Walter Stiern Library

Dust Bowl Migration -- Bibliography

“$10,000 Appropriated for More Migratory Labor Camps.” Shafter Progress 1935 May 10: 1.

“200 Porterville Men Work Under U.S. Relief Plan.” Fresno Bee 1933 December 1: 1.

“400,000 Fled West From Dust Bowl; Flow Begins Reverse.” Fresno Bee 1972 March 19:1.

“800,000 Now On New Deal Rolls.” Shafter Press 1935 January 23: 1.

“An Absurdity.” Bakersfield Californian 1940 December 9: 20.

“Actress Asks Fair Wages for Migrants.” Kern County Union Labor Journal 1939: 5.

[Ad for cotton pickers near Phoenix.] Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) 1937 September 11: 10.

Allen, W.V. “California’s Migrant Labor Problem.” September 1939: ??. Ames, Alden Judge (San Francisco Municipal Court). “Reply to ‘Who Is a Vagrant in California’ in California Law Review July 1935.” California Law Review 23 (July 1935): 616-620.

Ames, Alden. "A Reply to 'Who Is a Vagrant in California?'" California Law Review 23 (September 1935): 616-20

Responds to the argument that anti-vagrancy laws are unconstitutional by pointing out that courts have had time and opportunity to review them and thus far on the whole have not spoken out against them, indicating that they are both legal and within the proper scope of police power. As for their language, there is no problem posed by the concept of status. For example, those declared as insane, juvenile delinquents, or chronically alcoholic, which are certainly kinds of status, are legitimately incarcerated for public safety. Vagrancy as a status, therefore, is not fundamentally different.

Anderson, A.E. “The Children in Fruit-Picker Camps.” Oakland Post-Inquirer 1937 August 23: np.

Anderson, Nels. On Hobos and Homelessness. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998.

Men on the Move. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

_____. "Are the Unemployed a Caste?" Survey Graphic 1935 July: 345-347. .

Ardelt, Monika. "Another 'Grapes of Wrath'?" East Bay Labor Journal, 3 May 1940.

Draws a sharply negative parallel between the ostensibly growing demand for labor being advertised by California's aviation industry and the handbills promising employment in California for migrants from the Southwest during the mid-1930s as featured in The Grapes of Wrath.

Arnold, Murray. “Steinbeck Hits Big Time Because of Kern.” Bakersfield Californian 1978 April 9: ?

Athearn, Leigh. “Unemployment Relief in Labor Disputes California’s Experience.” Social Service Review 14(4) 1940 December: 627-654.

Examines California’s history of handling relief problems as they affected strikers and their families from 1935-1939. Study analyzes the circumstances under which persons engaged in or affected by labor disputes received relief payments from the California State Relief Administration under the California Unemployment Relief Act of 1935. Author concludes with an evaluation of policy stating that the history of the policy of “administrative determination” was a major departure from the “federal policy” which preceded it. Chief among its changes were the requirement that former employees accept jobs under strike conditions, that the plant is operating at near to normal capacity, and that any wage which may be prevailing at the moment be accepted, regardless of the existence of a labor dispute. Athearn recommends a reexamination of the policy of “administrative determination” in California and in other states where similar policy exists.

Auerback, Jerold S. “The La Follette Committee: Labor and Civil Liberties in the New Deal.” Journal of American History 1962: 435-459.

Bailey, Stanley. “Squalor—Result of Migrations.” San Francisco Chronicle 1940 February 12: 1.

Describes the living conditions of migrants who can no longer follow the harvest and settle into slums and shanty-towns. Drawing upon observations from visits to migrant slums surrounding Stockton, the article recounts how it and many others are privately owned, although by whom it does not say, and built on lots adjacent to cities. Migrants pay rent for the ground beneath their shacks and it is "not uncommon" for up to eight people to live in a single room shack. In one visit, approximately 650 people were found living in uninhabitable structures. It further reports that city residents widely agree that closing the slums and resettling the migrants requires federal intervention. Pursuant to that end, the State Division of Immigration and Housing plans a survey of the slums through the Work Projects Administration, hoping to draw federal funds that mitigate the $26,000 that the state pays for relief rent for San Joaquin County alone.

Bakersfield Californian 1935 February 21: 1. [Letter to the editor]

Bakersfield Californian December 11, 1935: ?. [Letter to editor.]

Bakersfield Californian 1939 August 28: 1. [Letter to editor]

Barry, John D. “Ways of the World—The Grapes of Wrath.” San Francisco News 1939 June: 2.

Succinctly reviews The Grapes of Wrath by soliciting opinions from many different people. On the whole, the expressed opinions of its worth are positive but strongly disagree on whether Steinbeck should have written dialogue and scenes that are in such "bad taste," as one respondent puts it, because its coarseness might offend many readers, thus blunting the effectiveness of its message and even leading libraries to ban it outright. One woman, however, praises these same qualities, comparing Steinbeck to French realist writer Émile Zola in challenging "this squeamishness" and advocating that every American ought to be given a copy. The respondents who snub the novel do so either because its "purpose" subverts its literary merits or because it is communist propaganda, a "deliberate attack on our social order" that is far more dangerous than the common screed because it favorably presents communism without describing it by name. The article concludes that it is bringing much needed attention to the socioeconomic condition of migrants, whatever its literary merits or political philosophy.

Baxter, W.F. "Migratory Labor Camps." Quartermaster Review 1937 July: 10-15, 74.

Analyzes the layout, amenities, and administration of migrant labor camps in Imperial Valley. Although each family has its own domicile,

whether wood or canvas, the amenities provided for each one vary by function, construction, and population density. Hence, houses have private toilets and showers but tents normally have communal ones that may be easily expanded as necessary. Specialized units such as recreation halls and medical facilities are built for the entire camp. The article also notes that despite their federal funding, camp administration is largely democratic, whereby a "camp committee" consisting of members elected from each residential unit represents the entire camp population and judges all disputes within the camp. The burden of camp maintenance is also democratic in responsibility, requiring all inhabitants to provide money into a general fund or two hours per day of extra work in lieu of payments. Although disputes between growers and migrants have been expected, there are no reports of such that directly involve federal or state camp dwellers.

Beals, Carleton. “Migs: America’s Shantytown on Wheels.” Forum 1938 January: 10-15. Sympathetically describes the life of migrants in the San Joaquin Valley and nearby coastal regions. Using inter-views with migrants and personal observations of each stage in their journey westward, the article presents a complete picture of their experience that places it within economic, historical, and cultural contexts while avoiding the tendency in the regional and national press to sensationalize their poverty and cultural differences, although its

sympathy for them is not without some ambiguity. It favorably compares them to frontier settlers, wonders at their "unfailing optimism, religious faith, and spirit of mutual aid," and notes the contempt of local communities in print and by deed for them, yet it also indulges in amateur physiognomy, whereby it claims to discern regional origins and temperaments by appearance, and disparages Pentecostalism for its "sadistic and oversexual" music, further impoverishment of migrants through tithing, and emphasis on faith healing over modern medicine, which the article claims contributed in at least one instance to the spread of tuberculosis and typhoid.

Beebe, Lucius. “The Dress-Suit Okies of California.” American Mercury 52 (1941 May): 533-540.Satirically analyzes migrants who insinuate themselves into the fashionable society of California. Coming from throughout the nation, they use their capital and wits to avoid drudgery by transforming themselves into fashionable company for Californian socialites, particularly those associated with the entertainment industry, whereby they may hobnob with stars and live exclusively on the largesse of gifts, parties, and seasonal lodging that comes through such connections. Though witheringly critical of such people, the article has no real sympathy for "scabrous" or "incompetent" migrant laborers, either. It concedes that the public routinely blurs the differences between migrant laborers and migrant social climbers, yet the article does the same by describing both groups as loafers who are determined to live only by what nature and the public provides them and by its satisfaction in observing how many of the latter eventually fall out of high society and must settle into the menial positions held by the former.

Benson, Jackson J. “An Afternoon and an Introduction.” Journal of Modern Literature 2(2): 194-210.

_____. “To Tom, Who Lived It: John Steinbeck and the Man from Weedpatch.” Journal of Modern Literature 5(2) 1976 April: 151-210.

Benson contends that the background for much of Steinbeck’s depiction of migrant life in The Grapes of Wrath, came not only from Collins’ camp reports, but also from the influence and friendship of Tom Collins, to whom the second part of the novel is dedicated. Hired in 1935 by the Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration), Collins served as manager of the first migrant camp program in California. By 1936, Collins’ contributions to the camp program were becoming legend. When Steinbeck went to the Division of Information offices for help with a series of articles on the migrants, he was directed to Tom Collins at the Weedpatch camp. Benson credits Collins with the most important contribution to The Grapes of Wrath; that is, “the spirit at the heart of the novel, rather than…the details and color of its surface.”

Bernstein, Michael A. The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929-1939. Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

“Big Celebration at Migratory Camp.” Terra Bella News (Tulare County Library, Visalia) 1941 September 5.

“Board Holds Hearings on Grapes of Wrath Ban.” Bakersfield Californian August 28, 1939: 1.

“Board Ponders Health Measure for Labor Camps.” Fresno Bee 1937 September 2: 1.

Bonnifield, Paul. The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt and Depression. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978.

Boren, Lyle H. "The Grapes of Wrath." Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., pt. 13, 1940, 139-1940. Reprinted in: A Casebook on The

Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Agnes McNeill Donohue. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968.

Braunig, E. Paul, Assistant Agricultural Economist. “A Progress Study of Families Living in the Labor Homes of Arvin Migratory Labor Camp, Arvin, California, for the year 1940.” July 1941: 1-15.

Bright, Margaret L. and Dorothy S. Thomas. “Interstate Migration and Intervening Opportunities.” American Sociological Review 6(6) December 1942: 773-83.

Bristol, Horace. "Documenting The Grapes of Wrath." The Californians Jan/Feb 1988: 40-47. Photographer Bristol recounts his travels with John Steinbeck through the Central Valley, interviewing and photographing migrants. The article includes several of Bristol's photographs.

Brown, Malcolm and Orin Cassmore. “Earnings of Migratory Cotton Pickers in Arizona.” Labor Information Bulletin 6 (November 1939): 10-12.

Examines the working and living conditions of migrant cotton pickers in Arizona in relation to other states, particularly California. As with their counterparts in California, economic instability pushed and a rising demand for agri-cultural labor pulled migrants to Arizona, although Arizonan growers initially failed to attract many because wages were much lower compared to those offered in California and Texas, and, as in California, migrants usually live in camps provided by growers, which are typically unclean and crowded. Impoverished, they rarely eat meat and fresh vegetables, relying almost exclusively on carbohydrates, and are highly vulnerable to diseases because of such chronic malnutrition, their children being the hardest hit. Since local communities consider them "undesirable" and effectively exclude them from participating in the community, even going so far as to deny them all but "emergency care," which is transportation to their place of legal residence outside of Arizona, most leave after a season for California, even though the wages there are now comparable.

Buck, Claudia. “’Migrant Mother’: A Central Valley Legacy.” California Journal 30(6) June 1999: 36-43.

Florence Thompson, photographer Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, was the icon for the plight of California’s Central Valley migrant families who struggled to overcome the Dust Bowl and the Depression. Hard work and family were her most enduring legacy that was passed down to her 10 children, 39 grandchildren, 74 great-grandchildren and seven great-great-

grandchildren. According to Buck, Thompson symbolized the spirit of “American can-do-ism.”

“Burden of Much Kern Relief is [?].” Arvin Tiller January 5, 1939: 2.

Burke, Robert E. Olson's New Deal for California. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1953.*

Burmeister, Eugene. “Early Days in Kern: The Grapes of Wrath.” Arvin Tiller May 10, 1978: 1.

“Lamont in the 1930s (Part 3 of 6 part series).” Lamont Reporter September 19, 1973:

Caldwell, Erskine and Margaret Bourke-White. You Have Seen Their Faces. NY: Modern Age Books, 1937.

“California Farm Labor Problems.” Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California 12(14) April 7, 1936: 156-197.

“California Is Housing Its Aged and Indigent in Large Modern Hospitals.” Wasco News January 1, 1930: 2.

California Legislature. “California’s Farm Labor Problems. Report of the Senate Fact Finding Committee on Labor and Welfare.” Sacramento: Senate of the State of California, 1961.

Surveys the farm tenancy in the United States from 1880 to 1920. Provides an analysis of the results of the 1920 U.S. census relative to farms classified by tenure. Part I addresses the problem of farm tenure in the United States from two points of view: (1) the status of the farm tenant compared to that of the farm owner; and (2) the status of the farm tenant and that of the farm laborer working for wages. Part II discusses the growth of farm tenancy from 1880 to 1920 in the United States. Contains detailed tables from the U.S. census, figures, and graphs.

“California: No Hobo Utopia.” The Literary Digest February 15, 1936: 9.

Reports on the reactions of various newspapers in California, Oregon, Arizona and Nevada to LAPD Chief James E. Davis’ ordering his police officers to patrol California’s borders and arrest “all persons who have no definite purpose for entering the State, and are without visible means of support.” The Los Angeles Times apparently supported Davis’ order claiming that these “imported criminals, radicals and troublemakers” have contributed

to a $70,000,000 deficit. Yet, Stephen O’Donnell of the Los Angeles Evening News and the Nevada State Journal insisted that the Davis “frontier guard violates every principle that Americans hold dear.” And, according to the Arizona Republic, the exclusion policy will have a tremendous impact on Arizona: “There is no other intermountain or western state which will suffer so much…”

“California Replies to Steinbeck.” Business Week May 11, 1940: 17.

California’s State Chamber of Commerce offers a recommendation to solve California’s migrant farm labor problem. Chief among Chamber report suggestions: (1) federal relief programs should be increased in states of out-migration, and local and state support should be encouraged by federal matching grants; (2) FSA camps should be continued as an emergency measure; (3) farmers must develop permanent housing facilities on their own land; and (4) state Employment Service should be re-organized to serve California’s needs more adequately.

California State Department of Public Health. “The Health of Transient and Migratory Laborers in California.” Weekly Bulletin (California State Department of Public Health 16(32) September 4, 1937: 125-31.

California State Department of Public Health. Bureau of Child Hygiene. "A Study of the Health of 1,000 Children of Migratory Agricultural Laborers in California." Report of the Migratory Demonstration, July, 1936-June, 1937.Sacramento, CA, 1937.

“Trailing Child and Maternal Health into California Migrant Agricultural Camps." Report of the Second Year of the Migratory Demonstration, July 1937-June 1938.” Sacramento, CA?, 1938.

