Lettuce Carrier

Description:

The Emergency Farm Labor Program, or the Bracero Program, brought laborers from Mexico to the United States on short-term contracts between 1942 and 1964. In the lettuce fields of Stanislaus and Imperial Counties in California, field laborers used small, square wheel barrows, called humps to pack and move boxes of lettuce. Each box held about twenty-four or thirty heads. This hump was used in the California fields of the Jerry Pepelis Packing Company from 1960 until 1964, when the Bracero Program ended. By then, humps were abandoned for more efficient, automated methods of harvesting.

Subject: Food Culture

Subject:

See more items in: Work and Industry: Agriculture, Food, FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000

Exhibition: Food: Transforming the American Table

Exhibition Location: National Museum of American History

Credit Line: gift of Jerry Pepelis

Data Source: National Museum of American History

Id Number: 2012.0054.01Accession Number: 2012.0054Catalog Number: 2012.0054.01

Object Name: lettuce hump

Physical Description: metal (overall material)paint (overall material)rubber (overall material)Measurements: overall: lettuce hump frame: 22 7/8 in x 15 3/16 in; 58.1025 cm x 38.57625 cmoverall: lettuce hump wheel: 11 3/4 in; 29.845 cmoverall: individual boxes (flat): 36 3/4 in x 25 1/4 in; 93.345 cm x 64.135 cm

Guid: http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746ad-98e3-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa

Record Id: nmah_1417332

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