Where Are Those Okies?

In Illinois, many a farmer scanned the highways last week, watching for the jalopy caravans of Arkies and Okies--which haven't appeared. Sugar-beet farmers need their help now: they have more than 1,000,000 acres of beets to be blocked and thinned. Other farmers are waiting, too. After beets, in rapid succession the Okies are needed to cut hay and clover, plant soybeans, start harvesting oats, wheat and barley. But the migrants have disappeared like the Egyptians in the Red Sea. The farmers don't know what's become of their wandering field hands. Perhaps they have no tires or gasoline. Maybe they've found better jobs in defense plants, or signed up to fight the Jap and the Nazi. Some farmers have taken their own cars, headed South to look for the missing help. Others offer $35 more than the usual $12-15 weekly wage, plus the un-heard-of luxuries of board, keep, gasoline. But still the Okies don't come.

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