California State Relief Administration. “Migratory Labor in California.” Sacramento: State of California, 1936.

Reports on the number of individuals who arrived in California by car from drought states during June through December 1935. Provides statistics of refugees by race and state of origin. Information based on data provided by Paul S. Taylor.

California State University, Bakersfield. California Odyssey: The 1930s Migration to the Southern San Joaquin Valley. [Oral history interviews] 1980.

Cambell, Ronald. “Past Deadline.” Bakersfield Californian October 13, 1979: 1.

“Camp Role as Cotton Pioneer Recalled.” Bakersfield Californian August 4, 1975: 9-10.

Campbell, Ann. “Reports from Weedpatch, California: The Records of the Farm Security Administration.” Agricultural History 48(3) 1974: 402-4.

Cannon, Brian. "Keep on A-Goin': Life and Social Interaction in a New Deal Farm Labor Camp." Agricultural History 70 (1966): 1-32.

Surveys everyday life and social relations in Arvin's Migratory Labor Camp near Bakersfield, California, one of eighteen camps in California that the Farm Security Administration was operating for migrant workers in 1940.

_____ "Keeping Their Instructions Straight: Implementing the Rural Resettlement Program in the West." Agricultural History 70(2) Spring 1966: 251-67.

Details the tasks resettlement developers performed in carving farms out of forests, bogs, and grasslands in the mountainous West. Faced with opposition from Congress and politically conservative groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation, Cannon discusses the various bureaucratic and legal hurdles the Resettlement Administration (RA) and its successor, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), faced in acquiring and rapidly developing land for its resettlement programs. Among the reasons for its demise, Cannon cites legal difficulties, the magnitude of land development work, dependence upon other federal agencies, lack of coordination within the resettlement agencies, reliance upon inexperienced relief labor, and the difficulty of adapting to environmental conditions.

Canter, Ester A. “California ‘Renovates’ the Dust Bowler.” Hygeia 18(5) May 1940: 420-23.

Camp nurse’s attempt to educate “dust bowlers” about personal hygiene and preventative medicine as she contends with home remedies and superstitution. For many of the “dust bowlers,” life in the migratory labor camp was an improvement over the poverty and starvation they experienced since leaving their farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. Condescending article portraying the ignorance of migrants toward health care and nutrition. Reflects the prevailing view of migrants as shiftless and illiterate.

“Care of Transients this Winter to be Along Broader Lines.” Shafter Progress September 1, 1933: 1. Carlson, Oliver. “Up From the Dust.” U.S.A.: The Magazine of American Affairs August 1952: 19 or 7.

Caughey, John Walton. “Current Discussion of California’s Migrant Labor Problem.” Pacific Historical Review 8(3) 1939: 347-54.

Chambers, Clarke. California Farm Organizations: A Historical Study of the Grange, the Farm Bureau, and the Associated Farmers, 1929-1941.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952.

Contains source material for the California Farm Bureau Federation, the California State Grange, The Associated Farmers of California, and personal interviews with persons active in farm politics during the 1930s. Includes references to newspapers and periodicals that were a valuable source of political views.

Clawson, Marion. “What It Means to be a Californian.” California Historical Society Quarterly 24(2) June 1945: 139-61.

Statistically analyzes migration to California from 1870 to 1945 to derive essential facts about its character. Using federal census data, the study argues that factors other than economic ones such as "pleasure-seeking" affect the decision to migrate, which might in part explain its conclusions on the composition of the state population, which shows that migration to California has steadily increased over the past seventy years, making two out of every three people living in California born outside of the state. Foreign migration notwithstanding, the typical migrants are young adults from states west of the Mississippi River, especially Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas during the 1930s, and have skewed the state age distribution abnormally young compared to the national distribution, which the study takes as a warning that public infrastructure involving children may soon become overburdened. While migrants are predominantly white, there is a growing population of black migrants as well, yet Mexicans, Chinese, and Japanese are declining, the latter two undoubtedly because of World War II.

“College Professor Hopes to Fill Archives With Okie History.” Fresno Bee Dec. 4, 1977: 1.

Collins, Henry Hill. America's Own Refugees: Our 4,000,000 Homeless Migrants. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1941.

Collins' social and economic study of migrants (1930-1941) is based largely on the congressional investigation of the conditions of the migratory worker during 1940-1941. [Note: the formal citation for the congressional investigation is: United States Congress. House. Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. Interstate Migration. Hearings before the Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens, House of Representatives, on H. Res. 63 and H. Res. 491, 76th Cong., 3rd Sess., 1940-1941. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1941.

Collins, Geneva. “’Grapes’ Propaganda? Yes, Same as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.” Stockton Record April 23, 1989: A, 17.

Collins, Thomas A. “From Bringin’ in the Sheaves.” Journal of Modern Literature 1976: 211-32.

"Colored Folk make Please for Share of Labor." Shafter Progress May 10, 1935: 3.

Colvin, Richard Lee. “Dust Bowl Legacy.” Los Angeles Times Magazine March 26, 1989: 8-17, 37-38.

Presents a series of oral family histories of the migrant experience that focus on how each family coped with its hardships. Using The Grapes of Wrath as a springboard for investigation, the article shows that not every migrant family could tolerate the stigma of being "Okies," causing one to leave California soon after arriving, whereas another, which not only endured but prospered, failed to pass their success on to their sons, one dying by a drugs overdose and another convicted for soliciting the murder of his parents. Others allowed their hardship to shape their view of life and the world for the better. One man came to believe that diligence leads to success, although his success was less than he had expected for his effort, while another man prospered greatly by heeding the persistence of his mother. Finally, another who did well in business remembers the kindness and example of a local educator in easing the hardship of migrant children.

Commonwealth Club of California. "California Farm Labor Problems." Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California 30, no. 5 (7 April 1936): 153-196.

Presents analyses by growers, migrants, migrant organizers on the welfare and efforts of migrants to organize. Growers are divided on whether they should be obliged to provide housing and other amenities to migrants. Small farmers argue that their means are too little to do so, whereas larger farmers, who consider doing so as a responsibility appropriate to their size, point out that most already do so. Both groups, however, prefer local governance of migrant camps to federal intervention and believe that communist agitators bully migrants into striking and attendant violence. Migrants and migrant organizers, while pleased with federal aid on their behalf, are less amiable towards growers, who instigate violence against migrants as local law enforcement turns a blind eye or even assists in the beatings, and insist that wages and working conditions, not communists, are not behind their actions. Moreover, they feel that peaceful collective bargaining must come before a solution may be achieved.

“Communist Farm Agitator Hit By Agriculturalist.” Shafter Press May 2, 1935: 2.

“Community Chest Records Appeals from Needy People.” Wasco News February 21, 1930: 2.

“Congress Must Solve the Migrant Problem.” Fresno Bee October 23, 1940: 1.

“Cotton Camps Are Given Food: Capital Is Picketed at Phoenix by Transient Labor Groups.” Arizona Daily Star March 23 1938: np. Cotton pickers demonstration in Phoenix, Arizona in protest over their living conditions. Spokesman for the group claimed some 2,000 persons were “lured to Arizona by advertisements” promising work only to find themselves living in squalor outside the city limits.

“Cotton Picker Relief Delayed.” Arizona Daily Star March 27, 1938.

“Cotton Pickers Ask Conference.” Kern County Union Labor Journal August 23, 1939: 1.

“Cotton Pickers Get $50,000 Relief Fund.” Arizona Republic March 25, 1938.

“Cotton Pickers March With CIO Organizers.” Arizona Republic March 23, 1938.

“Cotton Pickers Wanted Near Phoenix.” Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) September 23, 1937: 10.

"Cotton Pickers Will Get Food." Arizona Daily Star, 24 March 1938, p. 1 (EOA).

Briefly reports on the delivery of food aid by state and county authorities to camps west of Phoenix after a series of protests by cotton pickers before state relief offices to draw public attention to their poverty. Because state law permits such relief to non-residents only in a crisis, the authorities stress that the aid is temporary and, while promising to send case workers to investigate the camps, are considering plans to return the pickers to their states of residence.

“If there is no mob action and everyone goes home,” declared Governor Stanford to the organizers of the Committee for Industrial Organization, he would see to it that the destitute pea pickers residing in the squalid camps west of Phoenix would receive aid. However, only six case workers would be assigned to assess the needs of the families. “It is the best we can do,” said the secretary of the Maricopa County Board of Social Security and Welfare. “And to do that much, we will be taking food out of the mouths of Arizona residents.” Governor Stanford intends to “evolve a plan” by which to return the pea pickers to their home states.

Cowley, Malcolm. “American Tragedy.” The New Republic. May 3, 1939: 382-83.

_____. “In the Streets, Grass and Breadlines Grew: A Depression Memoir.” Los Angeles Times October 28, 1979: Part 5; 1, 6.

Creisler, Lillian. “Little Oklahoma: A Study of the Social and Economic Adjustment of Refugees in the Beard Tract, Modesto, Stanislaus County, California during the period July 1936 to May 1939.” Master’s thesis. Berkeley: University of California, 1940.

Sociological study of “Little Oklahoma” that includes supporting materials, surveys, along with supplementary tables. Author concludes that these refugees succeeded because they ceased to be migrants and instead became part of an established group. Through their hard work they contributed to the community as “substantial and valuable members of society.”

Cross, William T. and Dorothy E. Cross. Newcomers and Nomads in California. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1937.

Culley, John J. and Peter Peterson. “Hard Times on the High Plains: FSA Photography During the 1930s.” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 1979 52: 15-37.

Photography by Roy Emerson Stryker for the Resettlement Association (renamed the Farm Security Administration in 1937) within the Department of the Interior. As a record of their financial assistance during the 1930s, Stryker documented rural poverty for the regional FSA office in Amarillo, Texas.

Cunningham, Charles. "Rethinking the Politics of The Grapes of Wrath." Cultural Logic 5 (2002), (21 January 2005).

Argues that The Grapes of Wrath represents an attempt to reconcile "radical class politics," represented by the novel's critique of American capitalism, and "American racial nationalism," which it claims is reflected in the novel's inherent bias towards white migrants, and that from this springs an appeal for an active "solidarity" between the white middle class and the white underclass pouring into California.

Currie, J.H. "Labor Camps in the San Joaquin." Daily Telegram April 13, 1937.

Curtis, James C. "Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, and the Culture of the Great Depression." Winterthur Portfolio 21, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 1-20.

Explores the creation and symbolism of Lange's celebrated 1936 photograph within the context of her professional work, her often tumultuous life, and the sensibilities of the Depression-era American public. The photograph, although produced during an unplanned shoot, was itself not a spontaneous snapshot, as is often believed, but one of a series of photographs of Florence Thompson chosen and to some extent manipulated -- Lange intentionally omitted Thompson's name, husband, and teenaged daughter -- to maximize sympathy for migrant life with the public.

Daniel, Cletus. Bitter Harvest: California Farm Worker, 1880-1930. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1981.

Davenport, Walter. “California, Here We Come.” Collier’s August 10,1935: 10-11, 47-49.

Wryly reports on the arrival of migrants from across the country duped into coming to California by stories of its limitless generosity. Loading themselves and their few possessions into rickety vehicles that rarely survive the journey, they come, individually and in families, having heard that the state offers a pension plan to anyone over twenty, that it offers forty acres and a house to every white Protestant family, that it subsidizes anyone who grows oranges, that there are productive gold mines, and other such promises told or sold second-hand during their journey westward. Though the article spares some attention to their shabbiness and the resentment of many residents for their presence and publicly funded welfare, especially when the state treasury is all but empty, its interest remains with their astounding gullibility, documenting how their credulity lends their erstwhile support to any radical politician or utopian sect that can promise a remedy for their desperation.

Dawe, D. Theodore. “Migratory Children.” Sierra Educational News September 12, 1938: 38.

Analyzes the academic performance of migrant children compared to resident children using IQ and reading tests. At the suggestion of Kern County Superintendent of Schools Herbert L. Healy, and undoubtedly in response to vocal concerns in the popular press regarding an apparent achievement gap between migrant and resident children, this study sampled one-seventh of all students in the county, using several standardized tests of reading comprehension and intelligence, to determine whether such a gap exists and, if so, its degree. It concludes that there is a gap. Migrants scored from eight to sixteen points less than their peers in mean IQ and their reading achievement scores steadily declined with the age sampled, indicating that they seem to have been promoted to each grade based on physical maturity more than academic readiness. The study offers no explanation for the gap but notes that a "guidance program" is attempting to close it.

“Democratic Process is Beginning to Function.” Fresno Bee September 30, 1940: 1.

“Depleting Funds to Help Migrant Workers.” Chandler Arizonan March 11, 1938: 1.

“Destitute Are Warned.” Berkeley Gazette July 27, 1937: Sec. 2; 1, 5.

Dickie, Walter M. “Health of the Migrant.” Weekly Bulletin California State Department of Public Health 17 (June 18, 1938): 81-7. Examines the health of white migrants in California, focusing on their housing, diet, hygiene, and morbidity. Al-though rising wages and crop prices are gradually increasing material prosperity among the approximately 80,000 migrants in the state, most of them remain poorly housed, malnourished, dirty, and vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid fever, which the article blames on their ignorance of "how to live properly" regarding diet and hygiene as well as their "inherent laziness." Their malnutrition results from a traditional diet of fried and salted foods that has only recently become more varied through an increased familiarity with the range of produce available to them, while a similar ignorance regarding modern plumbing contributes to their poor hygiene, which the article demonstrates by how they often despoil the housing provided for them by growers "within a week after occupancy." It recommends that the state continue the immunization of migrants against communicable disease and commit itself to educating them in the essentials of nutrition and personal hygiene to improve their living standards and to protect public health.

_____. "Health of the Migrant." California State Department of Health Weekly Bulletin 17, no. 21 (18 June 1938): 81-83, 86-87.

Examines the health of white migrants entering and residing in California and describes the efforts of state and federal agencies to improve it. Using historical and statistical data gathered by various state and federal studies, it shows that malnutrition and poor sanitation, which it attributes to inadequate diets and housing, are their commonest health problems and that state and federal agencies, while initially overwhelmed by the number and indigence of migrants, are steadily improving their health through donations of food, mobile clinics, nutritional education, more and better housing, and subsidized health care. Although the article is sympathetic to their condition and praises government intervention on their behalf, it nonetheless seems to have a residual unease for their presence as shown by its occasional description of them as an "army," a "horde," and an "invasion" in addition to a slight disdain for their intelligence in supposing them wholly ignorant of balanced nutrition because of their "heritage" of inadequate diets.

