economy, banks became desperate for a way to recoup losses. With the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent decline in the U.S.
These two conditions combined to make it difficult for farmers to bring in a profitable crop. Meanwhile, poor farming techniques of numerous sharecroppers had decimated the agricultural capacity of the land, the harsh cotton crops robbing soil of its nutrients.
Soon after the war, however, the weather began to warm, and again, drought became a chronic condition of the area. In the early twentieth century, greater rainfall and the replacement of bare fields with sod helped restore the agricultural productivity of the Plains states, and by World War I, large-scale farming had begun again. During this drought period came several reports of dust clouds covering the land, suffocating livestock and impeding visibility. In the late 1880s, the land began to be settled by sharecroppers for agricultural purposes, but a particularly severe drought in 1894 brought such widespread crop destruction that, in some areas, as many as 90 percent of the settlers abandoned their claims. Drought had been a serious problem for the Great Plains region of the United States for many decades prior to the 1930s. The plot of Steinbeck's masterpiece is rooted in the historical and social events of 1930s America, specifically the environmental disaster coined the Dust Bowl by an Oklahoma reporter in 1935. This work, along with the time spent traveling cross-country with an Oklahoman migrant family, provided Steinbeck with the bulk of the episodic material needed to write The Grapes of Wrath. Recognizing his new status as a social commentator, The San Francisco News commissioned him to write a series of articles about conditions in the migrant worker's camps in California's Central Valley. With the publication of In Dubious Battle, Steinbeck established his reputation as a social critic and champion of the migrant worker. From this experience grew an awareness of the social inequalities affecting the labor force. Working as a ranchhand, he gained firsthand knowledge of the migrant laborers who worked the farms.
Much of Steinbeck's young adult life was spent around the ranches of California's Salinas Valley. Steinbeck's background and previous writing experience found him well prepared to tackle the chronicle of the dispossessed Joads as they search for work in Depression-era California.
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