Mr. BRITE. We have seasons of regular work that it does not require many extra men, but in the season of round-up and branding come they will use 13 or 14 or 15 men.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that so upon all the cattle ranches in your territory?

Mr. BRITE. It is true of all of them.

The CHAIRMAN. When you need these extra men are you able to obtain any other kind except Mexicans?

Mr. BRITE. No.

The CHAIRMAN. They are the only laborers to which you can turn? Mr. BRITE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose you did not have that labor to turn to, what would be the result?

Mr. BRITE. I do not know; I am afraid we would have a hard time of it. I think it would affect our business.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions by members of the committee?

Senator NYE. When you talk of this labor required from time to time, seasonal labor as it is, is it the labor that is there on the spot, or must it be brought across the line from Mexico?

Mr. BRITE. The labor there is residential.

Senator NYE. That would continue even though the immigration were restricted, would it not?

Mr. BRITE. I am afraid not.

Senator NYE. Do you think they would go back?

Mr. BRITE. No; I am afraid the people from the East and North would come and hire them and take them away and leave us without anything. There would be such a demand for labor that they would draw on that element.

The CHAIRMAN. These Mexicans then in your vicinity that you utilize are those who reside there permanently?

Mr. BRITE. Yes-Oh, the most of them; once in a while one drops in there.

Senator GOULD. As a matter of fact, you do not have any right to hire labor on the Mexican side and bring them over?

Mr. BRITE. No, sir.

Senator GOULD. And you are dependent upon what happens to stray across there and want a job; is that it?

Mr. BRITE. Yes. I am not so familiar with the element that picks the cotton. I do not raise any cotton. I see Mexicans going through in trucks. But I do not have much dealings with them.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, Mr. Brite. Thank you very much for your statement. Is Mr. Moore of Calexico here?

Mr. MOORE. Yes.

STATEMENT OF C. B. MOORE, REPRESENTING VEGETABLE GROWERS, OF IMPERIAL VALLEY; CALEXICO, CALIF.

The CHAIRMAN. Please state your name and who you represent. Mr. MOORE. My name is C. B. Moore. I live in Calexico, Imperial Valley, Calif. I am sent here as the representative of the Vegetable Growers of Imperial Valley.

I have filed a statement which I have read before the House committee, and I understand that you are going to carry on as you did yesterday and you do not care to have that repeated.

The CHAIRMAN. No; it will be unnecessary, because we have access to the record of the House committee. But, at the same time, I would be very glad if you would give your statement to the reporter, who will incorporate it as part of your testimony here to-day.

Now, upon any other new matters we would be very glad to hear you, Mr. Moore.

Mr. MOORE. There are a few things I would like to bring to the attention of this committee, if I may, at the present time.

I sat here and listened to the testimony of some of the witnesses and some of the questions of the various Senators. One idea that struck me very forcibly was this-and you mentioned it, Senator Johnson, a second ago-regarding the fact that the East feels they have been cut off from their supply of European labor and that they see no reason in the world why the West should not have the same restriction placed upon them.

The CHAIRMAN. All of them predicated upon the idea that it is necessary for the welfare of the United States.

Mr. MOORE. I am well aware of the immigration problems facing this country. But, gentlemen, 25 years ago when the industrial East was building up the enormous industries they have, there was not very much question about immigration; and I doubt very much if any immigration laws regarding European immigration at that time could have been enacted. Likewise, we are a new country in the West; we are pioneers out there. This valley I represent has been built out of a desert in 25 years.

We have been able to build this great Southwest such as the Imperial Valley and the other various valleys in the Southwest only with the aid of Mexican labor. I live in a country where the temperature in the summer time during the peak of the harvesting of the canteloupe crop runs, in the field, as high as 145°. We have had to specialize in these various field crops which are perishable, due to the fact that the enormous spreads of the Middle Western States who produce the standard crops, such as corn, wheat, etc., for the simple reason that we are practically all of us under irrigation at a cost that makes it prohibitive to grow these crops. We have also eliminated a great deal of that because of the competition with the Middle Western farmers, and we can not continue to grow the vegetables and the fruits that we do without Mexican labor to do it. There is no other supply available. We have tried in every way to get them in.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Moore, you spoke of the climatic conditions in summer. The climatic conditions all the year round are essentially different from climatic conditions in other parts of the United States, are they not?

