Of Mice and Men

‘Of mice and men’.

Meanings of:
• Bucking Barley- Throwing large bags of Barley grain onto the back of a truck.
• Jerkline Skinner- A jerkline is a single rein that runs to the lead animal in the team of mules or horses. The skinner controls the jerkline.
• Ranch Hand- A hired hand on a ranch.
Info on:
• Life working on farms/ranches in the 1930’s America. If you were a farmer in the Midwest and Southwest during the 1930s, you had seemingly everything against you--from the Great Depression to dust storms and drought, according to Robin A. Fanslow with the Library of Congress. This trifecta of poor circumstances pushed many farmers to seek work elsewhere, in the more temperate California climate, prompting a mass exodus West. Once you reached California, you continued to be transient, according to the LOC. This was the case because you basically "followed the harvest," travelling from place to place to harvest whatever crop was in season. Earlier in the decade, there was a mentality that workers would be provided with the barest means, such as poor food, and then simply "sent on their way," according to UC-Davis. With reform, that changed and migrant worker camps were established; essentially, these were a federally-sponsored network of camps that provided shelter as well as health care, work counselling and food Though these camps mandated that workers volunteer a specified amount of time, you didn't just work; you also had opportunities to play, according to the Library of Congress. It reports that there was a sense of culture that flourished in the camp. Music served as one of the biggest recreational activities; popular among workers were traditional Anglo-Celtic ballads, as well as early country works by the likes of Gene Autry. The LOC also reports that music was created during this period by artists like Mary Sullivan and Jack Bryant, who documented what it was like to be a migrant in song.
If you were a worker travelling from Mexico during this time, or an American of Mexican ethnic origin, you made far less than your white counterparts on the same job, according to the Oakland Museum of California. That being said, you still earned more in the states than you did in Mexico during this time. Mexican-American migrants patched together shelter from anything they could find, be it burlap, canvas or branches. Though it's estimated that in the 1920s, 75 per cent of migrant workers were of Mexican origin, as the country fell into the Great Depression, white workers took over their jobs, leaving many Mexican-Americans unemployed.
Your work options expanded with the advent of World War II. For this reason, migrant work became far less necessary and, in turn, far less desirable. Many former migrant workers, according to the Library of Congress, went overseas to serve in the war. Still others supported the war effort stateside, taking on positions at coastal shipyards or at defence plants.
• John Steinbeck- the writer of the book.
Although he spent a few years at Stanford University, the academic life did not suit John Steinbeck, because what he really wanted to do was to write. And write he did. Steinbeck penned twenty-seven novels, three collections of short stories, and numerous essays between 1929 and his death in 1968. He is best known for The Grapes of Wrath, a Depression-era (1930s) novel that follows the migratory experiences of the Joad family, who travel from the ravaged Oklahoma Dust Bowl to the “Promised Land” of California. Committed to diversity in his writing, Steinbeck’s other works of note include the semiautobiographical novel East of Eden, the comical Tortilla Flat, the travelogue Travels With Charley, and the nonfiction work Log From the Sea of Cortez.
Essential facts.
1. Although many people believe him to be a lifelong Californian, Steinbeck spent much of his life in New York and eventually shed most of his ties to the Salinas Valley.
2. Steinbeck had a lifelong fascination with the King Arthur tales.
3. Hollywood loved Steinbeck. Film adaptations of his work include The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and Tortilla Flat.
4. Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 “for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and a keen social perception.” Privately, however, he feared that the prize usually spelled the end of a writer’s career.
5. The two things Steinbeck found most necessary to life were “work and women.”
• The great depression in America in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
The Great Depression, an immense tragedy that placed millions of Americans out of work, was the beginning of government involvement in the economy and in society as a whole.
After nearly a decade of optimism and prosperity, the United States was thrown into despair on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed and the official beginning of the Great Depression. As stock prices plummeted with no hope of recovery, panic struck. Masses and masses of people tried to sell their stock, but no one was buying. The stock market, which had appeared to be the surest way to become rich, quickly became the path to bankruptcy.
And yet, the Stock Market Crash was just the beginning. Since many banks had also invested large portions of their clients' savings in the stock market, these banks were forced to close when the stock market crashed. Seeing a few banks close caused another panic across the country. Afraid they would lose their own savings, people rushed to banks that were still open to withdraw their money. This massive withdrawal of cash caused additional banks to close. Since there was no way for a bank's clients to recover any of their savings once the bank had closed, those who didn't reach the bank in time also became bankrupt.
Businesses and industry were also affected. Having lost much of their own capital in either the Stock Market Crash or the bank closures, many businesses started cutting back their workers' hours or wages. In turn, consumers began to curb their spending, refraining from purchasing such things as luxury goods. This lack of consumer spending caused additional businesses to cut back wages or, more drastically, to lay off some of their workers. Some businesses couldn't stay open even with these cuts and soon closed their doors, leaving all their workers unemployed.
• The American dream.
The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
• Black peoples civil rights in America in the 1930s.
In the 1930's black people did not have alot of rights, they could not vote, they could not sit in the same parts of resturants as white people or the bus. They had separate drinking fountains, bathrooms, they couldn't even walk into the front door of a building. Black people were second class. An incident shocked America when a black lady, Rosa Parks was on a full bus and a white man wanted to get on, after being told to get off she refused to move an inch! This was all changed when Martin Luther King Jr. lead the civil rights movement in the 30's. He also said the famous I Have A Dream speech. This stopped most of the segregation in the south and black people were given more rights.
Blacks actually gained the right to vote in 1870, long before the '30s. Also, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929. There is no way he lead the civil rights movement at 1-10 years old! The Harlem Renaissance took place around the '30s, and the civil rights movement took place from about 1955-1968.
The REAL answer lies somewhere in the middle. True, all MALE citizens of the US were granted the right to vote in the 1800s, but in reality, most Blacks were not allowed to vote given the 3/5ths amendment of the Constitution (blacks were not even counted as a whole person); and South's Jim Crow Laws as well as Grandfather codes--i.e. voted. Which of course, the idea that one could vote if their grandfathers had was an impossibility for Blacks who were enslaved and indentured. Those who risked exercising their "right to vote" were lynched, hanged, burned, etc. All of this is well-documented, and not a matter of conjecture. Had it been true that Blacks actually did vote earlier, as the second answer maintains, then the Civil Rights era of the 60s would have lost one of its main tenets. Also note, abolitionists took up the cause for Civil Rights long before Martin Luther King Jr, came on the scene--also well documented. However, it wasn't until the Civil Rights Act that Blacks could actually exercise their full rights as citizens to use public services and seek full redress, or expect proper representation from their government. As an end note, the Harlem Renaissance was an artistic era. In the 1930's black people did not have alot of rights.
Women in the 1930s.
In the 1930's women were treated badly. They could not own anything. Fighting in a war was just out of the question. They were basically made to stay home and do the cleaning and cooking. They couldn't even buy anything.
Women in the 1930s came up with remarkable ways to keep their families afloat during this time. They helped their families get by on less and maximized every opportunity to save money. For example, they bought yesterday's bread, which was cheaper and used old fabric or blankets to line old coats. Women cut up adult clothing to fit their children and came up with a myriad of similar ideas to save money.
In the 1930s, the role of women in the workplace did not change very much. In 1930, about 11 million women were employed; and by 1940, 13 million women were employed. This is not considered a significant increase. Women's wages were lower than men's and most women worked in domestic service. Seventy-five percent of professional women were either nurses or schoolteachers, which remain traditional roles for women.