Contrary to the figure on his pay stub, Oglesby said he got $35 in cash stuffed into an envelope at week's end. Brown said he pocketed $32.06 one week.

The men say Jones did not pay them for all the hours they worked. They say he also docked from their pay the loans and interest he charged them, and billed $30 a week to live in the slum complex.

``They've got a way to make sure you stay in their debt,'' Oglesby said. ``You don't think straight when you're tired and hungry.''

Jones, 40, is known in these parts as ``Too Tall.'' He did not reply to written questions delivered to his house in Hastings, nor did he respond to three requests for an interview placed with his wife, Sylvia.

Jennings, the Jacksonville man recruited near a homeless shelter, said he lived at another Jones compound in Palatka and also sorted potatoes at Bulls-Hit. He said Jones zeroed in on his weakness at that scraggly Jacksonville lot, luring him and four others.

``I've got a deal for you, and y'all can make a lot of money,'' he quoted Jones as saying. ``If you smoke crack, that's the place to be.''

Once he was in Palatka, Jennings said, prostitutes were ready visitors to the housing camp - at a cost. ``They would come there and smoke crack,'' he said.

Jennings is working to get straight at the Trinity Rescue Ministries in Jacksonville. The program supervisor, Cornell Robinson, said: ``They find your weakness and they force this on you.''

The city is a ready target for farm recruiters. The Jacksonville/Duval County hub is home to nearly 15,000 homeless people a year, according to a recent study by the Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition of Jacksonville.

For the homeless who turn to farm work, the cycle can become brutal. Many become fearful of talking publicly.

In late May, The Herald encountered a Jones worker at another of Jones' properties, a house in Hastings. With an elderly man sitting on a porch chair that day, the worker said he had no complaints.

Later that day, the worker was carrying a sack of potatoes back to the house, out of sight of the man in the chair. ``That housing is unfit,'' he said, saying he was billed $30 a week to live there.

Two months later, by chance, The Herald ran into the worker outside a Jacksonville feeding line. Now free of the boss, he said that ``Too Tall'' had recruited him at a soup kitchen with the same tired promises: good pay, nice housing, plentiful food.

``Nothing was true,'' he said. ``It's a death trap. You can't get out of there.''

He said that Jones loaned him money each day, and that a Jones associate loaned him cash each afternoon. Both demanded 100 percent interest. The debts got so heavy, he said, that one week he pocketed $1.08 for six days of work.

``It keeps you in a hole you can never get out of,'' said the worker, who asked that his name not be used.

He said the Jones associate beat him when he didn't have money to repay the debt, hitting him in the face two or three times and knocking him to the ground. ``He told me I better have his money or I'll be in trouble.'' Two days later, he made his midnight exit.

DANGEROUS WORK Injuries and illness are part of the woe some incur

Misery in North Florida isn't limited to Jones' camps, and poverty pay and slum housing are not the only abuses. Many workers, struggling when they start their farm duty, quickly find themselves in dangerous conditions. Injuries, or worse, become part of the trade.

In January, a migrant worker at the nearby Uzzles Labor Camp in Elkton was stabbed to death with a butcher knife after a dispute with another laborer.

Three months later, attorney Butler went to the camp to hand out fliers telling workers of their rights. She was not well received, nor were journalists who accompanied her for this report.

Ron Uzzle, the burly crew boss, became angry when a photographer started snapping pictures. He had little patience for Butler either. ``Does anyone want to talk to these people?'' Uzzle bellowed.

``Hell, no!'' came the reply. Some of his crew members declined fliers from Butler as Uzzle watched. Uzzle refused a request for an interview.

Another nearby complex housed a catalog of pain. To one side of that squat blue building, Butler inspected farmworker William Durham, who pulled up his shirt to expose a stomach covered by an unsightly, itchy white rash.

Durham feared that the rash came from pesticides. ``It did happen on the job,'' he told Butler. She took his story and his picture.

Nearby, Richard Williams, 53, a picker for nine years, worked without a right forefinger.

Wearing a T-shirt that said ``Nature Can't Be Restocked,'' Williams said he thinks pesticides got under his fingernail as he picked winter cabbage in North Carolina in 2001.

``By the time I got here, it was too late,'' he said. The finger was amputated.

Butler took his information. Another potential case at a camp oozing booze and misery.

William Anderson said he heard the promises at a Tampa Salvation Army shelter and went to a camp run by Ronald Evans, a veteran East Palatka contractor. Evans did not reply to four interview requests, nor respond to written questions.

``A van rolled around,'' Anderson recounted. ``They said, `Are you looking for work? . . . We've got a swimming pool.' When we got there, it was more like a slave camp. After he gets you there, he's got you.''

At night at the camp, next to the dinner line, more goods were for sale. ``You get your cigarettes, your beer and your drugs. Everything was there on the camp,'' Anderson said from an upstate shelter, to which he turned after leaving.

``A couple of guys said they owed $10,000. You might as well owe them your soul, because where can you go?

``I'm not going to sugarcoat it. We were doing what everyone else was doing. You do your beer, your cigarettes and your drugs.''

After four months of work, he left with $90 in his pocket, he said. ``I've been down and out. Right now, I'm sleeping wherever I can.''

Tammy Byrer, executive director of the St. Francis House shelter in St. Augustine, which provides a roof and job counseling for displaced workers like Anderson, said Florida's farmers surely know what's going on.

``Don't ask, don't tell,'' was how she described the prevailing attitude, as volunteers prepared 600 sandwiches delivered daily to area farmworkers.

``Somebody needs to come up to the plate.''

Herald research editor Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this report.

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.repliedToText@

@Nyx.replyAnswerText@

Reply to this Comment @Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@