“The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.” In this plaint from the Gospel of St. Matthew, one has only to substitute “migrant labor” for “Son of Man” to describe the situation of California’s migratory labor — “interstate” and foreign-born — during the ‘30s. For the unattached male “hobo” or “bindlestiff” there were barracks, supported in part by state and federal funds. But a family, new to the state, penniless and without California relatives and friends, would be thrown into one of the tent communities collecting along ditchbanks.

“Transients in California,” a report of the Division of Special Surveys and Studies, State Relief Administration of California, 1936, described the ditchbank community: “In Imperial County, many families were found camping out by the side of irrigation ditches, with little or no shelter. One such family consisted of the father, mother, and eight children. The father hoped there would be some work in the valley later in the year. The mother had tuberculosis and pellagra, and it was because of her health that the family came to California. One of the children had active tuberculosis. The family had no home but a 1921 Ford. The mother was trying to chop some wood for the fire. A meat and vegetable stew was being cooked in a large, rusty tin can over a grate supported by four other can. A cupboard and a table had been constructed of boxes. There were no toilet facilities, Nature’s needs being attended to behind bushes. Some water was brought from the ice plant in El Centro for drinking purposes, but for cooking and washing, water from the irrigation ditches was used. The family had been sleeping on the ground. The mother told the worker on the survey that she had been known as the best housekeeper in her home town…”

Some larger growers set aside land on which a worker might pitch a tent or unroll blankets. Others rented shacks to workers, with rent usually one dollar per week. Typically, shacks were without water, power, heat, often without even outdoor pit toilet facilities. For toilets, foot-deep holes were dug in earth and then covered up with burlap or cardboard, or people would simply “go” behind shacks and bushes. In better camps, one shower and one chemical toilet served up to 200 people. Workers bought food, usually with IOUs or “brass” money, from company stores, where prices ran high, quality low.

Privately owned auto-trailer parks offered accommodations and fees as various as their owners. Some California counties, notably Madera, built public camps for housing migrants. But county-run public camps were a rarity. It would be fair to say that most “Okie” migrants lived in vicious squalor.

By the mid-'30s, Californians had come to recognize that the “interstate” migrant, or “Okie,” was a phenomenon new to the state. Statistically, this migrant was a family man with a wife of childbearing age and 2.8 children. He was destitute. He was here to stay.

In the winter of 1934 -35, Paul Taylor, a University of California economics professor, serving as consultant to the state’s Department of Rural Rehabilitation, was asked to help the department determine how the new migrants could best be helped. Taylor, whose area of expertise was migrant labor, recognized that a documented statement of need would be required. Facts and figures, of course, had been piling uo on desks. Something more persuasive was needed. Taylor asked to be assigned a photographer – Dorothea Lange. (She would later become his second wife.)

Taylor, two Cal graduate students, and Lange drove through the state, interviewing and photographing migrant families. Research complete, Taylor recommended that California build camps to house the state’s 200,000 migrant farm workers. The camps, to be located along the migratory route, would allow these new migrant families to maintain a home in one place and their children to stay in one school. (When migrants’ children did attend school, five, six, even seven moves within one school year were not uncommon.)

Early 1935, when talk of building migrant camps began to be bruited about, was not the most auspicious of times for such an idea. During 1933 and 1934 in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, the Communist-affiliated Trade Union Unity League had organized and led massive strikes among Mexican field workers. California growers were still smarting. Conservative California Republicans in the state assembly and their constituents did not look kindly on such a program.

In March of 1935, the director of California’s Rural Rehabilitation Department nevertheless requested the federal government give $100,000 for the “erection of camps for migratory laborers in California.” The $100,000 would be used to “take care of California conditions growing out of the preponderant element of landless wage laborers in the rural population, the arm of migrant workers which moves en masse from place to place for one harvest after another along a 700 mile trek; and the flood of drought refugees from the stricken states of the Middlewest.”

In spring of 1935, claiming Communist union organizers would turn camps into hubs of radical activity, that local taxes for schools and law enforcement would rise, that migrants would spread physical and moral contagion, California growers lobbied so effectively against the camps that construction was delayed. Then in May, the Department of Rural Rehabilitation was assumed into the Federal Resettlement Administration, headed by Rexford G. Tugwell (anti-New Dealers called him “Red” Rex).

