Excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath
Published in 1939; excerpt taken from 1955 reprint

"They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless—restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do—to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut—anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry."

From The Grapes of Wrath

During the 1930s migrant workers poured into California in search of work. Most of them had been farmers in the Dust Bowl or sharecroppers or tenant farmers on cotton farms in the southern central states. John Steinbeck tells their story in his 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath. To describe the plight of migrants moving west into California, Steinbeck decided to concentrate on the story of one family, the Joads, and their struggles while traveling from the Dust Bowl region of Oklahoma to the promised land...