Emergency labor program 1942 wheat

This is a bonus post to our symposium on inflation. Read the rest of the symposium here.

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Historians and economists frequently invoke the World War II-era Office of Price Administration (OPA) as the sole exception to the general rule against price control. Under its contribution to the national mobilization program, the price level remained largely stable, with the consumption basket tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for low- and moderate-income families rising just 12 percent between May 1942, the month of the first across-the-board price freeze, and January 1946—an annualized rate of around 3.3 percent. During the five years of wartime mobilization, national output more than doubled, unemployment dipped below 2 percent, real civilian consumption increased by 50 percent, and the labor share of national income grew. Annual federal budget deficits ranged from 12.7 to 27.5 percent of GDP during these years.

The performance would not have been so impressive, however, were it not for changes to legislation authorizing the OPA program—amendments known as the Stabilization Act of October 1942. As originally crafted in the summer before Pearl Harbor, the Emergency Price Control Act (EPCA) introduced fundamental problems into the national plan that were as severe in their political consequences as those economic risks it sought to guard against. This post concerns one lesson of the World War II stabilization program: if inflation is to be avoided at levels of demand necessary to maximize employment of labor and existing productive capacity, then national planning must come to exercise influence over sector-specific programs. During the World War II stabilization program, this necessity was most evident in the conflict between the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), responsible for managing agricultural production and income, and the OPA, responsible for stabilizing prices.

For nine months after the EPCA’s passage in January 1942, the price

1942–1964 migrant worker program

The Bracero Program (from the Spanish term bracero[bɾaˈse.ɾo], meaning "manual laborer" or "one who works using his arms") was a U.S. Government-sponsored program that imported Mexicanfarm and railroad workers into the United States between the years 1942 and 1964.

The program, which was designed to fill agriculture shortages during World War II, offered employment contracts to 5 million braceros in 24 U.S. states. It was the largest guest worker program in U.S. history.

The program was the result of a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico. For these farmworkers, the agreement guaranteed decent living conditions (sanitation, adequate shelter, and food) and a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour, as well as protections from forced military service, and guaranteed that a part of wages was to be put into a private savings account in Mexico. The program also allowed the importation of contract laborers from Guam as a temporary measure during the early phases of World War II.

The agreement was extended with the Migrant Labor Agreement of 1951 (Pub. L. 82–78), enacted as an amendment to the Agricultural Act of 1949 by the United States Congress, which set the official parameters for the Bracero Program until its termination in 1964.

In studies published in 2018 and 2023, it was found that the Bracero Program did not have an adverse effect on the wages or employment for American-born farm workers, and that termination of the program had adverse impact on American-born farmers and resulted in increased farm mechanization.

Since abolition of the Bracero Program, temporary agricultural workers have been admitted with H-2 and H-2A visas.

Introduction

The Bracero Program operated as a joint program

The Women’s Land Army During World War II

Winter 1993 Prologue Vol. 25, no. 4

By Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith

© 1993 by Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith

We're working for Victory, too; growing food for ourselves and our countrymen. While other women work at machines and in factories—we're soldiers in overalls. . . . We're running the place while Dad's away.

—Toni Taylor, "Women on the Home Front,"
McCall's, May 1942.

I noticed on the farms, mostly the little ones with just a shack for a house, there seems to be no one but the women left to do the work. You see them taking care of cattle, etc. It makes me proud to see how the women have picked up where the men left off and are keeping the home fires burning.

—Mabel Opal Miller to Pvt. Ivan Johnson
Letter of September 6, 1944.1

One of the least known aspects of World War II in the United States is the crucial role played by the many women who plowed the ground, planted the seeds, cultivated the plants, and harvested much of the nation's crops from 1942 through 1945. Without their contributions, food would have been even scarcer, both at home and on the fighting fronts. The physical well-being of the combat forces would have been less. America's allies would have suffered greater privations than they did. Rationing, price controls, and dietary changes designed to meet food shortages would have been harder to bear. That this did not happen is a remarkable tribute to the women of the United States who, in response to great need, created a grassroots movement that came "to the rescue of the crops."2 Whether the forces consisted of farm wives driving tractors, college women milking cows, housewives picking apples, or secretaries spending summer vacations harvesting vegetables, these workers responded with energy and ingenuity to the wartime need for farm labor.

On Farm Mobilization Day, January 12, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt deliver

In 1939 when World War II began in Europe nearly all Great Plains Farmers wanted to stay out of the conflict. They feared the loss of life, particularly their sons, if the United States became involved. They also remembered the collapse of the agricultural economy after World War II. Still, many farm men and women considered the war an opportunity for the United States to sell surplus, price-depressing agricultural commodities to Great Britain and France. Wartime demands, they hoped, would increase farm prices and improve their income and the standard of living for farm families across the Great Plains. The editor of the Nebraska Farmer contended that a long war would bring prosperity to farmers because the belligerent nations would turn to the United States for agricultural commodities that they could no longer produce in order to feed their people.

Although agricultural prices, particularly grain and livestock increased during the autumn of 1939, most farmers anxiously awaited major price increases for farm products. By early spring 1940, however, the Nebraska Farmer reported that the war had not "lived up to the expectations of those who looked for a boom in exports of farm products." Britain and France continued to spend more for armaments than American farm commodities. As a result, by late 1940, only government buying, commodity loans, and export subsidies kept agricultural prices from falling due to a loss of foreign markets, primarily due to German and British blockades.

By mid-1941, however, increased British demands for food as well as an expanding U.S. military had substantially increased agricultural prices. Farmers now enjoyed 25 percent more purchasing power than during the previous year, and agricultural experts predicted another 25 percent increase the next year. In September 1941, Great Plains farmers became even more optimistic when Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard called for "the largest production in the history of Ame