Migrants: A Study of a Private Agency's Involvement in a County Initiated Program Affecting Migratory Workers Riverhead, New York 1964 and 1965
Abstract
Wandering the highways of the nation today are hundreds of thousands of farm families, homeless migrants, who are attempting to make their living as seasonal laborers in agriculture. These are the "Joad" families, dramatized in "The Grapes of Wrath"; destitute farm people who in recent or past years have been uprooted from the land by droughts, depression, changing economic conditions, and the rapid advances of agricultural mechanization and technology. In a very real sense, these homeless migrants are the economic and social casualties of changes which have come to our whole society; changes with which the individual acting alone is powerless to deal. Displaced in agriculture, and lacking both the means and opportunity of starting anew in different locations, the migrants have found in late years that agriculture has no place of security for them. The increase in number of migratory agricultural workers within recent years reflects the fact that opportunities in other lines of productive activity seem lacking. Today these people are wandering from one job to another, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles to get a few days work. Their wages are low. Employment is sporadic and uncertain. Deplorable conditions of housing and sanitation are the usual characteristics of migrant life, along with poor health and poor educational advantages. These conditions are not the problems of only the migratory workers. These conditions should also be of great concern to the local communities and states affected, as well as to the nation as a whole.
Subject Area
Labor economics
Recommended Citation
Carroll, Patrick John, "Migrants: A Study of a Private Agency's Involvement in a County Initiated Program Affecting Migratory Workers Riverhead, New York 1964 and 1965" (1966). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30308720.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30308720
