Sitting in California, where grain was the chief farm commodity in the 1870s and 1880s before the

advent of irrigated agriculture, some of the early harvesters were disappointed miners returning from
the goldfields. In the social and occupational hierarchy, they were on a level considerably below the
mule drivers, who, like Steinbeck’s character Slim, were valued for their skill in handling as many as
twenty animals “with a single line” and who were generally employed permanently on the ranches.

Of mice and men was published about the half of nation’s grain was harvested by Mechanical
combines that enabled five men to do the work that had been done formally by 350.