Archival Vintages for The Grapes of Wrath

At the beginning of John Steinbeck's perennially popular (and still controversial) masterwork,

The Grapes of Wrath, two dedication lines appear: "to Carol who willed it" and "to Tom who lived it."

Carol, of course, was the author's wife, who originated the title for Steinbeck.

Most readers logically assume that the second line targets Tom Joad, the archetypal protagonist whose

shade still walks the land "wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat." But the line actually refers

to Thomas E. Collins—a nonfictional "character" whose ghost would likely be found walking right

alongside that of Tom Joad.

There are significant relationships between the worlds of "the two Toms." First, the real Tom Collins

steps over into The Grapes of Wrath as the model for the character "Jim Rawley" in chapters 22–26. But

in addition, both Steinbeck and his biographers have acknowledged a major influence that flowed into

the novel from a wealth of federal documentary source material provided by Collins. Most of the latter is

preserved and available for public research today as a unique, absorbing, somewhat "quirky" treasure

held by the National Archives–Pacific Region (San Francisco): the narrative reports, mostly 1935–1936,

of California federal migrant labor camp manager Tom Collins.1

As the 75-year remembrance of the New Deal period passes into the 70th anniversary for The Grapes of

Wrath, it seems a good time to again visit these "Tom Collins documents," which in a rare occurrence

for government reports, were regarded as "worthy literature" by no less an expert than Steinbeck

himself.

Okie Migrants and Federal Camps in California

1

In 1936, when he met Steinbeck, Tom Collins managed the Resettlement Administration's

Arvin/Weedpatch federal "Migratory Labor Camp" for migrant agricultural laborers in Kern County in

southern California. "Weedpatch camp" appears in The Grapes of Wrath in chapters 22, 24, and 26. The

"campers" at Weedpatch were among thousands of mostly rural Dust Bowl refugee families newly

arrived in California in search of farm-related work. They came mostly from Oklahoma, southwestern

Missouri, central Texas, and western Arkansas.2

Most were victims in one way or another of a crop-killing 10-year drought or "tractoring out" (farm

mechanization), rather than of the terrible Dust Bowl storms per se, which struck a little farther west.3

Most had been farm laborers, tenant farmers or sharecroppers; there were also some small farm holders

and others. Stereotyped by mainstream resident Californians as "Okies" or "Arkies," these newcomers

furnished a new and major source for traditionally subsistence-level migrant agricultural labor,

harvesting fruit, vegetable, and cotton crops in verdant well-irrigated central California valleys

dominated by the large, often corporate-owned agribusiness operations described by Carey McWilliams

in his renowned study Factories in the Field.

Since the latter 1800s, white "fruit-tramps/bindlestiffs" and various ethnic minorities—Chinese,

Japanese, South Asian, Mexican, and Filipino—had served as seasonal "migrant armies" fated to harvest

large-scale California farm crops. All had faced exploitation, meager pay, and severe living conditions.

But generally, they had truly "come with the dust and gone with the wind," moving on after the harvests.

In contrast, the 1930s Okie migrant influx brought entire families that, having nowhere else to go,

remained in the valleys during times of scarce or no employment, generating consternation among

valley residents and further straining state and local social services already stressed by the Depression.4

2

As noted by historian James Gregory in his classic American Exodus, the agricultural labor Okies

comprised only a portion of a much larger stream of nearly 1,300,000 emigrants to California from the

southwestern southern states during 1910–1950.5 Many arrived in less desperate straits and adapted

more easily to their new, sometimes urban surroundings.6 Still, the thousands of California migrant

labor families chronicled by Steinbeck, Collins, Sanora Babb7 and others, had it very bad—sometimes

far worse than the Joads.

