Reel 23

Scope and Contents Folder 788 -- Petitions to President Roosevelt on minimum wages for farm workers. One sample filmed. Folder 789 -- U.S. Employment Service forms. Mainly War Manpower Survey forms, but some job application forms as well. Note: Two sub-folders of forms marked "Application For Job as a Cotton Picker" were not filmed. Folders 790 to 791 -- Organizer's reports from J.F. Hynds in Arkansas. Folder 792 -- Expense reports of H.L. Mitchell. Folder 793 -- Organizer's reports from W.M. Tanner in...

Scope and Contents Reports from the contingent of farm workers sent to Florida began to arrive about Jan. 10 and continued almost daily thereafter. Many of the workers expressed satisfaction with what they found, but the Rev. David S. Burgess, in a five-page letter to Clinton Golden of the WMC Labor-Management Committee, depicted scenes of considerable squalor in the migrant workers' camps (19). Further shipments to Florida were delayed due to lack of housing for white workers; on this and other difficulties,...

Scope and Contents Correspondence from workers in Florida and Arizona poured in throughout the month. Two long letters from B.V. Zachary, who reported that hundreds of workers in Eloy, Arizona, received special attention. F.R. Betton reported on his inspection trip to Florida (9) and Mitchell sent special instructions to all STFU representatives in Florida on how to organize and how to handle workers' problems (19). There are also two letters from organizer George Mayberry in Reform, Alabama, informing the...

Scope and Contents The union's plans for establishing a migratory workers' union came to an abrupt end with the introduction of House Joint Resolution No. 96, also known as the Cannon Bill, which placed the recruitment of agricultural labor under the Agricultural Extension Service of the Department of Agriculture. A copy of the bill, which contained explicit anti-union provisions, appears in the papers (11). Mitchell sent letters to a number of prominent labor leaders, asking their help in fighting the bill...

Scope and Contents From the Collection: Consist of correspondence, reports, ledgers, legal documents, leaflets, printed material, photographs, and newspapers published by the union. These document the activities of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union from its origins through its transformations into the National Farm Labor Union in 1946 and the National Agriculture Workers Union in 1952, and through its merger with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in 1960. The records also contain selected materials from the Socialist Party...