_____. "Migration and Communicable Diseases." Weekly Bulletin. California State Department of Health Weekly Bulletin 17, no. 19 (4 June 1938): 73-74.

Presents a brief history of communicable disease in California as carried by various migrant groups. While communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and dysentery have been in California since Spanish colonizers introduced them in the sixteenth century, recurring epidemics began in the mid-nineteenth century following the discovery of gold and the building of the transcontinental railroad, which expanded the population and, so the article argues, introduced new diseases through foreign migrants. It explicitly equates the spread of disease with the entry of foreign migrants, especially Mexican migrants, who it claims have little or no resistance to tuberculosis, are the most frequent carriers of syphilis, and constitute one-third of those on public assistance in Los Angeles despite numbering only one-twentieth of its population. It also notes in passing that the large number of "under-privileged" white mi-grants arriving in California is potentially another disease vector and recommends that state authorities continue mandatory immunization and nutritional education to improve their health, although no similar provisions are mentioned for non-white migrants.

Dickstein, Morris. "Steinbeck and the Great Depression." South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 111-131.

Analyzes how the Great Depression influenced Steinbeck's literary technique, noting how his output during the 1930s had its roots in experience he gained as a reporter. These experiences shaped his characterization of the marginalized, gradually changing it from detached observation to personal identification, as well as his interest in social justice, which, despite claims to contrary by his fierce critics, was never rooted in Communist ideology but in emotion and an intense desire to do right by the migrants' suffering.

“Did Like All the Other Okies.” Arvin Tiller July 27, 1977: ??

“Dismissal of Hanford Case Will Be Asked.” Fresno Bee November 24, 1941: 1.

Douglas, Katherine. “West Coast Inquiry.” Survey Graphic XXIX (April 1940): 228.

“Drought Refugee and Labor Migration to California in 1936.” Monthly Labor Review December 1937.

Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. "One or Two Things I Know About Us: Rethinking the Image and Role of the 'Okies'." Monthly Review (July-August 2002): 13-28.

Examines the nature of "Okie" identity and its political manipulation in a brief revisionist history of their experience. Beginning in the early seventeenth century with the Ulster Scots, the putative ancestors of the "Okies," and continuing to the present, it argues that the foundation of "Okie" identity is a "matrix of stories," particularly those which emphasize their ancestral role as white yeoman settlers and frontiersmen, that let them believe themselves to be the truly indigenous people of America. The study further argues that this identity, which has been useful since the late 1960s for political conservatives who appeal to traditional white supremacy and defense of the nation, especially against decadence, also served liberal interests to great effect in the 1900s and 1930s, which appealed to the elements of Jeffersonian agrarianism in its mythos, and, oddly enough, to its white identity, when Steinbeck cited their "blood" as the key to their survival of the Dust Bowl.

Dunn, Larry, and Kathy Durham, eds. The Grapes of Wrath in Kern County. Bakersfield: Bakersfield College, 1982.

Collects articles and brief oral histories written by students for a course at Bakersfield College that focus on aspects of The Grapes of Wrath such as its historical significance, its religious themes, and, most notably, its removal from local schools and libraries by the Kern County Board of Supervisors in August 1939, ostensibly for obscenity and defamation of local farmers.

Durbin, William. The Journal of C. J. Jackson: A Dust Bowl Migrant, Oklahoma to California, 1935. Scholastic, 2002.

Tells the story of a fictional teen whose family must abandon their farm in Oklahoma and journey to California in search of a new life, living through the same adversity that thousands of fellow "Okies" experienced. Written for a middle school audience, the novel also includes an historical note and captioned black and white photographs.

“Dust Bowl Invasion of California Stirs Call for L.A. Parley.” Berkeley Gazette July 10, 1937: 1.

“Dust Bowl Migrants.” Visalia Times Delta September 1, 1938: 10.

“Dust Bowl Refugee Survey Finds SJR Camps Squalor-Ridden.” Los Angeles Times July 21, 1937: 10.

“Dustbowlers Worry California.” Business Week September 24, 1938: 33-4.

Apparently the business community worries that the influx of dustbowlers will influence the outcome of California’s $30-Every-Thursday initiative. Approximately 66,000 of the 165,000 dustbowl migrants are eligible to vote. Voter registration rose 27% in the five San Joaquin counties, most of whom were registered Democrats. Business Week believes that “With relief in mind, the newcomers register [to vote] as soon as possible.” To discourage these “destitute hordes” from coming to California, the Kern County based California Citizens Association is petitioning Congress to strongly encourage: the federal government to send back “idle dustbowlers” to their home communities; to warn potential migrants that they will not receive relief in California; the FSA to refrain from doling out “immediate relief to any and all families that ask for it.” Skeptics of the petition advocate crop diversification as well as mandating the FSA to continue providing schooling, food and health care but to stop providing cash so as to prevent newcomers from sending money back home to “finance further migration.”

“Edwards v. People of the State of California.” Supreme Court Reporter November 24, 1941; 314 U.S. 160 (62 SC 164).

Appeal from the Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of Yuba. Fred F. Edwards was convicted of violating St.Cal.1937, p. 1406, s 2615, making it a misdemeanor for a person to bring or assist in bringing into state any indigent person who was not a resident of the state, knowing him to be an indigent person, and from a judgment of the Superior Court of California affirming the conviction, Fred F. Edwards appeals. Reversed.

Eichengreen, Barry. “Did International Economic Forces Cause the Great Depression?” University of California at Berkeley Working Paper in Economics: 8751, September 1987.

Etulian, Richard W., reviewer. Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination (Book Review). Agricultural History 72:3 (1998): 632-3.

According to Etulian, Charles Shindo’s book attempts to show how a few liberals like Dorothea Lange made the experience of the Dust Bowl migrants in California during the 1930s an enduring symbol of the Great Depression.

Evans, Mercer G. “”Housing For Migratory Agricultural Workers.” Public Welfare News 6 (June 1939): 2-4.

As Acting Director of the Personnel and Labor Relations Division of the FSA, Evans discusses the factors which prompted the FSA to provide decent living conditions for the migrant farms workers living in California in mid-1930s.

United States Department of Agriculture. Farm Security Administration. “The Migration of Farm Labor.” Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1939.

Discusses the character, motivation, and the opportunity of the migratory farm labor groups as they moved across the country in search of work. Department of Agriculture’s efforts to alleviate the social and economic conditions of the agricultural workers were organized into three phases: 1) direct amelioration of conditions through the development of a labor camp program; 2) partial stabilization of farm labor families through the development of labor homes and gardens; 3) reestablishment of migratory farm families as independent farm operators.

“Extra Teachers Employed for Migratory Pupils.” Wasco News October 9, 1931: 6.

“Factories in the Field.” Kern County Union Labor Journal August 11, 1939: 1.

“Farm Bureau Group Hears Advantages Clean Camps for Migratory Labor.” Bakersfield Californian October 26, 1937: 5.

“Farm Lands Flooded.” Yuma Daily Sun (Yuma Arizona Sentinel) Feburary 14, 1938: Sec. 1; 1, 2.

“Farm Security Chief Opposing Indigent Plans.” Bakersfield Californian June 24, 1938: 9.

“Farmers Ask Government to Stay Out of Farm Strikes of the Reds.” Woodlake Echo May 11, 1934: 1.

“Farmers Farm Labor Camps.” San Francisco Chronicle March 18, 1937: 12.

Fearis, Donald F. “The California Farm Worker, 1930-1942.” University of California, Davis. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1971.

“Federal Migratory Camps.” Kern County Union Labor Journal September 29, 1939: 4.

Fessier, Michael. “Grapes of Wrath, 1977.” New West 2(5) July 18, 1977: 24-31.

Presents several individual histories of the migrant experience in Kern County and how it continues to shape each life forty years later. Several used the values they learned, experiences they had, and some good fortune as young migrants to become highly successful entrepreneurs and landowners, whereas most were not nearly as successful and had to satisfy themselves with mere survival. Threaded throughout the article are keen observations of how the residents of Kern County have reacted to the migrants and their legacy, which ranges from the indignation of cotton magnate W. C. Camp against The Grapes of Wrath, which he condemns outright as a "lie" concocted mostly by communists, to the conspicuous absence of anything "Okie" at the Kern County Museum for fear of offending residents and, curiously enough, the "Okies," and to the attitudes of some migrants who became successful growers like Roger Lantz, who, while fair and civil, deals as hard with Mexican migrants as his employer did in 1934.

“First Lady Sheds Light on Problem of Migrants.” Fresno Bee December 13, 1940.

“Flee Dust Bowl for California.” Business Week July 3, 1937: 36-7.

“Flood Damage in California Increases, Rains for 16th Day.” Yuma Daily Sun (Yuma Arizona Sentinel) February 11, 1938.

Fossey, W. Richard. “’Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues’: A Study of Oklahoma’s Cultural Identity During the Great Depression.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 55(1) 1977: 12-33.

Foster, Doug. “Dust Bowl Refugees Reminisce.” Salinas Californian August 21, 1939: 1.

French, Warren, ed. A Companion to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1963.

“Friday Session May Break 2 to 2 Vote.” Bakersfield Californian August 28, 1939: 1.

“From Ozarks to Visalia.” Visalia Times Delta March 2, 1943: 2.

“Funds for Migratory Camp Must Be Halved According to Report.” Arvin Tiller March 31, 1939: 1.

Ganzel, Bill. Dust Bowl Descent. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984.

Bill Ganzel returns to Dust Bowl scenes made famous by the Farm Security Administration photographers Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein.

Gazit, Chana. "Surviving the Dust Bowl." Agricultural History 72(4) 1998: 767-9.

Review of a television broadcast of personal interviews with elderly Texans, Oklahomans, and Kansans who reminisce about their childhoods on the Plains during the Great Depression.

Gelber, Steven M. “The Eye of the Beholder: Images of California by Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee.” California History 64(4) 1985: 264-71.

An important visual contrast in the photographs of Lange and Lee documents California life during the Great Depression.

Gilbert, Judith Anne. "Migrations of the Oklahoma Farm Population, 1930 to 1940." M.A. thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1965.

Investigates the causes and effects of migration by Oklahoman farmers during the 1930s through an analysis of newspapers, public documents, letters, and previous studies. It finds that three consecutive years of drought beginning in 1932 created the increasingly harsh economic and living conditions for marginal farmers, particularly in the state's western counties, that, when combined with other factors such as the introduction of the tractor and depressed prices, started their exodus in 1935 to eastern counties or beyond the state to California, thus confirming in the main what Steinbeck had written of Oklahoma in 1939.

Girvin, Robert E. “Hopelessness Housed in California Jungles.” San Francisco Chronicle March 8, 1937: 2, 6.

Fruit pickers living in “jungles” around Marysville and Yuba City live in abject poverty. According to Girvin, the majority of these “jungle inhabitants” are former owners of small farms in the Great Plains forced because of drought, insects, and dust. However, social workers, according to Girvin, claim that the “Sacramento valley jungles…are clean respectable compared to conditions in Kern County.” Migrants in the Buttonwillow, Buena Vista and Tuckerton live in “almost unimaginable filth—festering sores of miserable humanity.”

_____. “Migrant Workers Thinkers: Forum at Federal Resettlement Camp Proves Eyeopener.” San Francisco Chronicle March 10, 1937: 1.

Girvin reports on an open forum at the Marysville Camp, held by seven residents representing the “responsible element” of the thousands of California’s migrant workers. The reporter fails to mention how these particular representatives were selected for the forum. However, the seven voice their opinions on a variety of labor topics. They claim, for instance, that the New Deal’s “plowing under” program forced many workers to California because once the land was plowed under, the landowner “pocketed his Government check, and told us there wouldn’t be any more work.” The workers are ambivalent towards unionization. On the one hand, they complain about the growers (poor working conditions) and labor contractors (reduce migrant wages) yet they would clearly like to distance themselves from the “reds,” whom they see as “unreasonable.” But as one worker remarked, “Trouble is [the red] are always willing to be in the vanguard and do the dirty work, and we get in a position to follow them.”

Goldschmidt, Walter. As You Sow. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947.

_____. “Down on the Farm—New Style.” The Antioch Review 1945: inc. ci

“Grammar School Has 690 Pupils Enrolled.” Wasco News November 7, 1930: 6.

“Grapes Back.” Bakersfield Californian January 27, 1941: 1.

"Grapes of Joy: 'Okies' Forge Ahead." Current History Forum 51 (March 1940): 48-49.

Concisely reports on the rapid development of East Salinas, a suburb east of Salinas founded by migrants. Founded in 1933 as a camp of tents, trailers, and shacks, the residents of Salinas called the community of migrants "Little Oklahoma" because many of the migrants had come from that state in search of work, bringing with them little more than an ageing, temperamental car piled with their few material possessions. Two Salinas residents who owned large parcels of unimproved farm land subdivided their holdings and sold them to migrants for $50 with at least $5 down payment, leading to a small land rush among migrants who could afford to buy or borrow. Working on local lettuce farms, many new land owners used their earnings to build better housing for themselves and within two years bought more property, expanded their homes, or built new ones while renting their former ones, amounting to over $100,000 of new construction within the past seven years.

“The Grapes of Wrath and Factories in the Fields.” Kern County Union Labor Journal August 1, 1939: 1.

"'Grapes of Wrath' Ban Ends." Library Journal (1 March 1941): 2.

Reports the lifting of a ban on The Grapes of Wrath in the Kern County library system. A year and a half earlier, the Board of Supervisors made a "request" to the library system that it remove the book from circulation after residents expressed tremendous outrage at its portrayal of the migrant camp near Arvin and the experiences of the Joad family in Kern County. On January 27, the board voted unanimously to "reconsider the said resolution" and bade county librarian Gretchen Knief to restore the book to library shelves. According to the article, demand for the book immediately surged after the lifting of the ban.

“Gratifying Response to Appeal for Funds Aid Needy and Jobless.” Wasco News December 19, 1930: 1, 10.

Gray, Thorne. “Oklahoma Family Heads West in 1927.” The Modesto Bee November 4, 1979: A-12.

Gregory, James N. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Argues that migration from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas to California was not limited to the 1930s but had been occuring since the 1910s and lasted into the 1960s, that not all of them were poor sharecroppers, and that the employment opportunities presented to them by the state's emerging aerospace industry let many escape farming but did little to attenuate their identity as a group, which could be succinctly described as populist yet conservative in politics, evangelically religious, and fiercely self-conscious, especially through country music.

_____. “Dust Bowl Legacies: The Okie Impact on California, 1939-1989.” California History 68 (3) September 1989: 74-85, 146-7.