Mr. MOORE. Very much so, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You have practically no rain in your territory, have you?

Mr. MOORE. No rain, except probably an inch and a half to 2 inches, in the Imperial Valley where I live during the year.

The CHAIRMAN. And it is singularly to work in the fields of the Imperial Valley, is it not?

Mr. MOORE. I will tell it to you in this way, Senator: The average work is known as stoop or knee work in the picking of these crops.

The CHAIRMAN. We used to call it "squatting occupations"? Mr. MOORE. That is the word that was used at the time the Japanese exclusion was put in "squatting occupations" and white labor that has been brought into that territory from the States of Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas refuses absolutely to participate in the work of that sort. They work for a day or two until they can get enough to get out of the country and they are gone. The Mexican comes. He stays through the peak of the crop and moves on to another crop in the State of California or Arizona, whichever it may be. As a result, there is a circulating movement of possibly 80,000 Mexicans in the State of California who are continually moving into these arid or semiarid valleys of California harvesting the crops that are not in competition with any other crop in the Middle West.

The social end of this question is another idea I would like to speak about at the present time. We have had a great deal of information gotten out by social workers throughout the West, especially regarding the handling of these Mexicans. They say they have become a terrible load to the community. In the town I live in our social welfare workers became very much burdened with Mexican charity, and they went to some of the better Mexican people, including the Mexican consul, who is the head of the Blue Cross Society, which corresponds very favorably with our American Red Cross, and they put this proposition up to these people, and they said, "Now, here, we have certain charitable funds in this town. But we are spending a great deal of it on the Mexican people, and we do not feel we should, and we want some help from you. As a result of it, the Mexican Blue Cross became very active, and at the present time they are taking care of their own people. They maintain clinics in their hospital in Calexico and 6 or 8 beds are filled there at all times with their own Mexican people. I judged they have relieved us of that entirely, and if that situation can be shown to the rest of the West or the other people in the Middle West who are complaining about the social evils of the Mexican, they will find out they can be taken care of. They are very, very easy to handle along that line.

The CHAIRMAN. Has there been a very large proportion of them become public charges?

Mr. MOORE. No, a very small proportion of them has become public charges. There is another question

The CHAIRMAN. First, in order that the rest of the committee may understand, I want you to state just where is the location of Calexico. It is immediately upon the border, is it not?

Mr. MOORE. Calexico is right on the border. The towns of Mexicali and Calexico form one town, and the international line runs right through the middle of the town.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, on one side of the line is the town from which you come, Calexico, and as a part of it, with the line between, is Mexicali, which is under the Mexican jurisdiction?

Mr. Moore. That is correct, sir. In the early part of 1926 we had considerable trouble with the Immigration Department-it was trouble to us-possibly due to the fact that the inspector in charge. of our district wished to show a large number of deportations to his

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credit, and they started the border patrol that worked throughout the valley deporting Mexicans that had entered the country illegally. As a result of it, the Mexicans were like a lot of jack rabbits that were being hunted. They would take them down and put them across the line, one day and the next day they would be back across the line at some other place.

We went to the Department of Labor and asked them to come to our rescue and help us out in the matter; and they sent a man out there who looked into the matter very carefully. As a result of it, the people of the valley, upon their own initiative, entered into a system of registration of these Mexicans that were working there. We registered over 7,000 of them. Considerably over half of that 7,000 had been in the country for more than five years and were not-subject to deportation, and through the arrangement we had with all of our ranchers and growers in the valley they promised not to employ any man that could not show his head tax receipt or show he was in the country legally. As a result of that we got a very close check on these Mexican people. The question occurred to me as to citizenship. We have very few applications for American citizenship in our county, and during the registration time I took it upon myself to make inquiry, and I interviewed at least 3,000 of these 7,000 Mexicans, and there was not one out of the entire 3,000 that did not say that he expected to return to Mexico as soon as conditions were such there that he could go back and live in Mexico and raise his family there.