The destitute Okie agricultural migrants had been drawn to California by hopes for employment or even

a new start on small-holding farm ownership. Word-of-mouth furnished much of the impetus, and there

is evidence Arizona had more to do than California with the cross-country lure of grower-produced ads

and handbills as portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath.8 At any rate, there is no doubt that during the 1930s,

large California growers took advantage of a huge bulge on the "supply side" of agricultural labor to

drive down wages. Okie migrant income hovered around and sometimes descended below bare

subsistence levels, and that was for the "lucky ones" who found employment. At one point, for every

available crop-picking job at even the most meager recompense, there were 3 to 10 workers who needed

it.9

In 1935, with Tom Collins playing a major set-up role, the Resettlement Administration (RA,

Farm Security Administration [FSA] as of 1937) established a chain of federal "Migratory (migrant)

Labor Camps" up and down California's agricultural valleys. At their peak just before World War II, 18

camps, including 3 "mobiles"—from Brawley in the south to Yuba City in the north—featured sanitary,

low-cost, and very basic living facilities (mostly tent sites) for migrant labor families. Populations could

reach around 500 or more per camp.

3

Early on, opposition from powerful growers' organizations, as well as lack of support from the

federal sector,10 divested the RA/FSA's regional office in Berkeley of any hope of accommodating the

entire California migrant farm labor population in federal camps. The agency fell back toward more

limited aims: to demonstrate to both the growers and California at large that it was possible and

advisable to provide low-cost, relatively humane living conditions for migrant workers and their families

and that there was no basis for common tendencies to brand the newly arrived migrant population in

California with such terms as "morally degenerate," intrinsically "uncivilized," etc.

For Okie residents, the camps strove to provide health services and education, community, and a

road toward "depolarization" with hostile mainstream Californians. The federal camps served as

comparative oases of health, human dignity, and relief from the often inhumanly degrading conditions

prevailing elsewhere.

Steinbeck, Collins, and Migrants

Collins and the migrant laborer families at the Resettlement Administration's Arvin/Weedpatch

federal camp hosted several Steinbeck visits beginning around August 1936, when the author journeyed

from his Los Gatos home to do fieldwork for the seven-part San Francisco News series "Harvest

Gypsies."11 But their relationship did not stop at Weedpatch. With the approval of the RA/FSA regional

office in Berkeley, Collins also served as Steinbeck's primary "migrant liaison" at various times between

1936 and 1938. The two traveled up and down the San Joaquin valley in Steinbeck's legendary "old pie

wagon,"12 gathering information and offering aid in several crisis situations.

During this period, Steinbeck's nonfictional portrayals of migrant squatter camp conditions were

grim, stark, and shocking. The innovative federal photojournalism of Dorothea Lange and others, "on

the road" for the RA/FSA starting in the mid 1930s, captured for the public eye unforgettably haunting,

4

dramatic images of destitute Okie families: journeying in often ramshackle "jalopy caravans" along their

"desolation road" to California (Route 66) or "wasting away" within the shockingly squalid California

ad-hoc irrigation ditch-bank squatter camps and "Hoovervilles."

Previously, the mostly non-European minority migrant labor force in California had been

exploited and "expected" to accept living standards far below the median for most Americans. But most

of America had never actually "seen them"—especially like this. Publicity relating to the Okie migrant

plight took hold and spread through the local and national media. By mid-1938, federal curtailment of

California cotton acreage and related reduction in employment opportunity, a continuing influx of farm

job-seekers, severe flooding, resultant deprivation, and vivid documentation made the peaking

"California Okie crisis" into "continuous front-page news."13 This helped "prime the pump" for the

explosive sales of the novel The Grapes of Wrath upon publication in 1939 and for the popularity of the

John Ford movie version in 1940.

In many respects kindred spirits, Steinbeck and Collins shared a commitment to the uphill fight

to better Okie migrant laborer and family living conditions. The situation was often dismal enough at the

grower-owned camps they visited. But at the ditchbank "squatter camps" and Hoovervilles, conditions

had descended to depths hard to acknowledge. Steinbeck and Collins saw, documented, and toiled to

alleviate mind-numbing, spirit-killing poverty, squalor, epidemic disease, malnutrition, and outright

starvation among a vast valley assemblage of least 100,000 (historical estimates vary)—often lacking

even subsistence in the most abundant "food-basket" of the nation.