Analyzes common conceptions about migrants and their impact on the culture of the San Joaquin Valley. Contrary to the impression given by Steinbeck, the article shows that migrants had been coming to California long before the mid-1930s and continued to do so through the 1940s, settling in cities at least as often as in the country, and working more often than not despite their hardships, initially in agriculture but then progressing into wartime industries until and once again during the 1950s into trades such as construction and transportation. Their urban presence also introduced aspects of their heritage into valley culture such as chicken fried steak, a distinct accent, and evangelical Christianity, but none had so profound an effect as country music, which the article argues was essential to reconstructing the "Okie identity" into a more socially acceptable one and credits to many musicians, particularly Bob Wills during the 1940s and Merle Haggard in the 1960s. See also: Gregory’s American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Griffis, Ken. “Story and Discography of Beverley Hill Billies.” JEMF Quarterly 16(56) 1980: 2-17.

Griffith, Bob. “Oildale Is a Town Proud of Its History.” Bakersfield Californian October 8, 1980: Sect. A; 1, 6.

Grossman, Aubrey W. "Who Is a Vagrant in California?" California Law Review 23 (July 1935): 506-518.

Strongly argues that anti-vagrancy laws are indefensible considering how they allow police to abuse their authority, how they burden the justice system with cases based on circumstantial evidence, and how the language of these statutes is discriminating or in conflict with previous statutes. Given such problems, especially the discrimination against present conditions rather than acts, it argues that the courts should declare them unconstitutional or the legislature repeal them.

Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989.

Guerin-Gonzales, Camille. Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900-1939. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 1994.

Focuses on immigration and repatriation of Mexican-American farm workers in California during the Great Depression.

Guthrie, Woody. “Talking Dust Bowl.” Folkways Records 1950. [Note: think this is a recording, FA-2011.]

Hamilton, James. "Common Forms for Uncommon Actions: The Search for Political Organization in Dust Bowl California." American Journalism 16 (1) 1999: 79-103.

Examines how a migrant camp newspaper provided a forum for migrants to engage in social criticism. From 1938 to 1942, the managers of the Arvin Migratory Labor Camp published a mimeographed newspaper that provided news, information, and entertainment to migrants residing in the camp as a part of efforts by the Farm Security Administration in "rehabilitating" the "rootless wanderers" into settled, productive wage-earning citizens. Despite ostensible editorial control by the camp managers, the newspaper also served as an open forum for migrants who wished to engage in social criticism, particularly of capitalism as practiced by growers, or give vent to the frustrations of the migrant experience through forms familiar to migrants such as verse and dialogue. The study argues that although such a forum might have been useful in organizing migrants into an effective labor front, there was a tension inherent to migrant culture between collectivism, which favored organization either under or in alliance with the Left, and a nearly anarchistic individualism that distrusted politics and tended towards religious fatalism.

_____. (Re)writing Communities: Dust Bowl Migrant Identities and the Farm Security Administration Camp Newspaper at Arvin, California, 1938-1942." Dissertation Abstracts International 1994 54 (10): 3626A.

Handy, Ellen. "Farm Security Administration Color Photographs." Arts Magazine 58 (January 1984): 18.

Discusses the composition and technique of approximately 700 color Farm Security Administration (FSA) images uncovered in 1978. Photographers Marion Post Wolcott, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, and John Vachon portray an America recovering from the Great Depression. Less intense than the early Depression era photographs, this collection is more upbeat depicting picturesque landscapes where "man and nature are in perfect harmony, united by the work of plowing. Hard times seem very far away." The photos provide insight into later stages of the FSA photographic project.

Hartley, James, Steven M. Sheffrin, and J. David Vasche. "Reform During Crisis: The Transformation of California's Fiscal System During the Great Depression." The Journal of Economic History 56 September 1996: 657-78.

During the Great Depression, California restructured its tax system by introducing sales and income taxes that had a higher revenue flexibility than existing taxes, which in turn created a revenue system that allowed the rapid growth of spending to continue.

“Harty Explains Stand on Novel.” Bakersfield Californian August 28, 1939: 1.

Harvey, Jean. “Tom Collins Hasn’t Read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’.” Kern Herald August 24, 1939: 1.

Haslam, Gerald. “What About the Okies?” American History Illustrated 12(1) April 25, 1977: 28-39. Sea also Haslam's article, "Oildale," The Californians Jan./Feb. 1988: 36-39.

Presents a brief and slightly revisionist history of the migrant experience in California during the 1930s. Using recent research by Walter Stein and illustrating it with vignettes from The Grapes of Wrath, the article challenges some of the received wisdom concerning the causes of the migration and the public reaction to it in California. Although drought and dust storms played a role in causing the migration, it argues that soil depletion, tenant farming, the unintended consequences of federal agricultural policies, and the introduction of tractors were more important but receive less attention because the natural causes were so spectacular. The article also notes that most Californians seem to have been initially indifferent towards the "Okies" until federal agricultural policies enacted in 1938 cut cotton cultivation and public awareness of their presence increased through news and photo essays, many of them biased against migrants by the input of incensed growers and the politically conservative.

“Health Problems Arising from Migrants.” Bakersfield Californian September 9, 1939: ??.

Henshaw, Betty Grant. Children of the Dust: An Okie Family Story. Texas Tech University Press, 2006.

Proudly recounts a "rare and wonderful childhood" as the daughter of a sharecropper in the hills of Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl who eventually migrated to California and then later to Oregon.

Heredia, Rick. “Wrath.” Bakersfield Californian April 23, 1989.

Heyman, Therese Thau. Celebrating A Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange. Oakland, Calif.: Oakland Museum, 1978.

Selected pages from Heyman’s ninety-seven page book. Includes introductory statements by Daniel Dixon, Joyce Minick and Therese Heyman.

Hibbs, Ben. “Footloose Army.” Country Gentleman February 7-8, 1940: 7-8, 42-44.

Presents a "well-rounded picture" of migrants in California that defends growers against claims of mistreatment. Pitched at middle and upper class growers, the article denounces claims by "left-wingers" such as Steinbeck and McWilliams that growers hold migrants in poverty while striving to show that most migrants refuse or oppose orga-nizers and that many growers on their own initiative have actually improved life for most migrants by building clean and spacious residency camps. In spite of its examples of generosity, the article repeatedly indulges in disparagement of migrants, most notably in citing Dr. Lee A. Stone, the Director of Public Health for Madera County, who describes forty percent of migrants as "shiftless trash who live like hogs, no matter how much is done for them" while he relates how he has discovered migrant families living in their own excrement or cases of incest. It also rebuffs criticism of industrialized agriculture, stating that it has increased the variety of the American diet and is the only way for Californian agriculture to succeed.

Hoffman, Elizabeth, et al. "The Failure of Government-sponsored Cartels and Development of Federal Farm Policy." Economic Inquiry 33 July 1995: 365-82.

An examination of U.S. government attempts to organize an orange cartel in California and Florida in the 1930s. Farmers' opposition to production quotas and output reductions forced a shift in economic policy.

Holzschuh, Alma (Farm Security Administration, California Region IX). “A Study of 6,655 Migrant Households Receiving Emergency Grants.” San Francisco, 1938.

Hori, Masahiro. “New Evidence on the Causes and Propagation of the Great Depression.” Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1996.

“Housing Officials Plan Fight To Get State Authority.” The Sacramento Bee March 9, 1940.

Story on establishment of state housing authority.

“How to Get The Grapes of Wrath from the Library.” Kern County Union Labor Journal August 1, 1939: 1.

Howarth, William. “The Okies: Beyond the Dust Bowl.” National Geographic September 1984: 320-49.

Howarth’s interviews with some of the sharecroppers and homesteaders from the Great Plains who journeyed westward to California during the 1930s. Along the way, from Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, “Okies” and their descendents can still be found. The poverty and homelessness that united them formed an unbreakable bond.

Howe, Nicholas. "Oklahoma Stories." Southwest Review 80 (1995): 207-29.

Stories about Oklahomans and their migration to the western states during the Great Depression.

“Huge Migrant Petition Goes to Congress.” Bakersfield Californian January 9, 1939: 1.

"Hundreds Stranded Here and El Centro due to Washouts." Yuma Daily Sun, 3 March 1938, p. 1.

Describes the heavy storm flooding in southern California that has closed or endangered the major highways to and from Arizona, thus stranding travelers on either side of the state border.

Hurley, F. Jack. Portrait of a Decade: Roy Stryker and the Development of Documentary Photography in the Thirties. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1972.

Hurt, R. Douglas. "Letters from the Dust Bowl." Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 52 1979: 1-13.

In 1940, Wilson Cowen, Acting Regional Director of the Farm Security Administration in Amarillo, Texas, hoped to stop the flow of migrants to California by urging Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas residents to stay home. Cowen sent 20,000 letters to Dust Bowl farmers and received responses indicating that Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas farmers still looked to the government for relief. Hurt's article contains twelve such letters.

“I Wonder Where We Can Go Now.” Fortune April 19, 1939: 90-94, 112-119. Reprinted in: French, Warren, ed. A Companion to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1963;The Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Peter Lisca. New York: Penguin, 1977.

Issler, Anne Roller. “California and Its Migrants.” Survey 85 (October 1949): 547+ .

Investigates recent state and federal efforts at improving the living conditions of migrants. Drawing on the conclu-sions of a recent state study on crime, which argues that the need for mobility among migrants strongly contributes to the high rates of delinquency among them, the article examines current and proposed means of settling migrants, which include liberalizing welfare payments, resettlement into established communities, and federal residency camps. Governor Warren and his commission favors retaining federal residency camps, citing how they have contri-buted to the stability of migrant families by providing them with sound lodgings and a sense of permanence, yet large-scale growers oppose them, fearing that such camps would invite federal intrusion into their management and become "hotbeds of agitation." To that end, the state and other migrant-friendly groups have tried to buy the camps, which are due for demolition, but large-scale growers and their associations have consistently thwarted all efforts.

Jamieson, Stuart M. “A Settlement of Rural Migrant Families In the Sacramento Valley, California.” Rural Sociology 7 (March 1942): 49-61.

Defines elements that give the migrant worker the appearance of a separate “ethnic group” in some California communities. Author sees their organization into unions for collective bargaining as a way of improving their economic position. The problem in California in adjusting to this influx of migrant families is unique and has made their permanent absorption into the community a difficult and slow process.

Janow, Seymour J. “Migration Westward: Summary of a Decade.” Land Policy Review October 4, 1941: 10-14.

Janow, Seymour J. and William Gilmartin. “Labor and Agricultural Migration to California, 1935-1940.” Monthly Labor Review July 1941: 18-34.

Statistically analyzes migration to California in terms of origin, point of entry into the state, and seasonal variation in number. According to data gathered at checkpoints on the usual points of entry along state borders with Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona, states in the Great Plains have yielded the most migrant families due to drought and agricultural depression, which had been the bane of growers since the 1880s, and the recent introduction of tractors to farming, which made sharecropping untenable for marginal families. The data further indicate that the vast majority of migrants entered through the Arizona border, although entry began to drop towards the end of the decade as they found alternate routes or decided to try for Oregon and Washington, and that while the number of border crossings increases most during the second and third quarters of the year, the Arizona border again records the most change, both from and to California.

Japenga, Ann. “Educator Who Had a Heart for the Okies.” Los Angeles Times January 18, 1987: 6: 1, 18.

Jones, Victor (California. University. Institute of Governmental Studies. Bureau of Public Administration, UC Berkeley). Transients and Migrants. Legislative Problems, No. 4. Berkeley: University of California, 1939.

Keagle, Cora L. “A Model Migratory Camp.” California Cultivator. February 12, 1938: 91, 118.

Keane, Melissa. “Cotton and Figs: The Great Depression in the Casa Grande Valley.” Journal of Arizona History 32(3) 1991: 267-90.

Cotton and figs, irrigation and drought, new arrivals and old settlers, all played a part in the Casa Grande Valley’s transition from sleepy railroad town to bustling agricultural community.

“Kern County Bosses Hold Workers in Peon System.” Western Worker June 2, 1935: 1.

Written by an anonymous “Worker Correspondent,” he recounts his observations at several Buttonwillow labor camps of the “big cotton bosses,” many of which were owned by Miller and Lux. The correspondent accuses these bosses of luring unemployed workers from Alabama to a worker’s paradise in the cotton fields of Kern County. According to the author, the bosses advertised across Alabama “telling the unemployed that they needed several families to take to the Garden of Eden.” The ads promised workers a house on an acre of land complete with a cow, chickens and a pig. But what these Alabamans got when they arrived, according to the article, was dirt-floor shacks with no beds or mattresses nor did they receive the promised livestock. In addition, they had to repay their bosses for their ticket to the “Garden of Eden.” The article concludes that the workers of Kern County must organize to fight for better pay and worker’s rights.

Kern County Union Labor Journal August 25, 1939: 1. [Letter]

“Kern Plea is Ignored by Fox.” Kern Herald August 27, 1939: 1.

Kessler-Harris. “Some Benefits of Labor Segregation in A Decade of Depression.” Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. 250-379.

Kinberg, Olof. “On So-Called Vagrancy: A Medico-Sociological Study.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 24 (1934): 409-27.

Kirwan, Tom. “Okie Campaign Progresses.” Fresno Bee August 5, 1970: 1.

_____. “Okie Gets a Different Meaning.” Fresno Bee October 23, 1968: 1.

“Land Settlement for Unemployed.” Monthly Labor Review 35 (1932): 512-13.

Landis, Benson Y. “Where the Grapes of Wrath are Stored.” Information Service XIX(7) February 17, 1940.

Landis, Paul H. “Social Aspects of Farm Labor in the Pacific States.” Rural Sociology December 1938: 421-33.

Discusses the problem of transient farm labor in the Pacific coast states citing two Farm Security Administration (FSA) measures that helped improve the social and economic conditions of these agricultural workers: (1) a socialized health program that would benefit the general welfare of farm laborers; and (2) the development of a chain of sanitary farm labor campus financed mainly by the federal government that improved their standard of living.

Lange, Dorothea. “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget.” Popular Photography 46(2) February 1960: 42-3.

Contains Lange’s account of her assignment to photograph starving pea pickers for the California State Relief Bureau in 1936

_____. "Migrant Mother: A Famed Photojournalist Tells of the Picture that Symbolized an Era." Popular Photography 46, no. 2 (February 1960): 42-3.

Recalls the story behind one of the most well-known photographs of the Great Depression.

Lange, Dorothea and Paul S. Taylor. American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939.

“Lavin Called Patrick Henry.” Kern Herald August 29, 1939: 1.

