serve as a key to the social character of the communities of the San Joaquin Valley. I can now report that the Arvin baby buggy-whisky index is 103 as compared with an index for Dinuba of 232.

Seriously, in Arvin $103 is spent for household goods, furniture, and building supplies for every $100 spent for package liquor and at places selling on-sale liquor. In Dinuba $232 are spent in the household category for each $100 spent in these liquor sales establishments. Chart 4 shows the proportion of the retail sales reported by major classes of enterprise. Note that 36 percent of retail sales in Arvin-this was 1942-43-was for automobiles, auto supplies, gasoline, and equipment and 9 percent for liquor. In Dinuba these items account for but 22 percent and 7 percent, respectively. Food, likewise, consumes far less of the individual's dollar, while clothing, household supplies, and agricultural supplies receive a greater proportion of expenditure in Dinuba.

Chart 5 shows the actual dollar volume of sales by major classes of enterprise. In each case Dinuba sales are the greater, though on a per capita basis the sales of automobiles and automotive supplies are greater in Arvin, while food and liquor are virtually the same.

(5) Social conditions

Thus far we have discussed almost exclusively the economic differences between Arvin and Dinuba; what of the social ones, which are our major concern?

The very appearance of the two communities differs. Arvin has no fully paved streets, nor any sidewalks; Dinuba has almost no unpaved streets, sidewalks are the general rule, and there are electric lights on both sides of almost every street. In Arvin the houses are mostly crowded together, while in Dinuba they are usually separated by adequate grounds. Arvin has but three brick business buildings while Dinuba has dozens. These physical features are so significantly different that the casual visitor doesn't realize that the two towns are in the same size class and are the marketing center for producing about the same dollar volume of agricultural products.

In Arvin I spoke with a woman, obviously a migrant from Oklahoma, about her town. She had a clerical job in the community, and seemed to feel Arvin her home, and when I asked her why its business district was so poor she said, “It's mostly that people don't feel permanent here. Now, we came here 9 years ago and we never expected to be permanent here. People feel transient here." She went on to complain that it was no place to raise up a girl (like the one who was with her) nor her boy who is 16 and in high school. Her feeling is not unique. One of the large farm operators who has functioned as a real community leader in Arvin, is planning to leave the community and operate as an absentee landlord because of the inadequate facilities the community offers his growing children. Not all residents can afford to move away.

Contrast this with Dinuba. One man I interviewed had recently sought that community as a place to establish a business-he had traveled throughout the West as the representative of a large corporation and therefore knew western towns-because he felt that it was an ideal place to raise a family.

These are not my judgments, but the judgments of persons who know the communities more intimately than I could get to know them.

Statistical analyses support these generalizations. On the basis of material possessions of families interviewed, a level of living scale was established, based upon a series of material possessions and weighted in inverse geometric proportion to their frequency of occurrence. On a scale of 100, the median level of living value in Arvin is 52; in Dinuba is 69. Thus, the same volume of farm production supports about 15 percent more people at an appreciably higher average level of living in Dinuba than it does in Arvin.

The opportunities for social contacts, the number of clubs, lodges, social gatherings, and churches are greatly different in the two communities. The social poverty of the great bulk of the Arvin population is more evident than their material poverty. There are no media for social action and social betterment of the laboring group in that community. In Arvin there are 4 clubs which meet for social or semisocial purposes. Two of these are men's service clubs: The Lions and the local organization called Boosters. In neither of these are there any laborer members. The Farm Bureau is made up largely of farmers, though there are a few sustaining nonfarm members, but these are not laborers. Six laborers (of the 47 whose occupation was determined) belong to the parentteacher association. This is the extent of the social participation of that twothirds of the population who receive their livelihood from farm labor in Arvin.

DISTRIBUTION OF RETAIL SALES AMONG
VARIOUS CLASSES OF
OF ENTERPRISE

SOURCE: GROSS VOLUME OF SALES REPORTED TO CALIFORNIA STATE BOARD OF EQUALIZATION.

FIGURE 4

In the churches the social segregation is equally marked. One church serves the merchant-farmer class, and only one family which derives its income from farm labor and this a foreman's job-belongs to this congregation. The remainder of the churches serve almost exclusively the laboring classes. Two of these have members who operate small businesses and farms, but most of them are laborers. The other Protestant churches exclusively serve the laboring classes while the Catholic church serves a mixed group, predominantly Mexican laborer. Except for these, the churches are housed in unpainted or poorly painted frame structures.

Dinuba is not without its social hierarchy, but the cleavages of club and church are less marked. In the first place there are far more clubs and churches. Where one church served predominantly the stable Arvin population, four served this

group in Dinuba; where three churches had somewhat mixed congregations in Arvin, six served in Dinuba; and where three served the laboring group exclusively in Arvin, there were five serving that segment of the Dinuba population together with minority groups. As with business houses, churches were at a ratio of

over 2:1.

Dinuba has five service and commercial organizations, Arvin two; two fraternal orders, Arvin none; four women's clubs, Arvin none; two Scout troops (each with its own building), Arvin one (without any of its own facilities). It is clear that all age and sex groups have more opportunity for social activity in the one than in the other community.

