Better Living Conditions for Fruit Workers
This is a potential Edith Daley article from the July 11, 1919 San Jose Evening News.
Better Living Conditions for Fruit Workers
Throughout the valley, this year, things are being done for the welfare of the fruit workers which have never been done before. The whole trend seems to be to make the life of the cannery worker as pleasant as possible, and it's not a philanthopic matter entirely, either, for people do better work when they are comfortable and well house and taken care of.
The Canneries at campbell are excellent examples of progressive institutions in this valley that are doing things for their employees. The case of the California Canning Company is typical of the Hyde Company and Ainslee people as well. The California canneries furnish a sort of wood and canvas cottage, cots, tables, and oil stoves, to their workers free. They furnish a kindergarten for the kiddies, with two women in charge who look after the little tots during working hours without charge to the mothers. A cafeteria with shining oil-cloth tables and porcelain dishes is maintained by the company, where employees can get three meals a day at cost - or 25 cents a meal.
Same With Others
The same is true with the other canneries. The Ainslee people are enlarging their cottage village this season to several times its former size. The lines of little red cottages nestled among the rows of cot trees with branches brushing against the windows. Some of those cottage streets resemble First Street on Saturday afternoon, from the number of cars parked along their sides. Another indication of the wide variety of people who are this year doing homage to "King Apricot".
The company charges its worker tenants as low as $2.50 a month for use of its cottages. Others are slightly more, according to the number of rooms contained, but the rent never rises very high, and the structures are substantial ones with running water, etc.
It looks pleasant enough to sit under the 'cot trees upon the low porch, in the evening, after the day's work. The Victrola next door is rasping out "Over There", but its just far enough away that it sounds rather "dreamy".
It's no wonder that lots of folks think their summer in the fruit is a lark rather than real work, and yet the average of $3.50 which they are making ought to be sufficient reminder.
In the plants themselves the same efficiency has tended to improve the lot of the human parts of the machine. The Ainslee plant has long shafts running from end to end of the building with wide paddles attached which act as fans, and anyone who has experienced the heat in a crowded cannery on a summer afternoon knows how welcome those fans must be.
Cookers, syrups, all the machines are arranged a la Ford factory, with the fruit received at the receiving door at one end of the plant and issuing into the warehouse at the other end in the form of cases of cans of 'cots - extra fine. A cot never retraces its steps after it reaches the fatal doorway. It might as well abandon hope as it enters, for its doom is sealed and it is only a few minutes before it is pitted, sorted, syruped, exhausted, cooked, canned, its lid sealed on, labelled, and stored away until some bally Britisher orders it for his breakfast and it must start its long jaunt across America and the Atlantic towards its final resting place.
More and more will be done for the worker, as this seasons experiments are found to pay. At last someone else other than the Almighty is starting to "protect the working guru."