Backyard Empire: The U.S. in Latin America · Episode 12 of 14 · 42 min
The Human Machine Behind C&H Sugar: Hawaiʻi's Plantation Labor System
A bag of C&H Pure Cane Sugar from Hawaiʻi was the end of an engineered chain. After Native Hawaiians were dispossessed, a tiny elite planted the islands in cane and imported over 300,000 contract laborers, deliberately separated by ethnicity in housing and pay. The Big Five then built a refinery and marketing cooperative in Crockett, California, until the workforce united under the ILWU after World War II.
Who's who
- Claus Spreckels+2 more episodesSugar King whose mainland refining monopoly C&H was created to challenge
Where it happens
- Crockett, CaliforniaCompany town where C&H refined Hawaiian sugar
- Hawaiʻi+1 more episodeIslands planted in cane by a tiny landowning elite
Timeline
- 1850Masters and Servants Act establishes penal contract labor
- 1906C&H refinery opens at Crockett, California
- 1909-1924Ethnically separate plantation strikes largely defeated
- 1921C&H reorganized as a cooperative
- 1946Multi-ethnic workforce unites under the ILWU in the Great Sugar Strike
- 2017Crockett refinery processes its last Hawaiian sugar
Still debated
Figures such as the claim that a few dozen individuals controlled half the land are approximate. Historians also differ on how deliberately the ethnic wage hierarchy was designed to divide workers.
← PreviousHow Sugar Barons Stole the Hawaiian KingdomNext →How Capital Flight Replaced Private Armies: Maquiladoras and Fast Fashion
