January and February, 1953, 1953

To forestall possible anti-trust litigation by the Department of Justice, a co-operative marketing association was set up among the NAWU strawberry farmers in Louisiana; for details on the new co-op, see Mitchell to Hank Hasiwar (Jan. 14) and two letters from NAWU attorney Daniel H. Pollitt (Jan. 19, Feb 13). In a memorandum to AFL President George Meany, Mitchell proposed a $500,000 organizing drive among agricultural workers (Jan 6); see also a letter from Mitchell to Churchill on the current status of the negotiations with Meany (Feb 9). There is an interesting exchange between the USES and Mitchell on an attempt by the US Sugar Corp. to recruit workers in Memphis, in which Mitchell claimed that the company deliberately sabotaged its own recruitment efforts in order to procure Jamaican workers through USES (Jan 9, Feb 11). The papers also contain a lengthy report from Galarza on "The Status on the Wetback Problem in the Imperial Valley" (Feb. 25), as well as a Department of Labor survey on labor needs in the Valley from January to June, 1953 (Jan 19)