Billboard Near Hotchkiss Ranch
COTTON PICKERS WANTED—placards on the road, handbills out, orangecolored handbills—Cotton Pickers Wanted. Here, up this road, it says. - Narrator (279 e-text)
This billboard seems to reside in California, but greatly resembles the flyers that were likely distributed further East. Like the repetitive billboards for the same restaurant or truck stop we see along our highways today, media of the era seemed to bludgeon their point across by advertising within their own area as well as along the road.
By now, the tropes of labor advertisements we've seen in prior artifacts are noticeable. The billboard once again promotes a land of vocational prospects, complimentary board, comfortable amenities, and massive fields. As the original caption points out, the mirrored Spanish version of the billboard is something to take a closer look at. As California developed into a land of vast immigration, employers sought to entice all demographics of laborers.
Yet, Steinbeck's proletariat fiction is often criticized for excluding non-white narratives. Charles Cunningham, in his article: "Rethinking the Politics of The Grapes of Wrath" notes:
"While more nuanced and politically to the left of the mainstream, the analysis in Steinbeck's series seemed to assume Anglo-Saxon white supremacism. As was true with most representations of California agricultural labor after the white workers became a majority, Steinbeck's excluded non-white workers -- despite the fact that when the articles were published, the displacement of non-white workers was "by no means total".
Intriguingly, although ethnic workers are indeed mostly absent from In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's Harvest Gypsies articles show that the author was keenly aware of their role as exploited laborers, stating:
"Before the white American migrants were here, it was the custom in California to import great numbers of Mexicans, Filipinos, Japanese to keep them segregated, to herd them about like animals, and, if there were any complaints, to deport or imprison the leaders. This system of labor was a dream of heaven to such employers as those who no fear foreign agitators so much".
However, despite Steinbeck's awareness of minority struggles in the fields, it becomes clear that he is far more interested in the changing demographics of California labor:
"But then the dust and the tractors began displacing the sharecroppers of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Arkansas. Families who had lived for many years on the little “croppers’ lands” were dispossessed because the land was in the hands of the banks and the finance companies and because these owners found that one man with a tractor could do the work of ten sharecroppers’ families. Faced with the question of starving or moving, these dispossessed families came west. To a certain extent they were actuated by advertisements and handbills distributed by labor contractors from California.
While it may be fair to accuse Steinbeck for focusing on caucasian protagonists, it is critical to note that his interest in the subject seems to stem from the "Okies" in California coming into existence as a new kind of exploited laborer. Steinbeck's proletariat literature comes across as very reactionary, a response to forms of oppression less "custom" than what America was used to. As sad as it is, Steinbeck, and most of America was likely much more troubled to see their white peers suddenly in plight - so it makes sense that the Joads and Wilsons are his subjects, not the Hernandez' or the Alfonsos. In the passage above, Steinbeck once again alludes to the influence of advertisements in his discussion of migrating laborers - likely because this new breed of dispossessed worker was all of a sudden susceptible to such forms of marketing. The artifact above exists as a bridge between the two parties - showcasing that laborers of all walks of life were capable of being coerced.