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It's canned peas for the New York market.

That, of course, made the relationship between the man who worked inside the factory under cover, operating the shellers, or the cappers, or keeping up the heat in the steam baths, very close to the one who was bringing the peas in in trucks and the one out in the field picking the peas. You saw that they were all working on the same process, the object being to make a can of peas - not doing what used to be called agricultural work.

That was a new thing in American life. It was brought pretty well to light by the people who worked in this FSA. It was not a Southern thing, but this western crop thing, and included Florida, where they had almost the same conditions, but never on quite so big a scale. That was widespread in the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. That only began to be exploited in the 1920s. When I went to Corpus Christi early in the thirties, it was still the thing to say,” Now, don't you want to come down and see the train come in from the valley?”

I didn't know what train and said, “What train?”

“Oh, the great express, the fruit and vegetable express from the valley. It goes right straight through on this track, like chain lightning, all the way to New York.”