During Steinbeck's San Joaquin valley migrant journeys with Collins, they toiled and lived

alongside destitute migrant labor families as well as rendered emergency assistance. Efforts culminated

in a two-week mission, with the two "dropping in the mud from exhaustion"14 while trying to rescue

5

4,000–5,000 squatter camp families stranded during the terrible Visalia-Nipomo floods of February

1938—"not just hungry but actually starving" as noted by Steinbeck.15 According to Robert De Mott,

this horrific experience, etched in acid upon Steinbeck's consciousness, galvanized his commitment to

The Grapes of Wrath.16

While at work on the latter, Steinbeck had at his side Collins's official federal narrative reports as

well as correspondence. Previously, Steinbeck had tried to aid Collins in an unfulfilled effort to get them

published, even doing some editing work. In 1936 Steinbeck declared to writer and friend George

Albee: "Now I'm working hard on another book which isn't mine at all. I'm only editing it but it is a fine

thing. A complete social study made of the weekly reports from a migrant camp."17

As time passed, all other projects gave way to The Grapes of Wrath. But there are indications

that Steinbeck believed that basing many of his fictional California migrant scenes and contexts on

nonfictional documents like the Collins reports might help when the firestorm of criticism rained down

following publication of his novel. Notable for its duration and intensity, the backlash featured such

events as "book-burnings in Bakersfield."18

The Reports

Prominent Steinbeck biographers and California Dust Bowl migrant historians, not to mention

numerous thesis-writers, have come to the National Archives–Pacific Region (San Francisco) to

research the Collins reports and related records of the Farmers Home Administration (Record Group

96). Steinbeck biographer Jackson J. Benson "rediscovered" the 1930s FSA migrant camp reports there

during an early 1970s quest to find and write more about Tom Collins.

Thanks mostly to Benson's dogged biographical detective work, we know that the federal

migrant labor camp period was likely the high point of Collins's far from run-of-mill life. Born out of

6

wedlock, raised in a Catholic orphanage, and drawn at one point toward priesthood, Collins listed his

educational background as four years at prep school plus a year at a possible "diploma mill" teachers

college from which, when convenient, he claimed to have received a doctorate. During the early 1920s,

he worked as supervisor/organizer of public schools at the Guam Naval Station. He also traversed the

Amazon jungle with his young ex-socialite wife (the second of three) while fleeing from her family's

lawyers.19

He came to the Resettlement Administration in 1935 from a job as director and organizer of

shelters and labor camps for the Federal Transient Service in San Diego County and Los Angeles. In his

June 1935 job application, Collins recorded a salient attribute: "I have the ability to . . . successfully

handle people without coercion or force."20

Wearing the face turned toward his RA/FSA superiors when writing the reports, Collins

sometimes commented on low levels of intelligence for certain adult migrant individuals or groups,

especially in comparison with their own children.21 He remarked on major initial "learning difficulties"

especially regarding hygienic education. In his view, these were attributable mainly to the

sociocultural/psychological trauma stemming from prolonged deprivation.22 His anecdotes about the

migrants sometimes made light of what he regarded as primitive, superstitious and/or ignorant beliefs

and customs. Sometimes the comments sounded like laughing at, not with—though he also laughed at

himself. Collins's reports also document some unsavory migrant behavior such as wife-beating (or

occasionally vice-versa). His usual laissez-faire position: "A man's tent is his farm."23

Some references can be seen as condescending, such as "these simple, honest, full-hearted,

deserving people."24 But he also wrote repeatedly that the spectacular quality-of-life upgrades that

others found so amazing at his federal camps should be "justly credited to the migrants themselves."25

7

Collins saved his special scorn for less honest, more convoluted, and sparse-hearted folk such as

exploitive growers, educated nose-in-air social workers, and "His Satanic Majesty, Caesar Augustus

Hearst" (William Randolph Hearst).26

Some recent historians have accused Collins, Steinbeck, Lange, and others of seeing Okie

migrants through a lens distorted by urban elitist liberal "reform agendas" while neglecting to attend to

and preserve authentic Okie culture.27 This view seems not to recognize that the real foundational

concern of these three—the need for relief from sustained socioeconomic trauma and severe human

misery—is a precondition for cultural survival and recovery.

