05. Melons

Melons of all sorts were grown in Chandler as a cash crop.  National companies offered Chandler farmers lucrative deals for planting melons, with more money at harvest.  Above, unidentified farm workers pose with a pile of watermelons on the Sossaman farm.  On it is written “’our bread + butter’ 1918.”  In a photograph taken from a Chandler Improvement Company promotional booklet, laborers pick and pack a bountiful crop of cantaloupe melons.