John Steinbeck, the Harvest Gypsies

Primary Source Assignment:

John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies (1936)

By: Alfredo Pelayo

ID: 003471415

HIST 146 (01)

John Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies is one of a series of newspaper articles that he wrote which then becomes his source into writing his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath. His newspaper articles are about migrant’s who have lost just about everything due to the Great Depression, causing them to suffer to look for a new beginning. Steinbeck’s articles were written by what he personally witnessed or by interviewing migrants as they were in their quest for a wage to survive. The migrants were needed but not wanted in California, which sounds contradicting. As they were on their way to California the residents had this hatred on them which wouldn’t accept them for various reasons. Before these migrants the people that used to go look for these new beginnings were foreigners that came from China and other countries. As the Great Depression hit, eastern populations were driven westward from their old farming communities where they lost just about everything. They were in need of any type of wage to feed their families, which then led them to field work. There have been significant differences from the different migrant generations during this New Deal and Great Depression era compared from earlier times.

The main cause of this movement of migrants to the west was the Great Depression. This has been one of the worst, if not the worst, downfalls in U.S. history. The textbook states clearly, “The Depression transformed American life. Hundreds of thousands of people took the road in search of work.” (Foner, 789) Unemployment peaked at 25%, which made people get out and look for work. Many of these families were homeless and hungry trying to find the best way to survive. There were over one million families that lost their farms, their only form of income. This relates to Steinbeck’s article when he describes the westward movement of the...