The Grapes of Wrath: Chapter 31 The family hurried on through the filth they called California, searching for their next plantation to work at. They did not have much time to lose for if they could not reach the next plantation in time they knew there would be no more work left for weeks. The deluge had taken all it could, wiping out tons of ramshackle homes near the fields and leaving many homeless. They were all scared as they all could meet the same fate without hesitation. “How much long’r?” Ruthie complained as the sun rose higher in the sky.
Labor Union strikes were the most prominent form of worker insurrection against employers. During the period of 1875-1900, many labor unions participated in strikes, however many of them failed to achieve their goals. The biggest reason that farmers and workers went on strike was clearly stated by a machinist before the Senate Committee on Labor and Capital. Because machines were taking jobs away, workers would lose their livelihood, and most likely their only source of income. In the year of 1877, employees working for the four largest railroads went on strike due to the fact that their employers cut their wages by 10 percent; this was known as the Great Rail Road Strike.
Clara Nielsen US History 3.11.2015 Civil Concentration Corps Before the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were started our country was in a great depression. People had almost no money and couldn’t afford some of the necessities of life. All around the world there was fires, smoke, floods, drought, erosion, and to top it off the dust bowl. It was very difficult to find good soil. The storms and floods had taken all the good soil in the 1930s.
This conflict usually led to dehydration or starvation which led to the depression of losing a loved one. The farm owners exploited farmers in believeing that the job availability in California was significant by mass advertising their need for work and not having enough jobs for everyone migrating to California. Once the Joad family arrived in California, they realized that job availability was hard to come by and even if they found a job, making a living was going to be harder than they thought with the wages offered: “An’ they ain’t much work. An’ wages is comin’ down all a time. I git so goddamn tired jus’ figgerin’ how to eat.” John Steinbeck witnessed the struggles of American people during the Great Depression and wrote about his observations and research in The Grapes of Wrath.
Estimates say that a third of Allied casualties on the Western Front were sustained in the trenches, a large number of said casualties were due to disease. Trenches were overcrowded and dirty, especially after heavy rain fall. Trenches would quickly be filled with muddy water that could sometimes lead to the trench walls collapsing. The soldiers would stand in the muddy, cold water for days not having a chance to be able to dry their socks or shoes, causing a fungus in which they called trench foot. Then the soldiers that had lost their lives whether from poisonous gases or the bullets flying, their bodies would lay in the trenches, untouched by another human, and only to be eaten by rats and mice.
In many ways, it was nothing more than a metamorphosis of slavery. For example, David E. Conrad stated “Tens of thousands of farmers fell down the tenancy ladder than moving up it Some farmers lost their farms or their status as cash or share tenants because of crop failures, low cotton prices, laziness, ill health, poor management, exhaustion of the soil, excessive interest rates, or inability to compete with tenant labor. Many tricks of nature (drought, flood, insects, frost, hail, high winds, and plant diseases) could ruin a crop.” (Conrad 12) This was more economically logical for the landowners because they were basically supporting no wage labor. Whatever the sharecropper made they ended up giving back to the landowner in order to rent the equipment needed to make enough money to pay the land owner back. This was far crueler than slavery because in slavery the slaves at least had the comfort of knowing that there was going to be
Cecilia Tinajero L. English H. The novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is based on the hardships one family in Oklahoma faced during the dust bowl. The weather was harsh, there was a huge drought covering about ten states, and strong dust storms blew in. Because of the hard living conditions and the bank taking away their land, they had to move out. As the Joad family journey to California a lot of biblical allusion is assumed. In the bible there is the story about Noah's Ark.
The towns where the men that worked on the canal were staying were filthy and were not able to give the men a sanitary place to stay. Once he obtained the attention that was needed, water was provided for the men but it didn’t stop there. Streets were paved, houses were evacuated and cleansed, fresh food was now assessable, and modern communities were built. Research on the mosquitos was then started so they could start on finding a way to prevent yellow fever. Even though the Panama Canal caused many to suffer, today it stands high.
During the 1930's Canada was going through a tough time and that was because of the Great Depression. They suffered through a drought that lasted for ten years providing the cities with no crops, overproduction of goods allowing there to be not enough goods later on, unemployment causing people to go through poverty, and the stock market crash where people lost everything due to the loans they made to pay for their stocks they wanted to sell in the future. All of these events had a major contribution to the Great Depression, but the main causes of the Great Depression were unemployment, the drought, and the stock market crash (also known as the trigger incident). Unemployment was one of the main causes of the Great Depression. While many people were buying on credit, they needed to pay off their debts and as long as they had jobs they were able to
But these immigrant children did not get any pay, this was child labor because the under aged immigrant worker was used and did not receive pay. It was more of a two for one deal for the factory owner because small bodies were needed to fit a certain job. “They are doing away with a great deal of mule-spinning there and putting in ring-spinning…for that reason it takes a good deal of small help…they get all the small help they can to run these ring-frames.” (65). These requirements cost many immigrants available work, leaving these immigrant men without pay unable to provide for their families. In an interview Thomas O’Donnell explains “…at Fall River if a man has not got a boy to act as “back-boy” it is very hard for him to get along…in many cases discharging men in that work and put in men who have boys…and that has brought my circumstances down very much…our children are very often sickly of not having sufficient clothes, shoes, food or something” (64, 65).