Dear Mary and Bonnie and Jack and the rest of my readers:
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
are perhaps two hundred thousand people migrating to California
alone each year.
Of course there isn't nearly enough work for them all, and there
aren't good living places for those who have work. That means
that the children--like you--don't have the rights of young
American citizens--like you. A great many of them can't go to
school, and are growing up ignorant; and they don't have church,
with all it means to us. They don't have proper homes or food, so
they haven't good health; and because they are not in their home
state or county, they cannot get medical and hospital care.
You may think we have nothing to do with them when you sometimes
pass a jalopy packed inside with a whole family, from grandma to
baby, and outside with bedding and what-not.
But we have something to do with them many times a day. Every
time we sit down at our table we have something to do with them.
Our sugar may come from these children's work; our oranges, too,
and our peas, lettuce, melons, berries, cranberries, walnuts . . . !
Every time we put on a cotton dress, we accept something from
them.
For years no one thought much of trying to help these wanderers.
No one seemed to notice the unfairness of letting some children
have all the blessings of our country and others have none. By
and by, the counties and states and Federal government tried to
help the migrant families. In a few places the government has set
up comfortable camps and part-time farms such as this story
describes. The church has tried to do something, also.
About twenty years ago, the Council of Women for Home Missions,
made up of groups of women from the different churches, began to
make plans for helping. They opened some friendly rooms where
they took care of the children who were left alone while their
parents worked. The rooms were often no more than a made-over
barn, but in these "Christian Centers," as they were called, the
children were given cleanliness, food, happiness and the care of
a nurse, and were taught something about a loving Father God. The
children who worked in the fields and the older people were also
helped. From the seven with which a beginning was made, the
number of Centers has grown to nearly sixty.
There is a great deal more to do in starting more Centers, and in
equipping those we have, and we can do part of it. With our
church school classes, we can give CleanUp and Kindergarten Kits
like Cissy's and Jimmie's and our leaders will tell us other
things we can do, such as collecting bedding and clothing and
toys and money. Best of all, we can give our friendship to these
homeless people.
For they're just children like you. When you grow up, perhaps you
may help our country become a place where no single child need be
homeless.
Florence Crannell Means
Denver, Colorado