With the advent of modern mechanization, coupled with improvements in sugar beet seeds, growers no longer rely on hand labor in the beet fields to produce a crop. However, hand labor used to play a major role in growing sugar beets, and without field hands, growers could not have grown a good crop.

Santos Carranza, who joined the Sidney Holly work force as summer help in 1942, then became a permanent staff member in 1944, knows all about the itinerant labor work force. Carranza spent 27 years, from 1947 until 1974, recruiting the migrant labor force from Texas needed to work in the Holly area sugar beet fields. For two years prior to that, he oversaw the Mexican National summer labor force, recruited to work as field hands in the Sidney area during the war.

Mexican nationals were used during World War II, as most U.S. industry suffered from a severe labor shortage. The U.S. introduced a Mexican National program, which allowed Mexican nationals to enter the U.S. on a temporary basis to assist in field work. "Unfortunately," recalls Carranza, "the people who recruited the Mexican work force forgot to ask them if they spoke English. I acted as an interpreter for the Mexican people who came to work in this area, being a liaison between workers and growers."

Carranza also assisted the Mexican laborers in dealing with the everyday problems facing them, such as buying food, understanding local laws and dealing with doctors.

About 1,500 Mexican laborers took advantage of this program, arriving in Sidney to help with planting and thinning in the spring, then returning in the fall to assist with harvest. Laborers at that time arrived by train. Carranza assigned workers to area growers, based on the number of beet acres of each individual grower. His area of responsibility extended from Forsyth to Oswego. "I put in a lot of 28- hour days," he jokes.

After the war ended, Congress quit importing labor from Mexico. This left the sugar growing areas with a severe shortage of field workers. In 1947, Carranza accepted the task of recruiting labor from Texas for all of the Holly sugar factories in the region. He earned his license as a Texas state labor agent, and spent the three months of April, May and June of every year for the next 27 years traveling to 8 locations in south Texas recruiting field labor for the six Holly sugar growing areas in a three state region. At that time, Holly had plants not only in Sidney, Torrington and Worland, WY, but also had a plant in Hardin, MT, and two factories in Colorado, Swink and Delta. "I was a Sidney Holly Sugar employee for nine months of the year, but for that three-month recruiting period, I worked and recruited for all six factory areas in the three-state region," Carranza states.

Carranza recruited approximately 6,000 Texas field hands, which satisfied the needs of all six of the three state Holly beet growing areas. These workers helped during the spring and returned again in the fall to help with harvest.

The Holly Sugar Corporation wasn't the only sugar company recruiting Texas labor. "It was a dog eat dog business," Carranza says. "Lots of sugar companies competed for the Texas labor supply, and companies thought nothing of stealing workers from one another if they could."

However, Holly Sugar, through Carranza, had a bit of an advantage over other sugar companies. Carranza had worked beets himself, so he knew a lot of the Texas laborers personally. He knew which laborers worked hard and got the job done, so he concentrated his efforts to secure these good workers for the Holly area beet fields.

When Carranza left for Texas each April, he took with him orders from the six Holly sugar plants for the number of field hands needed by each of the individual factory areas. He also had a budget, given to him by the agriculture superintendent of the Holly Sugar Corporation in Colorado Springs. He needed such a budget to complete the recruiting process.

When Carranza signed up field workers, his job had just begun. Once workers had signed on, Carranza had to determine in which of the six areas the laborers preferred to work. Carranza then had the responsibility of advancing these workers enough money to make the trip to the beet fields. "They needed money to get here," Carranza explains. "They might need money for tires for their vehicles, or for licenses, plus they needed money to make the actual trip. Holly Sugar advanced them the money to get here. We financed them from the time they left home until they reached their destination."

Once the laborers arrived at the beet fields, growers paid them for working the fields.

arranza did have workers who took the money and never showed up for work. "That was the hardest part of the job, advancing them the cost of making the trip," Carranza acknowledges. "It was a gamble. We just had a verbal agreement, and there were no guarantees."

Most years, Carranza didn't have too many problems with losing his advance money. However, 1970 turned out to be his worst year. "Competition among sugar companies was very fierce that year," Carranza recalls. "That was my worst year for no-shows."

"Recruiting was nerve-wracking," he admits. "It wasn't physically tough, but it was hard on the nerves. I had a lot of responsibility, especially with handling the money entrusted to me."

The migrant workers drove their own vehicles from Texas to the sugar beet fields in Wyoming, Colorado and Montana. The field hands worked from May to early July, then left to follow up vegetable crops in other regions. They returned to the beet fields in mid September to help with the harvest.

When Carranza's recruiting duties ended in Texas in June, he spent the rest of the summer maintaining peace between growers and laborers, arbitrating any disagreements that arose. "Most disagreements that arose were misunderstandings and were settled easily," Carranza says. "The biggest arguments occurred over wage disputes."

Carranza recalls measuring many beet fields to settle wage disagreements. "There were set rates for hoeing and thinning," he explains. "I would measure fields to settle these arguments over money." He laughs and adds, "I was glad to see winter come."

Besides his recruitment responsibilities with Holly Sugar, Carranza also had other duties with Holly Sugar. When not arbitrating disputes during the growing season, Carranza worked as a mechanic on the beet pilers, repairing and maintaining them for use at the fall harvest. "I liked working on the pilers," Carranza says. "It was peaceful and I felt that I accomplished something."

Every fall, Carranza supervised and maintained the tare house, as it was called then. Over the winter, Carranza operated beet loading equipment. He operated the loader at the beet pile grounds and loaded trucks which hauled the beets to the factory, and he also operated equipment to load wet beet pulp into farm trucks for the growers. "Holly used to sell wet beet pulp to growers," Carranza says. "Now Holly dries the pulp and makes pellets, and no longer has wet beet pulp for sale."

Carranza made his last recruiting trip to Texas in 1974. "We still used field labor, but I no longer needed to recruit," he comments. "By then, the use of field labor had begun to decrease, and growers generally had arrangements with particular migrant families, employing them every year."

Carranza feels the most dramatic changes occurred in the sugar beet industry with the introduction of improved beet seed and with new mechanization. Both of these factors virtually eliminated the need for field labor. "The single germ seed, better farming practices, and greatly improved harvesting machinery spelled the end of labor recruitment," Carranza notes. "These improvements greatly changed farming methods."

Carranza continued to work for Sidney Holly Sugar until his retirement in 1977. When he retired, Carranza held the position of agriculturist in charge of the Sidney factory beet receiving station.

Carranza feels one of his most important accomplishments during his tenure with Holly Sugar occurred in 1943. That year, he, along with the help of four Mexican laborers, finished building the first receiving station at Marley. "We built the whole thing," he says with pride. "We worked the spring and fall of 1942, and completed the project in time for the '43 beet harvest."

Carranza found two Mexican nationals who had excellent carpentry skills, and two Mexican nationals who had skills in concrete work. Together, the five men built the beet receiving station. "I take pride in this accomplishment," he states.

All in all, Carranza enjoyed his years with Holly Sugar. "I enjoyed my job," he says. "The work was never the same, I had something different to do all the time. It was a very interesting job."