However, these transient camps were not yet established when, in , the Dust Bowl in the Midwest began sending migrants to California, the migration documented by Dorthea Lange. In , Paul Taylor hired Lange to accompany him to study migrants, and Taylor credited Lange's photographs of migrant conditions in the privately created "Hoovervilles" with persuading government to begin, in the summer of , to build the first two of what would become a chain of government-funded migrant labor camps in Marysville and Arvin.
Lange and Taylor divorced their spouses, and married in December Lange's most famous picture, "Migrant Mother," taken in March near Nipomo, Calif, was the stark symbol of a woman trapped in poverty during the Great Depression. The woman was Florence Owens Thompson, a migrant from Oklahoma. In , the U. Taylor grew up on a family farm in the Midwest, and wanted to redistribute land and create a family farming system in California.
Taylor recognized that many of the migrants arriving in California would need help to make the transition from the non-irrigated cotton and grain farming of the Midwest to irrigated fruit and vegetable farming in California, and he urged the formation of camps and co-ops that would train Okies and Arkies in the vagaries of California agriculture. Carey McWilliams made his first extended trip through the Central Valley in with writer Herbert Klein, and their observations were published later that year in the Pacific Weekly in a series of articles entitled "Factories in the Fields" p McWilliams argued that government was providing extensive benefits to farmers--water subsidies and price supports--and very little to farm workers, and urged government to do more for migrants.
McWilliams went on to head California's Commission of Immigration and Housing between and , where he increased inspections of grower-owned labor camps; the Commission had been established in response to the Wheatland hops riots of McWilliams also changed the wage-relief formula that was used to stop relief for migrants who refused to accept farm jobs at prevailing piece rate wages, effectively forcing some growers to increase piece rates.
Growers labeled McWilliams "California's number one agricultural pest, worse than the pear blight or boll weevil. The 16 permanent and nine mobile labor camps funded by the Farm Security Administration proved vital to the writing of farm labor literature in the s. White English-speaking migrants Blacks and Mexicans were often excluded from the camps were readily accessible to outsiders, and camp managers such as Tom Collins in Arvin later called Weedpatch and now the Sunset Labor Camp often made their notes available to writers such as John Steinbeck, who used them in character development.
Steinbeck was recruited by the liberal San Francisco News to publicize the benefits of the fledgling government-run camps, and his first visit was to the Arvin camp. While there, local farmers threatened to disrupt the regular Saturday night dance--if they had succeeded, a precedent may have been established for local law enforcement to invalidate the authority of federal camp managers, who were far more sympathetic to migrants.
Steinbeck, then 36, used this and other incidents from Arvin in "The Grapes of Wrath," the novel that opens with the Joad family being pushed off their farm in Sallisaw in eastern Oklahoma, and follows the family west for 1, miles on Route 66 through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to California.
The Dust Bowl migrants captured the imagination of many Americans in part because readers could easily identify with them, and think, "there but for the grace of God go I. While Steinbeck, Taylor and McWilliams documented the plight of migrants in little-read leftist magazines and papers, Frank J. Taylor presented the growers point of view in the mainstream press. Taylor emphasized that some growers, including the 4,acre Tagus Ranch, offered free or low -cost housing as well as on-farm schools and stores for workers.
Reformers such as McWilliams thought on-farm housing and services were feudalistic, with workers afraid to leave the ranch, or even consider other jobs, for fear of losing their housing. Growers sponsored monographs entitled "Plums of Plenty" and "Grapes of Gladness. Taylor emphasized that growers established the San Joaquin Agricultural Labor Bureau to set standard piece rate wages so that workers would not "jump from job to job in the middle of the grape, peach, fig or cotton picking.
The Grapes of Wrath was published in April , and President Roosevelt was quoted as reacting after reading it that "something must be done and done soon" to help California farm workers. In , two Congressional committees with opposing agendas held hearings in California. The US Senate's LaFollette Committee was guided by McWilliams, among others, to examine the power and anti-union activities of growers in 28 days of hearings, with over witnesses. Loftis concluded that Taylor and McWilliams were motivated by the injustices of a farm labor system they believed badly needed change and that the "chief impact of their writing was its Lange and Steinbeck, on the other hand, "gave history a human face;" both are far better known sixty years later than the social scientists with whom they worked.
Shindo's six-chapter book aims to debunk myths about the s by showing how four American icons used the Dust Bowl migration to California to further their wider aims. Until then, land prices had been rising rapidly as farmers and non-farmers saw buying farms as a good investment.
With the collapse of farm prices, the land bubble burst, often dropping the market value of the land well below what the investor owed on it. The post-war depression did not start with the Stock Market Crash of For the Midwest, it started in , and farmers and the small towns that depended on the land were hit hard. In the s, only slightly less than half of the U. When farmers were not making money, they could not buy the products that factories were making.
The workers could not buy the factory output either, meaning more lay-offs, and the country fell into a downward spiral. However, not everyone saw the pattern emerging. Many thought that because the stock market had been on a sustained upswing, it was a good place to invest money. When it became obvious that the price of stocks far outpaced their productive capacity, investors lost confidence and began selling before prices dropped further.
