Prior to unionization, agricultural workers, many of whom were undocumented, worked in dismal conditions. Historian F. Arturo Rosales recorded a Federal Project Writer of the period, who stated: "It is sad, yet true, commentary that to the average landowner and grower in California the Mexican was to be placed in much the same category with ranch cattle, with this exception–the cattle were for the most part provided with comparatively better food and water and immeasurably better living accommodations." Growers used cheap Mexican labor to reap bigger profits and, until the 1930s, perceived Mexicans as docile and compliant with their subjugated status because they "did not organize troublesome labor unions, and it was held that he was not educated to the level of unionism." As one grower described, "We want the Mexican because we can treat them as we cannot treat any other living man ... We can control them by keeping them at night behind bolted gates, within a stockade eight feet high, surrounded by barbed wire ... We can make them work under armed guards in the fields."