The reports as a whole, as well as accounts of his managerial conduct by first-hand observers,

reveal a complex and mainly constructive portrait of Collins. Regarding his behavior toward the

migrants, he noted in an early August 1935 report that he was "on the spot at all times."28 Shedding

bureaucratic trappings, Collins chose to live and work in close, constant, extensive, and deliberately

visible personal contact with migrant camp residents, where "one false move, and he loses the

confidence and respect of the campers."29 He later commented, "Hypocrisy, pretense, insincerity, lack

of interest in their problems and in them—these evils we can never hide from them . . . and their justice

is efficient, final and swift."30

With the migrants, Collins combined the straightforward aspect of the "plain-folks American"

with a daunting regimen of 24/7 on-call caring and public service.31 In a short piece included in

America and Americans, Steinbeck gave some insight into Collins's dedication:

The first time I saw Windsor Drake [Collins] it was evening, and it was raining. . . . I drove into

the migrant camp, the wheels of my car throwing muddy water. The lines of sodden, dripping tents

stretched away from me in the darkness. The temporary office was crowded with damp men and

8

women . . . and sitting at a littered table was Windsor Drake, a little man in a damp, frayed white suit.

The crowding people looked at him all the time . . . his large, dark eyes, tired beyond sleepiness. . . .

There was an epidemic in the camp—in the muddy, flooded camp . . . every kind of winter disease had

developed: measles and whooping cough; mumps, pneumonia, and throat infections. And the little man

was trying to do everything. He had to. . . .32

For Okie farm migrants reeling from the terrible treatment meted out elsewhere in California, the

experience of Collins's "neighborly" caring manner, dedication, and public "servant-leadership" must

have come as a dramatic, welcome contrast. It may have generated a sort of "positive culture shock" that

partly explains FSA migrant camper receptivity to his guidance during 1935–1936. At any rate, it earned

him a tremendous reservoir of credibility with Marysville and then Weedpatch migrant labor camp

residents. He tapped into this with great effect while using tactfully packaged instruction, friendly

suggestion and encouragement, and the attitude of the "Good Neighbor" (his signature phrase) to foster

individual, family, and camp community democratic self-help programs in health, hygiene, nutrition,

baby and child care, education, daily government/law enforcement, and recreation.

Time and time again in the reports, Collins conveyed respect, esteem, and faith that the destitute,

despised migrant Okie families, given a place to stand and a chance, were capable of conduct at least on

and perhaps above the level of the mainstream California society that had so far brutalized them.

Combined with Collins's management style and programs, the minimal amenities at Weedpatch camp

furnished the foundation for a gently guided, generous, high-standards, self-governing "community of

caring" at Arvin/Weedpatch. This amazed visiting farmers, politicians, social workers, and others who

9

had previously believed migrant Okies to be inherently incapable of such achievements. Steinbeck, his

sympathies already with the migrants, was also mightily impressed.