On one hand New Deal Washington found the migrant camp plan attractive: on another they feared federally supported camps amounted to government subsidy for California’s large growers. In August of 1935, from a budget of $91 million intended for the entire U.S., Tugwell assigned $10 million to Region IX (consisting of California, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona).

By summer of 1935, using the initial $100,000 applied for and won earlier in the year, the first migrant camp was built in Yuba County outside Maryville, and that fall, in Kern County at Arvin, construction began on a second camp. (In the film version of The Grapes of Wrath, the government camp scenes were shot in the Arvin camp.)

In October of 1935 Tugwell toured Region IX. He visited the Marysville and Arvin camps and declared himself “favorably impressed.” He went on to Los Angeles and spoke before the California Democratic Clubs. He chided club members for putting private interest before public, for identifying with Communism any government program that helped the less powerful. He ended his speech by suggesting, “We have no right to expect that the disestablishment of our plutocracy will be pleasant. These historic changes never are.”

In November, meeting in Los Angeles, California growers again protested the camp plan. Fearing that migrants resident in camps located on federal property could with impunity organize strikes, they wanted camps located on private property and camp population limited to 300. Additionally, growers at the Los Angeles meeting stated that camp managers should not be permitted to acquire time toward the one-year state residency requisite for receiving “relief.”

By the end of the year, Tugwell had approved a plan to build camps in California sufficient to house 150,000 to 200,000 migrant laborers. When the Resettlement Administration’s migrant program reached Congress in 1936, California growers continued to foment against the camps. Congress chipped away at the Resettlement Administration’s initial plan and in its final vote limited the number of camps to be built. (The camp program was extended into Arizona, Utah, Oregon, and Washington.)

Under this new plan, California was to have 25 camps. Some were to be permanent; others were planned as mobile units, to be moved as harvesters moved. In subsequent sessions of Congress, appropriations for the camps suffered both from national indifference to the migrant workers’ plight and agrarian states’ hostility to a program that seemed as much a benefit to California’s large growers as to migrant labor. The large growers, while appreciating that these camps offered housing that they might otherwise have to provide, also continued to fear federal camps would be centers of union organizing, and some growers retaliated against these camps by refusing to hire anyone living in one. Rural townspeople, generally, opposed camps being built in their vicinity. In California, by 1939, only 15 camps, 10 permanent, had been completed.

To be eligible to live in a camp, the head of household had to present a card from the U.S. Employment Service, showing the applicant registered for work. The permanent camps furnished tent foundations, a clinic, isolation units for those with communicable disease, meeting hall, nursery for children of working mothers, garage and grease rack, pump house, laundry, showers, and toilets. Plans also called for building on permanent camp site of small houses, each with a lot attached on which migrants could raise vegetables. Rent for a tent platform was ten cents per day. Houses were rented for $8.20 per month. The Resettlement Administration (which in 1937 was transferred to the Farm Security Administration) appointed one full-time camp manager and a public health nurse for each camp.

Two hundred families could be accommodated in a permanent camp, and it was not unusual for 1000 people to be living in one camp. According to John Steinbeck’s 1936 San Francisco News series, 85 percent of camp occupants were former farm owners, farm renters, or farm laborers. The other 15 percent were painters, mechanics, electricians, and professional men.

Tom Collins, to whom Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath was dedicated, managed California’s first and second migrant camps until 1941, when he resigned from the migrant program, trained many of the managers of other California camps. According to Steinbeck’s biographer, San Diego State University English professor Jackson J. Benson, “The camp program as it was actually put into practice in the individual camps was essentially derived not from directives from above, but on the basis of the precedents established by Collins first at Maryville and then at Arvin.” In a Journal of American Literature article, Benson noted that Collins’s “scheme of operation was based on the premise that the worst thing that could happen would be for the migrants to be thrust into a cold, bureaucratically run camp, bristling with rules governing every aspect of their lives.”

Following Collins’s plan for management, each camp population governed itself through an elected council and series of committees. The council determined punishments – for drunkenness, gambling, fighting, lack of cleanliness – and voted for or against eviction. A work committee assigned chores, an entertainment committee planned dances and socials. The women’s group — the Good Neighbors — greeted newcomers and got them settled, supervised a limited charity for sick and entirely destitute families, ran the nursery, pieced quilts, and “made over” donated clothes.

