On vacation, I finally read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I’d been meaning to read the Grapes of Wrath for quite some time, but never got around it. Steinbeck is a spectacular writer. I can’t believe nobody made me read Steinbeck in high school. One day a couple of years ago, I read East of Eden and found it gripping, particularly for a book written 60 years ago.
Anyway, the house we were staying in had a copy of the book, so that’s what I read. Basically, it’s the story of the Joad family, forced off of their Oklahoma farm by debt along with thousands of other “Okies” and other midwestern farmers. They scrape together enough money to make the harrowing journey along Route 66 from Oklahoma to California in their beat up jalopy. They’re lured to California by flyers advertising a need for workers. Turns out it’s a scam by California property owners to drive down wages. If you have 5 starving men for every available job, you can essentially feed them bread for day’s work, and they’ll take it.
I’d love to know more about how California went from being a state where the few powerful owners ran the show, taking advantage of soul-crushing poverty to one of the more liberal states in the nation. I wonder if it’s like a Newtonian 3rd law of politics — the liberal state of today is an equal and opposite reaction to the state of the state in the 1930s? It also brought to light a downside of the mobility of the automobile. Whereas prior to the availability of cheap locomotion, Dust Bowl style poverty would have probably resulted in more care for the poor in their own states and/or violent insurrection simply because the poor were backed into a corner and their neighbors would be forced to deal with them; the availability of cheap cars created at least the illusion of an option. They hit the road searching for opportunity. When they got to California, they were separated from their roots, vulnerable to slave wage manipulation, and easy for established Californians to ignore and loathe because they were newcomers.
An abrupt and (to me) unsatisfactory ending, though. I’ll have to look at a Cliffs Notes analysis or something to see the important stuff that flew over my head. I’ll end this entry with Tom Joad’s speech:
“Well, maybe like Casy says, a fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big one… Then it don’t matter. Then I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere, wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there
Doug,
I thank you for your blog, which I picked up by following a lead this morning to your post on Advance America’s tax-abuse from Taking Down Words. I’m a Jefferson H.S. alumnus (1958) who went away, wound up in California. I still have hopes for — and an interest in helping in my modest ways — the Democrats of Eugene Debs’ and Birch Bayh’s home state.
You wrote re Grapes of Wrath:
I’d love to know more about how California went from being a state where the few powerful owners ran the show, taking advantage of soul-crushing poverty to one of the more liberal states in the nation. I wonder if it’s like a Newtonian 3rd law of politics — the liberal state of today is an equal and opposite reaction to the state of the state in the 1930s?
The reaction was internal, will major constituencies for social change operating for legislative power within a majority, Democratic Party Coalition. Socialist Upton Sinclair almost won the governership in 1934 as a Democrat, but the entertainment and agriculture industries blocked that with red-bating newsreels and connivance by centrist and conservative Democrats (including FDR).
The excellent California: An Interpretive History (3rd edition, 1979?), by the late Walton Bean, summarized the scholarly consensus (as I recall without checking the text for precise numbers).
By a 1952 initiative {which Indiana’s 1851 constitution lacks, but which Californians installed in 1911 at the peak of anti-Southern Pacific — bipartisan — progressivism), the Democrats, who had a registration plurality but a legislative minority under Republican Governor Earl Warren, eliminated crossover voting by Republicans in Democratic primaries. Powered by the 100,000-member Democratic Club movement organized as the California Democratic Council (one of whose leaders was future four-term Senator Alan Cranston), and full of both 1948 Progressive Party Wallaceites, many of whom were becoming ex-Communists as Cold War repression set in, and of Stevensonians such as Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas, whom Congressman Nixon had red-baited (“pink-slip” postcard mailer) successfully in the 1950 election, started gaining seats from the Republicans, finally won the governorship for Attorney General Pat Brown (father of Oakland’s deplorably ambitious outgoing Mayor) in 1958 because Senator-from-Formosa Bill Knowland thought he could win by campaigning for a state right-to-work constitutional amendment in 1958. The Democratic Clubs (with lots of lawyers and wives ambitious for judgeships, BTW) and the California Federation of Labor (which had over 1.1? million members in its unions when the state’s population was around 15? million) humiliated the GOP by 1.6? million votes. Eight years later, under Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh, the Legislature became full-time, with district, capitol, and committee staffs. The Pat Brown administrations implemented the California Plan for Higher Education (expanded the University to 9 campuses from three, added 23 State Universities and many, many two-year community colleges), the freeways (not a blessing), and the California Water Project. All three were instrumental in absorbing Northeastern, Midwestern, and Sunbelt exiles, attracted to liberal social legislation — even Ronald Reagan signed a bill legalizing abortion — and in the population doubling.
Even though public opinion is quite negative on the competence of the Legislature and the Gropinator after many years of deadlock, both houses have liberal leadership, and both centrist Controller Steve Westly or liberal Treasurer Phil Angelides have excellent prospects of defeating the Austrian, whose party is controlled by folks like Buyer, Burton and Hostettler, not by moderates. The New Deal, environmental, labor, and minority group protections are well-buttressed electorally by a centrist-progressive coailiton, the economy will continue to flourish if we can get off petroleum, tax reforms can be expected, and few program rollbacks are likely. More often, our state government is hamstrung by the malfeasant, conservative federal government, as by FERC in the 2001 Enron/El Paso NG, etc. energy-market gaming.
I see one typo: “will” should be “with” in 4th graf, 1st line:
The reaction was internal, will major …
Also, a note I ask you not to post:
Just for fun, take a look at the last chapter of Daniel Lazare’s way-out-there 1995 Frozen Republic to see a plausible scenario for elimination of red-state dominance by scrapping the Senate and the Electoral College in a plebiscite precipitated by the House in response to a threat of blue-state (bicoastal, including upper midwest) SECESSION.