On November 21, 1960—the day aft er Th anksgiving—many Americans tuned their televisions to CBS to watch Harvest of Shame . Trusted broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow spent the next hour in a documentary exposé of farmworker conditions. The program opened with a farmworker crew shape-up in Florida, labor contractors hawking promises of good earnings. As a truck crammed full of twenty migrant workers drove off, Murrow quoted a farmer: “We used to own our slaves. Now we just rent them.” Aft er detailing migrant workers’ hardships and highlighting the fact that those same workers harvested the food viewers ate the previous night for their feasts, Murrow closed the program with an appeal: “The migrants have no lobby,” he said. “They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do.” 1 Although farmworkers lacked lobbying clout, they had an ally in James P. Mitchell, President Eisenhower’s labor secretary. Over the objections of the congressional farm bloc and Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, Mitchell worked to do what he could to improve the lives of the nation’s farmworkers, and Murrow featured him in Harvest of Shame. Secretary Mitchell spoke movingly about the migrant workers’ problems. Referring to farmworkers as “excluded Americans,” Mitchell called their plight “a shame in

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通过客工政策倡导农场工人：劳工部长 James P. Mitchell 和 Bracero 计划

1960 年 11 月 21 日——感恩节后的第二天——许多美国人将电视调到 CBS 上观看《耻辱收割》。值得信赖的广播记者爱德华·默罗 (Edward R. Murrow) 在接下来的一个小时里拍摄了一部关于农场工人状况的纪录片。该计划以佛罗里达州的农场工人队伍开始，劳务承包商兜售丰厚的收入承诺。当一辆装满 20 名农民工的卡车开走时，默罗引用了一位农民的话：“我们曾经拥有自己的奴隶。现在我们只是租用它们。” 在详细介绍了农民工的艰辛并强调了这些工人收获了前一天晚上观众为他们的盛宴而吃的食物这一事实之后，默罗以呼吁结束了该计划：“移民没有游说，”他说。“他们没有力量影响立法。也许我们会。” 1 虽然农场工人缺乏游说影响力，他们在艾森豪威尔总统的劳工部长詹姆斯·P·米切尔 (James P. Mitchell) 中有一个盟友。不顾国会农场集团和农业部长埃兹拉·塔夫脱·本森的反对，米切尔努力尽其所能改善全国农场工人的生活，而默罗则在《耻辱收割》中介绍了他。米切尔部长感人地谈到了农民工的问题。米切尔将农场工人称为“被排斥的美国人”，称他们的困境“在