In his San Francisco News articles, Steinbeck noted, “From the first, the intent of the management has been to restore the dignity and decency that had been kicked out of the migrants by their intolerable mode of life … A man herded about, surrounded by armed guards, starved, and forced to live in filth loses his dignity; that is, he loses his valid position in regard to society, and consequently, his whole ethics toward society. Nothing is a better example of this than the prison, where the men are reduced to no dignity and where crimes and infractions of the rules are constant.”

For all the hopefulness felt by camp managers, life in the camps was by no means idyllic. There were outbreaks of drinking, fighting, wife beating, squabbles between tent neighbors. The Okies were loners, men and women who had grown up on farms set miles apart; getting them involved in group activities wasn’t easy. Many indeed were not accustomed to indoor toilets, problems with plumbing were endless. The typical camp manager, urban and educated, found himself out of sympathy with Okie fundamentalist religious precepts and practices – the latter might include faith healing. The typical manager also found offensive the average Okie’s racial attitudes; and the federal migrant camps were never home to a significant number of people of color.

During the ‘30s, Filipino and Mexican field laborers were gradually displaced by the interstate migrants. Before the ‘30s and after, the foreign-born migrant laborer in California typically was able to afford only the meanest of housing. The problems of the foreign-born migrant were never addressed by the program described here.

Growers’ fears that the federal camps would produce a militant unionized Okie work force never materialized. The average Okie did not come to California intending to be a field worker, to do what he – unselfconsciously referred to as “nigger work”; he wanted to acquire land, return to farming, and a significant number of Okie migrants, although entirely destitute, nevertheless identified more easily with the landowner than the landless. Generally, the Okies found offensive the rhetoric of the usual union organizer, the internationalist cry of “workers of the world” and discussion of class solidarity resonated with nothing the Okie held dear, and indeed the supra-patriotic Okies tended to suspect union organizers of un- and anti-Americanism. A majority of the Okie migrants arrived in California literally starving. To get work — any work — they were willing to accept the lowest wages and to cross picket lines, and did.

The camps published weekly newspapers — The Covered Wagon, People’s Word, Migratory Clipper, Pea Pickers Prairie, The Tow Sack Tattler. Beneath the disclaimer, “Neither the Farm Security Administration, nor its employees accept ‘Editorial Responsibility,’ the papers were written and edited by the migrants and typed onto stencils and mimeographed. Some papers ran to 10 and 12 pages. Most included a manager’s letter, minutes from camp meetings, reports on weather, crops, grower/labor relations and union organizing (not infrequently, camp members requested of camp newspaper editors that pro-union messages not be included in the papers’ pages), news of camp youth, a gossip sheet with tidbits on camp romances and letters, poems, and drawings by camp members. Written in the words of the people living it (and with their spelling and phrasing unchanged from the original) these papers provide a portrait unlike any other of migrancy and camp life.

• Weed Patch Cultivator
• Arvin Farm Worker’s Community
• Arvin, California
• November 11, 1938

ARMISTIC

We Observe this 11th day of November as Peace. Fathers died over Seas so Mothers could teach their children what Liberty and Piece stand for. There were numbers of people who fell on Flanders field, which we will never forget, and we hope there is never another war. We look for the better, which we are assure to git if we all stand firm, Roy Carter.

Mr. and Mrs. Osborn made a rush trip Tuesday night into Arvin with their son Everett to Dr. Hendricks. Everett was choking with croop.

Jack Frost has certainly played havoc with a good part of the gardens. However, both Mrs. McMillan and Mrs. Osburn were able to pick roasting — ears Tuesday and Wednesday. Mrs. Osburn was able to pick enough to can several quarts.

• The Happy Valley Weekly
• The Indio Farm Workers’ Community
• Indio, California
• Volume I, No. 1 November 26, 1938

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

Surely as an American community, with our own government, our own laws, being conscious of our identity as a workers group, we need a common voice. A paper in which truth is news and news is truth … Again as in other ventures of this farm workers community, please do not forget that this is your newspaper, you are expected to contribute.

Don’t bother about using perfect english, any way the only object of writing is to convey thoughts. So whether you use perfect english or not, as long as you make us understand what you mean, then you have done a perfect job. There are people so narrow they look at you agast if one says “aint” or “youall” but won’t flicker an eye if they see a hungry child. There aren’t any English experts in camp any way. And you know it isn’t always how you say a thing that counts but what you say. So if any body has any thing to say, this paper has a place to say it for you all.

