The Great Depression; Interview with Horace Bristol. Part 1

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

OK, hold it. Rolling, mark it.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

OK, I want to—let's start by talking about 1937. Tell me a little bit about what you were doing in 1937, how your life was then.

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, I would, I would say that in 1937, as far as I was concerned, it was sort of the beginning of, of a very interesting period. Having been through the Depression myself, and knowing, knowing how difficult it was, although it was never the way so many people were suffering, I had been hired by Life magazine when it started. So, well, it was quite relatively easy, the easiest period in my life, so far. And I, I was in San Francisco, and the, when Life started out, they asked me to be a staff photographer, which, I, nobody realized how glorious or important it was, it was, but I was excited and very, very happy about, about the opportunity, because it, it meant doing something that had never exactly been done before in the way of journalistic photography. It was actually the epitome of what I would want to do, and looking back on it, it was still a great period, because with, with the people I was working with, and the acceptance of the magazine, I could go anywhere and be reasonably welcome. But, but the main thing that I know you're interested in, is the fact that the '37s were not a glorious time, we were just, for many people, we were just emerging from, from, and slowly, from a very, very tough time. And, so when I went out with, not on an assignment, but I went out with Dorothea Lange, who was a very famous photographer, and her professor husband, and saw the conditions under which the migratory laborers were working, I was, I was surprised and shocked, because even as a Californian, I, I wasn't, I wasn't aware of that aspect of how, how close to the, to the margin everybody was. And, when it came, at this time it was a very rainy year, and these people weren't close to the margin, they were over the margin with the floods and all of these circumstances.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

I wonder if you could just describe that for me a little more in detail, that, the first time you went down with Lange. Where did you go?

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, at, that very—the thing that took me down there at first was the actual news-happenings of the lettuce strikes, when, quite, for me at least, quite a violent experience, I mean, with the hired, well, you can call them strike-breakers or goons, as they were referred to, who were armed with pickaxes, to either beat or threaten to beat these workers into, into accepting non-living wages and...not only that, but I was quite shocked to see that our California police highway patrol was used as strike-breakers as well, and with large amounts of tear-gas to subdue the, they weren't riots, but at least, they intimidated the, the strikers. I was, I expected a certain amount of difficulty for, I was a young man, but fairly strong, but Dorothea Lange was young, was not-so-young, and small, and somewhat handicapped, we call it nowadays, from early polio, and the way she stood up to these very burly deputy sheriffs and, as they were sworn in, and they did this all under the auspices of legality. But the way she stood up to them just amazed me, and I, I remember that one of my greatest memories is this little, little woman standing up to, to the, the police. But I realized that what I, what I, it was a great story, I thought, and so I, I asked Life magazine if they wouldn't like to do a story on, on these migratory laborers. We call them migratory laborers, the term \"Okie\" was used disparagingly about them. We, we just, particularly when we refer to them, themselves, we just used the term \"migratory laborers\". When, when they were...I sort of lost my train of thought.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

That's OK, that's OK. You were starting to talk to me a little about what seeing their living conditions and seeing the story inspired you to do.

HORACE BRISTOL:

Oh, yeah. Well, the fact that it was, that the weather was so, so really bad compounded their problems. In the first place, they came out there, sort of lured by the flyers that were sent out, telling of \"Sunny California\" and wonderful jobs that were waiting for them, and when they actually crossed the border, they found that they were in a place that had no jobs and was beginning to be partially underwater, no work of any kind. So, this was a terribly discouraging situation.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

But tell me a little bit about who these people were, and—

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, they were, we call them, now, \"Okies\", and they did come from Oklahoma, but they came from Arkansas and maybe northern Texas, wherever they'd been dispossessed by circumstances, that is, the Dust Bowl. Actually, we also referred to it as the Dust Bowl. But it wasn't the Dust Bowl alone, it was the fact that these people were mostly small, independent farmers. Some of them were sharecroppers, but most of them had their own, small, farms. And, when they couldn't make any living off of it, the banks foreclosed, and they, they just didn't have any place anymore. But with the attraction, the allurement of wonderful jobs in California, they, they came out expecting to, confidently, to, to find work. It wasn't that they were just wandering, they had the expectation, which was that of, of... jobs were there, and this was rather unfair, but it did bring the prices down for what labor there was, because people would work for anything, just... There were no signs, \"Will work for food,\" because there was no use, there was just no, no work. And I wanted, so I wanted to do a story, but this was not a story such as you now see in Somaliland, because these people were all relatively healthy, they were hungry, they weren't starving, and that's, but they were on the borderline of, all the time. So, when I suggested to the editors in Life that we ought to do a story, they, they, I think I probably sent them a picture or two to give them an idea, and of course it was very discouraging, these weren't happy people, and Life was not interested in, in doing a story on, of this type at that time. When I sent the things and asked them, they said, well... you know, Life makes, its street-sales come from pretty girls on the cover, and they said nobody wants to look at tired, frightened Americans. So, then I went to Fortune magazine, which is a sister-publication of Life, but it was at that time called the red corner of Time, Inc., and they were a lot more sympathetic. So, the editors were delighted with the idea of doing a story. I should say that, first, that I, I, I wanted to do a story by myself, as I usually operated, but when I, when I saw that they didn't want a story—

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

I'm going to interrupt, we're just rolling out.

HORACE BRISTOL:

Oh. Is it, is it all right?

SUSAN BELLOWS:

Oh, it's terrific, this is a ten minute roll.

