Lots of things had changed since 1920. Kids under 16 were no longer allowed to work in the field and most of the people from Oklahoma and Arkansas were gone.
While the compostition of the labor force changed, a lot more people were needed. They need people for year-round work, blossom thinning, limb-tying, and color picking. Also when farmers grew other kinds of apples the growing season got longer which meant they need more people.
Many of the people who had onced worked in the U.S. were losing their jobs to people from Mexico and Central America. They also were losing their jobs to mechanicalization.
Sons and dughters of Dustbowl migrants were still around picking fruit in 1970. They had left the southern states for all the work opportunities that had come up in California and the Northeast.
Mexicans started to come to America illegally to get a job that pays better than jobs in Mexico. When they started getting large amounts of people they shut down the cookhouse and made people cook for themselves.
Hippies also were good workers. They liked the soil so they liked doing the job as well. This is one of the reasons why the hippies were so good at the job.
Since there wasn't a lot of workers anymore, people would be picked up by buses to be brought to the orchards. They would feed the workers and provide a place to stay. But, some cities were close enough to an orchard were they wouldn't need to provide a place to stay.
Many Americans went to work at defense plants to help with WWII so pickers were in high demand. It got so bad that the government brought Mexican nationals to temporarily work in the fields.
Cotton is often a crop that brings back bad memories. It was much harded to harvest than berries and apples. It created lots of dust which made the area not a fun place to be.
Kids were pulled out of school during this time to help pick fruit. During the harvest however, there was no problem finding people to help. Many people from the Great Plains came desperate for work.
The earliest migrant workers were Canadian Indians who, in 1928, only received 40 cents per hour for their fruit picking. Theses Indians came until 1950. They stopped coming because of the bank collapase which caused them to only make 15 cents per hour.
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