ALL A MISTAKE

Campers, last Tuesday watched a local law enforcement officer come to the tent of Brother campers Clarence Dickeson and Pell Dancy looking for a sack of goods allegedly stolen or lost. It seems the two campers had played the role of good Samaritans and hauled from the Indio depot trunks and what nots to a local hotel. This morning on awakening the traveler missed one of the bags and so of course thought the two families from the camp must have stolen them, so out he comes post haste with a minion of the law ready to send to prison the so and so thieves. With language none to polite he accused ourtwo camp families of stealing. But the officer being a very sensible sort of fellow didn’t do any arresting, which turned out to be wise on his part. Any way the end of this sad tale is that the man found his bag right where he had left it, in a corner at the depot. Somehow or other, I don’t think folks who haven’t even enough gumption or sense to take care of a few bags should be allowed to travel around the country with out a keeper. Any way the two brother campers Dickeson and Dancy wants their neighbors to know they are good farm working citizens and aren’t guilty of stealing as all camp citizens they wished to leave camp with good records.

• Camp Echo
• Brawley Farm Worker’s Community
• Brawley, California
• January 13, 1939, Volume 1, Number 3

NOTICE! ABOUT SEWAGE.

Many of the campers have the bad habit of throwing their dish water around trees and in their yards. The management request that all campers cooperate in keeping this a sanitary place. Put all dish water in slop containers. Remember that trees do not like soapy dishwater.

BRICKBATS

Listen people who have barking dogs! Many people who work all day want a good nights rest. How can they if the dogs keep them awake.

Several in Unit 2 have thrown dish water and slop in their lawns.

LITTLE NOTHINGS

There was something in one of our large newspapers condemning us vegetable tourists. We would like to have people know that if it weren’t for us, California would be a poor state. Who would pick all of their crops?

I’ve heard that the man from Arkansas really did die and was turned down in Heaven. He was sent to California where there is no rest for the wicked.

The Covered Wagon

The Indio Migratory Labor Camp

Indio, California

WE WRITE WHAT WE SAY, WE SAY WHAT WE THINK, WE THINK WHAT WE DARN PLEASE

January 14, 1939

Saturday night dances are getting better and better. The Bruton family furnish some real old-time “fiddlin’.” Tex and Mike Lancaster take turns at guitar and several good harmonica players help out on harmony. Recently a lady in camp stepped up and did a real job of “callin.” If any thinks he can do better at callin’ than this lady – let him step out and strut his stuff. There will be another big dance Saturday.

FROM A SITTER DOWNER TO ALL YOU SITTER UPPERS

There seems to be a few of us who do not know that they are not supposed to put their feet on toilet seats. Again let me repeat they are shaped as they are to enable people to sit on them. The doors were taken off in front of the toilets so that folks doing queer gymnastics like putting their feet on seats would be noticed. There are two things that are not very nice in the unit buildings, on the mens and womens end both. The worst is spitting on floors specially those who chew tobacco and snuff. Those to chew lease stop spitting on the floors and if you must spit into toilets, you should go back in the grapes a while first and practice until you get the range.

This morning a report came to the camp committee that a man in Unit Five got drunk and beat his wife. I wonder just what kind of punishment would fit him. A man meets a girl, goes through a courtship, promises before God if he has one to protect her and care for her. Experiences with her one of the greatest things a man can know, the love of a woman. To trouble and suffering she becomes the mother of his children. To her he is the one for whom no tribulation or sacrifice is great to endure. In return for this, some men, big strong brave ones, oh but they must be proud of their bravery and manliness, to actually hit a defenseless woman. You know what I think should be done to a person like that. I don’t say man because he doesn’t deserve the title. He should in all fairness be tied to a post and horse whipped. I heard of a woman once whose husband used to get drunk and beat her, well one time he come home drunk and soon went to sleep and then she took some strong cord and tied his hands and feet so he couldn’t move and kept his tied until he awakened sober. Then she went to work with a horsewhip and beat him until he was a mass of welts, until he begged her to give him a chance to be a man again. Course very few women have the determination to do a thing like that but I have a hunch there are a few other women who would enjoy helping. Would be a nice sight to see a dozen women horsewhipping a man like that. There are MEN and there are men.

REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE MEETING

January 28, 1939

We know this is going to be embarrassing but we have said we would publish the name of any that gets drunk in camp. Mr. Clayton was drunk again today. Sure is terrible for his poor wife and children. Now let us tell you again that every drunk will be arrested and his name printed in this paper. Gambling also must be stopped. Anyone caught gambling should be arrested, let’s spend our gambling money on our wives and children. We are sure they need it.

