"So you’re lookin’ for work. What ya think ever’body else is lookin’ for? Di’monds? What you think I wore my ass down to a nub lookin’ for?…We heard they was work up north. We’re shovin’ north, up aroun’ Salinas."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 20. Floyd Knowles, one of the first people Tom Joad meets after the Joads arrive in California, says this to Tom at the Hooverville camp for migrants. Tom has told him that he is looking for work and is hopeful of getting it. But Floyd says that he is heading north because there is no work nearby.