Leiby, James. “State Welfare Administration in California.” Southern California Quarterly 55(3) 1973: 303-18.

Lewis, M.H. Director, SPL Studies & Surveys. California State Relief Administration. Migratory Labor in California. San Francisco: State of California, 1936. Note: excerpt pages 36-38, section F only.

Section entitled: The Migration of Drought Refugees to California” examines the additional source of labor for California agriculture which began in 1929 thorugh the end of 1935. Tens of thousands of people from farms and small towns in Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas poured westward. Excerpt focuses on migration to California by

“motor vehicle” for the period June 16 to December 15, 1935 with a statistics showing states-of-origin, number of migrants, and race of migrants entering California.

Lingo, Marci. "Forbidden Fruit: The Banning of The Grapes of Wrath in the Kern County Free Library." Libraries & Culture 38 (4) (Fall 2003): 351-377.

Analyzes the history behind the banning of The Grapes of Wrath and its implications for librarians. Using sources ranging from oral histories to newspapers of differing political orientations, the article argues that county librarian Gretchen Knief complied with the ban in public to protect her employment but protested it in private and used her position to keep copies of the book in circulation by distributing them to libraries outside of the county. It also shows that public acceptance of the ban was not uniformly positive, noting that some residents believed it originated in a conspiracy between members of the grower and political elite, and that public demand for the book remained quite high despite government censure. Finally, it argues that the failure of the American Library Association to defend Knief resulted from recent turmoil within the organization over whether librarians were "agents of their sponsors" or defenders of intellectual freedom.

“Local Officials Seek $120,000 in Federal Care of Migrant Groups.” Bakersfield Californian January 27, 1938: 13.

Loftis, Anne. Witnesses to the Struggle: Imaging the 1930s California Labor Movement. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998.

Analyzes a substantial array of primary and secondary sources to show how "professional observers" such as Dorothea Lange and John Steinbeck used their craft to elevate the condition of the exploited and oppressed in California during the Great Depression to a national audience, sometimes for ideological reasons, and how their efforts added or subtracted from the aims of radical labor organizers within California.

Majka, Theodore J. “Poor People’s Movement and Farm Labor Insurgency.” Contemporary Crises 4 (1980): 282-308.

_____. “Regulating Farmworkers: The State and the Agricultural Labor Supply in California.” Contemporary Crises 2 (1978): 141-55.

Manley, John F. American Liberalism and the Democratic Dream. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1989.

Mann, Wanda D. “Migrant Nursing.” The Pacific Coast Journal of Nursing 37(11) November 1941: 658-60.

Mann discusses health conditions among agricultural migrant families who have emigrated from the “dust-bowl” area of the United States. Her work with the FSA’s Agricultural Workers Health & Medical Association in California is the focus of this article.

“Many Transients Self-Supporting Survey Reveals.” Shafter Progress January 31, 1936: 1.

“Many Tulareans Want to farm With Uncle Sam.” Fresno Bee January 16, 1938: 1.

“Maps Indicate Location of All Migrant Famlies.” Fresno Bee October 21, 1940: 1.

Marysville Appeal-Democrat June 14, 1938.

McDean, Harry C. "Dust Bowl Historiography." Great Plains Quarterly 1986 6 (2): 117-126.

_____. “The Okie Migration as a Sociological Economic Necessity in Oklahoma.” Red River Valley Historical Review 3(1) 1978: 77-92.

Farm researchers in Oklahoma during the agricultural depression that began in 1920 and lasted until 1941 left a record of the life of all farmers that will show: 1) that the standard of living for nearly all Oklahoma farmers was well below the norm for Americans during the 1920s and 1930s; 2) that in Oklahoma on-the-farm reforms were difficult, if not impossible, to achieve because of the transient character of the farm population; and 3) the volume of the transitory farm population slowed the entire agricultural economy of Oklahoma. Researchers concluded that even Oklahoma’s better farmers lived in comparative poverty.

McEntire, David. The Labor Force in California: A Study of Characteristics and Trends in Labor Force, Employment, and Occupations in California, 1900-1950. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1952.

McGovern, James R. And a Time for Hope: Americans in the Great Depression. Westport, CT: Greenwood, Praeger, 2000.

Explores the responses of Americans to the severe problems raised by the Great Depression.

“McManus Wants Longer Residence for Relief Work.” Arvin Tiller March 10, 1939: 4.

McMillan, Robert T. The Interrelation of Migration and Socio-Economic Status. Louisiana State University, 1943.

_____. Migration of Population in Five Oklahoma Townships. Oklahoma A&M University, Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin #271, 1933.

McNickel, R.K. "Migrant Farm Labor." Editorial Research Reports April 19, 1950: 277-92.

The need for seasonal labor in order to produce the food supplies is cause for national concern in this report that explores the hardships of irregular employment and the migratory existence endured by farm laborers and their families. When migrant farm workers are members of a minority, their difficulties are increased placing them within the lowest income group in the country with substandard housing, and little or no medical compensation or legal protection. The children of migrant farm families bear the burden of the ceaseless movement that interrupts schooling and prevents normal social development. Offers suggestions for alleviating the oversupply of migrant farm workers in relation to jobs.

McWilliams, Carey. “California Pastoral.” The Antioch Review March 1942: 103-21. Reprinted in: A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath, 52-62. Edited by Agnes McNeill Donohue. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968;The Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Peter Lisca. New York: Penguin, 1977.

_____. California, the Great Exception. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1949.

_____. “California’s Migrants.” Forum December 1939: VII. [Letter to the editor.]

_____. “Civil Rights in California.” The New Republic January 22, 1940: 108-110.

_____. Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California. Little, Brown, 1939.

_____. Ill Fares the Land. New York: Arno Press, 1942.

_____. “The Joads on Strike.” Nation April 11, 1939: 149, 488-489.

Reports on the cause and possible outcome of a general strike among migrants in the San Joaquin Valley. It traces their discontent to the recent practice among cotton growers of collectively setting a "base" wage that actually func-tions as the "going" wage, which, despite open gubernatorial opposition and public inquiry into its role in establishing "industrial peonage," has led to stagnant wages and anger among established migrants accustomed to high wages and recently arrived migrants desperate to improve their lives. When a public inquiry into the system failed to pro-duce a "fair" wage of $1.25 per hundred pounds of cotton harvested compared to the $0.80 previously set by the growers, migrants went on strike, which in turn led to reprisals by growers against them such as eviction from grower-owned housing, harassment of organizing activities, and false allegations of sabotage by migrants. The article concludes that strike will soon end since the governor and much of the public, seeing the unfairness of this practice, has sided with the migrants.

_____. “A Man, A Place, and A Time: John Steinbeck and the Long Agony of the Great Valley in an Age of Depression, Oppression, Frustration, and Hope.” American West 7(3) 1970: 4-8, 38-40, 62-64.

Discusses how Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath accurately reflects the discrimination against “migrants, itinerants, domestics, unemployables, farmers too sick or too poor to participate in the subsidy programs, big families on relief, sharecroppers, and unorganizable labor…” in California during the decade of the 1930s.

_____.On the Ground in the Thirties. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1983.

_____. California State Division of Immigration and Housing.) “What Are We Doing for the Interstate Migrant?” Sacramento: State of California, October 27, 1939.

Explains that the problem of what California can do about interstate migration is dependent upon what direct assistance can be obtained from the federal government and what indirect assistance can be obtained from the other states affected.[see also Aaron Sachs' article on Carey McWilliams: "Civil Rights in the Field: Carey McWilliams as a Public-Interest Historian and Social Ecologist." Pacific Historical Review 2004 73 (2): 215-248.

Meany, George. “Peonage in California.” American Federalist. May 1941: 5, 31.

Describes the poor working conditions of migrant lemon pickers in Ventura County. Though The Grapes of Wrath provoked righteous indignation at every level of society for the plight of migrants and led to reform, the article claims that such reforms have yet to reach Ventura County, where the Teague family and other growers continue to exploit migrant workers in order to provide the nation with lemons, paying and housing them poorly for their labor. In January, these pickers went on strike for higher wages and by May organized under the aegis of the American Federation of Labor, leading growers to refuse their demands and seek ways of breaking the strike, initially soliciting for scabs at Ventura Community College, then among the "Okies," and most recently by evicting them from camp housing. The article praises the American Federation of Labor for supporting the strikers and earnestly believes that they, having the moral high ground, will eventually succeed in their demands.

Menig, Harry. “Woody Guthrie: The Oklahoma Years, 1912-1929.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 53(2) 1975: 239-65.

Popular Depression era folksinger Woody Guthrie grew up in Okemah, Oklahoma, an oil boom town, which had a lasting effect on his life and music. Guthrie’s strong family ties and his small town upbringing made him conscious of the rights of the common man. During the Dust Bowl period and the Depression, his ballad style represents a national voice for the dispossessed in their search for self-respect.

“Migrant Child Gains Attention.” Los Angeles Times April 25, 1963: 19.

“Migrant Flow Held Peril to State Living Standards.” Bakersfield Californian March 20, 1940: 1.

“Migrant Households in California, 1938.” Monthly Labor Review (September 1939): 622-623.

“Migrant Influx Decrease Noted.” Bakersfield Californian September 20, 1938: 9.

“Migrants are Becoming Voters.” California: Magazine of the Pacific (Chamber of Commerce) October 1938: 58, 20-21.

Fearfully reports on the growing involvement of migrants in state politics as new voters. Noting that the registration rates in the counties of the Central Valley are rising faster than expected, the article argues that migrants, having now established a semblance of residency, are registering to vote in record numbers and will undoubtedly vote for any politician who promises to expand relief and pension programs which the state cannot afford. It cites as evidence the recent histories of several migrants in Kern County who came poor and remain so, living hand-to-mouth in ersatz housing and relying on odd jobs and the charity of various state and federal relief agencies while dodging the harassment of the California Citizens Association. None, it reports, expressed any desire for returning to their native states even if paid to do so, and one plans to open a restaurant some day while another is buying land with his meager earnings for a small farm.

“Migrants Decision Points Out U.S. Responsibility.” Fresno Bee November 26, 1941: 1.

“Migrants Given Jobs in Sonoma.” Kern Herald August 24, 1939: 1.

“Migrants Mecca.” The Commonwealth (McFarland) November 12, 1937: 2.

“Migration and Communicable Diseases.” Weekly Bulletin (California State Department of Public Health) 17(19) June 4, 1938.

"Migration to and from Farms in 1931." Monthly Labor Review 35 (1932): 512-513.

Reports a significant rise in the national farming population from 1931 to 1932, particularly in every region except New England and the South Atlantic, the largest in the ten years that the United States Department of Agriculture has been tracking such changes and a break after seven years of continuous decline. It attributes the changes largely to a sharp rise in urban unemployment that has provoked the children of farming families living in the cities to return home.

“Migratory Camp.” Arvin Tiller. February 3, 1939: 4.

“Migratory Camp Plans are Outlined in Report.” Arvin Tiller. March 31, 1939: 1.

“Migratory Labor Adds Many Pupils to Public Schools.” Shafter Progress May 1, 1936: 1.

“Migratory Labor: A Social Problem.” Fortune April 19, 1939: 90+.

“Migratory Pupils Serious Problem in California Schools.” Wasco News June 19, 1931: 5.

“Migratory Pupils Swell School List.” Wasco News October 3, 1930: 4.

Miller, Thelma. “What Price Publicity for Kern.” Kern Herald August 24, 1939: 1.

“Model Migrant Tow Opened at Woodville.” Fresno Bee July 31, 1941: 1.

Molander, Ruth Emelie. "A Study of 101 Migrant Families Receiving Assistance Under the Regulations of the California 'Aid to Needy Children' Law in Kern County in June, 1940." M.A. thesis, University of California, 1943.

Assesses the condition of migrant families in Kern County through an analysis of records relating to their use of public assistance, records to which the author had personal access as a former county employee. Among its findings are that although one-third were single-parent families, three-fourths of their children attended public school and often had average or above average IQ scores. As for their use of public assistance, it finds that only one-third of the families surveyed applied within a year of entering the county, apparently preferring to rely on their earnings than to accept county charity

Monroy, Douglas, et al. Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.

Explores the concept of México de afuera, "Mexico outside of Mexico," in Los Angeles through three studies that analyze the troubled relationship between the Anglo-American and Mexican American communities. Of particular interest is the collision between labor organization by Mexican Americans and Anglo-American interests that led to a series of agricultural strikes during the mid-1930s in which Mexican consuls sided with growers and the anti-union activities of the Los Angeles Police Department led to further strife between police and the ethnic community.

Morgan, Dan. Rising in the West: The True Story of an "Okie" Family from the Great Depression Through the Reagan Years. New York: Knopf, 1992.

“Mrs. Robinson Addresses Mothers in Arvin Camp.” Arvin Tiller March 31, 1939: 1.

National Resources Committee. Report of President’s Committee on Farm Tenancy. Washington, D.C. 1937.

Natanson, Nicholas. The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA Photography. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1992.

Nealand, Daniel. "Archival Vintages for The Grapes of Wrath." Prologue 40, no. 4 (Winter 2008), (27 April 2009).

Explores the relationship between Steinbeck and Tom Collins, manager of the Resettlement Administration's Migratory Labor Camp in Arvin, and its influence on the creation of The Grapes of Wrath. From 1936 to 1938, Collins toured the San Joaquin Valley with Steinbeck, interviewed and assisted migrants they met, and provided him with official reports from the camp that contained diverse, detailed, and usually favorably opinionated information on the migrants, much of which Steinbeck adapted to varying degrees to create characters such as the Joads and Jim Rawley, who is based on Collins.

Nicholas Natanson’s book discusses Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration photographs of African-American life from 1935 to 1942. Photographers include Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, and Gordon Parks.

Neuberger, Richard L. “Refugees from the Dust Bowl.” Current History April 1939: 32-5.

“New Camp Ground for Transients.” Shafter Progress January 19, 1934:

“New Migratory Director Appointed Here.” Arvin Tiller March 3, 1939: 1.

New Republic January 22, 1940: 108-110.

“No Room for Undesirables.” Shafter Progress August 9, 1935: 8.

“No Work, No Eat Plan Inaugurated in Tulare County.” Fresno Bee April 17, 1934: 1.

Norris, Thomas D. “Southern Baptists and the ‘Okie’ Migration: A Sectarian Rebirth in California, 1930s-1940s.” Locus 2(1) September 1989: 35-47.

