Maybe you've heard about the migrants lately, or have seen
pictures of them in the magazines. But have you thought that many
of them are families much like yours and mine, traveling
uncomfortably in rattly old jalopies while they go from one crop
to another, and living crowded in rickety shacks when they stop
for work?

There have always been wandering farm laborers because so many
crops need but a few workers part of the year and a great many at
harvest. A two-thousand-acre peach orchard needs only thirty
workers most of the year, and one thousand seven hundred at
picking time. Lately, though, there have been more migrants than
ever. One reason is that while in the past we used to eat fresh
peas, beans, strawberries, and the like only in summer, now we
want fresh fruits and vegetables all year round. To supply our
wants, great quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables must be
raised in the warm climates where they will grow.

Another reason is that more farm machinery is used now, and one
tractor will do as much work as several families of farm
laborers. So the extra families have taken to migrating or
wandering about the country wherever they hope to find work.

A further cause of the wandering is the long drought which turned
part of our Southwestern country where there had been good
farming into a dry desert that wouldn't grow crops any more. The
people from the Dust Bowl, as the district is called, had to
migrate, or starve. A great many of them went to the near-by
state Of California, which grows much fruit and vegetables. There