Riding the Rails
Men and women in the 1930’s are having a tough life now that the stock market has crashed. Banks are closing and people are losing all of their money. It is very difficult for most people to find work. Children, mostly boys, are running away from their families because they feel that it would be better financially for themselves and their family if they left and found work. Some people are just leaving because they want to find adventure. When the children feel they have to leave, they wait until nightfall to do so. They go to a train yard, and run alongside a train while it is picking up speed. They hope to jump on the train so that they can be taken to a place with job opportunities. More than 2 million men and 8,000 women have become hoboes during this time. People are losing their legs and even their lives trying to jump onto these trains, of those people at least 6,500 people are killed per year either due to accidents or due to the railroad “Bulls”, the train guards who brutally beat people that they find trying to sneak onto trains at night.
When these people leave they want to go to places like the Salinas Valley in
California, also known as “The Salad Bowl”. The reason that the Salinas Valley is called “The Salad Bowl” is because it is one of the most productive agricultural regions in California. For people arriving in the Salinas Valley, things aren't going like they had planned. The people who are already working in California don't like all of the new people coming into California because they take opportunities from them. If newcomers do somehow find jobs, they are often paid less than the workers already there. But there are still a few people who have come out successful after doing this, such as novelist Louis L'Amour, TV host Art Linkletter, oil billionaire H.L. Hunt, journalist Eric Sevareid, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. These families have had it tough during this time, hopefully in the end America will pull through.