• The Covered Wagon
• The Indio Migratory Labor Camp
• Indio, California
• March 11, 1939

The present situation of, The Capitalist System, Big Business, laboring and idle, as a whole, reminds me of a man who had his winter home close to my fathers farm when I was a little boy. This Mr. X didn’t allow any trespassing of the neighbors, my brothers, or any one, without first asking permission from him. A very particular and peculiar gentleman, suspicious of every one. He had a collection at one time of 500 dogs of various breeds he’d picked up half starved, half dead. He built a pen for the dogs and a big, strong box to keep enormous dog food supplies within. The box was bilt close by the pen and each day, the old man would go over, open a can of food, and throw it in the midst of those 500 dogs. You should have seen those dogs fight for a bite of that food.

This procedure continued for some time and each day there was a new made mound in the little dog grave yard until he had rid the yard of the weakest. Still he kept a lock on the box and was sure those few left didn’t get enough food to strengthen themselves. But just enough to exist on.

P.S. We hope the dogs ate up Mr. X in the end.

• The Covered Wagon
• The Indio Migratory Labor Camp
• Indio, California
• April 8, 1939

THOSE WHOM GOD HAS JOINED LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER

When those words were spoken by Rev. Thompson, a boy and a girl — Miss Bertha Brewton and Mr. Vester Pickell — became before God and the world, a man and a woman, destined to try to-gether the road and life … This was the camp’s first public marriage, the first time two of our young folks have before us all taken the vows … There wasent any silks and satins, there wasent any big cats driven by shauffers, nor was there splendor nor was there the outward showiness of brass and gold, just two simple hearts, honest, sincere. Folks to whom marriage is an act of God, not just another adventure.

WEEKLY LETTER FROM YOUR MANAGER

When the minister said, “DO YOU TAKE THIS MAN VESTER,” a big lump sneaked up into my throat. To the bride and groom I wish, a future, with a home, not like they have known, but a cottage, flowers, little knick knacks around which will be built, feelings of ownership and pride, little tots with a real chance in life, for education and hope. Some time the future scares me, for young girls and young men, Is there nothing but despair for them. Oh God, isent there a nook somewhere, a piece of ground they can call their own, a little corner where they can build, can plan, can love without the terrible blank wall-of-depair and starvation and want looking them in the face … But I don’t , and where can I send them to any one that does.

• The Covered Wagon
• The Indio Migratory Labor Camp
• Indio, California
• May 6, 1939

Leonard Jones who was a resident in this camp for some weeks, and left here after committing a burglary was caught last week and sentenced to six months in jail. Jones, who lived on Platform III was apprehended in the migratory camp at Gridley, California. It is recalled that he robbed a fellow camper.

• Agri-News
• Shafter Farm Workers’ Community
• Shafter, California
• June 3, 1939

We understand that there was a strike in some of the potatoe fields. It seemed some of the Ranchers are overworking the potatoe pickers, giving them such long spaces that they can’t keep up with the diggers. This causes some of the help to “burn out” and last Monday we understand a man dropped dead while picking up spuds near Wasco.

COUNCIL NOTES

A motion was made, seconded and carried that the Secretary write Mr. Steinbeck asking him to forward a copy or two of his new book The Grapes of Wrath for the camp library.

June 17, 1939

CAMP CHATTER

Joe Carter and Jonah Foster slaughtered another Hog last weekend. Think Joe must have been a butcher at one time, for he sure can cut meat. This hog killing reminds us of home, the only thing missing here was the home made sausage.

Our welfare committee should be commended for the splendid work they do. A family of three came in Camp a week ago destitute; like all of us, had a streak of bad luck back in Texas and rode the freight cars out here with 30 cents worn out and half sick. What a brave little woman that Mother was to endure such a Hardship. One of the welfare committee women borrowed a wheelbarrow and proceeded to gather things for this unfortunate family. It wasn’t any time at all that wheelbarrow was full of groceries and vegetables, gladly donated by our generous Campers: bed, mattress, springs were gladly loaned a tent was secured and in no time our family set up housekeeping. And with the aid of the FSA (Farm Security Administration) office the family came out of their difficulties. As soon as our man was able he started out for a job, we hear they are back on their feet again.