HORACE BRISTOL:

OK.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

So, we've talked for ten—

SUSAN BELLOWS:

OK, you were—why don't you tell me what you did after Life turned it down, and Fortune offered it, and, you decided—

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, well, no, I'll tell a secret, was that Life turned it down as a story from me. So I decided, well, I had seen a book that Margaret Bourke-White, who was also a Life photographer, and I thought, if she can do a book, they can't complain about my doing a book on my own. So, she had worked with an author, Erskine Caldwell, and so I thought, well, I'll have to get somebody, another author, similar ability, to work, to collaborate with me. So, being in San Francisco, I thought, John Steinbeck who had, he had also done a book, In Dubious Battle, on agricultural problems, and seemed very sympathetic. So I picked up the phone and called him, and asked him, would you be interested in doing a photographic book on migratory labor? He was very willing, and asked me to come down and talk to him and to his wife about the project, so I drove down to Los Cados, which is south of San Francisco, and we had lunch there, a leisurely talk about, it wasn't, it wasn't a big problem, I mean, just a way of how we could work it out. He was, he was editing, I think, The Grapes of Wrath, so he, during the week he didn't have any time, and since I worked for Life I didn't have any time either, but I felt that the weekends were legitimately mine to do as I chose. So we decided to go down every weekend and start interviewing the various people who were in, not so much organized camps or groups, but who were scattered along the roadside, living in, in the car itself, or in ragged tents, stretches of canvas on, on a, even on wet soil, grass. At any rate, it gave us, this way, we could, we could move, we didn't have to be too much disturbed, I mean, we worked with individual families.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

Tell me a little bit about how, how you would do this on the weekends, you would—

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

I'm sorry, can we cut for a second?

SUSAN BELLOWS:

Sure.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:

Mark.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

OK, describe it for a little bit, how—

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, as I said, we would go down on the weekend, which meant, since I lived in San Francisco, I'd go down to the nearest Safeway, and fill up my station wagon with all the cheapest cuts of meat, and the bulk, things that were filling, but not expensive, and day-old bread, and such things as old, wilted vegetables that the market probably couldn't sell anyway, and so they were at a bargain. Made a very healthy sort of a mixture, anyway, and we, the purpose of these things were not in any way a bribe, or a gift. These were a method that we felt, that could sort of, not just show, show our interest in them, but we, we would ask them sort of to cook it for us, make it look as if they were doing us a favor. These were very proud people, that's one thing I can't overemphasize. These were very independent, I would say, religious, god-fearing people who weren't looking for any charity, and of course there was no, there was no such thing as welfare or relief or, there was statewide relief, but they found out that they weren't eligible because they hadn't lived anyplace in California for a year, which I think was a necessity. But at any rate, they weren't looking for, they were looking for jobs. By, by our coming there, and trying to become part of the family when we interviewed, they could accept us. We never, I never found any semblance of resentment as, while I was poking a camera in their face and taking their pictures. Of course, I really sort of followed behind Steinbeck; he interviewed the people, he talked to them, and I just happened to be there taking pictures. They accepted this, never a question so far as I could see. I think the pictures sort of show the fact, that these, these people, I don't want to say they were relaxed, but they were not posing, they were just being themselves, and of course they're sad pictures, in many ways. My wife says, Oh, they're lovely pictures, but I don't want to have any of them up in my room, because they are so discouraged. I always, I always felt that these people had reached the point of, that they were truly, had been...life had just beaten them down, and they accepted whatever demands, for example, that I would make, taking pictures, without any question.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

Tell me a little bit about how you felt during all this time, about what you were seeing.

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, it was a, it was a great education for me. I lived in, had always lived in rural, sort of farm communities. My family had been ranchers. I realized we didn't have much understanding or sympathy for these people who actually came to California, and were a part of the whole system of California agricultural wealth. I mean, the term \"migratory laborers\" was very apt, because, they were Mexicans originally, and they would come up usually from Mexico, or from Imperial Valley, and have a regular path that they would go every year, migrating, if you want to call it that, up to, finishing up with the apples up in Washington state. Through oranges, through the lettuce, the oranges, the, and the various what they call \"stoop crops\", because they had to stoop to pick them or cultivate them, and then ending with the fruit in, up near Yakima Valley. So, and then they would come back and prepare, wait for the cycle to start all over again the next year, but all this had changed with these people, these Americans, Anglos, or call them whatever you want, all came out of Oklahoma, because they were not looking for a pattern job, they were looking for a job, anything, a permanent job if possible, because at that time they assumed that nobody was ever going to go back to the Dust Bowl. So they were quite a different, in quite different circumstances.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

And posed a very different problem for the state, I think.

HORACE BRISTOL:

Well, the state wasn't at all prepared for them or this problem. As a matter of fact, the people who had benefited most from the migratory laborers themselves were very resentful of the fact that the, here were people who were sort of really looking for permanence. It was much easier to deal with people who were here today, gone tomorrow, and you didn't have any responsibility for them, and who were in a position where they couldn't really demand anything in the way of consideration or wages or health or even elementary sanitation. There were, the farmers just felt no responsibility for them at all. One of the things that Dorothea Lange and her husband had done so well with the beginning of the understanding of the situation on the part of the government, because the government with the farm resettlement, or whatever—

SUSAN BELLOWS:

Hold on, a minute, we're out another camera roll.

HORACE BRISTOL:

Oh, well, I'm sorry...

SUSAN BELLOWS:

But I want to pick up with that story.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

OK.

HORACE BRISTOL:

OK.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

Do you need to stretch at all?

HORACE BRISTOL:

Sure, I will.

SUSAN BELLOWS:

OK.