After reading seven articles of The Harvest Gypsies, readers get a feel for what the migrants and foreign labor workers had to go through. Families were struggling from what the Dust Bowl did to their homes. They came to California to start over and regain some of the money they had lost. However, the California communities did not appreciate the migrants move very much. The Californians began to lose their jobs to the migrants, causing all communities to not get along with the migrants. In articles six and seven of The Harvest Gypsies, foreign laborers are brought up. Many of the farm workers in California came from foreign countries. They faced discrimination unlike the migrants. They were not as confident to stand up for themselves as the …show more content…
migrants were. By reading more about their conditions, I get a better understanding of the conditions they went through. The foreign labor workers and migrant workers can be classified as different people.
The migrants came from the midwest, in search of a job. The foreign workers came from different countries, such as China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. The demand for peon workers was increasing dramatically, foreign workers were just what the farmers needed. The foreign workers were also treated much worse than the migrants. They worked for little pay, but there was not really another way they could get money. The migrants were paid more, possibly because they are foreign born. When foreign workers came to the United States, they had to adapt to the languages, traditions, wages, etc. As for the migrant workers, they were raised in the United States, so they have a better understanding of how to live. Foreign workers had a very poor standard of living and often faced discrimination. In The Harvest Gypsies, the first sentence of the sixth article is, “ The history of California’s importation and treatment of foreign labor is a disgraceful picture of greed and cruelty.” Steinbeck had a strong belief that foreign workers were treated different from migrants, which is true. Another example is when the article talks about how the whites could not compete with the foreign workers anymore. “ Mexicans were imported in large number, and the standard of living they were capable of maintaining depressed the wages for farm labor to a point where the white could not compete.” This quote is saying that the wages and standard of living got so low, that whites gave up on trying to get a job in the fields. Some may say that the migrants and foreign workers were treated very similar, but this is untrue. They both had to live in very poor conditions, but the foreign workers had it much harder than the
migrants. Migrants were not imported from a different country, so they have a better grasp on how to farm. Steinbeck states that the migrants are going to demand different treatment compared to the foreign workers. This is a very accurate statement. The Dust Bowl migrants were not going to face discrimination like the foreign laborers went through. Prior to coming to California, migrants would work on farms harvesting the land and preparing the crops. They expected to be treated better than the others. The foreign workers came to California in search of freedom, while migrants did not have a choice, they needed to find work. In the article it says, “In the past they have been of several races, encouraged to come and often imported as cheap labor…” Steinbeck declares that foreign laborers were more welcome than the migrants. The migrants would want a higher pay than the other workers. “But, as usual, the nature of California’s agriculture made the owners of farmland cry for peon labor.” In the article, it talks a lot about how farmers needed help preparing their land. The migrants were just what they needed, but they did not expect them to agree with everything they did. Migrants were not as afraid to stand their ground as the foreign workers. Readers may disagree, saying that migrant workers were just as scared as foreign workers, but the article proves that they migrants were not scared of anything. They were willing to stick up for themselves and get what they thought they deserve. Steinbeck believed that during the time of the Dust Bowl, there would be more white migrants than any other race. However, his prediction was false. As time moved on, the amount of foreign workers in California began to rise and the amount of whites working dropped. The reason for the decreasing amount of white migrants was World War II. Many of the white men were drafted into war, leaving the farms behind them. Another conflict that rose was that factories needed workers, resulting in many leaving the farms. The factories had better wages and better working conditions than the farms. In an article from the National Center For Farmworker Health, Inc., it is stated that 72 percent of the farmworkers were foreign born, while only 28 percent were born in the United States. Other statistic determine that 78 percent of the workers were male and 22 percent were female. This leads to the problem of males being enlisted in war, forcing the amount of labor workers to decline dramatically. This proves Steinbeck wrong. His prediction would have been correct if World War II had not occurred. As I read through all the articles of The Harvest Gypsies, many new facts stood out that I had not known before. When answering the question of how do foreign laborers' circumstances differ from the Dust Bowl migrants, I became intrigued at how hard working they both were. The reading material explained how foreign workers were faced with discrimination and how the migrants were not going to put up with the same thing. They expected to be treated with more respect. It also brings up how Steinbeck believed the migrants were going to be superior. This accusation was wrong. The most prominent workers were born in foreign countries. Reading and answering these questions gave me a better understanding on what the workers had to go through during the Dust Bowl.
Before the strike for higher wages began, migrant workers worked in very horrible conditions. Men, women, and children would work on these farms for only a dollar an hour. The
Steinbeck meets his standard by celebrating the migrant workers’ drive and sense of community in the face of the Great Depression. The Joad family and many others, are dedicated to conquering all odds: “[t]hus they changed their social life–changed as in the whole universe only man can change” (Steinbeck 196). There are no other options available for these tenant families than to take the trek to California in hopes of finding work. The fears they once had about droughts and floods now lingered with
John Steinbeck does not portray migrant farm worker life accurately in Of Mice and Men. Housing, daily wages, and social interaction were very different in reality. This paper will demonstrate those differences by comparing the fictional work of Steinbeck to his non-fictional account of the time, The Harvest Gypsies.
