Green Beans, Green Cash: Alderman Farms' Post—World War II Teenage Workforce

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 When my parents sold their North Dakota dairy in 1947 and moved our family to Oregon, they were awestruck by the abundance of fresh fruits, berries, and vegetables. My father spent his first two days in the state picking cherries, mostly for the sheer joy of fresh fruit off the tree. It seemed to be everywhere, and we were certainly not in North Dakota any longer. A summer later, at the age of twelve, I was introduced to the cornucopia — on the business end of a strawberry carrier and a bean bucket. For a decade, my summer home was the sprawling Alderman Farms near Dayton, one of the nation’s largest row-crop operations — certainly the largest in theWillametteValley — and I grew up amidst beans, berries, and companions of youth.1 Tens of thousands of young Oregonians shared my experience, at large farms such as Alderman’s and small neighborhood berry patches; it was how we spent our summers, long before the advent of summer ballet and soccer camps or trips to Europe or Disneyland. Alderman Farms’ summer workforce was larger than the population of the nearest town, Dayton, drawing workers from as far away asVancouver and Portland, Depoe Bay and Taft.2 The heart of the picking crew and its support workers was Yamhill County and the county seat of McMinnville, where I grew up and graduated from high school and college. For a generation of young people, Alderman’s was an extension of our school year. We started berries when school closed in June and started school when beans ended in September, and our baseball games, evenings “dragging the gut” of Main Street, and trips to the beach all worked around the crop seasons. Alderman’s was virtually selfsufficient , with a freezing plant, equipment-repair sheds, cafeteria, sawmill,helicopter,Texacostation,and 75,000-gallon water tower. The farm Green Beans, Green Cash© 2010 Oregon Historical Society oregon voices Alderman Farms’ Post–World War II Teenage Workforce by Floyd J. McKay  McKay, Alderman Farms’ Post–World War II Teenage Workforce hired upwards of 300 year-around workers, but the big push during the summer—whenlabor-intensiveberry and bean crops came in — attracted pickers by the thousands. The scale of the Alderman operation was unique in the valley, but what went on at the ground level (literally) was typical of the workplace for tens of thousands of young laborers in the 1950s. Teenagers from Portland to Eugene shared the experience, and it remains a bond for thousands of retirees who grew up in that era. Young people had worked on farms for centuries,primarily for their families or, at most, nearby neighbors. But the Second World War forced farmers to hire outside the traditional work force (which had gone off to war),and that search took farmers into cities and towns where there was an untapped source of labor in housewives and teenage children. Wartime officials plunged into the task of recruitment; at the federal level, a U.S. Crop Corps was created, with a Victory Farm Workers organization for young workers and a Women’s Land Army for women. In Oregon, the Extension Service operated by Oregon State College was the major organizer and promoter of hiring women and teens to work on the farms.3 Alderman Farms was a community in itself, employing about 300 year-around workers and up to 3,000 a day during bean season. When Urie Alderman threw his annual barbecue in the 1940s, thousands of regular employees, neighbors, local merchants, and politicians were on hand. According to the newspaper caption, this 1945 gathering devoured four fatted steers, 4,500 buns, five barrels of corn on the cob, and 800 pounds of snap peas. The picnic followed the end of the bean harvest, closing the intensive summer harvest season for area teenagers.© 1945 the Oregonian. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. OHS neg. no. bb009908  OHQ vol. 111, no. 3 At the time Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Urie Alderman was forty-three years old and only two years into full-time ownership and management of the farm that his father, Ennis, started on Wallace...