The C.C. Morse Company wasnt the only seed farm in the South Santa Clara and San Benito County region, but in its day was one of the first, the largest, and most innovative in seed cultivation and plant breeding. Its founder, Maine-born Charles Copeland Morse, had first come to California in 1862. After mining in Nevada, then working at Henry Rengstorffs Mountain View hay farm, in 1874 Morse went into the seed business with a partner, A.L. Kellogg. Three years later, the two men bought out a seed business in Santa Clara, later enlarging the operation with additional land purchases in the Mountain View area. By 1884, Charles Morse had bought out Kellogg and formed his own company. When he died in 1900 at the age of 58, his son, Lester L. Morse, took over the business. Besides his field work in developing new varieties of lettuce, onion and sweet peas, Lester Morse expanded the companys operation by purchasing several local seed companies in the South Santa Clara County-San Benito County area. In 1910, the C.C. Morse Company expanded again, this time buying 900 acres of the San Justo Ranch, located along Highway 156 between San Juan Bautista and Hollister. From that time on, growing operations for the company were headquartered at the ranch, which by 1930 had merged with the D.M. Ferry Company of Detroit, Michigan under the name Ferry-Morse Seed Company. The company farmed a total of about 1,800 acres in the Santa Clara-San Benito County area. Other early seed companies in the region included the San Jose-based Braslan Seed Growers Inc., founded in 1892, which leased ranches in both Santa Clara and San Benito Counties, and the Waldo Rohnert Co. of Gilroy. Rohnert, who had been a superintendent overseeing seed production for the C.C. Morse Co.s Gilroy farm, later established his own flower and vegetable seed company. The Pieters-Wheeler Co. of Gilroy was named for A.J. Pieters, who founded a Hollister company in 1907, and Lin W. Wheeler, who worked for both Braslan Seed Growers and for A.J. Pieters, and was also a grower for Braslan. In 1910 Mr. Wheeler purchased the A.J. Pieters Seed Co. Under the new name, Pieters-Wheeler Seed Co. of Hollister, the company which grew both vegetable and flower seeds, in 1913 located permanently in Gilroy. Following Mr. Wheelers 1944 death in an automobile accident, the firm was taken over by John B. Scherrer. Another company, California Seed Growers of San Jose, which operated at both Hollister and Coyote, went out of business in 1931. The C.C. Morse Seed Companys Early Years Early laborers at the Gilroy area seed farms were Chinese immigrants. According to Frank Cuthbertson, former Executive Vice-President of Ferry-Morse Seed Co., Readily available Chinese labor allowed for very fine garden farming to keep fields free of weeds by constantly hoeing to keep weed seeds out. Chinese were natural gardeners, thorough and careful in planting, growing and harvesting the seed crops. One of the first Chinese foreman was Ah Hem, who formerly was the foreman for a crew of Chinese laborers who worked for Mr. Leland Stanford at Palo Alto.1 The Morse Companys San Juan Ranch supervisor, Ah Hem, had first gone to work for Mr. C.C. Morse in 1877.2 It is interesting to note that his prior employer was Leland Stanford, whose Palo Alto farm had been established in 1870. Prior to this date, information about when he arrived in the United States, or how he came to work or Leland Stanfordd, is not known. At the Morse Companys San Juan Ranch, Ah Hem oversaw an average of 80 to 150 Chinese workers who were seasonally tasked with meticulous hoeing. The specialty was known as rouging, for the rogue weeds which, if allowed to proliferate, could ruin a seed crop. Growers depended on the Chinese laborers exacting work. According to Cuthbertson, The rouging of seed crops in the early days was usually done by a crew of Chinamen, under direction of a trained and experienced foreman. The Chinese were very good roguers as they seemed to have a very good eye for highly trained crew. Plant breeding is a very expensive part of modem seed growing business.3 The entire cultivation process, from planting, to tending the growing plants, to harvesting the seed crops, required reliance on the Chinese workers care and thoroughness. Despite the companys dependence on them, pay and working hours during the era, according to Cuthbertson, were unequal to the wages of their white counterparts. While Chinese laborers earned 10 cents an hour, putting in ll-hour days during the harvest season, white workers were used as teamsters, and worked a 10-hour day, earning $1.00 in per diem wages. Room and board for workers were figured at 50 cents per day. On wet days when the land couldnt be worked, the teamsters got room and board only for taking care of the horses. The Chinese workers, who lived