Many moved to the west in California to escape from their land in the mid west. Californians who lived through the 1920s and 1930s must have felt as though they were on a roller coaster. In a dizzying cycle of boom and bust, a decade of spectacular prosperity was followed by the worst economic collapse in the state's history. Ramshackle encampments, such as Pipe City in Oakland, filled with forlorn unemployed workers and their families. The crash of the Macon, a helium-filled dirigible, mirrored the collapsing fortunes of Californians everywhere. The hard times of the thirties contributed to a disturbing resurgence of nationalism. The farmers in the Dust Bowl area of the country were hurt by a severe drought and were forced to move to California to make any money at all, usually working as a hired hand on a large plantation with many other farmers. The resistance of the unemployed became a major factor in the political and social life of the decade. Beyond this, the movements of the jobless fuelled the organizing of workers in industrial trade unions in the late 30s and 40s and created the political impetus for the welfare state of later decades. The Great Depression struck California hard, just as it did countless other states and nations. It also helped remake California, writes Kevin Starr in the fourth instalment of his multi-volume history of the state. .
"The Depression brought a massive influx of hopeful refugees to California from elsewhere in the United States, including 300,000 new agricultural workers--the people of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. These newcomers worked in the fields and stores for fifteen cents an hour while Hollywood made movies about their lot, Woody Guthrie sang songs about them, and union organizers tried hard to make a labor-based revolution. The fortunes of these "Okies" is just one of the sweeping topics that Starr, a fine writer and imaginative chronicler, takes on in this book.
