History: The Quest for Employment

The above photo depicts a migrant worker, carrying likely all he owned, walking on a California highway in search of employment. The photograph was shot and developed in 1935 by Dorothea Lange. Lange was employed by the "Resettlement Administration (RA), an agency set up to help tenant farmers during the depression," (Maksel). Since "there was no budget for a photographer," she would afford her film and travel expenses through working as a clerk-stenographer for the RA, (Maksel).

In the 1930s, as is depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a great migration ensued, "spurred by the economic difficulties of the Great Depression, by heat and drought, and by a multitude of other pressures," (Gutmann). For the families who were driven from their homes in places effected by these economic and environmental pressures (such as the "Okies" illustrated in Steinbeck's novel), California symbolized an oasis or haven of sorts for the displaced Americans. Whereas the droughts and dust storms of the southern plains region and part of the mid-western United States represented the death of previously rich and abundant lands, California presented itself as a place for new life, where Americans and their farm lands would flourish. California was the "promised land" of the U.S.A. in the 1930s.

Analogous with the Joads from The Grapes of Wrath, multitudinous amounts of families purchased vehicles, packed up their most valuable possessions, sold or left behind everything that they couldn't bring with them, and set out on the road to California (or anywhere else that held the promise of hope and livelihood). According to journalist, Nicolaus Mills, "as a result of dust bowl conditions throughout the plains states, California was flooded with more than a quarter-million farm families," (Mills). Handbills had been distributed far and wide all around the country with the assurance that help was needed and employment would be available for the quarter of a million refugees who were migrating from their former homes. Clinging to this hope, the myriad of migrants, most of whom “were poor even before they lost their livelihoods,” fled to California (among other destinations) with little to no money, expectant of more than enough jobs, which would be ripe for the picking, (Crossen). Much to their dismay, however, upon arriving in the “promised land,” the “Okies” discovered that there was little to no work to be found. In The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad was extremely lucky upon finding some work almost right off the bat; this was a situation that many migrants during the 1930s could only dream of. As Cynthia Crossen put it in her article titled, “Americans Who Fled Drought in the 1930s Found Little Sympathy,” “these unlucky citizens had been dealt a fistful of bad cards. Some would survive the blow, some wouldn’t,” (Crossen).