Osvaldo Lopez

Professor Rick Moniz

History 12
July 28, 2015

At the start of John Steinbecks work, In Dubious Battle, we meet Jim

Nolan. Jim is leaving his boarding house determined for a new beginning. We
soon learn in Mr. Nilsons office that he would like to join the labor
organization movement and make a change. Jim experienced hard times in
his childhood beginning with his father trying to fix his problems with his job
at the slaughter-house using his fists. This only ended in his father coming
home beaten and/or drunk. Eventually his rage overflowed and he got it in
his head [] that hed like to dynamite a slaughter-house where he used to
work. Well he caught a charge of buckshot in the chest from a riot gun.
Like Jim, many people during this time joined the labor party because
they saw the conditions their families were living in were of extreme poverty.
These workers also saw the horrors of what happened to people who tried to
speak up and make a change. They saw that for employers to protect their
profits would constantly do so at the expense of the workers. Jim had grown
up poor, hungry, and feeling helpless. Jim like other workers at the time has
a breaking point where he decides action over helplessness is worth the risk.
His breaking point happens when he is knocked unconscious and thrown in
jail for being mistaken for a labor party member. When he is finally released
from jail he decides its time to stop sleepwalking and take action.

However, as eager as Jim is to get started his new fellow members

have experienced just how difficult it is to get farm workers to organize. His
veteran organizing partner, Mac warns him to be very discrete about what
their purpose is when they arrive to the town where the farmworkers have
arrived to pick apples. Right away, cops question them and they must
pretend they are just here for the farm work. Historically, if workers were
found to be organizing the police could arrest them, beat them, or
sometimes vigilante groups put together by the landowners would kill the
party organizers, as was sadly the case with Jim.
Other problems included that the landowners paid some workers to be
informants. This creates an environment of mistrust as evidenced in
Steinbecks book when a man comes up to Mac and Jim pretending to be a
member and asking