Brief essay on the “Attention! Migratory Farm Workers” educational bulletin

In this text, the novelist John Steinbeck reflects on the historical significance of educational bulletins for migrant farm workers. Steinbeck declares these pamphlets, which were labeled“ subversive literature,” to be “wonderful documents” because they show that “America will not always be in the hands of … men and groups who now dominate it with money with publicity and much terror.” Steinbeck’s work covering the plight of migrant farm workers and agitating for federal resettlement agencies inspired his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. His sympathetic depiction of farmworkers infuriated some agribusiness leaders and landowners, who pushed to ban the book in parts of California.