Collins's views of migrant capabilities evolved alongside their own story of recovery at his

prototypical camps. In September 1935 at Marysville, he had found it "very gratifying to see what we

can do for these people simply through . . . giving them some voice in the camp routine . . . they do very

well under proper supervision and guidance."33 A year later in October 1936, Collins observed that the

migrant Okie community at Weedpatch camp had, even during "down times" of scarce employment,

"demonstrated beyond a doubt just how little they need us down here to manage their affairs."34

The reports follow a form fairly consistent with the "Instructions to Camp Managers" approved

by initial regional RA/FSA camp community manager Irving W. Wood,35 but which Collins at least had

a hand in writing. Usually written and sent to the regional office weekly or biweekly if things got too

busy, the Collins reports usually contained most of the following interesting components:

Statistics: Reports noted the number of resident camp families and individuals, illnesses, destitute

persons, persons dismissed from camp (with reasons), referred to other agencies, employed,

unemployed, children at camp, treated at camp first aid stations, and children by school grades. They

also recorded the classification and number of camper families by state of origin and by occupation. In

addition, Collins noted the number checking in and checking out, sometimes with notes on local travel

origins and destinations. Oklahoman migrant families always won hands down in terms of Weedpatch

camp population. A September 1936 report recorded "Oklahoma 56, Arkansas 4, Texas 8, Missouri 6,

California 7," and a few each from eight other states. Similarly, farm labor outpaced all other pre-

California occupations, as in "Farm Laborers 63, farm renters 10, farm owners, 8," and one to three for

assorted others.36

10

Types, rates paid, and notes for any employment, such as: "Fruit picking. Wage rates $.25 per hour.

Average weekly earnings $15.00 based on 10 hour day" (July 1936).37

Commentary on the labor conditions including employment, labor supply and demand, grower practices,

worker reactions, unrest, disputes, and strike situations.

Notes on migrant living conditions at the federal camps and also the off-site local, grower-owned,

private fee, and ditchbank squatter camps/Hoovervilles.

Sections about camp organization, government, and programs for health, education and recreation.

Collins was an advocate and the chief on-the-ground architect of what Regional Director of [migrant

camp] Management Eric Thomsen called "functional democracy" as a way to run the camps.38 By

various noncoercive methods, federal managers were to educate, encourage, and empower the migrant

residents to govern themselves in most daily affairs through elected camp committees. This approach

worked very well for Collins in 1936, though much less so with some other managers and especially

after 1937, when FSA destabilized the situation by mandating shorter stays and more frequent turnovers

of camp residency for migrant families.39

In addition, the reports of Collins and several "disciples" also contained "bits of migrant

wisdom" relating observations and anecdotes about goings-on among the residents. Though some

vignettes can admittedly be seen as demeaning, the reports overall show an underlying respect,

sometimes bordering on "romantic reverence," for a straightforward, resourceful people who stubbornly

persevere, somehow keeping hope alive in the face of challenges far more harrowing than those faced by

the "average American." The reports feature transcriptions of migrant poetry, songs, letters, and

conversations.

11

Collins often tried to capture the regional flavor of "Okie dialect." Compared to Steinbeck,

Collins exaggerates, with frequent gratuitous misspellings, as in a February 1936 example: "When we

aswallas the last been our innards will haf ter shak the dise ter see who agits it."41 Still, Collins's

attempts may have influenced the more muted and readable Steinbeck rendition. For instance, both use

"purty" for "pretty."42

Along with other contemporary sources, they document how "standard sets" of negative

stereotypes associated by the Anglo-American mainstream of the day with ethnic minorities (and mostly

concerned with "blaming the poor") landed in this instance on destitute white, old-stock rural American

Protestants slotted into the lowest rung on the "California caste ladder"—migrant farm laborers. The

stereotypical slurs—inherently dirty, lazy, stupid, immoral, shiftless, parasitic, welfare chiselers,

fundamentally incapable of joining mainstream American civilization43 —tell us much about the

sociopathology of prejudice and nothing about the groups victimized.

"Respectable visitors" to Weedpatch camp, from large growers to social workers, often

confessed near-disbelief at the exemplary levels of conduct "these primitive people"44 had achieved

there in a very short time.

