Another One
Tom watched her working, and his eyes smiled. "It done you good jus' thinkin' about it. I knowed a fella from California. He didn't talk like us. You'd of knowed he come from some far-off place jus' the way he talked. But he says they's too many folks lookin' for work right there now. An' he says the folks that pick the fruit live in dirty ol' camps an' don't hardly get enough to eat. He says wages is low an' hard to get any." A shadow crossed her face. "Oh, that ain't so," she said. "Your father got a han'bill on yella paper, tellin' how they need folks to work. They wouldn't go to that trouble if they wasn't plenty work. Costs 'em good money to get them han'bills out. What'd they want ta lie for, an' costin' 'em money to lie?" - Ma Joad (61 e-text)
Like the flyer found in Charles Todd's scrapbook, and the handbills discussed in The Grapes of Wrath, this flyer promises a prosperous opportunity away from the Dust Bowl. In addition to similar claims of "Good Wages" and "Sleeping Quarters", it's interesting to note how both advertisements attempt to entice whole families, not just the "Strong Men". The contractors behind this handbill offer roles to the entire family ("Able Women & Children Also Needed").
Family is a huge part of Steinbeck's narrative, and the novel depicts most "Okies" as large family units unwilling to exclude anyone from their journey. While the Joad family ultimately dwindles, their desire to stick together is subtextually praised throughout the text. "Ain't Goin'" (or similar expressions) provacatively pervade the novel: used negatively when Noah splits from the family ("Ain't goin'? What the hell's the matter with him? ... that boy's all my fault." - Pa Joad, 167, e-text), and positively when Ma bravely asserts: "I ain't a-gonna go." (113, e-text). Loyalty, and togetherness is a big part of Steinbeck's saintly portrayal of the Joad clan. Ma's heartbreaking appeal to the family to prevent them from splitting ("'What we got lef' in the worl'? Nothin' but us'", 113, e-text) suggests that solidarity was a key factor to migrant laborers - an essential aspect of maintaining identity and hope in difficult times. Handbills like the one above seem to capitalize on that vulnerability by offering jobs to all ages and genders - enticing families like the Joads to consider California as a destination where everyone can find fortune.
The location of the promoted farm, Tulare County, is also something to consider. According to Tulare County Librarian Judith Wood, Steinbeck began writing the novel in the area. As a result, it makes sense that the Joad's inevitably are recruited to work in Tulare fields, and visit Tulare shops to buy a "tin stove", "new overalls", and a "dress for Ma" (281, e-text). It's very possible that Steinbeck found inspiration in handbills like the one above promoting work in Tagus Ranch - a large farm in the region.
The source of this artifact questions the validity/presence of these types of advertisements:
"A flier purportedly used by farmers to entice immigrants and those thinking of emigrating from Dust Bowl to come to California. There is some question as to whether these really existed. This flier may be a re-creation."
Although they provide no evidence to back up their claims of ambiguity, it is intriguing to consider why these handbills would be fictionalized or why reactions to such documents might be hyperbolized in Steinbeck's fiction. While Charles Todd's flyer seems to be legitimate, it is indeed difficult to locate many examples on the internet. Yet, the novel's reliance on handbills as a motivator makes it hard to believe they were not at least somewhat prevalent.
Further research indicates that handbills may not have been the powerful force Steinbeck made them out to be. In Keith Windschuttle's article, "Steinbeck's Myth of the Okies", the author simplifies the influence of labor advertisements as an unbelievable narrative device, stating: "The Joads packed up and left for no better reason than a yellow handbill Pa Joad found saying there were good wages and plenty of work in California. According to later chapters of the novel, this was simply an advertising ploy, by the "great owners" of California to entice more men than they needed to their harvest so they could reduce wages. Hence the Joads set out for a region about which they knew nothing. To find work, they could only wander helplessly from one location to the next."
Windschuttle goes on to use James N. Gregory's 1989 text, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California, to suggest that "Okies" were far more informed than Steinbeck depicted them to be, arguing:
"Most had direct information about working conditions from relatives already there. Two-thirds of Okies interviewed in the Salinas Valley had relatives living in California before they came west. In two other surveys in Sacramento Valley and Kern County, the majority of migrants said relatives or friends had been instrumental in their decision to relocate. "All of this suggests," Gregory writes, "that the Dust Bowl migration was not an atomistic dispersion of solitary families but a guided chain migration of the sort very typical for both trans-Atlantic immigrants and rural-to-urban immigrants."
In actuality, it seems as though farmers like the Joad's would have put more weight into the information Tom heard from the "fella from California", than they would have trusted a handbill. Gregory and Schuttlefield contest that naive reasonings like Ma's retort (quoted at the top of the page) are stretches of the imagination - and, to the latter author, exist in the narrative as part of Steinbeck's effort to sensationalize the "Okie" experience as victims of an elaborate, exploitative dupe rather than a gross miscalculation of opportunity.
Whatever the reality, the handbill artifacts in existence online today seem to at least legitamize the fact that labor advertisements were crafted to be rhetorically manipulative. Regardless of whether Steinbeck's characterization of the Joad family, and their willingness to believe such publications is exaggerated, it's obvious that The Grapes of Wrath was written to prove a point about opression and its roots. The handbills we've seen so far decidedly show that there was indeed a "ploy" - whether it was fully embraced or not.