> Outside of the U.S., The Grapes of Wrath included a prologue explaining the Dust Bowl, the source of the Joad family's problems. Sadly, the Dirty Thirties, as they were nicknamed here, were all too familiar to American audiences. The '30s were a period of drought that afflicted the Midwest but also extended South into Texas and North to Canada. Although the prairie states had survived earlier droughts, the one in the '30s was compounded by other recent developments. The rise of small tractors had made more extensive deep plowing possible, which had eliminated grasses that normally held the soil in place and trapped moisture during dry spells. As a result, when the long drought hit dust storms swept the land, some reaching as far as New York City and Washington, DC. About 100 million acres were stricken, with the worst damage in the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, areas largely inhabited by tenant farmers. Unable to bring in a decent harvest, the banks threw the farmers off land many of their families had lived on for generations. With the nation in the grips of the Great Depression, jobs for these newly homeless people were hard to come by.

> More than one million farmers from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Texas and Missouri took off for California in search of work on farms the drought had not reached. Nicknamed "Okies," they were subjected to prejudice and harsh working conditions. Farm owners in California paid them starvation wages and used gangs of guards and local police to terrorize them into submission. Many of these workers had already demonstrated a strong liberal political bent. Their harsh treatment in the California work camps inspired strong union activism, leading to violent clashes with local authorities and landowners. Strikes started in 1933 and continued for years. When several strikers were killed in Pixley, CA, in 1937, the federal government stepped in to arbitrate an uneasy agreement.

> It would take the outbreak of World War II in Europe to improve the lives of migrants from the dust bowl. With the defense boom of 1940, jobs were once again plentiful, and many migrant workers left the farms for lucrative jobs in weapons manufacturing. Ironically, the rise of hostilities in Europe also made the filming of The Grapes of Wrath more feasible. With a new focus on the evils of Fascism and the need for a large labor force, politicians became more tolerant of the novel's progressive politics, particularly with the positive spin 20th Century-Fox would give Steinbeck's story.