January and February, 1959, 1959

On January 8, Mitchell met with George Meany, Walter Reuther, A. Philip Randolph, and Leon Schachter to formulate an AFL- CIO program for the organization of farm labor; the papers include a memorandum by Mitchell which gives a full account of the meeting (Jan. 8). On February 5 and 6, the National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor held widely-publicized hearings in Washington; the papers include statements by Mitchell, Galarza, NAWU organizers George Stith and Raul Aguilar, and California peach worker Delmer Berg, speeches by John M. Seabrook, President of Seabrook Farms, and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer William Schnitzler, an illustrated NAWU booklet entitled "The Blight on the Countryside", and a 40-page "Report on Farm Labor" issued by the Committee (Feb. 5 and 6). There are five different sets of minutes of BES Advisory Committee meetings called to discuss the new set of regulations for farm labor recruitment proposed by the Department of Labor (Jan 27; Feb 9, 10, 11, 28). The American Farm Bureau Federation, alarmed by all this activity, sent out a report of its own to its state affiliates on the Advisory Committee hearings and the BES meetings (Feb 13). There is a letter from Mitchell to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. on the account of the STFU which appears in Schlesinger's The Coming of the New Deal (Jan 26), and a set of letters from Mitchell to state officials in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, offering to supply their states with southern farm workers during the coming summer (Feb 13)