Migrant Workers in the 1930s.('Of Mice and Men' John Steinbeck
...of their ‘little house and a couple of acres’. Migrant farm workers are temporary farm hands and are mostly young Mexican men who are employed by farmers around the country to plant, tend and harvest crops. Approximately 99% of these farm hands are illegal aliens. Farmers hire migrant workers to do these jobs because they have to be done and no one else wants to do them. The work is hard and the pay is poor. By the time that ‘Of Mice and Men’ was published almost half of America’s grain was harvested by huge combine harvesters. Five men could do what would have taken 350 men a few years earlier. George and Lennie are some of the last of the migrant farm workers. Huge numbers of men traveled the countryside between the 1880s and the early 1930s harvesting wheat. They earned $2.50 or $3.00 a day, plus food and very basic accommodation. In addition to pathetic pay and terrible living and working conditions migrant farm workers faced barriers because of language and culture and they experienced intentional isolation that keeps them trapped in this bad situation. During the 1930s, when there was very bad unemployment in the United States, agencies were set up under the New Deal to send farm workers to where they needed. George and Lennie got their work cards from Murray and Ready’s, one of these agencies. There is an element of loneliness, migrant workers travel alone from ranch to ranch, collecting their stake and moving on. They do not have time for family or friends. They work seasonal jobs until they are too old or too sick to handle them, and they are cast aside for younger workers. An example of loneliness in ‘Of Mice and Men’ is when George plays a card game of solitaire (‘solitaire lay, slowly and deliberately...