Studies how migration to California from the Southwest contributed to the renaissance of the moribund Southern Baptist church. Although Southern Baptists had been in California since 1850 and thrived enough to sponsor missions to China, their strong association with the South limited their membership primarily to transplanted Southerners, who were never more than seven percent of the state population, and became a fatal liability after the Civil War when California sided with the Union, which stigmatized it. Their inability to cooperate with Northern Baptists and the stigma of Southern identity made the church moribund until the 1930s, when migrants from the Southwest, who belonged to Baptist, Pentecostal, and independent churches, created informal "fellowships" the Southern Baptist Convention eventually recognized by the end of the 1940s, thus reviving and strengthening the church in California, particularly in Kern County, despite initial misgivings between migrant and resident members over doctrine, liturgy, and comity.

0Northern California Citizens Against 30-Thursday. “Summary and Text of Retirement Life Payments Act [‘Ham and Eggs’ Proposition].” August 26, 1939.

Nye, Ronald L. “Challenge to Philanthropy: Unemployment Relief in Santa Barbara, 1930-1932.” California Historical Quarterly 56(4) 1978: 310-27.

“Oases for Health.” Time January 15, 1940: 40.

“Okie and Arkie Festival Music and Dances of Migratory Workers in California.” New York Times September 21, 1941: ??.

“The Okie as Farm Laborer.” Agricultural History January 1975: 202-215.

“Okie Is It, Indeed, Just a Four Letter Word?” Fresno Bee September 30, 1981: 1.

“The Okies—A National Problem.” Business Week February 10, 1940: 16-17.

“Oklahoma Finds Okie Organization Paso Robles.” Fresno Bee October 11, 1968: 1.

“The Ostrich Visits the Courthouse.” Kern County Union Labor Journal August 25, 1939: 1.

Otto, John. “Okies, Arkies, Texans: One Man’s Recollections.” California Historical Courier 40 (December 1978): 4-6.

Presents a brief oral history of the migrant experience based on the recollections of a man who lived it. Solomon Otto, a teacher turned farmer from North Dakota, abandoned his farm in 1934 after suffering multiple crop failures and headed westward as a migrant laborer, passing through Montana, Idaho, and Oregon until arriving in California, where he and his wife traversed the state in following the harvest and endured much the same living conditions as other migrants. His anecdotes often provide an alternative view of why migrants came and behaved as they did. For example, he recalls that the "middlemen" who hired migrants intentionally overstated the demand for labor in California in order to drive down wages, which contributed as much to the migratory pull as letters sent home by migrants. He also notes that migrants, in keeping with their heritage of thrift, preferred older automobiles, the "jalopies" so often derided in the press, because they were easier and cheaper to maintain.

“Over 3,000 People Live Here During the Year.” Woodville Farm Worker’s Community News June 15, 1942: 1. Note: Tulare County Library, Visalia. Verticle Folder, History Room.

“Pacific Rivers Pushed Higher by New Rains.” Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City). February 14, 1938: 1.

Packard, Rose Marie. “The Los Angeles Border Patrol.” Nation March 4, 1936: 295.

Packard writes a letter to the editors of Nation complaining about the positioning of Los Angeles police officers at key entrance points into California, which she sees as a “serious stab at our civil liberties.” She claims she and her husband spoke with a Los Angeles police officer stationed at a highway entrance to California near Blythe. This officer told her that “[the LA officers] were down here at the orders of the chief of police of Los Angeles.” She argues that the presence of these officers is not only a drain on the taxpayers, but a violation of individual constitutional rights.

Patch, B.W. The Problem of the Migrant Unemployed. Washington, D.C.: Editorial Research Reports, 1939.

Peeler, David P. Hope Among Us Yet: Social Criticism and Social Solace in Depression America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.

Pew, Thomas W. “Rte. 66.” American Heritage 28(5) 1977: 24-33.

_____. “Boley, Oklahoma: Trial in American Apartheid.” The American West November 1980: 14-21, 55-6, 63.

Phelps, Winston. "Uncle Same Has His Own Refugee Problem, the Thousands of Homeless Farm Families." Providence Journal 21 May 1939, sec. II.

Sympathetically reports on the condition of migrant farmers, the causes for their displacement, and the various programs that the Farm Security Administration has created to improve their lives. Of particular interest are the new farming cooperatives that it has created in various parts of the country to entice migrant farmers to settle by offering them subsidized housing, livestock, land, and profit-sharing schemes.

Pike, Roy M. “Californians—Wake Up!” California Journal of Development July 1936: 12-13, 42-44.

Addresses California farmers as “business men” whom he admonishes to form a united front and to realize that they are accountable to the government and their employees. Pike also encourages his farmer colleagues to acquaint themselves with the elected local officials of their wards, precincts, cities, and counties.

Pomeroy, Harold E. Transients in California. Sacramento: State Relief Administration of California, 1937.

Surveys the size and condition of the transient population in California by investigating its presence in the largest cities and presents proposals for its care by public agencies. It finds that transients are usually those displaced by economic change such as natural disasters and mechanization and that the continued public neglect of their poverty poses a substantial threat to the state. It therefore urges renewed requests for federal aid, expansion of county assistance to improve their health and employment, and greater uniformity in settlement laws to allow them a fairer chance at establishing residency.

“Poor Housing In Sutter and Yuba Is Investigated.” The Sacramento Bee April 23, 1940: ??.

Potter, Ellen C. “The Problem of the Transient.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. November 1934: 66-73, 176.

“Preferred Life in Oklahoma to Term in Jail.” Wasco News January 8, 1932: 1.

“Public is Shown Migrant Camp at Farmersville.” Fresno Bee March 6, 1941.

“Red Cross Drive to Aid Victims in Drought Area.” Wasco News January 30, 1931: 1.

Red River Valley Historical Review 3(1) 1978: 77-92.

Reeves, Scott. "Okies are Major Cultural Force in State." Tracy Press, 19 April 1989, sec. C-14.

Reports on a presentation by James Gregory, an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, which argues contra Steinbeck that migrants from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri have not only refused to shed their regional cultural proclivities but have profoundly affected the culture of the southern San Joaquin Valley. Evidence for this change includes the proliferation of evangelical churches, the genesis of country music, and even the popularity of chicken fried steak and Dr. Pepper in Bakersfield.

Reuss, Richard A. "Woody Guthrie and His Folk Tradition." 173-303.

Surveys Guthrie's life and work, paying particular attention to how he came to prominence through his connection with Leftist intellectuals, the rough and spontaneous nature of his work, and his protean nature within the context of folk music, especially in light of his innovation and the fluidity of what constitutes folk music.

“Refugees From ‘Dust Bowl’ Are Relief Problems.” Berkeley Gazette July 27, 1937: Sec. 2; 1.

Reichard, Alice. “California’s Adult Children.” Country Gentleman February 1940: 34-5.

One California schoolteacher’s opinion that the majority of migrant families in her community are irresponsible adult children who happily take advantage of the state’s relief program. Stereotypes all migrant farm families as “footloose, jobless” slackers. Her classroom is overcrowded with children of migrant laborers whom she asserts are of low moral character and compares them to the children from “our established resident citizenry” whose parents taught them the “virtues of work and decent living.” Concludes that these people are lazy, illiterate, and ungrateful. Recommends that the state re-examine the "liberal cash dole" disbursed by the state. Relief has failed the migrants and has become a burden to the taxpayer. For similar stereotypical comments, see Ester Canter's (64).

“Released WPA Workers Spurn Cotton Chopping Jobs.” Fresno Bee May 20, 1936: 1.

“Relief Appeals Heard by Governor Stanford.” Arizona Republic October 31, 1937.

“Relief Camps to Close as Conditions Improve.” Wasco News April 1, 1932: 7.

“Relief for Needy.” Wasco News December 5, 1930: 10.

“Relief Numbers Drop Sharply in Tulare County.” Fresno Bee October 10, 1935: 1.

“Relief Slash Urged to Curb Migrant Horde.” San Francisco Examiner March 3, 1939: 32.

“Report Asks Aid in Home States for Migrants.” Bakersfield Californian April 20, 1940: 9.

Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1994.

Focuses on some three-quarters of the population in southwestern Kansas who remained on their farms during the Great Depression and toughed it out.

Rintoul, William T. “The Banning of The Grapes of Wrath.” California Crossroads (Parts 1 & 2) January 26, 1963: 5, 4-6.

Analyzes the public reaction to The Grapes of Wrath in Kern County and its in removing the book from county schools and libraries. Although Gretchen Knief, the head librarian for the Kern County Free Library, favorably re-viewed the book before its general release, public reaction to it quickly grew negative as newspaper editorials as-serted that its depiction of medical care for migrants did not match hospital records and that the burden of cost for that care fell to the county with little state or federal subsidy. Further editorials bolstered this charge throughout the summer of 1939, and when front-page news broke on August 12 that the Kansas City Board of Education had voted to remove the novel from public libraries, the Kern County Board of Supervisors followed suit, voting four to one in favor of removing it from school and public libraries because it slandered residents as "low, ignorant, profane and blasphemous."

_____. “The Grapes of Gladness, et al.” California Crossroads April 1963: 10-12.

Rorty, James. “Lettuce—with American Dressing.” Nation May 15, 1935: 140, 575-76.

Rural Sociology March 7, 1942: 51-57, 49-61.

San Francisco Chronicle March 10, 1937.

San Francisco News October 6, 1936.

“San Joaquin Is Unable to Aid Reliefers.” The Sacramento Bee March 9, 1940: ??.

Sanders, Arthur. “What’s Going on Around Here?” Oildale Press August 31, 1939: 4.

Sanders, Mae. ‘Authorities Predict Increase in Migrant Flow to Kern Soon.” Bakersfield Californian August 7, 1939: 9.

_____. “National Problem of Migratory Workers Center in California.” Bakersfield Californian August 18, 1939: 9.

_____. “Growers Are Providing Housing for Workers.” Bakersfield Californian August 16, 1939: 9.

Schuler, Loring A. “The Dust Bowl Moves to California.” California: Magazine of the Pacific 26(8) August 1938: 5-9, 30-33.

Luridly describes the socioeconomic impact of migrants on the southern Central Valley. In interviews with various county administrators and inspectors, it excoriates migrants for abusing the charity of taxpayers, creating a public health crisis by their squalor, and undermining local morality with their incest, the latter attested to by no less than the Director of Public Health for Madera County, as it warns that as residents they will be able to vote their corrup-tion into law. The article blames their presence on the expansion of cotton cultivation in California, which is labor intensive and has historically paid well relative to other states, and the unrestrained generosity of state and federal agencies which draws migrants by the promise of cash aid and free public services. While it reports on the entire southern Central Valley, it is particularly attentive to Kern County both as a microcosm of the problem and for its campaign petitioning Congress to deny federal aid to interstate migrants.

Schwartz, Harry. Seasonal Farm Labor in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1945.

Scudder, K.J. “How California Anchors Drifting Boys.” Survey; Social, Charitable, Civic: A Journal of Constructive Philanthropy March 15, 1933: 101-105.

Approvingly describes a camp that is succeeding at reforming delinquent migrant boys. Located in San Dimas Can-yon of Los Angeles County, Forestry Camp No. 10 houses approximately thirty such boys, many of whom ran away from home because of family problems, joined the westward migration, and resorted to petty criminality for survival after arriving poor and homeless in the West. The camp uses work, sports, and incentive-based discipline rather than incarceration and corporal punishment to guide them away from hardened criminality and has had remarkable success in turning around the roughly hundred boys who have passed through it, with only a handful remaining incorrigible enough to warrant removal. Their work consists not only of camp maintenance but also public works projects such as the construction of a service road into the mountains, while good behavior earns privileges such as trips to the city and credit towards release from the camp and a return trip to home.

Sears, Mary. “The Nurse and the Migrant.” The Pacific Coast Journal of Nursing 37(3) March 1941: 144-6.

Personal account of a nurse’s two year experience working in the migrant field for the FSA’s Agricultural Workers Health and Medical Association in California and Arizona.

_____. “The Flat-Tired, Flat-Tired-People.” Californians 7(2) 1989: 14-17, 5

Author recalls her experiences working as a public health nurse for the FSA assisting migrant families in California from 1938-1944.

“Seek to Aid Employer and Farm Laborer.” Shafter Progress May 10, 1935: 1.

[SERA]. Shafter Progress May 31, 1935: 1.

“SERA Camp Is Planned Here.” Shafter Press May 9, 1935.

Shafter California Government Camp’s Weekly News. December 9, 1939.

“Shafter Migrants Elect Camp Government.” Kern County Union Labor Journal August 11, 1939: 1.

“Sharp Increase in Patronage of County Hospitals.” Wasco News July 21, 1933: 2.

Sherman, Jacqueline G. Oklahomans in California During the Depression Decade 1931-1941. Los Angeles: University of California Los Angeles, 1970.

Shindo, Charles J. Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1997.

Shindo shows how artists and reformers have dominated the public memory of the Dust Bowl migration. His study is a fine example of the ways in which artists use “aesthetics and politics to make a personal statement about the human condition.” book explores the impact of the Great Depression on the lives of ordinary people in California through professional observers like economist Paul Taylor, photographer Dorothea Lange, journalist Carey McWilliams, and novelist John Steinbeck.

_____. "The Dust Bowl Myth." Wilson Quarterly 2000 24 (4): 25-30.

Shockley, Martin Staples. "The Reception of The Grapes of Wrath in Oklahoma." American Literature 15 (4) January 1944: 351-361. Reprinted in: A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Agnes McNeill Donohue. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968.

Sillen, Samuel. "Censoring The Grapes of Wrath." New Masses September 12, 1939: 23-24. Reprinted in: A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Agnes

McNeill Donohue. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968.

Simon, Bryant and William Deverell. "Come Back, Tom Joad: Thoughts on a California Dreamer." California History 79 (4) Winter 2000/2001: 181-191.

Discusses how the character of Tom Joad, protagonist in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, has been interpreted in literature, film, and music. Focuses on the work of musicians Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.

“Six Kern County Projects Given SRA Approval.” Daily Midway Driller December 12, 1934: 1.

"Slaves were Fed." Arizona Labor Journal (Phoenix), 24 March 1938:1.

Attacks the rise of "farmer organizations" in Arizona's Salt River Valley that, having failed to pay cotton pickers and other harvesters fairly while providing clandestine support for suppressing efforts by harvesters to air their grievances, are directly responsible for their present poverty and poor health.

Snyder, Fred. “Battle to Curt Migrant Invasion.” San Francisco Examiner March 3, 1939: 32.

