Paul Taylor: “Again the Covered Wagon”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Taylor begins by describing conditions in the Midwest and the plight of migrants who are relocating to California. He provides a vivid picture of the “Dust Bowl” of Oklahoma and Texas, along with adjacent states, where topsoil has been laid bare by cultivation and blown away in “vast clouds of dust,” leaving farmers destitute. Refugees from the midwestern Dust Bowl travel to California in distress. Families, including parents, grandparent, aunts and uncles, and children, arrive penniless in beat-up old cars and trucks, although a few have been able to earn some money along the way by picking cotton in Arizona. All of their worldly goods—bedding, a trunk, a lantern, a washtub—are tied onto the vehicles. Many camp along roadsides, and their health is poor because of inadequate diet. Taylor notes that this migration to California is not a new phenomenon. Earlier in the century, people from the Southwest arrived to harvest cotton in the Imperial Valley and the San Joaquin Valley. Many of these immigrants were seasonal workers. The Depression of the 1930s, along with drought, increased the volume of westward migration.

Taylor examines the factors that led to the migration. He quotes migrants who believed that there was nothing to stay for in their home states because of drought—although some migrants were driven out of Mississippi by flooding. The author examines government policies that worsened matters for the migrants. Crop restrictions and conflicts between sharecroppers and “first tenants”—those responsible for providing tools, teams of draft animals, feed, and seed—on the one hand and landowners on the other led to a situation where ground was allowed to lie fallow because the sharecroppers and first tenants simply could not afford to farm the land. One of the persons Taylor spoke with references FERA, or the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, noting that his only recourse was government relief. Although many of the migrants are eligible to receive government assistance, many others shun “relief,” regarding it as “begging,” and desire simply to find work. Some families find comfort in the belief that they will be able to return home when drought and depression come to an end; while some will in fact return, many will not.

Migrants continue to face problems once they reach in California. Most are unable to acquire land. Many meet with a hostile reception by the local population. Native California farmworkers are troubled by the competition the migrants pose. The state legislature is considering bills to bar indigent persons. Many Californians fear the influx of migrants into the cities, although Taylor points out that most of the migrants gravitate toward rural areas, moving about from harvest to harvest. This trend creates further problems, for the farmers who grow the crops believe that a glutted labor market can kindle strikes. More generally, the migrants become party to a social conflict, pitting subsistence workers against “monied men” who “gobbled up” the land.

Labor conflict, too, is a persistent problem. Migrants, desperate for work, broke a strike by lettuce packers in the Central Valley. Taylor alludes to the state's 1933 agricultural strikes, which involved more than forty-seven thousand workers in dozens of strikes; most of the strikers were members of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union.

The violence that accompanied the strike led to trials, where numerous strike leaders were convicted for “criminal syndicalism,” advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. The state's Associated Farmers lobbied for laws to protect their interests against organized labor (and Communists).

Under these conditions, the future of the refugees is unlikely to be peaceful. They are likely to remain caught up in labor strife. Further, many refugees reject the “Townsend plan,” a scheme devised by Dr. Francis E. Townsend to provide old-age relief and that influenced the establishment of the Social Security system. Some believe that the plan will not accomplish anything and will serve as a disincentive to work.

Taylor concludes by noting that the westward migration is continuing and that to many migrants, Southern California initially looks like paradise. Sadly, most will remain part of an underemployed “labor army” consisting of white Americans, Mexicans, African Americans, and Filipinos. Taylor imagines the descendants of the migrants, wondering whether they will take pride in what their ancestors did. He wonders whether those descendants will ever play any meaningful role in California history, in the same way that the gold rush prospectors did in the nineteenth century. He also wonders how conditions will change with increased mechanization.