How did the Great Depression affect the migrant workers?

How did the Great Depression affect the migrant workers?

How did the Great Depression effect the migrant worker? Migrant workers were subjected to harsher working conditions and lower wages because people were desperate for work. Workers were replaceable. Too many people looking for work reduced living conditions.

What happened to the migrant workers in the 1930s?

The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl (a period of drought that destroyed millions of acres of farmland) forced white farmers to sell their farms and become migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages.

What was it like for migrant workers in the 1930s?

The working hours were long, and many children worked in the fields with their parents. Working conditions were often unsafe and unsanitary. Migrant workers had to follow the harvest of different crops, so they had to continue to pack up and move throughout California to find work.

Why did migrant workers move to California in 1930?

Migration Out of the Plains during the Depression. During the Dust Bowl years, the weather destroyed nearly all the crops farmers tried to grow on the Great Plains. Many once-proud farmers packed up their families and moved to California hoping to find work as day laborers on huge farms.

What was life like for workers during the Depression?

A labor market analysis of the Great Depression finds that many workers were unemployed for much longer than one year. Of those fortunate to have jobs, many experienced cutbacks in hours (i.e., involuntary part-time employment). Men typically were more adversely affected than women.

What hardships did immigrants face during the Depression?

The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Mexican immigrants especially hard. Along with the job crisis and food shortages that affected all U.S. workers, Mexicans and Mexican Americans had to face an additional threat: deportation.

What were typical salaries for migrant workers in the 1930s?

Migrant workers in California who had been making 35 cents per hour in 1928 made only 14 cents per hour in 1933. Sugar beet workers in Colorado saw their wages decrease from $27 an acre in 1930 to $12.37 an acre three years later.

What was happening in Mexico in the 1930s?

The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Mexican immigrants especially hard. Immigrants were offered free train rides to Mexico, and some went voluntarily, but many were either tricked or coerced into repatriation, and some U.S. citizens were deported simply on suspicion of being Mexican.

What did migrant workers eat in the 1930s?

Migrant families primarily subsisted on starch-based foods like potatoes, biscuits, and fried dough that would fill them up enough to complete a day’s work in the fields. The estimated annual income of agricultural workers was $450 per family.

What was life like in California in the 1930s?

California was hit hard by the economic collapse of the 1930s. Businesses failed, workers lost their jobs, and families fell into poverty. While the political response to the depression often was confused and ineffective, social messiahs offered alluring panaceas promising relief and recovery.

How were migrant workers affected by the Great Depression?

Migrant workers were subjected to harsher working conditions and lower wages because people were desperate for work. Workers were replaceable. Too many people looking for work reduced living conditions.

Who were the migrant workers during the depression?

Mexican and Mexican-American migrant workers felt the full force of state power during the Great Depression. As non-citizens, many Mexicans were banned from public works projects available to other destitute workers. Moreover, communities looking for a scapegoat to explain the Depression often blamed Mexicans.

What did Steinbeck do to learn about the migrant workers?

He spent his summers working on nearby ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the harsher aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature, which supplied him with material expressed in Of Mice and Men .

How did the Great Depression affect workers/farmers?

The Great Depression changed the lives of people. From 1920 farmers struggled to survive and 1929 became worst for city workers. Stock markets crashed and many businesses were closed. Some young men who were not able to pay the rent, left home in search of job. World War I saw farmers produce more to meet their expenses.

How did the Great Depression affect the migrant workers? How did the Great Depression effect the migrant worker? Migrant workers were subjected to harsher working conditions and lower wages because people were desperate for work. Workers were replaceable. Too many people looking for work reduced living conditions. What happened to the migrant workers in the…