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“When they need us they call us migrants. When we’ve picked their crops we’re bums and we've got to get out.”

- migratory worker, in This Fabulous Century

The Great Depression brought a wave of “new migrant workers”. Before, migrant workers were exclusively immigrants from China, Japan, Mexico, etc. But with the dust bowls and the Great Depression, white American families became the “new migrant workers”. Though migrants played a huge part in the agricultural economy, they were viewed as impoverished and a waste of the government’s resources.

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"In the 1930’s, to ease the strain on United States; resources, the federal government sent back to Mexico tens of thousands Mexican American who were on relief. Sometimes whole families were hered aboard cantle cars and transported south of the border; Many of these people had actually been born in the United States and were United States citizens. Many of the men had served in the armed forces during World War 1) But such considerations were overlooked in carrying out the policy of deportation. Mexican Americans were encouraged, even “helped,” to leave the United States."

- from A Mexican American Chronicle

Unemployment was spreading across the United States as well as food shortages, causing growing hostility to Mexican Americans. They were often condemned for taking jobs away from “true Americans” and used as a way to pin the blame of the economic crisis.

As a way to combat the problem with unemployment, the government created a repatriation program, which forced thousands of Mexican Americans (even those who were U.S. citizens) deported to Mexico. Most immigrants were tricked or forced into being deported while some had volunteered. And even some U.S. citizens were deported based on the suspicions that they were Mexican.

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Migrants, family of Mexicans, on road with tire trouble

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. As unemployment swept the U.S., hostility to immigrant workers grew, and the government began a program of repatriating immigrants to Mexico. 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. All in all, hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants, especially farmworkers, were sent out of the country during the 1930s--many of them the same workers who had been eagerly recruited a decade before.

The farmworkers who remained struggled to survive in desperate conditions. Bank foreclosures drove small farmers from their land, and large landholders cut back on their permanent workforce. As with many Southwestern farm families, a great number of Mexican American farmers discovered they had to take on a migratory existence and traveled the highways in search of work.

El Rio - Mexican FSA Camp - 1940

Many found temporary stability in the migrant work camps established by the U.S. Farm Security Administration, or FSA. The FSA camps provided housing, food, and medicine for migrant farm families, as well as protection from criminal elements that often took advantage of vulnerable migrants. The FSA set up several camps specifically for Mexican Americans in an attempt to create safe havens from violent attacks.

The camps also provided an unexpected benefit. In bringing together so many individual farm families, they increased ties within the community. Many residents began organizing their fellow workers around labor issues, and helped pave the way for the farm labor movements that emerged later in the century. This interview with a leader of the FSA camp in El Rio, California describes some of the day-to-day issues that the camp residents dealt with.

Two Mexican workers

Although farming was an important source of employment for Mexican immigrants, by the end of the 1930s Mexican Americans were established throughout the American workforce. Mexican immigrants and their descendants could be found in most of the industries of the Southwest, including ranching and mining. America's growing rail network was particularly important for Mexican immigrants. The railroad industry had long turned to immigrants from Mexico as a source of low-cost labor. In return, Mexican workers found that the railways offered not only employment, but also mobility. They often used this relatively inexpensive form of travel to move their families further into the North and East of the U.S., and into a more urban way of life.

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Depression and the Struggle for Survival | Mexican | Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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Migrants, family of Mexicans, on road with tire trouble 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.

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“Maybe we can start again, in the new rich land-in California, where the fruit grows. We’ll start over, But you can’t start. Only a baby can start. You and me-why we're all that’s been.... This land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can’t start again.”

- from The Grapes of Wrath

Farmers were one of the hardest hit groups during the Great Depression. They were dealing with debt, prices dropping, and losing their land. And since farmers were struggling to earn enough money, it meant that they couldn’t just start over. They have already spent most of their life cultivating and harvesting their crops, there was no way that they could restart in a different state. The only option for farmers was to stay where they were and deal with the drought, debt and the possibility of losing their land.

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“In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.”

- Asa Philip Randolph

Black Americans were facing harsh conditions during and even prior to the Great Depression. They were facing prejudice, discrimination and high unemployment. And it became clear that those who were benefiting from the fact that Black Americans were mainly unemployed weren’t going to be the ones that would support them. So that meant that they had to fight for what they wanted on their own. Black Americans made their own unions like Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Ports to show others that they deserved to have jobs and to be able to support themselves financially in a crisis.

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"I’ll work for fifteen [cents]. I’ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin’ out, an’ they can’t run aroun’. Give ‘em some windfall fruits, an’ they bloated up. Me. I’ll work for a little piece of meat… the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides."

- from The Grapes of Wrath

The lives of children during the Great Depression is completely different to a child now. Food was scarce for many families causing children to sufferer from malnutrition. It was a luxury to be able to have meals at the table or to even eat anything at all. These parents are getting desperate, feeding their children whatever is edible but now they are seeing the aftermath and how these kids are suffering. No matter how hard and tirelessly parents are working, it is not enough for them or their children.

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"It ain’t going to hurt the government to feed and clothe them that needs it."

- Flood-relief worker, in This Fabulous Century

This is was a common idea that many families had during the Great Depression. They believed that there needed to be more government intervention like providing basic necessities (food and clothing) to those who were unemployed and struggling. Families were struggling just to support themselves, any job that they could get a grasp of wasn't able to support them financially. It forced them to have their own children begging in the streets, relying on soup kitchen, and it even had husbands deserting their families.

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"Long as I can work, I’ll get along somehow."

- mother suffering from tuberculosis, in This Fabulous Century

More women were entering the workforce during the Great Depression. It was a way for women to support their families since the family breadwinners (men) had lost their jobs. Though women were being paid less, they kept fighting to have a job because they knew that their families were depending on them. And the fought against the discrimination by joining unions and continuing to work.

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Women and the Great Depression-- Episode #18

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"That farm was probably  worth seventy or eighty thousand dollars, and they’d foreclose on a $15,000 mortgage. That wasn’t fair."

- Rome Hentges, in Hard Times

Thousand of farmers were losing their farms during the Great Depression. They were unable to pay their loans because they had no means to earn money. The farms was the only thing they had to make a profit but since the prices of crops can barely support a person, farmers were forced to give up their land. And to add on, the foreclosed farms were be sold way less than when the farmers originally had bought them for, meaning that they were losing even more money.

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PH 77 (1936) by Clyfford Still – Artchive

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The artwork titled “PH 77” by Clyfford Still, created in 1936, employs oil as the medium and is a notable piece within the Expressionism art movement. Categorized as a genre painting, the artwork portrays a vivid and dynamic scene of everyday life, reflecting the emotional intensity characteristic of Expressionism.

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"I remember lying in bed one night and thinking. All at once I realized something. We were poor. Lord! It had been weeks before I could get over that."

- Depression victim, 1933, in This Fabulous Century

People are getting a profound realization of what was truly happening when the Great Depression was happening. Families were processing the fact that they need to find solutions to a problem that they can't fully comprehend themselves. They have no idea of what to expect and the obvious hardships that will be following families throughout this crisis.

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"Why does Every Thing have Exceptional Value. Except the Human being?"

- anonymous letter to Hebert Hoover. 1930, in Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letter From the Forgotten Man

This is bringing to light the harsh treatments and discrimination that migrant workers faced during the Great Depression. They travel from different farms to help pick crops or take jobs with extremely low wages and were still being treated as less than by others. Migrant workers are trying to show that not everybody is being equally or with value. And they bring this idea to the president, the person that is suppose to be helping the American people, no matter who they are.