Mexican immigrants in the United States are willing to work hard and long hours throughout the day regardless of the amount of sleep or rest they may get. Conversely, this is not how Efren Mendoza, a public city bus driver, views Mexicans and he believes they are not motivated to achieve things in life. One would assume that he would understand how difficult it is for immigrants to assimilate in a new foreign country without knowing anyone or anything here, but he is not on their side and it is somewhat hypocritical of him because he himself is Mexican. It is as though Efren sees his own people as invisible individuals because he does not acknowledge all their hard work and sacrifices they may have gone through in order to arrive in the United States. He further proves his insincerity when he mentions that the “new wetbacks [are] picky about what jobs they’ll do [and that they] half-ass [the] work” that they are given to do (77).
Migrant workers have the stereotype of hard workers that are desperate for money. They are usually not very well educated. Most of them were strong but some weren't. Take Lennie and George for example. George wasn't very strong but was smart and Lennie was strong but dumb as a fence post. Like Lennie and George, all migrant workers wanted their own land to farm. They had few possessions and were independent. The workers liked to cuss a lot, get drunk on Friday nights, and were usually very poor.
... many immigrants faced discrimination, thus leaving them no choice but to live in the slums of some areas and try fight their way up to success.
...however, feels that to solve the plight of the Okies, land should be set aside for them to start their own small farms, since farming is all they know. He also suggests that local committees set wages and labor needs before the harvests to protect the rights of the workers and prevent them from being extorted (Pgs 58-59). While Steinbeck’s ideas made sense and had good intent, the grim reality still remained that the corporations controlled the agriculture industry and that they were going to save every nickel and dime they could, even if it meant a lower standard of living for the Okie. Today, we have unions that attempt to prevent things like this from happening again, but the plight of illegal immigrants demonstrates that the reality of this country’s need for cheap labor remains.
The drive to keep jobs out of the hands of Mexicans had the highly undesirable result of forcing many families to depend on welfare to survive. Many Mexicans were forced to leave and rounded up by immigration officials, while others were intimidated by immigration practices and left voluntarily. While some left willingly because of the poor economic outlook, hoping things would be better in Mexico, others were deported even if they had come to the United States legally. One reporter called for an investigation of immigr...
...rked as unskilled laborers in the new factories. Most were poor, disgruntled, and found that America was not what they had expected when they left their native countries. The city bosses provided aid to these immigrants and then gained their political support. They unfairly took advantages of the immigrants to gain power, which helped them to gain the money they were seeking. The immigrants had a difficult life because most of them were crowded into ghettos and slums. They received low wages and faced dangerous and unhealthy working conditions daily. Concentration increased and living quarter size proportionately decreased. The immigrants experienced poor sanitation and contagious diseases and most did not have any plumbing or ventilation. They had a difficult and sad life, and many were more happy in their oppressive homelands than industrialized America.
The movie opens up with rural images of thousands of migrant workers being transported in trucks with a short introduction by Edward Murrow and some occasional interventions of parts of an interview made to the secretary of labor after he saw the impacting images, and to the different people who have seen the lives the workers lead. Most of the secretary’s commentaries depict the exclusion that these people have since they are basically people who are silently crying out for assistance to stop harvesting the fields of their shame, or at least to hope for potential raises and better work conditions. From Florida to New Jersey, and from Mexico to Oregon, these people including women and children travel around the states following the sun and the demand from the seasonal goods while working around a hundred and thirty-six days earning and average of nine hundred dollars a year.
The novel focuses on the negative aspects of capitalism and sheds a positive light on communism. Steinbeck proves that there are many problems in capitalism with the way the migrants suffered during the era of the Great Depression. The economic slump, which many people assume affected the urban populations, was even harsher on the migrants. Steinbeck, throughout his novel, reveals the plight of the migrant workers during the Depression and how capitalism has crushed them. He reaches out to his readers and plants the idea that the glorified capitalism in America is not what it seems, and that any path, even communism, is preferable.
Immigrants during this time period came to America seeking wealth for their family they had brought with them, or to send back to their families in their homeland. Whichever case it was immigrants spent the majority of their time working in the factories in hope for a better life than the one they gave up in coming to America. However, upon arriving immigrants soon realized that the home they left behind was not all that different than their new one. Immigrants came seeking the types of jobs that would give them Liberty and independence, leaving them only to find themselves just a working part in a large factory dependent on machines, rather than their own skills.
...e. Think any of us folks’d live like that?” The migrant farmers were not even considered Americans; they were viewed as foreigners and second-class citizens. The economic inequality that developed during the 1930’s not only left thousands of Americans impoverished and it created a large division in the class structure of America.
Wealth and success came with the age of factories, and so did problems, requirements, and laborers that were associated with major factories. While factories required many employees to function, they usually did not hire women or African Americans very much. Even though they would not normally hire fully grown African American men, they would hire white children, some only at the age of ten. Labor was desperately needed. So, immigrants desperate for work would often be hired at large numbers alongside of white American born citizens. It was the vast number of immigrant workers that made the factories thrive. Over time American citizens began to despise the immigrants because the immigrants took away jobs, made their cities vastly overcrowded, and lived by different social and religious standards. Immigration reforms were demanded and, eventually, the government began to restrict who could come into the
Immigrants from around the world wanted to migrate to the United States in search for better opportunities because the United States’ economy was blooming during this time period. Immigrants did not only came to the United States for better jobs, but also for the freedom that the United States gave to its people. Each group of immigrant had their own reason to migrate to the United States. For example, the Irish fled to the United States in the 19th century because the English was oppressing them. This was the reason that led to the first wave of Irish immigration. “The Irish were dispossessed of their island by the English Prosperos. The Irish, too, were depicted and degraded as the ‘Other’- as ‘savages,’ outside of ‘civilization,’ and ‘wild.’