• The Tow-Sack Tattler
• Arvin Migratory Labor Camp
• Arvin, California

“AN INJURY TO ONE … AN INJURY TO ALL”

August 14, 1939

NOTICE

It was reported that a strike condition prevails in the Maryville are at the present time.

September 29, 1939

“Just Around the Corner”

• We left our house in Arkansas
• Twas the month of June
• To hunt a job way out west
• Of course we’d find one soon…

• No work in Arizona
• Or Nevada so they say
• They said in California
• That money grow on trees
• That everyone was going there
• Just like a swarm of bees …

• The goat heads punctured our old shoes
• The sun it baked our brain
• We stayed out here about three months
• Before we saw a rain.

• We drink our coffee from tin cans
• Eat sardines by the peck
• If I could catch the fisherman
• I’d break his gosh darn neck
• We eat soup bones three times a day
• We sleep upon the floor

• I’ve tried so hard to find the trees
• On which the money grows
• I’ve walked through this hot sand so much
• It’s blistered my poor toes
• Perhaps the money has all fell off
• Or just a little late
• The one who wrote this crazy thing
• Lives in cabin 228. By A Camper

October 6, 1939

“CIO CALLS COUNTY WIDE STRIKE”

At Shafter Labor Temple the CIO met and by a sweeping majority of 47-3, CIO delegates from all Kern County locals voted to strike all Kern County cotton fields. The strike will begin officially at dawn on Monday, October 9, and all fields where picking is anticipated will be picketed, both by men afoot and by flying squadrons.

According to the local CIO organizers, the union tried to bargain with the growers and their representatives at the cotton wage hearing, called by Governor Olson, but were not even given a chance to be heard because the growers refused to attend the meeting. Failing in this they had no other alternative but to strike for a living wage in the cotton: $1.25 per 100 lbs.

October 13, 1939

GOOD LUCK KINGS

The King Family who went to Hollywood Monday for an audition to take part in the picture being made (Grapes of Wrath) are to report at the 20th Century Fox Studio on or about Nov. 10 when they will do their part. Mr. King will sing his own arrangement. We are all glad the King’s are taking part in this great picture. The Editor.

OUR SURPRISE

We the Campers of Arvin were given a great surprise last week. When the John Steinbeck Committee of Hollywood, Sent up a truck load of clothing and shoes to be given to the campers. And also a promise to send more later. The most needy were taken care of first. And some were laid back for the girls and boys who attend High School. The Editor.

IT IS BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN TO LIVE ON YOUR KNEES

• You Okies and Arkies get off the row
• You know the CIO
• Get out of your trailers if you want a raise
• We’re not foolin around many more days
• Come out of the field boys and don’t go back in
• We’ve got you out now but about fifty men

• I’m telling you men time is getting hard
• And eighty cent cotton won’t buy your lard
• Tell Mr. John Farmer that we stand in row
• And were all backed up by the CIO
• You eat your beef steak and farm with machines
• And us poor cotton pickers live on beans.

This poem was donated to the Tow sack Tattler by 13 year-old George Tapp of Arvin, California. Many thanks George and you certainly have us at heart.

November 4, 1939

WE MAY BE THE COMMON HEIRS BUT WE ARE AS GOOD AS THE BEST

I have heard several times (Myself) that people come to California, because it was so easy to obtain relief and get old age pensions. I say this is not true. A Migrant.