_____. “California Facing Desperate Crisis in Migrant Influx.” San Francisco Examiner February 27, 1939: 1?

_____. “Red Drive to Recruit Migrants (part of title missing).” San Francisco Examiner February 28, 1939: 12.

“Squatters Camps Go: Tulare Migrants Move to Towns.” Fresno Bee October 12, 1939: 1.

Stanley, Jerry. Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp. Crown, 1992.

Uses oral and written sources to recount the extraordinary story of Leo Hart, a local high school guidance counselor who transformed an empty piece of land into a school for migrant children living at the Arvin Federal Camp and later sought to be come the Kern County Superintendent of Schools to continue championing their cause.

_____. “Children of The Grapes of Wrath: A Handmade School Saved Okie Kids for a Happy Ending.” American West 23(2) March-April 1986: 22-28.

Tells the story of the Arvin Federal Emergency School through interviews with its founder and former students. Elected Superintendent of Kern County Schools in 1939, Leo Hart built the school in September 1940 using nothing but donations of building materials and the labor of his students, the children of the Weedpatch migrant labor camp, whom local taxpayers and teachers dismissed as an "uneducable" and "shiftless lot" because of their shabby dress, poor health, and uncouth culture. His unconventional school taught its students not only literacy and mathematics but also home economics, husbandry, construction, and even aircraft mechanics after the camp superintendent donated a functioning surplus C-47 airplane and his expertise. Although the school eventually combined with another public school in 1944, thus ending its exclusivity for migrant students, it gave many of its students hands-on experience and poise that translated into successful lives while its success transformed community hostility towards the endeavor into eager acceptance.

_____. “Educating the Children of The Grapes of Wrath.” California Historical Courier 32(4) August 1980: 6-8.

_____. and Susan McClogan. Interview with Leo B. Hart. February 2, 1977.

Mr. Hart recalls his experiences as head counselor in the Kern County High School system in the late 1920s and 1930s where he began to recognize the special needs of the children of the dust bowl migrants who were shuffled aside and ignored by local schools. In 1938, as Kern County Superintendent, Hart set up an experimental special education program in the Shafter Camp in order to help these migrant children develop skills needed to contribute to society.

Starr, Kevin. Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Argues that the Great Depression provoked a violent crisis in Californian politics by eliciting strongly diverging reactions from the Left and the Right over the future of the state's economic order, particularly regarding labor rights and poverty relief, that was relieved only by the introduction of more moderate reform plans such as Dr. Francis Townsend's "ham and eggs" pension scheme and New Deal public works projects.

Examines California during the Great Depression. “Starvation in Cotton Camps Seen in Survey by Governor.” Arizona Daily Star March 22, 1939: 3 E0A.

Governor Stanford and Dr. Coit I. Hughes, state superintendent of public health, inspected the Waddell and other camps located several miles outside of Phoenix. The Governor sent nurses, food and medical supplies, to aid the pea pickers living in these camps. According to health authorities, many of the residents were “on the verge of starvation” and suffering from smallpox, measles, whooping cough and typhoid fever. [See article reporting on the pea pickers protesting at the state capital a week earlier.]

“State Asks Roosevelt for U.S. Aid in Migrant Crisis.” San Francisco Examiner February 16, 1939: 1 ?

“State Chamber Committee Studies Valley Conditions.” Bakersfield Californian January 15, 1940: 15.

“State Has Over 200,000 Jobless; Kern About 3,000.” Wasco News October 30,1931: 6.

“State Survey Reveals Most Tulare County Needy Are Americans.” Fresno Bee May 14, 1934: 1.

“State’s Education Plan Aid to Unemployment.” Wasco News February 12, 1932: 3.

Statewide Committee on the Migrant Problem (Migrant Committee, California State Chamber of Commerce). Migrants: A National Problem and Its Impact on California. California State Chamber of Commerce, 1940.

Stein, Walter J. California and the Dust Bowl Migration. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1973.

_____. “The ‘Okie’ as Farm Laborer.” Agricultural History 49(1) January 1975: 202-15.

Discusses the “Okie” migration into California’s agricultural valleys during the 1930s. Stein explains how these “Okies” competed with and rapidly supplanted the Mexicans, Filipinos,

Chinese, and Japanese farm laborers who had dominated farm labor for two decades.

“Steinbeck Answers.” Oildale Press August 31, 1939: 1.

Steinbeck Committee folder, Carey McWilliams Collection, Institute of Government and Public Affairs Reading Room. Los Angeles: University of California, [year].

“Steinbeck in Answer to R. Levin.” Kern Herald September 5, 1939: 1.

“Steinbeck Novel Reinstated at Kern Library.” Bakersfield Californian January 28, 1941: 1.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.[texts of]

_____.“The Harvest Gypsies.” The San Francisco News October 5, 1936: 1. Reprinted in: Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings, 1936-1941. New York: Library of America, 1996.

_____."Starvation Under the Orange Trees." Monterey Trader April 15 1938: 1, 4. Reprinted in: Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings, 1936-1941. New York: Library of America, 1996.

_____. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. Eds. Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten. New York: Viking Press, 1975.

Steinbeck's writes about the public reaction to The Grapes of Wrath. For example, in one letter he says, "The vilification of me out here from the large landowners and bankers is pretty bad. The latest is a rumor started by them that the Okies hate me and have threatened to kill me for lying about them. This made all the papers. Tom Collins [FSA labor camp manager] says that when his Okies read this smear they were so mad they wanted to burn something down." [see pp. 180-190 for letters related to The Grapes of Wrath.]

_____. Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath. Edited. by Robert Demott. New York: Viking, 1989. .

_____. Their Blood is Strong. San Francisco: Simon J. Lubin Society of California, 1938. Reprinted in: French, Warren, ed. A Companion to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1963.

Includes Steinbeck's journalistic pieces, "The Harvest Gypsies," and "Starvation Under the Orange Trees."

“Storm Renews Attack on California Coast.” Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) February 13, 1938: 8A.

Street, Richard Steven. "The Economist as Humanist: The Career of Paul S. Taylor." California History 58 (4) Winter 1979/1980: 350-361.

Stryker, Roy Emerson and Nancy Wood. In This Proud Land: America1935-1943 As Seen in the FSA Photographs. Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973.

Suburu, Cindy. The Grapes of Wrath revisited. Thesis (B.A.), California Polytechnic State University, 1972.

“Suggests County Migrant Camps.” Bakersfield Californian October 3, 1938: 9.

“Supervisor Harty to be Fall Guy Again”. Kern Herald August 27, 1939: 1.

“Supervisors Vote Two to Two So Book Ban Stays.” Kern Herald August 31, 1939: 1.

“Survey Finds the Dust Bowl Has Supplied Few Migrants.” Arvin Tiller December 8, 1939: 4.

“Survey of Transient Boys in the United States.” Monthly Labor Review 1933: 36, 91-3.

Synon, John. “Grapes of Wrath Sequel.” South Carolina News and Courier November 20, 1962.

Taylor, Frank J. “From Unemployed to Self-Employed.” Reader’s Digest. February 1940: 121-24.

_____. "California's Grapes of Wrath. Forum November 1939: 232-238. Reprinted in: A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Agnes McNeill Donohue. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968; The Grapes of Wrath. Edited by Peter Lisca. New York: Penguin, 1977.

_____. “Labor On Wheels.” Country Gentlemen. July 1938: 12-13, 67.

Within the context of subjectivity and condescension, Taylor discusses the effect the migrants from the Midwest are having on California agriculture. Migrants from Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma are replacing the Mexican laborer who is returning to Mexico to work land offered gratis by the Mexican government. According to Taylor, the white migrants who are replacing the Mexican workers are a “major social burden” for California. Unlike the Mexican laborers, Oklahomans, Texans, and Kansans lack the “sensitive touch for fruit,” their legs are too long for stoop work (Mexicans are “well adapted by nature for stoop labor”), and prefer settling rather than “disappear[ing] over the horizon” out of sight of the Californians. Growers were threatened by the high numbers of Midwestern “penniless work hunters” coming to California because they might be vulnerable to “radical leaders” intent upon organizing them in a “militant and hostile labor army.” However, no labor army has arisen; apparently, the Midwesterners are apolitical, unlike the Mexicans, who are “susceptible to radical leadership” because “they are easily aroused emotionally and accustomed to acting in groups.” In addition to causing problems for the growers, the dustbowlers have too many kids, prefer living in unsanitary conditions, and encourage their relatives to come West. Taylor questions whether California can support these new migrants.

_____. “Promised Land.” Reader’s Digest February 1940: 29-32.

Taylor, Paul S. “Adrift on the Land.” New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1940.

_____. “Again the Covered Wagon.” Survey Graphic July 1935: 348-51.

Taylor explains that drought, dust, and depression are the factors that drove residents from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and adjacent states to immigrate to California. Morever, floods not drought drove blacks out of Mississippi to California. Although many migrants expect to come to the land of milk and honey, they are confronted with something much different: land is scarce; farm labor job market is glutted; and they are unwanted. The California legislature is considering a bill that will exclude “all indigent persons or persons liable to become public charges.” Many migrants flock to rural California where they are caught in labor conflicts. For example, many of these migrants break strikes to earn money to feed their starving families. Taylor predicts increased conflicts between farmers and workers. In order to protect themselves from strikes, farmers have organized. Taylor predicts that the migrants will continue to be caught in these labor disputes as well as living in squalid conditions unless a “protecting government intervenes.”

_____. "California Farm Labor: A Review." Agricultural History 42(1) January 1968: 49-54.

Taylor surveys the issues concerning the peculiarities of California farm labor needs, which occur because of the industrialization of farmland. This large-unit agricultural structure depends upon an abundant labor supply. Since the 19th century, farm labor supply has been composed of dispossessed peoples, including Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Hindustanis, Filipinos, and whites migrating from the southern region of the U.S. Of rural America, California has a record of the most intense labor conflict. Over the few decades, there have been repeated attempts to organize the workers. Taylor concludes his survey with a list of resources related to labor relations and California.

_____. “Migrant Mother: 1936.” American West 7(3) 1970: 41-7.

Dorothea Lange was a typist for the California State Relief Bureau. Her real assignment was to document research the Bureau was conducting on rural rehabilitation. The poignant photographs which she took in 1936 of starving pea pickers is credited with State action for the construction of migratory labor camps. Lange’s own account is appended as “The Assignment I’ll Never Forget.” 7 illustrations.

_____. Migratory Agricultural Workers on the Pacific Coast. American Sociological Review April 1938: 225-32.

Examines the socioeconomic causes of migrant morbidity, poverty, and labor abuse and describes current or poten-tial solutions. Using newspaper accounts, academic studies, and government reports, it contends that the industrial patterns of employment by which large-scale agriculture functions and the bias of local government and institutions for residents cause and perpetuate migrant problems. For example, the economic imperative of large-scale agricul-ture for cheap labor causes their poverty by obliging them to subsist on the low wages of seasonal employment, while the resistance of local government and institutions to treating them equitably perpetuates it by restricting their access to public services or subsidizing their relocation outside of the community. The solutions described in the article rely on significant state and federal intervention on their behalf, most notably through subsidized health care, improved migrant camp housing, and expanded labor regulation that recognizes the industrial character of labor within the context of large-scale agriculture.

_____. "Migratory Farm Labor in the United States." Monthly Labor Review 44(3) March 1937: 537-49.

Surveys the refugee families who received relief from the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Report's data claims to disproved the myth that these refugees are primarily irresponsible and "addicted to wandering." Concludes that the needs of migrants are no different than those of residents. Recommends that to provide migrants with adequate care, the federal government must assume responsibility for reducing or eliminating the states' residency requirements. Includes detailed narratives, tables, and maps on migratory patterns and the socio-economic characteristics of migrant families.

_____. Poor Farming and Labor Displacement in the Cotton Belt, 1937. Monthly Labor Review March 1938: 595-607.

Taylor, Paul S. and Clark Kerr. "Documentary History of Cotton Picker's Strike in California, 1933," in Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. Senate, 76th Congress, 3rd Session, Part 54, Washington, DC: GPO, 1940.

Recounts the events of the violent strike of 1933 involving 8,000 migrant workers in the Southern San Joaquin Valley.

_____.“Uprisings on the Farms.” Survey Graphic January 1935: 19-22, 44.

Examines the causes of strikes by migrant workers in 1932 and 1933 with attention to the ostensible role of leftist agitators. The article argues that their long-term cause, the rise of irrigation-based agriculture and its high demand for seasonal labor, combined with short-term causes such as growing restrictions, wage stagnation, and the introduc-tion of mechanization, leading to confrontations with growers and farming communities that had become unaccus-tomed to such acts. Such confrontations immediately became prone to violence because of racism among growers and farming communities, who already resented the presence of so many non-white workers, and their suspicion of collusion between striking workers and leftists, who instigated similar strikes a generation earlier and were anticipat-ing greater success in organizing workers. Seeing no evidence of substantial leftist involvement, the article concludes that the growers, who have interpreted the strikes as a "crime problem," are doing nothing to solve the fundamental problems that promise future ones.

Taylor, Paul and Edward Rowell. “Patterns of Agricultural labor Migration Within California.” Monthly Labor Review November 1938: 980-90.

Examines patterns of migratory labor in California for the period from June 1934 through June 1935 and its effect on school enrollments. Routes of migration were varied up and down the San Joaquin Valley. Authors distinguish between Mexican and white agricultural workers. Focus in particular on Imperial Valley. Graphs show seasonal mobility with monthly fluctuation of enrollment of Mexican children for a three year period. Fluctuations in enrollment are reflected in seasonal crops. The extreme mobility caused educational problems for Mexican and non-Mexican children for authorities in elementary schools.

Taylor, Paul S. and Tom Vasey. "Drought Refugee and Labor Migration to California, June-December 1935." Monthly Labor Review (February 1936): 312-318.

Reports statistics gathered on those "in need of manual employment" entering the state by the major highways, noting that nearly ninetey percent were white and seventy-five percent were migrants from the "drought states" who entered through Arizona. In contrast, the number of Mexican migrants dropped significantly in the same period due to the saturation of the labor supply by white migrants.

_____ "Historical Background of California Farm Labor." Rural Sociology 1(3) September 1936:281-295.

_____.“Contemporary Background of California Farm Labor.” Rural Sociology 1(4) December 1936: 401-19.

Discusses the growth of intensive agriculture with highly capitalized, large-scale farming methods and concentrated ownership that has given California an industrialized agriculture.

_____. “Drought Refugee and Labor Migration to California, June-December 1935.” Monthly Labor Review February 1936: 1-7, 318-21.