One of the most significant differences between these two communities is that one is incorporated while the other is not. Dinuba has been incorporated for

DOLLAR VOLUME OF SALES REPORTED IN MAJOR
CLASSES OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

RETAIL FOOD
AND
RESTAURANTS

AGRICULTURAL
SUPPLIES

AUTOMOTIVE
SUPPLIES

PACKAGE
AND ON-SALE
LIQUORS

MISCELLANEOUS

CLOTHING,
SPORTING GOODS
AND JEWELRY

FIGURE 5

nearly 40 years, and all her civic decisions are therefore made by American democratic processes and by local action. Arvin is not incorporated, and thus has very little local civic democratic processes. The full meaning of this difference must be understood in terms of the actual nature of local civic activities. It is highly significant that at a meeting of one of the Arvin civic organizations an organization which includes no representatives of that four-fifths of the population who are laborers, remember a county official asked the organization to let him know how it wanted the law administered.

These are some of the more obvious differences between Arvin and Dinuba. They are merely representative of those vast differences that are observable to any visitor to the two communities. Many other important differentials, many more details, could be supplied.

CAUSAL FACTORS

This comparison between Arvin and Dinuba has been made, not to cast aspersions upon one or to laud the other, but to understand the extent to which size of farming operations contributes to the establishment of the particular character of the community. We are all aware that communities differ. San Franciscans point with pride to the differences between their city and its sister city in California. We all make judgments about the relative differences between, say, Stockton, Fresno, and Bakersfield. Nobody would doubt, either, that the differences I have enumerated for Arvin and Dinuba are valid. The casual visitor would insist that I have understated these differences, and perhaps I have. The crux of the matter is the causal factor. The same visitor would say Arvin is much smaller perhaps a fourth the size of Dinuba. When disabused of this error,

he might insist on relative poverty. He would insist that there is no economic base for a community like Dinuba. But here, too, our visitor would be wrong, as we have seen.

What, then, makes Arvin like Arvin rather than like Dinuba? How can the differences be explained? Several causes come to mind: (1) The history of the community, (2) the character of its people, (3) the character of its farming operations, which again divides into two possibilities (a) the type of crops grown and (b) the size of operations. It is my thesis that while all of these possible causes may have some contributory influence certain minor effects-the basic cause, the one all-important cause is the last, size of farm operations. Let us consider the several causes.

Arvin is 20 to 25 years younger than Dinuba. The accompanying growth of average daily attendance in the elementary schools shows this relationship (chart 7). The Arvin data have been shifted over 20 years, and when this is done the growth curves are quite parallel. If history were to account for the changes, one would have to expect the development of institutions at comparable points in time on a growth curve scale. On the chart some historical landmarks can be indicated for Dinuba: Incorporation in 1906, first bank in 1902, second bank in 1910, first newspaper in 1897, second in 1903, first påving and sewers in 1915, a park as early as 1900. By this time adjustment, Arvin should have incorporated in 1926, had a bank in 1922 and a second one by 1930, had paved streets and sewers in 1935. Except for sewers, built in about 1940, and a newspaper in about 1938 none of these institutions or services exists in Arvin at the present time. Though some of these differences reflect the differences between before and after World War I, not all of them militate in favor of Dinuba, and other small farm communities, such as Wasco, have grown up at the same time as Arvin, and have many more of the institutions and services that characterize Dinuba than Arvin possesses at present. Though some of the differences can be attributed to their history, the essential differences cannot be attributed to this cause.

The farming population in Arvin and Dinuba are very similar. As a matter of fact, very many Dinuba people, I discovered, went to Arvin to farm. Therefore it is difficult to think that they are responsible for the differences I have described. It will be said that the fact that there are a large number of "Okies" in Arvin is responsible for its poverty of social conditions. This is a truth-a partial truth. The "Okie" as the white migrant family laborer in California has come to be called, has a poor educational and social background and a low interest in social affairs. Except for his church he has not brought any social institutions into the community. But two things must be remembered: (1) That he is generally excluded from participating in the established institutions of Arvin, and (2) it is the existence of large farms which establishes the predominance of these Okies in the population. Thus it is that large farms, by attracting the residual groups in our population, are responsible for the conditions which set Arvin off from Dinuba.

As to whether the type of farming or the size of operations is the responsible agent, I can see no argument. In the first place, I can see no significant social differences between the cultivation of cotton and the cultivation of grapes; in the second, there are acreages of both and merely differences in proportions. Finally, look elsewhere. Westley, Calif., is dependent upon the cultivation of fruit in big tracts, Wasco (which stands between Arvin and Dinuba both in size of farms and in social conditions) has mostly field crops. If you know these two communities, you will realize that both Arvin and Dinuba conditions exist elsewhere, without respect to the kind of production. Considering the higher specialization in Dinuba, you would expect worse social conditions in that community. Size of farms differ markedly in these two communities. The family operation predominates in one, the large-scale enterprise in the other. This difference, by any reasonable measurement is a difference of at least 3:1.

The result of these differences is that in one community most of the population is independently employed and has a reasonable degree of economic security and social stability, whereas in the other most of the people are dependent upon wages and stand in subordinate relationship to the few, with the result that they have little economic security and no social stability. As an Arvin merchant told me, "Nobody builds in Arvin for permanence. The laborers don't expect to stay here, the farmers figure on making a killing, and the merchants won't invest any money in their stores because they want to make their money and get out. is why we don't have much of a community here."

That

Size of farming operations is, then, the basic cause of the impoverished social conditions in Arvin as contrasted with Dinuba.