Finally, what stands out about the reports is Collins's literate and antibureaucratic style of

government narrative report writing. He went to lengths (sometimes 20–30 pages) and took liberties to

inject colors far beyond the "officialese" of most constrained, gray-scale government reports. Collins's

creative latitude included both ad hoc headings and no-holds-barred candid, opinionated commentary, as

in the following under "Labor, continued (September, 1936):"

The Shadow of Associated Farmers—the Hidden Hand

12

Rumors are now afloat that the Associated Farmers and the Cotton Finance Control agencies

have been circulating through the valley in an effort to have the larger growers and others pay a cotton-

picking scale between $.60 and $.80 per cwt [hundred-weight]. This is the advance guard preparing for

the general price-fixing session to be held at Fresno, California on September 8, 1936.45

Items like the above would have been of great interest to Steinbeck, who believed that

Associated Farmers, the powerful large growers lobbying organization not particularly disguised as the

"Farmers Association" in The Grapes of Wrath, were after him as their "public enemy number one."46

Behind Collins's unique report stylings, there must have been purpose. An educated guess would

be that he hoped to: capture and hold the interest of regional and higher RA/FSA and other officials;

buttress precarious federal support and funding for the migrant camp program by highlighting

spectacular challenges and achievements; as part of the latter, provide entertaining PR copy for

RA/FSA; and familiarize readers with the California agricultural labor scene.

Influences on Steinbeck

Steinbeck spent considerable time with Collins and among the migrants at Weedpatch camp and

elsewhere. The California section of The Grapes of Wrath therefore bears the stamp of numerous

conversations as well as events and characters seen firsthand. In addition, as Benson notes, "There were

deeper influences flowing from the camp manager to the author: influences of spirit, emotion, and

attitude, which are difficult to measure or locate precisely . . . both had a knack for getting close to

ordinary people and winning their confidence . . . both had faith that our democratic institutions, through

the pressure of an enlightened citizenry, could and would conquer the inequities that appeared to be

tearing the fabric of society apart."47

13

Having the body of reports at his side also furnished Steinbeck with an extensive, rich

documentary context for the imaginative surround in which he built the California section of the novel.

The reports contained numerous portraits of labor conditions, domestic life, migrant character,

"characters," and such significant components of Weedpatch camp life as the governing committees

elected by campers.

The committees were numerous, but three chronicled repeatedly in the reports appear in The

Grapes of Wrath. The Central Committee saw to all-camp matters such as law and order, basic upkeep,

and employment aid for the campers. The Good Neighbors Committee ("Ladies Committee" in

Steinbeck) visited all tents to welcome new women and families, helped with sustenance, and introduced

them to sanitary facilities and child-centered resources such as the clinic, nursery, and playground.

The Recreation Committee arranged for such events as baseball games with nearby settlements

or farms as well as the orderly, liquorless, camper-policed "best dances in the county" featured in the

novel. As Collins intended, such activities, besides boosting camp morale, helped break down barriers

between the migrant campers and surrounding communities. This led to more jobs with growers who

had previously vilified the FSA camps (filled with highly patriotic Okies) as "red-infested."48 He was

pleased to report instances when campers passed beyond the migrant agricultural cycle altogether and

left for steady, long-term employment in the towns.49

The reports feature numerous "items," from major to minute, that appear in the novel—from

small farmer protests against large grower coercion aimed at cutting migrant wages, to the price for a

cotton-picking sack if you have none. Sometimes these were inserted whole-cloth into The Grapes of

Wrath, but more often they were reconfigured or "built-out" to serve the creative purposes of the novel.

14

The Collins report items also have an absorbing "story life" apart from The Grapes of Wrath.

This storytelling strength is likely another reason the reports appealed to Steinbeck.

As one might expect, chapters 22 and 24 of The Grapes of Wrath—set mostly at the Weedpatch

camp—contain the highest numbers of items correlated to Collins reports, though they appear elsewhere

as well. The following are a few selected examples.

