The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck [11]
Fortunately, Collins was a punctual and voluminous report writer. His lively weekly accounts of the workers’ activities, events, diets, entertainments, sayings, beliefs, and observations provided Steinbeck with a ready documentary supplement to his own research. In a section called “Bits of Migrant Wisdom,” noted in Collins’s “Kern Migratory Labor Camp Report for week ending May 2, 1936,” he records a discussion with two women about how best to cut down on the use of toilet paper: “One suggested sprinkling red pepper through the roll. The other suggested a wire be attached to the roll so that every time a sheet was torn off the big bell placed on the outside of the building for the purpose would ring and let everyone know who was in the sanitary unit and what she was doing.” Steinbeck saw the humor and pathos in the account and utilized some of the original material in chapter 22: “’Hardly put a roll out ’fore it’s gone. Come right up in meetin’. One lady says we oughta have a little bell that rings ever’time the roll turns oncet. Then we could count how many ever’body takes.’” Collins guided Steinbeck through the intricacies of the agricultural labor scene, put him in direct contact with migrant families, and permitted Steinbeck to incorporate “great gobs” of information into his own writing. “Letter from Tom. . . . He is so good. I need this stuff. It is exact and just the thing that will be used against me if I am wrong,” Steinbeck noted in Working Days on June 24, 1938.
In 1939, at Steinbeck’s suggestion, Collins worked as a well-paid technical adviser to John Ford’s 20th Century Fox production of The Grapes of Wrath. (“Tom will howl his head off if they get out of hand,” Steinbeck told Elizabeth Otis.) And later—probably spurred by the success of both novel and film—Collins himself (under the pseudonym of Windsor Drake) wrote an autobiographical-fictional memoir, to which Steinbeck, who appears as a character, added a foreword: “Windsor and I traveled together, sat in the ditches with migrant workers, lived and ate with them. We heard a thousand miseries and a thousand jokes. We ate fried dough and sow belly, worked with the sick and the hungry, listened to complaints and little triumphs.” The book was accepted but never reached print because the publisher reneged on the deal. After that, Collins resigned from the FSA, and he and Steinbeck passed out of each other’s lives.
Clearly, Steinbeck had a knack for associating himself with gifted, generous people. George West, chief editorial writer for the progressive San Francisco News, was the man who instigated Steinbeck’s initial investigations of the migrant labor situation for his paper (to be discussed below) . Frederick R. Soule, the enlightened regional information adviser at the San Francisco office of the Farm Security Administration, and his assistant, Helen Horn, provided statistics and documents for his News reports and otherwise opened official doors for Steinbeck that might have stayed closed. Soule