In connection with that I want to point out what the Mexican Government is doing at the present time. They have been cognizant of this matter for many years. They have talked several times of prohibiting their nationals leaving their country and coming into the United States or going into South or Central America. But, as a member of the embassy here in Washington told me, "You can legislate against your people leaving their country, but when they are hungry you are not going to enforce those laws to keep them home."

And as a result of it, and possibly because of betterment of conditions in Mexico at this time, the Mexican Government has come to the realization that they must do something for their people; that is, what we call peon labor. They have been held for centuries in peonage on these enormous estates. You have seen items in the paper regarding their agrarian laws, whereby they are giving those people land. Those laws are now in force, the land is being distributed in many, many parts of the country to the peons of their own country. But that does not stop the immigration. They have no finances and they have no water. As a result of it, they have formed their Federal farm loan banks, such as we have in this country, and at this time they have several million dollars available for the purchase of seed, tools, and equipment for ranches, under irrigation systems which they are putting out. They have irrigation systems which will bring under permanent water this year 682,500 acres, consisting of a series of dams and canals in various States; and on top of that they have negotiations on with the Richardson interests in the Yaqui Valley for 750,000 acres of land, which they will distribute among their people. That is going to solve part of our troubles, gentlemen, along this line.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you mean by "part of our troubles"? Mr. MOORE. You will find, if you go into the history of immigration from Mexico that certain States, due to drought and lack of crops have been the States that have sent the largest number of immigrants into the United States. In the years of crop failure and cereal shortage in those States there have been the biggest years of immigration to this country. A Mexican does not want to leave his 'home; he wants to stay there, but he has been forced out.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you mean that this condition that you have described will keep him at home?

Mr. MOORE. That is absolutely the idea I am trying to put over. The CHAIRMAN. I was going to say, what are you going to do if you can not get labor in the Imperial Valley?

Mr. MOORE. Now, we do not want that thing to come too soon. It is going to come gradually. We realize the situation as to immigration in this western country, but we can not be cut off.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me get your idea. You do not want to be cut off immediately, on the question of the Mexican labor, but if it could be gradually done, would you prefer it?

Mr. MOORE. I think it will gradually take care of itself from an economic point of view.

Senator KENDRICK. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?
The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Senator KENDRICK. Is it not your idea that the provision of the Mexican Government to take care of its people at home will stabilize the conditions so that we may have in this country and along the border such labor as we need, without being overrun with people that we do not want?

Mr. MOORE. Absolutely. For example, if there are 25,000 to 30,000 immigrants coming in annually-there are more than that— probably 80,000 that we know of coming in now, and in addition to that some others that come in illegally. If that number were cut to 25,000 possibly with the quantity of Mexican labor that we now have in this country, people in the Eastern and Northern States and this part of the country are not going to be bothered with them. They are going to stay where there is enough labor to take care of them. They do not like to live in the cold sections; they like to live in the warm country, because they are used to that; they are raised that way.

Senator KENDRICK. If I may suggest another thought there, within the borders of the United States, there are tidal movements of labor from one section to another, as the need arises, to take care of seasonal work?

Mr. MOORE. Yes, sir.

Senator KENDRICK. Now, even though these people were properly located on their own land holdings, it is more than likely that they would still come to the United States to do this seasonal labor and return to their own country with all the more certainty.

Mr. MOORE. Knowing the Mexican as I do, I think you will find if he has a home of his own, he is not going to leave it.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, right there: The laws of Mexico that you have just described, will ultimately, in your opinion, give him that home?