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…
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
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.
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
In his book, “…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him,” author Tomás Rivera documents through a fictional non-traditional novel, the life experiences of a child that endured many difficulties, he describes the hope, struggles, and tragedies of the Mexican-American migrant workers in the 40s and 50s, and how they travel from home to work to survive. The book’s focus is in Texas, although other areas are mentioned throughout the United States. Divided into 14 different short stories and 13 vignettes the author records the predicament of the Mexican-American migrant workers in Texas and explains how the migrants had to overcome constant discriminatory actions by the White Americans and endure difficult living situations because of poverty as well as unsatisfactory job
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
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 Mexican Migrant Farm Workers’ community formed in Southern California in the 20th century because of two factors that came together: farming emphasized by migrations like the Okie farmers from the East and Mexicans “imported” to the U.S. because of the need for cheap labor as a replacement for Americans during World War II. The migrant labor group formed after an already similar group in the U.S had been established in California, the American farm workers from the East, known as the Okies. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s caused the movement of the Okies to the West and was followed by the transition from American dominant farm labor to Mexican migrant labor. The Okies reinforced farming in California through the skills they took with them, significant to the time period that Mexicans arrived to California in greater numbers. However, the community was heightened by World War II from 1939 to 1945, which brought in immigrants to replace Americans that left to fight in the battlefields.
...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
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).
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.’
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.
...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 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.
In essence, the Harvest Gypsies was written as a documentary elucidating on the lives of American immigrants into California in search of employment that would help feed their families. The low-income families would work for minimal wages as there were plenty of laborers in the town because of increased immigration. Despite the existence of high wages that could be received from employment for instance harvesting crops, the neighboring towns would not match the extent of labor supply in such a time. Understandably, this period was marked by great depression, affecting poor and rich individuals across the country (Steinbeck and Charles 1998). Due to such, the native poor had to migrate to other states, for instance, California,