In chapter 8, Granma Joad exclaims, "Praise God for Vittory!" Collins records use of this phrase

in April 1936 as the standard ending for letters to "folks back hum" he is typing for Weedpatch women

campers. But it is also the signature declamation of "Reverend Georgie," the "Holy One," whom he

hired as his housekeeper. Her description does not match that of Steinbeck's grim fundamentalist who

terrorizes Rose of Sharon at the camp; rather, Georgie is depicted more as a voluble "space-cadet." Her

saga begins in a May 1936 report and ends in September as she and her part-Cherokee husband, Noah,

having recently launched their "Ark of Love," move on. Collins records Georgie's hobbies, perhaps in

priority order: "1. entertaining visitors at manager's house, 2. having her husband rock her before he

goes to work and for hours after he returns, 3. saving souls through her preaching, 4. holding revival

services anywhere, anytime, 5. TALKING, and 6. Housekeeper."50

"No cops" are allowed in Weedpatch camp without a warrant, finds Tom Joad to his relief

(chapter 22). This policy is specified in the August 1935 "Instructions to Camp Managers."

" We won't have no charity," says Jessie of the Weedpatch Ladies Committee (chapter 22).: The

characteristic Okie aversion to accepting charity or relief—the opposite of the stereotype—recurs in

both Collins and Steinbeck. In February 1936 Collins quotes the Okie consensus: "jest as well haf all our

teeth yanked out as ter go sit down, tell our life's history and ask for relief. Culd we only git a job for

that's all we wants. We's able ter wuk and wants to wuk."51

15

In the "croquet mallet incident," Ruthie Joad snatches a croquet mallet from another girl, acts

tough, and cries afterward (chapter 22). In Collins, a very young newlywed does the mallet-snatching;52

the "crying" part may come from a May 1936 report item in which Collins arranges and pays for a

birthday party hosted by "the toughest kid in camp . . . we have seen her tackle three and four at a time

and 'clean up.'"53

Ruthie and Winfield get a shock from accidentally flushing a toilet (chapter 22). A similar

incident appears in a Collins report from October 1935.54 Throughout the reports, toilet, shower, and

similar "plumbing hijinx" occur due to unfamiliarity of some rural migrant campers with basic modern

sanitation technology. The committee suggestion of a "toilet paper dispenser that rings a bell" transfers

from Collins (May 1936) to Steinbeck.55

Much more serious are Collins's repeated battles with deadly disease outbreaks, especially

among children, caused by the unfamiliarity of some rural people with basic hygienic theory and

practice, horrid conditions at the squatter and grower camps, and sometimes the traumatic migrant shock

and fatigue reported by Collins, Steinbeck, historian Walter Stein, and others.56 At a Hooverville in

chapter 18, Ma Joad notes, "we ain't never been dirty like this . . . I wonder why? Seems like the heart's

took out of us."

Echoing numerous migrant sentiments recorded in the reports, Ma Joad and Rose of Sharon

appreciate Weedpatch camp's hot water and laundry, washing, and bathing facilities. Due to

opportunities for and the efforts of the migrants, the FSA camps generally furnished a spotless contrast

to the festering situation at squatter, private fee, and many grower camps. Collins reports that by July

1936, Weedpatch resident women have taken over much of the clinic, nurse visit, nutritional, first aid,

and well-babies program work, lessening his own toils.57

16

Rose of Sharon mentions how "I'm to go see that nurse and she'll tell me jus' what to do so the

baby'll be strong . . . all the ladies here do that" (chapter 24). There are numerous mentions in the reports

of the well-baby program and how resident camp mothers embrace it. Collins, who cared most deeply

about the children, seems to have especially loved dealing with infants. In August 1936, he celebrates

Raymond, the "Perfect Baby": "Raymond seldom cries. He is always smiling. . . . Many times he sits on

our desk as we go about the routine office work. At other times we can be found on the sewing project

floor keeping Raymond busy while his mama runs a new suit of jumpers . . . on the electric sewing

machine. What a baby!"58

Early on at the Marysville migrant camp in 1935, Collins reports that "Complaints regarding

drinking, gambling, and unnecessary noise late at night all appear to be things of the past since the

campers committee entered the picture."59 But later at Weedpatch, he notes an instance of "pappy

rolling about in a dry ditch. Beside him was an empty bottle of gin . . . we appreciated the fact that he

left camp to have his big snort of liquor."60 The novel mentions two such "solitary ditch-bank drunks,"

the first involving Uncle John Joad (chapters 20 and 23).

