Sam McVea/Vey

It appears that Sam McVey lived in Oxnard from 1901 to 1904. During that time, Oxnard was a new town which was founded during the late 1890s when a new plant was built to process the sugar beets which were growing on nearby farmland, which is located on the Oxnard Plain, an incredibly productive agricultural area for last 140 years. With the growing of sugar beets in the Oxnard Plain, it meant that there was a dramatic transformation to more intensive agriculture than ranching or a number of other types of farming, much like what was happening in many other agricultural areas of California at the time.

The simple reason for such a transformation was that intensive agriculture in California usually resulted in farmers making far more money from crops grown on their land than ever before . For instance, California's agricultural products have an annual value of about forty billion dollars at the present time while Montana's has an annual value of about four billion dollars. Yet California's land area which is only a little bigger than Montana's. Much of the agricultural land in Montana is devoted to cattle ranches and wheat farms, both of which usually make far less money per acre than much of California agriculture.

To this day, much of the intensive agriculture in California involves far more hand labor than many other types of agriculture . As a result, there would be a tremendous demand for migrant workers to do the arduous stoop labor. In the sugar beet fields, a large number of migrant workers were needed to do the weeding, thinning and harvesting. Since stoop labor is so physically demanding and low-paying, relatively few of the people doing such work were white or even native-born Americans.

When there was a transformation to intensive agriculture starting to take place in certain areas in California during the late 19th Century, much of the stoop labor was done by Chinese workers. During the 1870s, about ten percent of the population of California was Chinese, a vast majority being adult males. As a result, the percentage of Chinese in California workforce was far greater than ten percent at the time, probably closer to twenty or twenty-five percent. When the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, the immigration of Chinese to the mainland of the U.S. became greatly restricted. This meant that other sources of labor had to be found to do the arduous work. This led to a large migration of Japanese to the United States.

At the time that Sam McVey was living in Oxnard, a workforce consisting of mostly Japanese, Chinese and Mexican laborers was doing the stoop labor in the nearby sugar beet fields. Even though the number of people of Japanese and Chinese descent living in the area would be substantial, they would be greatly outnumbered by whites and people of Mexican descent.

- Chuck Johnston

 

The ridiculous assertion that McVey was not game, or lacked grit is neither supported by his results, nor contemporary reports of his fights.
McVey was celebrated for his willingness to accept punishment.


You have accomplished something I would have thought was impossible, you have descended even lower in your agenda driven, hate campaign against Jack Johnson !

To which depths will you sink in the New Year?

 

his fight with jeanette....the 49 round one with all the knockdowns.....were they really full three minute rounds like the reports say ?

 

You made it another year? Your hate campaign against white heavies is running out of space. Is Ingo next? Current heavyweight boxing must be tough for a bigot like yourself to stomach.

If you read news reports you will see Mcvey complain of fouls, and such. He is not as tough as you think.

On film he retreats when hit, and as I told you he once quit boxing.

But we know your knowledge is mostly confined to books, not films or news clippings, and you are full of double standards.

McVey was a crude slugger in his day who was certainly good enough to rank among the top 4-5 of his time ( 1907-1916 ), yet he also failed to KO anyone with class when they were in their prime despite multiple opportunities to do so.

 

You need to read Adam's book on Johnson you might educate yourself ,you could certainly use it!
I'm colour blind as far as boxing or anything else goes, Jack Dempsey is my favourite fighter and my number 3 all time heavyweight .
McVey beat a 28 years old Langford for the coloured title dropping him along the way, he beat him again 3 years later, and he went 49 bloody rounds with Jeannette. For the likes of you ,who have never boxed ,to question his courage is obscene.

My knowledge though it pales before many on here, holds up pretty well against yours .I boxed for nearly 20 years. I started collecting films in the 60's was a regular supporter of both big and small boxing venues ,and still watch as much as I can .I've also a fairly extensive library.Your knowledge seems to be confined to spotting incidents in fights that are not actually viewable as they don't exist. For example Johnson's black eye against Ketchel, Burns yellow skin against Johnson, and now Johnson fouling Burns.

Remind us all again what round you saw that happen in ?



BTW
Yes I'm still here, I expect to out live you, and if there is any justice I will.
Do you want to answer those questions I put to you the other week or will you continue ignoring them?

 

While I rank Sam McVey behind Jack Johnson, Sam Langford, Joe Jeannette and Harry Wills, Jeannette edges McVey out by only a small margin in my book.

As far as I know, there is very little footage of any of McVey's bouts which is available. As a result, I think that to assess McVey's willingness to take punishment based on such footage is folly.

While I don't think that McVey was great puncher based on the fact that he didn't stop Johnson, Langford, Jeannette or Wills, he did score 52 stoppages in 102 known bouts despite facing the mentioned fighters so many times without scoring a stoppage against any of them.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Box rec does not have all McVey's fights listed, but 52 kos in 66 wins is pretty impressive imo, especially if we take into account some of his opponents.