Panic ensued, and the market dropped sharply. With factories closing and banks failing, unemployment continued to rise. Without the safety nets of today like Social Security, many families found themselves without income, losing their homes and facing poverty. The situation during the s was bad; it got much worse in the s. Farm families were often better suited to weather hard times than town residents. Farmers could grow their own food in large gardens and raise livestock to provide meat.
Chickens supplied both meat and eggs, while dairy cows produced milk and cream. Wherever they could, families cut down on expenses. A major problem was taxes, which had to be paid in cash.
Families that could not pay taxes sometimes lost their homes and farms. The state and governments slashed costs wherever they could. The federal government began to provide relief to offset the impact of the Depression. Iowan Henry Wallace, a corn scientist and farm journal editor, was named secretary of agriculture. He saw that low prices were brought about by surplus production. The federal government adopted a policy that would guarantee farmers a higher-than-market price for their crops and livestock if they would reduce their production.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act began sending much needed checks to farmers who would sign up for the system, and the money was a great stimulant to the economy. It saved many a farm from foreclosure. The environment also seemed hostile to the farmers during the s. The winters of and were especially long and cold.
The summer of saw one of the worst droughts ever recorded and crops dried up in the fields. Livestock died for lack of food and water. West of Iowa, on the Great Plains, lands that could no longer sustain the grasses that held the soil in place began to lose topsoil to the strong hot winds. So much dust was picked up that soon great dark clouds, not of rain but of soil particles, began to drift eastward.
Iowa was never hit as hard by the Dust Bowl as Kansas and Oklahoma, but the clouds of dust that blocked out the sun and found their way through any cracks in the house around windows or doors left a lasting impression on those who lived through them. Times were tough through the entire decade of the s. While government programs helped, it was the start of World War II and the renewed demand for manufactured goods and farm products that lifted the United States out of the worst economic period in its history.
It was, however, at a heartbreaking cost in American lives. It was on "Black Tuesday," October 29, , that investors traded around 16 million shares on the NYSE in a single day that resulted in billions of dollars being This is an interview by W. Tarpley, who was a finance officer in the U. Treasury, of Raymond Tarver. Tarver gives his personal account of the effects of the closing of the bank he worked in during the Great Depression.
Interview with George Mehales by R. Through this oral history interview, George shares stories of his life including what happened to him during the stock market crash of October All parts of the nation were faced with the worst economic depression in history in Iowans suffered along with the rest of the nation.
This video from Iowa Public Television explains causes and effects of the stock market crash of During the Great Depression, a series of droughts combined with non-sustainable agricultural practices led to devastating dust storms, famine, diseases and deaths related to breathing dust.
This caused the largest migration in American history. Many factors led to the Dust Bowl. An increased demand for wheat during World War I, the development of new mechanized farm machinery along with falling wheat prices in the s, led to millions of acres of native grassland being replaced by heavily disked fields of This young man in overalls is removing drifts of soil from the highways near Guymon, Oklahoma. These piles of soil blocked roadways throughout the area during the Dust Bowl.
This photograph shows a Dust Bowl farmer raising his fence to keep it from being buried under drifting sand in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. This photograph shows a farmer pumping water from a well to his parched fields in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. One possible solution to the dust problem during this time period in America is irrigation. Packing winds of 60 miles per hour, the loose topsoil was scooped up and mounded into clouds of dust hundreds of feet high.
People hurried home, because being caught outside could mean suffocation and death. The dust and darkness stopped all forms of transportation and the A federal study found that the migrants were spending all they earned on gasoline and housing, with nothing left to feed themselves or their children. Small farmers were affected particularly badly by these conditions.
Many small farmers were in debt because they would borrow money from banks to buy seeds and then pay back the loans when the crops came in; during the Dust Bowl, farmers could not pay back these loans and could also not afford to feed themselves and their families. In worst case scenarios, this led to banks repossessing farms, making the farmers and their families homeless. As a result, many farmers migrated to California to look for work, as this state was perceived to have spare land and a lot of work.
However, because so many people moved to California an estimated 1. Unfortunately, this fantasy was ruined by the accidental fact of Lenny killing Curley's wife. As soon as Curley found out, he and other men in the ranch went in search of Lenny with the aim to shoot him in the guts so he could experience a painful death. George hurried to find Lenny before It was too late.
He had to make a hard choice; If Curley found him, he would suffer a painful death, but if he was left loose, he could cause even more trouble. George had no other choice; he now he was living in a time of depression and sadness, he new that Lenny would just suffer more if he kept living.
His choice was cruel and unbearable. George murdered Lenny because he new that it would be better to die, than to live in s America.
His best friend was now gone and he was alone. The depression he had felt for a long time, suddenly took over him.
He was lost. Get Full Access Now or Learn more. See related essays. Even though George says this sometimes he is still always there for him. He had been looking after Lennie nearly all his life and always tries to help him. George is the person who keeps control of what they do. Steinbeck goes on to tell us about the animals 'skittering' lizards and 'rabbits The scene changes and the marks left by man are described, the hard beaten path, the piles 'made by fires' and the limbs of.
George knows that this dream will never really happen but he likes to think about it because when he is telling Lennie about it he puts himself in the dream and it almost seems real. But when Candy overhears Lennie and George talking about their dream and says that he. Lennie delights in simple pleasures and from that you can also see the father son relationship between George and Lennie.
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