Across the Fruited Plain

Across the Fruited Plain

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Across the Fruited Plain, by Florence
Crannell Means, Illustrated by Janet Smalley
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Title: Across the Fruited Plain
Author: Florence Crannell Means

Release Date: June 25, 2006 [eBook #18681]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ACROSS
THE FRUITED PLAIN***
E-text prepared by Meredith Dixon

ACROSS THE FRUITED PLAIN
by

FLORENCE CRANNELL MEANS
With Illustrations by Janet Smalley

[Illustration: Beechams in Reo]

New York : Friendship Press, c1940

Plans and procedures for using Across The Fruited Plain will be found
in "A Junior Teacher's Guide on the Migrants," by E. Mae Young.
Photographs of migrant homes and migrant Centers will be found in the
picture story book Jack Of The Bean Fields, by Nina Millen.
This book is dedicated to a whole troop of children "across the fruited
plain": Tomoko, Willie May, Fei-Kin, Nawamana, Candelaria and
Isabell, and to the newest child of all--our little Mary Margaret.
[Illustration: Cissy and Tommy at the Center]
CONTENTS
Foreword 1: The House Of Beecham 2: The Cranberry Bog 3:
Shucking Oysters 4: Peekaneeka? 5: Cissy From The Onion Marshes 6:
At The Edge Of A Mexican Village 7: The Boy Who Didn't Know God
8: The Hopyards 9: Seth Thomas Strikes Twelve

FOREWORD
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