Note: for an overview on Paul S. Taylor's influence on labor in California, see Richard Steven Street's article, "The Economist as Humanist: The Career of Paul S. Taylor," California History 58 (4) Winter 1979/1980: 350-361.

Taylor, Robert. “Hard Times: Values Forged in Dust Bowl Days Led Many to Eventual Success.” Bakersfield Californian September 1993: 5; B: 1, 2.

_____. “Lamont Plans to Stir Memories of Migrants of the ‘30s.” Bakersfield Californian September 1993: 1; B: 5.

Taylor, Ronald. “Okies, Refugees of the Great Depression.” Tucson Citizen November 8, 1980: 8-10.

Teaford, Jon C. "The Twentieth-Century's Great Migration." Reviews in American History 18(2) June 1990: 218-223.

Looks at the rural migration of Okies to California in the 1930s and 1940s and the northward movement of blacks from the Deep South to Chicago during World War II. Focuses on James N. Gregory's American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989) and James R. Grossman's Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1989).

Teisch, Jessica B. "From the Dust Bowl to California: The Beautiful Fraud." The Midwest Quarterly 39(2) Winter 1998: 153-172.

Explores historical parallels between California and the Plains states that forecast the potential for a natural calamity as large in scope as the Dust Bowl. Discusses the power that nature wields over people who fail to include ecological limitations in their calculations.

“Tenant Purchase Program Aids Tulare Farmers.” Fresno Bee January 21, 1940: 1. Tent City News. August 5, 1939.

“The Okies: A National Problem.” Business Week February 10, 1940: 16-17.

“Them’s Strong Words Gentlemen!” Kern Herald August 24, 1939: 1.

Thornwaite, Charles W. Internal Migration in the U.S. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934 {see pp. 1-46, plates VI-VIII ]

Quantitative study dealing with the phenomenon of internal migration in the United States between rural and urban communities, specifically from 1920 to the beginning of the Depression. In spite of improved means of transportation, people were leaving stricken industrial areas for submarginal agriculture. Using census data for state-of-birth and age group, vital statistics, school census records and school transfers, the study explains the historic phases of interstate migration in the United States.

“To Establish Justice…for Sharecroppers.” New York Workers Defense League, 1940.

“Town Overrun with Indigents: Some Are Vicious.” Wasco News October 16, 1931: 5.

“Tragedies of the Land.” The Commonwealth (McFarland) November 4, 1937: 4.

Treadwell, Sophie. Hope for a Harvest produced in New York by the Theatre Guild in 1941.

Tribe, Ivan M. “The Hillbilly Versus the City: Urban Image of Country Music.” John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly June 10, 1974: 41-51.

Study reviews general historical attitudes toward the American city. Discusses common theme widely utilized in novels and ballads characterizing the city as a place where young and innocent country youth are led astray and corrupted.

Troxell, Willard W. and W. Paul O’Day. “The Migrants: Migration to the Pacific Northwest, 1930-1938, Part 3.” Land Policy Review January 1940: 33-43.

Statistically analyzes migration to and within Idaho, Washington, and Oregon during the last ten years. While census data regarding migrants in these states are lacking, survey data from the Department of Agriculture and Farm Security Administration indicate that migration from the Rockies and Midwest has been steady throughout the 1930s with only a slight surge from 1936 to 1937 coinciding with the drought that struck the Great Plains. They have tended to settle in densely populated areas and represent every broad occupational category in numbers that are roughly equal across the three states excepting Idaho, which seems to have attracted more farmers and farm laborers. Furthermore, migrants arriving from 1934 to 1938 had a slightly larger proportion of unemployment claims relative to residents, and the study urges that each state make a greater effort to relieve their distress in order to integrate migrants more completely into local communities and economies.

“Tulare Closes Food Depot to Able Bodied Men.” Fresno Bee May 13, 1935: 1.

“Tulare District: WPA Build New Migrant School.” Fresno Bee July 23, 1939: 1.

“Tulare Relief Need is Acute.” Visalia Times-Delta January 8, 1932.

Underhill, Bertha S. "A Study of 132 Families in California Cotton Camps with Reference to Availability of Medical Care." California State Department of Social Welfare. Division of Child Welfare. October 1937.

Report cites the industrialization of California agriculture as the reason for the increase in migrants to California. Underhill provides information collected at grower-owned farm labor camps in Merced, Madera, and Fresno Counties, in the neighborhoods of Madera, Los Banos, Dos Palos and Firebaugh. Data includes: family size, income, residence status, previous occupations, relief received by 132 families including Mexican, white, black and Native American. The statistical tables emphasize the health situation of children, including nutrition, infections, hygiene, tuberculosis, congenital defects. Underhill concludes that although considered "migratory," most in study remained in the county. Many migrant families do not receive relief; non-residents do not receive medical care and are unable to pay for private medical care. Those migrants who are residents often do not take advantage of medical services. Recommends that state and federal agencies should pay for the improvement of the poor conditions under which migrant families live.

“Undesirables.” Bakersfield Californian July 28, 1938 Reader’s Viewpoint: 22.

“Unemployment Increases Cases in Child Aid.” Wasco News October 16, 1931: 3.

“Unemployment, Relief Work in Kern County Explained by Welfare Heads.” Shafter Progress January 26, 1934: 4.

United States. Farm Security Administration. Study of 6,655 Migrant Households Receiving Emergency Grants, 1938.

United States. Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division. "Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother." 2005. (www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html) See also Barbara Natanson's web site: "Exploring Contexts: Migrant Mother."(memory.loc.gov/ ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/ migrant_mother.html)

United States Congress. House. Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. Interstate Migration. Hearings before the Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens, House of Representatives, on H. Res. 63 and H. Res. 491, 76th Cong., 3rd Sess., 1940-1941. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1941.

United States. Senate. Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor. Hearings and Reports Pursuant to S. Res. 266, Violations of Free Speech and Rights of Labor, 74th-77th Congress, 1936-1941. Note: See Dr. Clements to Mr. Cecil, Hearings, Part 53: 19, 696.

United States Congress. “Interstate Migration.” Hearings Before the Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. House of Representatives. Seventy-sixth Congress. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1940. (July 29-31, 1940).

Committee appointed to inquire into the interstate migration of destitute citizens, to study, survey and investigate the social and economic needs and the movement of indigent persons across state lines.

U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. Farm Tenancy in the United States. 1924.

“U.S. Migratory Camp is Opened at Farmersville.” Fresno Bee December 18, 1938: 1.

“U.S. Remembers Forgotten Farmers.” Mid-Week Pictorial. January 13, 1937: 4.

USDA, ASCC Federal Records Center, San Francisco, 36, 886. Shafter Camp Report, November 1940.

Vargas, Zaragosa. Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest. Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press, 1993.

Vean, R.J. January 21, 1941. Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Clerk of the Board. Gretchen Knief, County Librarian. [Beale Library, vertical file.]

Velie, Lester. “The Americans Nobody Wants.” Collier’s. April 1, 1950: 13-14, 48-50.

Reports on the persistence of poverty and disease among migrants in the San Joaquin Valley into the 1950s. Despite an economic boom resulting from wartime industry and more than a decade of government intervention, migrant slums continue to surround major cities throughout the San Joaquin Valley, wherein people eke out an existence in conditions described nearly a generation earlier in The Grapes of Wrath. Malnutrition among children and a lack of access to medical care are their commonest complaints, both caused largely by chronic indigence and an inability to get ahead because work is in short supply, public and private relief is limited or absent, and interest rates on loans they contact to pay for their rents are high. Much of the problem regarding public relief, the article claims, lies in the outright refusal of interests such as the State Senate Agricultural Committee to support any relief scheme, fearing that such relief encourages migrants to stay in California.

_____. "For Us and Our Children: Home is a Dream." Collier's (8 April 1950): 27, 54-57.

Reports on the persistently poor working conditions of migrants in the San Joaquin Valley a decade after The Grapes of Wrath. Despite the efforts of the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, many migrant agricultural workers continue to have hand-to-mouth lives in substandard camp housing with their children, who, if they do not die of malnutrition or diarrhea as infants, work alongside their parents, often suffering chronic skin diseases due to malnutrition and poor sanitation. The article further shows that active efforts by state and federal agencies to improve their health ended in the 1940s, although it gives no reason for the cessation, and have only resumed since county coroners began to note high infant mortality rates among migrants. Likewise, the drive to organize migrants, although supported by the La Follette Committee of the United States Senate and national church organizations, has stalled because growers continue to resist it, claiming that a strike by a migrant union would ruin any grower, even the largest ones.

Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection

Online presentation of an ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of migrant work camps in Central California in 1940 and 1941.

Wallace, Henry A. “The War at Our Feet.” Survey Graphic. February 1940: 109-14.

“War Opened on Migrants: Officials Unite at Santa Barbara to Bar Outside Labor.” Los Angeles Times January 29, 1939: ??.

Ware, Susan. “Women Face the Depression.” Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Wartzman, Rick. Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Public Affairs, 2008.

“Waters Receding from Stricken L.A. Region: Huge Property Loss.” Yuma Daily Sun (Yuma Arizona Sentinel). March 3, 1938: Sec. 1; 1.

Weber, Devra. Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994.

Uses oral histories of Mexican migrant labor in California agriculture during the 1930s to examine both the paradoxical empowerment of growers by the New Deal and the active resistance by migrants to the same through community, family, and habits that formed a tradition of collective action which, although not immediately successful, remained independent of outside support or leadership.

Webb, John N. and Malcolm Brown. Migrant Families. Works Progress Administration Research Monograph XVIII. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1938.

Report on the characteristics and activities of Depression migrant families who received relief from the transient program of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Report debunks stereotypical misconceptions of migrants as irresponsible, chronic wanderers. Suggests as solution to the transient migrant relief problem the elimination of state settlement requirements which designate transient as a separate category. Contains detailed analysis of 5,489 migrant families selected from the total number receiving care in transient bureaus during September 1935. Includes reasons for migration, family histories, origins and movement, personal characteristics, such as composition of migrant families, age, ethnicity, citizenship, marital status, and education, among others. Contains tables and figures. Concludes that the transient relief problem is national; the solution is Federal leadership. See also: John N. Webb. The Transient Unemployed: A Description and Analysis of the Transient Relief Population. Works Progress Administration Research Monograph III [1935]. New York: Da Capo, 1971 (this edition is the unabridged republication of the first edition published in Washington, D.C., in 1935).

Weiler, Kathleen. "Schooling Migrant Children: California, 1920-1940." History Workshop Journal 37 (1994): 117-142.

Examines the interplay of race, class, and locality on the struggle between different groups -- teachers, students, scholars, officials -- and the presentation of that struggle on how to educate migrant children. It finds that local conditions, particularly the needs of growers and racism against Mexican and Asian migrants, permitted an easy and common objectification of white migrant children and created divisions in official directives, reports, and even personal recollections of the problem.

Weisger, Marsha L. “Mythic Fields of Plenty: The Plight of Depression-Era Oklahoma Migrants in Arizona.” Journal of Arizona History 32(3) 1991: 241-66.

Weiss, Margaret R. Ben Shahn, Photographer: An Album from the Thirties. New York: Da Capo, 1973.

“Welfare Director Explains School Attendance Law.” Wasco News May 22, 1931: 1.

“Welfare Group Seeks Jobs for Local People.” Wasco News April 29, 1932: 1.

Wells, Merle. “Twentieth-Century Migrant Farm Labor.” Journal of the West 25(2) 1986: 65-72.

Discusses 20th-century migrant farm labor in western United States, in particular, Mexican workers in California.

Westbrook, Lawrence. “Rehabilitation of Stranded Families.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 176 (1934): 74-9.

“What Should America Do for the ‘Joads’?” Town Meeting 5(22) March 11, 1940: 3-30.

Whelpton, P.K. “The Extent, Character and Future of the New Landward Movement.” Journal of Farm Economics 15 1933: 57-72.

“When Dust Bowl Refugees Come to Linnell.” The Visalian July 30, 1981: 2.

Whisenhunt, Donald W. “The Transient in the Depression.” Red River Valley Historical Review 1(1) 1974: 7-20.

Whitcomb, Robert. “The New Pilgrim’s Progress.” The Atlantic Monthly 147 May 1931: 545-54.

Whitney, D.J. “White Labor Harvested Raisins.” Pacific Rural Press 1921: 416.

“Why Not Be Practical?” Bakersfield Californian October 23, 1939: 18.

Wik, Reynold M. “Some Interpretations of the Mechanization of Agriculture in the Far West.” Agricultural History 49(1) 1975: 73-83.

Discusses how the environment of California’s Central Valley had an impact on the evolution of farm machinery. The manufacture of combines and the Caterpillar tractor were two of the most significant technological developments in recent American history.

“Will In Hand.” Wasco News November 13, 1931: 8.

Williamson, Mary H. Unemployment Relief Administration in Kern County, 1935-1940 [Master’s thesis]. UCLA, 1936.

Wolfenstein, Judith. "Okay Okie." Westways 71(7) 1979: 33-5.

Two short articles by Woody Guthrie on his observations of two famous California landmarks: "Hollywood" and "Hollerwood Bolevard" written for the Hollywood Tribune in 1939.

Wood, Samuel E. "Municipal Shelter Camps for California Migrants." Sociology and Social Research 23, no. 3 (January/February 1939): 222-227.

Describes how the city of Fresno has operated a shelter camp for migrants during the agricultural off-season over the past six years in order to reduce surges in the crime rate due to vagrancy exacerbated by cold and hunger. Migrants earn their keep by working on municipal projects and a committee headed by the mayor administers the camp. Surveys of the migrants show that they are generally honest and appreciate the camp's services, especially since work is difficult to find in the Central Valley.

Woofter, Thomas J. “Travel Also Broadens Social Issues.” Nation’s Business April 29, 1941: 20-2, 114-17.

“Work or Face Kern Vagrancy Charge is Sheriff’s Ultimatum.” Bakersfield Californian October 8, 1937: 9.

Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Examines the socioeconomic and ecological foundation of the Dust Bowl in an interdisciplinary analysis of how farmers and agricultural experts conceptualized the Great Plains. It argues that the insistent demands of industrial-scale agriculture not only created catastrophe on the Plains during the 1930s but also shaped the mindset of the experts appointed to restore the Plains during the 1940s. The result has been the subordination of conservation to maximal production and the persistence of conditions that threaten ecological stability in the region.

“WPA Division of Social Research, Monograph XIX, C.E. Livery.” Rural Migration in the U.S. 1939.

“WPA Employees Assured Union Is Not Banned.” Fresno Bee April 9, 1937: 1.

“The Young New Dealers.” Nation 220(21) May 31, 1975: 645-46.