He who sit alone in a dreary park and it seem as though the world had parted from right. He lay and passed into slumber forgetting the trail of men. He thought he was a child again, and his mother was holding his hand, as he and his brother were playing. When a light in his face did gleam, it was a policeman approaching to waken and end his dream. Why do you come to the park to sleep, you aggerseley band who can roam, you can’t stay in the park at night, so I will put you where you belong. He taken him down to the strong house. It looked like a cage for men, says here is a blanket for a bed, as he locked the poor boy in. He stood and gazed at the blanket and then at the bars in the door as he wondered if jails were made for all or only for the lame and poor. As he made his bed in the corner on the old hard dingy floor. He thought of his home he left before he intered the war. Next morning dwelt out the unfortunate one who was so weak and lame, the passers stoped to pity him as they wondered what crime he had done. At the usual hour of 9 the court adjourned, the boy who was so weak and lame was quick to heed he Judges call when he read aloud his name. Says you are charged with vagrancy, do you wish to deny or refrain. The boy arose from where he sit and says I can’t find any work to do I have no home or money so I guess your charges are true, why you aimseley vagabond who roams, the rock pile is a good place for you. Is there any lea you wish to make before I pass sentence on you. Well it doesn’t seem treating us right, we boys who dig trenches for miles and willingly faced every danger to be welcomed home to rock piles, have you forgot the day we left when you made the speech at the train, you said that we would be welcome home and world would honor our names. For many of months we lived on nerve and met the hungry Hun’s, but we never weakened or fell down Sir until the victory was won. It was after that great old battle, we were gathering the lame and dead when I came across my brother the truest Pal I ever had, he side was toren and bleeding, his mouth and chin were shot away he tried to tell me something, but the words he could not say, but his eyes had spoke the message plain. “Tell Mother and my friends at home, I died to make them free.” Then came the time we all looked for but it was unlucky for me, one hour before the fight was won a shell had shattered my knee, when I returned home my job was gone, my Sweetheart a slicker had won now I am left alone without a job or home. Mother heartbroken was dead, now the price I have paid for liberty is being gassed withered and a shell shocked knee and left alone. So now go ahead and pass sentence on me. All were silent in the courtroom, not a sound were stirring, the croud seemed to be wandering if the Judge would treat the poor boy fair. The judge set restless but silent and lessoned to the Ex-soldiers plea, then he arose and spoke praises to the living and like of those that are dead and says my boy your troubles were many. Seems as though you have more than your share and I still command you a here but that won’t help you, so I hope that you will forgive me and come to my home to live. BY J.W. GARLAND

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT BY UNCLE BEN

Why the Agricultural Workers need to organize. Because the Associated Farmers are organized to defraud the public and are Gambling on the Misery of the Agricultural Workers.

Proof of this lies in the fact that 95 percent of the Agricultural Workers is on Relief about 7 months out of each year – Which makes it plain – that the huge profit derived by the Associated Farmers is at the expense of the workers. We would rather name this bunch as the Conspiring Farmers against the Workers.

They even use the mail to defraud the Workers by false advertisements of high wages and general working conditions. Just say further their idea of law and order is force and violence such as the terror visited upon the Workers of Maderia and other places. They have left a blood trail in San Joaquin Valley since 1933 which was the birth date of this organization. Born in force and violence on their part that never has been relaxed.

Contrary to the tactics of the Associated Farmers, the Workers issue is not to rob, murder and turoigh but their Issue is more bread and butter, more decent housing and better working conditions for themselves and their families.

NOW WHICH IS THE UNAMERICAN? BY Uncle Ben, Arvin, California

December 2, 1939

“A MIGRANTS ANSWER”

• I once lived in OKLAHOMA
• Near a place called Paradise
• Where the fields were washed into gully’s
• And the top soil blew through the skies

• Our kids were always hungry
• Their thinly clad bodys cold
• When sick we had no doctor
• For want by his charges I’m told

• We tried to plant to prosper
• Yes, had some hens and a cow
• But poor old Bossy was hungry
• And the hens didn’t lay somehow

• The sand lorered up our bottom just
• Buried our corn in the row
• And the drough burned up our garden
• Befall was ready to hoe.

• Till in disgust we left it
• Took to the open road
• Landed right here in the Camp Yard
• And layed down our weary load.

• I’ll stay with my good old Uncle
• As long as the law will allow
• Let others more braver than I am
• Go back to the hens and the cow.

• Back to old Oklahoma
• Too its poor eroded over cropped land
• You have my Ion sent to plant it
• And to propser back there if you can.

• Mrs. Martha Dickerson, Lot 113

• Tent City News
• Gridley Farm Workers Camp
• Gridley, California
• December 29,1939

NOTICE

Due to so much sickness there was only 7 women at the meeting of women last week.

CHRISTMAS IS OVER

Well Christmas is over and another year will soon be gone. I wonder. What wil 1940 hold for all we homeless people? Will we go on year after year in this fashion or will we some how gain homes. Mrs. Frieda Duree.

WHO’S WHO

Mr. & Mrs. Jones

1. Where from – Oklahoma
2. How long in California – 6 years.
3. Where are you going from here? – Don’t know.
4. Where were you born? – (Husband, Ark.) (Wife, Missouri)
5. What do you like to do best? – Eat.
6. What do you like to do best in camp? – Camp Gossip.
7. What do you like to eat best? – Fish.
8. What do you like to work at best? – Picking fruit.
9. What is your favorite flower? – The Rose.
10. What is your favorite fruit? – The Strawberry.
11. Kind of car liked best? – Hupmobile
12. Kind of gas used? – Richfield.
13. What games you like to play best? Checkers.
14. What liked best about camp newspaper? Managers letter.
15. What camp liked best? Gridley.
16. Who proposed marriage? The Mister.
17. What time do you get up in the A.M. – About 6 o’clock.
18. What time do you go to bed – About 8:30 o’clock.
19. What kind of sport liked best? – Baseball.
20. What kind of music liked best? – Violin and Guitar.