in separate bunkhouses, had their own kitchen and cooked for themselves. Work was labor-intensive. While a team-driven mowing machine was used for some harvesting, the workers also spent long days harvesting with hand-held sickles for cutting some crops. In the early, pre-mechanized days, the Morse ranch kept 100 horses to operate the cultivation equipment. After a crop was harvested, laborers carried out the initial steps in the field, flailing and screen-cleaning the seeds, then passing them through a hand-powered cleaning mill. Before the grain thresher was introduced, dry crops were flailed on a 40 x 40 canvas by crews of 6 to 8 men. By todays standards, the work was time-consuming and very hard. According to Cuthbertson, after removal of chaff and dust, The seed was sacked and delivered to a 4-story cleaning plant for final processing. Today, all mechanized cleaning is done at the plant where seeds are put into a hopper at one end of a I-story building and run through the process, emerging sacked and ready for shipment at the other end. Irrigation methods, unlike todays sophisticated deep well irrigation, were primitive as well, depending in the early years on rainfall and drainage. Although fertilization is today considered indispensable for its highly technical and predictable results, its use was not standard practice in the early seed industry, particularly not prior to 1925. When fertilization was used, stock manure was the common choice until 1935, when commercial fertilizer was introduced. It was the early Chinese workers who helped make the C.C. Morse Company, and other local seed companies, into the successful enterprises they became. On July 15, 1899, the Gilroy Advocate published a long report on a group of 150 delegates to the convention of the Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experimental Stations who, as guests of the San Jose Board of Trade, spent an afternoon touring the South Santa Clara Valley agricultural areas. It was an event in which Ah Hem, and his workers, played a role. The event was also attended by my great-grandfather, Dr. Heverland Chesbro, who was at the time Gilroys Mayor. According to the report, The visits of these delegates to Santa Clara Valley is perhaps the most important event of the kind this county has yet experienced and a great amount of good will follow. The resources of the county will be advertised far and wide. On leaving San Jose the special train arrived at Carnadero about 6 oclock. Mr. Lester Morse arranged a fine dinner for the distinguished party, and showed them over his seed farm, which is the largest in the world. The gentlemen were delighted with the entertainment and expressed themselves as surprised and pleased at the wonderful adaptability of the soil. Several prominent gentlemen from Gilroy also enjoyed Mr. Morses hospitality. The visitors were given the liberty of plucking all the sweet peas they could carry, and the ladies were charmed with the beautiful fields of flowers. Dr. Stubbs of Reno, Nevada, President of the Convention, made a neat speech in which he voiced the sentiments of the visitors to California. Dr. Jesse, President of the Missouri State University, also thanked Mr. Morse for his generous hospitality. Mayor Chesbro made a happy speech in which he expressed the pleasure it offered our people to meet such an intelligent body of men and women. He was glad they had an opportunity of seeing what Santa Clara Valley could produce. Mr. Morse presented each guest with a package of choice seed grown here, and the Chinese Superintendent, Ah Hem, presented each with a package of choice tea. One of the interesting features to the Easterners was the firing of two long strings of firecrackers by the Chinese. The entire body gave the following yell as they boarded the train: Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Morse! Morse! Morse! The Messrs. Morse are to be congratulated on the enterprise displayed in entertaining this fine body of men and women from all over the country, and it is safe to predict their visit to this great seed farm will result in a greater demand than ever before for Morse & Co.s seeds. Further editorial praise for the local seed industry was offered six years later. Calling the Gilroy area The Paradise for Seedmen, the Gilroy Gazette, in its October 6,1905 issue noted, South Santa Clara County is indeed fast becoming the seedmens home. Those interested in the cultivation of seeds are becoming more impressed each year with the advantages offered along these lines by this portion of our valley. The fertility of the soil, our climatic conditions favoring the proper drying of the seeds and other advantages have been given due attention.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 04:46:49 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015