

BACKGROUND OF THE BRENTWOOD PLAN 



Baum: 



Miller: 





I thought we'd start with the beginnings of the 

 Brentwood plan. I believe the whole thing started 

 with the trouble in 1934* This was before you were 

 sheriff? 



Yes. The sheriff of Contra Costa County, whom I 

 succeeded, had been sheriff for forty years, and 

 of course more or less operated in horse and buggy 

 style. He was a wonderful gentleman, perhaps the 

 best sheriff we ever had, but the transition had 

 not taken place yet when I was elected. 



In 1934 there was the birth of a new group of 

 labor people trying to organize groups that hereto- 

 fore had not been taken into unions, and one of 

 them was the initial effort made to organize the 

 fruit pickers. There was infiltrated into the 

 early movement, of course, certain communistic 

 elements and certain people who were more or less 

 red in nature, and this whole idea of striving to 



