The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (American Crossroads, 2)
by Neil Foley

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Book Reviews of The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (American Crossroads, 2)

Book Review: Cotton culture and racism
Summary: 3 Stars

"White Scourge" starts by showing how Texas underwent significant economic and demographic changes after the Civil War. According to the book, central Texas eventually assumed a unique position within the country because it was a place where the cotton culture of the Deep South met the Mexicanized West. Whites of all classes in Texas despised the arrival of Mexican laborers, arguing that these people were dirty, uneducated peons who often subscribed to dangerous anti-American ideas of socialism and anarchism. Simultaneously, farm owners wanted Mexicans brought into the country as cheap labor to help harvest the cotton crops. This uncomfortable paradox resulted in wealthy white landowners claiming that poor whites who failed to achieve farm ownership were as undesirable as blacks and Mexicans. Poor whites despised immigrants arriving from Mexico because they drove out white tenants and sharecroppers, thereby reducing the entire work force in central Texas to the role of landless farm laborers.

Foley closely examines the white racist ideas leveled against Mexican immigrants, the role of women on the farm, unionization attempts, the effects of New Deal agricultural policies in Texas, and how mechanization and corporate farms undermined whites, blacks, and Mexicans. His argument repeatedly appears in these sections: the social constructions of race and whiteness allowed farm owners to deal a serious blow to farm tenancy and sharecropping, two agricultural methods that allowed many to earn enough money to buy farms. Moreover, racial divisions among whites, blacks, and Mexicans inhibited the formation of interracial unions capable of battling farm owners. Ultimately, race played a major role in completing the move from an economic agricultural system based on farm ownership for all to a polarized ownership/migrant labor arrangement.

"White Scourge" is at its best when describing the destructive effects Roosevelt's New Deal Agricultural Adjustment Act inflicted upon migrant laborers throughout the South. Historians frequently praise Roosevelt's Depression era policies as extraordinary measures that saved millions from desperate circumstances. In many cases, this claim is true, but there was also a downside to the president's social palliatives. Foley's research reveals that by paying farm owners in Texas to plow under cotton in order to elevate crop prices, the result for those who did not own land was disastrous. Farm owners often refused to share government reimbursement checks with their contracted tenants. Moreover, owners sat on the local committees charged with examining complaints from tenants and sharecroppers. The same people stealing federal relief checks had the power to deny legitimate complaints lodged by tenants and sharecroppers. Conditions reached such horrific proportions that around two million people eventually left the South by the end of the 1930s. Foley's examination of this period in Texas history is neatly researched and cogently argued.

One reason farm owners could fleece their tenants out of relief monies was due to the nature of contracts between land owners and aspiring farmers. The agreements between the two sides were usually oral because poor whites, blacks, and Mexicans could rarely read or write. This widespread illiteracy is at the bottom of a significant problem in "White Scourge." Most of the author's source material comes from social and political elites, from men and women who could both read and write. Sources include government commissions, labor leaders, politicians making pronouncements on events in Texas, and other educated observers concerned about the potential social problems arising in the cotton fields. Hearings conducted by state officials to determine what actions the government should take concerning the problem of farm ownership do occasionally capture the voices of the landless poor, but the laments from those actually suffering through the difficulties are few in number. A lack of sources left behind by the masses is perhaps an unavoidable problem in social history, but it is a problem that raises questions about the author's arguments.

An excellent example of the difficulty in getting at what the common farm worker thought appears when Foley examines the rise and fall of Tom Hickey's Land League of the 1910s. The chapter devoted to this labor leader consists largely of interactions between Hickey and other labor leaders, with precious little information about what the rank and file said or did. The author places great emphasis on how the union elites celebrated Mexican actions against landowners and how these leaders used it to cast aspersions on white men's manhood in an effort to swell the ranks of the Land League. Foley sees this as a way of "whitening" Mexicans while challenging poor white claims to whiteness. Without corroborating evidence from the masses, however, this attempt may have been simply one way of getting people into the union. There needs to be more evidence from average people about the role whiteness played in their daily lives before I accept "whiteness" as a legitimate historical methodology. For those who wish to learn more about "whiteness" studies, look for an excellent critique of the field written by historian Eric Arnesen. He takes Foley to task on several issues important to the study and research of history.

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