The reports are also laced with Okie humor, as in this example from a January 1936 report:

"With Roosevelt, we hunts our jack rabbits and milks 'em and turns 'em loose again to catch again when

we needs 'em."61 A similar Okie "jack rabbit fantasy" can be found in Steinbeck's chapter 27.

Regarding character, Collins seems to be talking about Ma Joad's strength (and Pa Joad's

protests) when he notes that "during times of unemployment . . . the woman steps in as Master of the

House."62 And Tom Joad's instinctive bent to challenge head-on and strip away the puffery of others

resonates with report items like the following, in which a migrant faces down a "pusher" trying to cut

pay by force-speeding the pace of work.

17

Pusher: "You pack 15 boxes a day OR ELSE." Camper: "I been wuking here for 2 years, an I

ain't had no one tell me I loafs on the job. . . . I ain't gonna pack 15 boxes because I ain't gonna

put rotten grapes in these boxes to ship . . . so OR ELSE TO YOU AND LIKE IT. I ain't gonna

quit...so what's your other OR ELSE?"63

Steinbeck biographers note that partial inspiration for Tom Joad may have come from a Tulare

FSA camp fugitive son of Weedpatch Camp Central Committee chairman Sherman E. Eastom, a bronze-

faced, widely respected, no-nonsense figure.64 Eastom's "eyes that miss nothing" in Collins become

"eyes like little blades" for committee chair Ezra Huston in The Grapes of Wrath.65

In 1937 Tom Collins left Arvin/Weedpatch "to act as traveling Field Superintendent out of the

Regional Office . . . and to be ready on short notice to enter into the organization and management of

any new camp, as ordered" a position also known as "Community Manager at Large."66 After stints at

various locations among which were Gridley, Thornton, and Calipatria, his luster evidently dimmed.

Again a camp manager as of 1940, he resigned from the FSA in 1941,67 having recently received

$15,000 as technical director for The Grapes of Wrath movie.68

The currency of "functional democracy" and the Collins community method also faded as

economic conditions and pay improved, defense jobs opened up, FSA camp populations became more

transient, and Collins-school "servant-leaders" gave way to managers accustomed to more bureaucracy

and social distance between themselves and their clients. Steinbeck might have been disappointed to

visit later camps where most residents were indifferent to clique-ish committees,69 or where campers

charged managers with "Hitlerism."70

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By 1940, California was on the way to ramping up industrially and otherwise for World War II.

Over the next few years, pay and defense-related employment in California followed suit. With the "War

Deal," the Depression came to an end, taking with it the California Okie migrant crisis.

However, The Grapes of Wrath lives on and on, and with it, that special sense of a greater,

deeply human whole that comprises a sizable portion of the legacy of not only John Steinbeck, but also

Tom Collins. For a time at least, as Steinbeck noted when writing it, Tom actually "lived it." That spirit

shines through in the words of Robert Hardie, a Collins "disciple" selected to replace him as Weedpatch

camp manager. Presaging Ma Joad's memorable words from chapter 20—brought forward to conclude

John Ford's 1940 movie—Hardie declares in his report for the week of Christmas 1936:

"But come what may—we'll find a way through this thing—for we are the American people."71

Daniel Nealand is director of the National Archives Pacific Region–San Francisco.

Nealand, D. (2008, Winter) Archival Vintages for The Grapes of Wrath. National Archives. Prologue

Magazine, Vol. 40, No. 4. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Retrieved

April 16, 2012, from http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/winter/ grapes.html.

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