Ten Things You Should Know About Migrant Labor in the 1930s1. http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/327750?terms=migrant+workers+1930s Migrant workers are an important and inexpensive source of labor. They migrate from place to place in search of work.
2. John Steinbeck wrote a book, Grapes of Wrath, about migrant workers and the Dust Bowl. http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/327750?terms=migrant+workers+1930s3.
The agricultural, mining, and construction industries in California and the border states of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico have long depended on low-cost immigrant labor, primarily from Mexico http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/327750?terms=migrant+workers+1930s4.Another force at work in the lives of migrant workers is labor organization. As early as the 1930s, leftists in the labor movement attempted to unionize workers that the American Federation of Labor considered "unorganizable" due to their mobility and lack of legal status5.
Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," portrayed people who lived in a migrant labor camp.6. Another force at work in the lives of Migrant Workers is labor organization. 1930s, American Federation of Labor tried to help those who do not have jobs.
7. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies, was launched in 1905 and remained a vital force in labor organizing through the 1930s. The most radical union in U.S.
history, the style and heroism of the Wobblies produced labor strategies that were eventually used by more mainstream trade unions. http://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/311941?terms=1930s+labor8. Labor organization among migrant farm workers languished until 1962, when César Chávez, the son of a family of poor farm workers, founded the National Farm Workers Association.
Chávez used nonviolent tactics, including a prolonged strike against table grapes centered in Delano, California, which drew national attention on the plight of farm workers. In 1966, he led a 340-mile march from Delano to the state capital of Sacramento. http://americanhistory.abc-clio.
com/Search/Display/327750?terms=migrant+workers+1930s9. Estimates of the total number of Dust Bowl immigrants to California range from 300,000 to 600,000, with the majority arriving between 1935 and 193710. The federal depression-era Agricultural Adjustment Administration also played a financial role in worsening the plight of southern Plains tenant farmers by paying benefits directly to their landlords, instead of to the tenant. This allowed tenant farmers to be replaced by laborers, or by tractors.
