"I knowed a fella from California. He didn’t talk like us. You’d of knowed he come from some far-off place jus’ the way he talked. But he says they’s too many folks lookin’ for work right there now. An’ he says the folks that pick the fruit live in dirty ol’ camps an’ don’t hardly get enough to eat. He says wages is low an’ hard to get any."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 10. Tom Joad tells his mother what he heard about the migrant situation in California. It turns out not to be good news for the huge numbers crowding into the state in search of work. There isn’t enough work to go round, pay is poor, camp living conditions are bad and people are huntry. This foreshadows that the California dream will not be what it’s cracked up to be for families like the Joads.