Migrant Workers Essay Example

Have you ever had to walk all over the country for work? Migrant workers had to walk all over the country to go to work. My topic is migrant workers. Migrant workers travel all over in search of work  they came around in 1929. The great depression is what drove poor people into being migrant workers. After the great depression the economy was shut down and no one had money. So desperate as people were that they started to walk all over to get a farm job that they could hardly get by on. Some of the jobs came with housing but most of the time they had to sleep outside.

What kind of work did migrant workers do? Most of the newly made workers participated in farm work and manual labor all though there were some unusual jobs for them so would cook also, some of them would just be the boss hand maid. According to National Farm Workers migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages''. There were also female migrant workers. They were female migrant workers  most of them did the farming and cooking while the men did the manual labor such as digging,lifting andbuilding. What kind of people were there? They were normal people just like me and you. The only difference is that they travel all over for their work.

They have nothing wrong with them. Where would they sleep? They would sleep in barns,sheds, and, even outside. Some time the job would come with housing but 5/10 the job would not come with housing. Sometimes when it did come with housing you would have to pay for it so it would come out of your paycheck. According to  “NFWM” they have to pay for housing and food. What happened was either the family went with the worker or the family would stay home. If the family stayed home the mom would have to find a local job. Kids would have to get money for food and housing to help out.

There were kid workers they did the same types of jobs an adult did. Kids did not have to work as long or as hard as the adults did. Migrant workers had to migrate to California from Oklahoma. Because the dust bowl had wiped out all of the crops and after the dust bowl they could not grow any more crops. So they migrate to California. When they got to California they knew just what they had to do so they got right into work. In John Steinbeck's story he talks about 2 migrant workers that had just found a full time  job on a farm. There are several books about migrant workers.

A few of them are “ Of Mice And Men” “The Cricket''. Migrant workers were fed lots of veggies and fruit. On special occasions they would get fed stews, soups or sometimes meat. Where did migrant workers come from? Migrant workers originated from oklahoma they had to move because the dust bowl had wiped out all of the crops and would not let them grow any more crops so they most of them moved to california in search of work according to Rural Migration News  “In 1930, California had 5.7 million residents, and the population shrank as 120,000 Mexicans were repatriated...During the 1930s, some 2.5 million people left the Plains states.” 

Migrant workers were not paid as much as we are nowadays. They were paid about a few cents and hour. According to   Encyclopedia.com “As a result, wages throughout the nation fell during the Depression. 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.”