Agri-News

• Shafter Farm Workers’ Community
• Shafter, California
• December 30, 1939

CAMP CHATTER

Mr. Obin Reed, Lot #207, and son Billy Joe had quite an Accident Thursday after noon about two miles from camp, his car and another hadd a smash-up completely overturning both cars, seriously injuring Little Billy Joe, age 2 years, his throat being cut being the cause of much lost blood. Daddy Red donated enough of his own blood for the transfusions and he is getting along as well as can be expected.

It appears our rainy season is upon us as we are having once again some rain and cold miserable weather. Our camp is full and very little work here at present. Wouldn’t suggest any one coming here as we have more men than work.

• Number of families in camp 237
• Number in this week 21
• Number out this week 14
• Camp Population 1045

• The Tow Sack Tattler
• Arvin Farm Workers’ Community
• Arvin, California
• December 30, 1939

CAMP POPULATION

We have at present a full camp with the following residents.

Number of men 311

Number of women 238

Number of girls 204

Number of boys 183

Total Population 936

Total Families 206

Working conditions in and around Arvin district at present. Work is very scarce. Pruning of grapes and fruit trees will start after the first of the year. Colder weather has started, and the few that have been able to find work cannot work until almost noon, because of the cold weather and fog.

• The Static
• Calipatria, California
• March 20, 1940

A FAREWELL LETTER FROM YOUR MANAGER, Reginald A.F. Loftus

Dear Friends:

Checking out time is in the air. We can smell it. We are now on the threshold of spring, and I kind of believe there is such thing as Wanderlust with an itching foot who spurs us on to taste of many strange places before we ome in to roost at the Trail’s End. And don’t you think we can avoid the adventures that are still in store for us, for that in Life’s Destiny – your destiny, my destiny, and the destiny of all Mankind !

The world is sick today because a combine of gangster nations is putting for a vicious and terrible effort, an effort that intends to run all over the rest of the world’s peace-loving countries and destroy them by reducing their people to slaves. And we are trying now to believe that RIGHT will prevail, but we are fearful for we realize that EVIL is very strong.

Now many of you here in camp have been with us for quite some time, many only recently. For some, your stay has meant sickness, want, and general hardship; to others it has meant pretty fair living among ones fellow men.

The Farm Security Administration was designed especially to help you help yourselves, and is based on cooperation involving ALL of you. To fulfill such a responsibility is to further a good cause.

• The Hub
• Tulare Farm Workers’ Community
• Linnell, California
• June 26, 1940

PERSONALS

Mr. and Mrs. Felix Fannings’ small son Ronald fell out of his wagon Sunday afternoon and kocked his arm out of place. He is doing nicely.

James B. Allen Jr., visited his parents last week. He is enlisted in the Army at Fort Lewis, Washington.

• Pea Pickers Prattle
• Brawley Farm Workers Community
• Brawley, California
• March 7, 1941

GONE WITH THE WIND

There comes a time in every Migrants life when he or she has to say goodbye to their friends and start roaming for more work. Well, that is about was is happening here in camp and I think I am leaving a lot of friends. I sincerely hope that the boy or girl, man or woman, that takes my place on the amateur hour has as much fun as I, while I had the good old amateur hour. I hope I see a lot of old faces up north this spring. I really believe that we have had the best camp newspaper that the Brawley Camp has ever had.

So until next winter, so long to the manager, clerk and guards of the Good Old Brawley Migratory Labor Camp. Just a camper leaving, Charley De Homssely Lot #111

• The Woodville Community News
• Woodville Farm Worker’s Community
• Woodville, California
• January 10, 1942

EDITORIAL

The present situation find this nation in a state of war. Hectic Days and Nights are being spent by the Officials and Citizens of the Country. But despite the terrible strain, everyone is working together for the same cause – Defense, impregnable Defense! Our young men are volunteering for service in the Army and navy. People at home, in the factories and in the fields are working hard to keep up endless production of war materials and food.