John Steinbeck and Farm Labor Unionization

W HEN John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle came out in early I936, Fred T. Marsh in a review in New York Times called it both dramatically and realistically, best labor and strike novel to come out of our contemporary economic and social unrest.' While never as popular as The Grapes of Wrath, book over years since its publication has maintained a solid reputation as one of Steinbeck's best novels. And today we value it for just about same reasons it was praised for when it first appeared: because it is dramatically effective and convincingly realistic. But how historically accurate is novel, actually? Up to now basis for its alleged realism has remained vague. Three years after publication of In Dubious Battle, Harry Thornton Moore, in first critical book on Steinbeck's work, disclosed that Steinbeck made acquaintance of a communist district organizer who gave [him] his life story. He went on further to say that the main incidents of strike were drawn from events that had actually taken place a few years before in and near city of Fresno.2 (Moore's book, without notes, gives no indication of source of either statement.) In I958 Peter Lisca, who had access to Steinbeck's letters to his agents, added another piece to puzzle from one of letters: My information for this book came mostly from Irish and Italian communists whose training was in field.3 Moore in his book decided that model for location of Stein

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