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TEXAS MEXICANS AND COTTON
Cotton was first planted in Texas around 1822 by Stephen F. Austin's settlers, but for many years was mainly restricted to the traditional southern bottom lands of East Texas. However, as early as the 1870s, farmers in the Central Texas town of Georgetown were recruiting wagon-loads of Texas-Mexicans in San Antonio to harvest their cotton. (Coalson 1977:22) In the early 1900s, cotton developed as a cash crop simultaneously in several areas of the state; the Rio Grande Valley-South Texas area, the Gulf Plains around Corpus Christi, a strip of Central Texas from Texarkana in the north, down to San Antonio in the south, and in the High Plains of West Texas. By 1922, two-thirds of the land in Central Texas was planted with cotton, while in West Texas cotton production had edged out cattle ranching as the main industry. (Coalson 1977:1-2)
When farm machinery began to mechanize the production of cotton, farmers were able to plant more acres; however, since the crop had to be completely thinned and harvested by hand. This transition expanded the need for field labor at specific times in the season. (Coalson 1977:5-6) As ranch land was developed into farm land in South Texas, large acreages had to be cleared of scrub brush, mesquite and cactus to allow furrows of cotton to be planted. Texas-Mexicans, who in a generation or so had gone from owning much of the land to being hired laborers on that same land, were used for most of the heavy work of clearing fields for planting. Foley notes that "Clearing the land during the Rancho period required a great deal of hand labor with crude grub hoes. The Mexicano laborers cut down, rooted and dragged the mesquite into piles and burned it. The cactus which was used for cattle feed, was also burned." (Foley 1977:12)
The daily Spanish-language newspaper, La Prensa from San Antonio, often ran ads for land-breaking work similar to this one from May 12, 1920:
NECESITO DESENRAIZADORES para ir a Three Rivers, Texas, para desenraizar 2,000 acres. Precio de $12.00 hasta $40.00 por acre . . . pago con pura plata . . . C. M. Posey (El Pansón) (sic), Three Rivers, Texas.
I NEED LAND-BREAKERS to go to Three...