FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 229one of the country’s first radio talk shows. “These agencies were set up, not
to solve the problem of unemployment, but to meet the problems of the
unemployed. This distinction is extremely important.”
As mentioned, disaster relief during the Dust Bowl was intended primar-
ily for landowners, which created problems for those without land. To qual-
ify for federal relief, farmers had to first plant a garden to prove that they were
at least trying to survive on their own before taking federal aid. But, to plant
a garden, one also had to have land, perhaps a house, and be stationary.
Therefore, Roosevelt’s Dust Bowl disaster relief left out tenants and share-
croppers, forcing thousands upon thousands to migrate in search of work and
new homes. Those migrants became commonly known as “Okies”, “Arkies”,
and “Texies” but came from every drought state. Over 2 million people fled
the Dust Bowl, a great number heading west to California, in America’s larg-
est concentrated migration. In fact, the influx of dust bowl refugees into
California became so great that state officials began to demand identification
at the border and were refusing entry to people from other states, a clearly
illegal practice. Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about it in which he had
California officials telling people to go back Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas or
wherever if they did not have the “do-re-mi,” meaning money to survive.
Small business owners and teachers who got no benefit from crop loans or
cattle purchasing programs also made up many of the migrants. Others were
young laborers who did not own any land. Many male teenagers were labeled
“transients” as they ran away from their parents in search of a better life.
Many parents of transients sent descriptions of the runaways to Washington,
D.C. in hopes that leaders would help them find their children. When seven-
teen-year old James Dwyer left his home, for example, his parents sent a
detailed description of the young man to Washington. We learn that he was
5 foot, 7 inches, 135 pounds, wore white gold-rim glasses over his brown eyes,
and was last reported in Kansas City, Missouri, searching for a job to help his
family. It is unclear what happened to James.
For most Americans, the reality of the dust bowl hit home because of John
Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, a story of people fleeing the drought-
ridden and dusty Midwest for California. But Steinbeck’s story was more than
a tale of human tragedy; it was a critique of Capitalism, a system where
people who had farmed land for generations were forced out with no savings,
few possessions, and no good prospects. In a famous scene, an “Okie” con-