. cities, became a boomtown during World War II, as new residents flooded in to take jobs at the city's shipyards and petroleum production facilities. Between 1940 and 1943, population rose by 35% and the city suffered [...]