U.S. Labor Movement and Grapes

U.S. Labor Movement and Grapes of Wrath

Labor Movement and Grapes of Wrath

Like Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads, Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath (1939) depicts a certain moment in American farm labor. While Guthrie sang of not being defeated and of tough times and desperate outlaws, Steinbeck's writing portrayed the migration of southwestern farmers to California, where they sought a better life. The context was the 1930s Great Depression in America. Unemployment was high (around 25%) and those who kept their jobs suffered wage decreases as industry struggled to stay afloat (Kannenberg 542-43). The situation for industry workers and farmers was abysmal and dim. Political response came with Roosevelt's New Deal policies that sought to relieve the unemployed. Kannenberg says, "Displaced sharecroppers and tenant farmers migrated to the cities where New Deal relief kept them afloat until harvest time when their labor was again in demand" (Kannenberg 545). It was a time of resurgence for labor organization and unions like the AFL and CIO, which were communist, militant, and in solidarity.

The migrant agricultural workers who headed across Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri (the Dust Bowl) to California were called "Okies." Their exodus inspired Steinbeck. Denning writes, "The roots of the Grapes of Wrath lie in the great 1933 strikes of Mexican, Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese farmworkers, led by the Communist organizers of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union" (Denning 260). These were the largest agricultural strikes in American history. According to Denning, they "succeeded in winning wage increases" (Denning 260). But out of their success, the factory-farm owners and canning companies organized a response that ruined the unions through violence, deportation, and anti-picketing laws. After this, hundreds of thousands of southwestern farmers began their migration to California. A popular front social movement was started. This was the social struggle against farm fascism by farm labor. It paralleled other struggles and strikes in the east by textile workers and coal miners, but became more mythic. Demming says that "unlike the local and regional battles of particular groups of workers, the story of the struggles in California's agricultural valleys was built around a mass migration" (Demming 264). California was like a promised land for laborers. It imitated the biblical archetype of migration. The Grapes of Wrath captured that sentiment and told the story of the displaced poor.

The plain people would dig themselves out of their impoverished hole from the migrant camps by organizing as farm workers. The interesting thing is that Steinbeck depicts the story as one of white people. It thus has a false racial bias, since many of those involved were non-white migrants. Kannenberg writes, "The legacy of racism intensified the troubles of minority populations" (Kannenberg 543). Mexican-Americans and Filipinos were pushed out, deported, or repatriated to make way for white migrants. Steinbeck's focus is on the plight of the poor white people. It does not focus on the people who were pushed out, but on the people who moved in. Moreover, the labor unions ended up crushed and collapsed. Pizer interprets the Grapes of Wrath as having materialistic view of history: "The migrants can be exploited because labor is abundant, the 'lesson of history' is that the increasing chasm between the haves and the have-nots will result in revolution, and organization of the masses -- from camp sanitation committees to labor unions -- is the solution to all social problems" (Pizer 84). This is the goal, but the narrative does not end with labor solutions in place.

California is portrayed in different ways. The "promised land" aspect of migration is expressed by Ma Joad when she says, "But I like to think how nice it's gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. an' fruit ever'place, an' people just bein' in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder -- that is, if we all get jobs an' all work -- maybe we can get one of them little white houses" (ch. 10, 124). There is talk of the lovely orange and grape orchards. Pa has his own version of paradise: he wants to own land again to replace what was taken from him. He says, "We'll get out west an' we'll get work an' we'll get a piece a growin' land with water" (ch. 16, 256). This image is burst by Tom, who mentions how there are too many people looking for work with low wages and living in dirty camps with little food. Along the way, others give similar disturbing reports. People laugh at their ideals, aware of the hard situation in California. Some are met returning already. So there were competing images. It is important for the myth of the book that they are presented as victims of natural disaster and economic crisis, but victims who remain dignified in their predicament. The poor working class is not shown as criminal, but as admirable in their survival struggle.

Steinbeck introduces the conflict between owners and laborers in chapter fourteen. He describes a nervous West, like horses before a storm. He elevates the concept of humankind's spirit in their stumbling forward, aching to work and to have a function. The text says, "The great owners, nervous, sensing a change" in face of "the growing labor unity" (ch. 14, 204). The farmers, driven from the land, are dangerous. Why? It is because they form a "we," a collective unity that aims to take over the egotistical individualistic power of the owners. "This is the beginning," Steinbeck says, "from 'I' to 'we'" (ch. 14, 206). He creates in this way a sensation not only of change, but of the conflict between the two parties, labor and capital. It is this idea of labor's unity that reflects the social concern in the novel. Levant observes that "the Okies derive a consciousness of the need for group action from their experiences" (Levant 19). The group comes to possess one soul. Families unify, "the loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream" (ch. 17, 264). The camps organized Central Committees around rules to keep peace and safety. Their whole social life changed from farming to migration. This theme reflects Steinbeck's consciousness of the labor movement.

The owners of factory farms are portrayed as rogues. They print flyers off to advertise jobs, but far more see them than needed. The competition is so fierce that the owner can pay them next to nothing. They control police violence against the Okies. There is no land left since it is all already owned -- some have millions of acres to make themselves feel rich. The farms became fewer and bigger. They were focused on cash crops. They cut prices low so the small farms went out of business. "Now farming became industry," he writes, "and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos" (ch.19, 316). These serfs were beaten, starved, and killed. The farm owners took advantage of the workers. Or they refuse to reveal the wages in a contract, to which one camp man responds "If you don't know, you got no right to hire men" (ch. 21, 358). The conflict of owners and Okies is described as that between soft and fierce men. The consumerist Californians want luxury, but the Okies want only food and land. The owners guard their property with armed force. Raids are enforced on squatter camps. "The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression" (ch. 19, 325). The owners themselves organized in associations for protection. "The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling" (ch. 21, 388). Steinbeck's tone throughout is one of the owners' impending doom. But their violent and cruel methods keep them in control.