Of Mice and Men: Intro The book is set in 1937 in the middle of one of the bleakest periods in U.S. history. One of every four Americans was jobless. If these unfortunates had no families to take them in, they were either institutionalized or thrown into lines for bread or employment that stretched for blocks. Of Mice and Men: Intro Out of sheer desperation, an Arkansas man walked 900 miles to find work. Men set forest fires in Washington state so they could be hired to put them out. For the only time in the countrys history, more people were leaving America than coming in. Of Mice and Men: Intro The Salinas Valley region in California was really hard hit because of the immigration of thousands of jobless men, many with families, who were driven westward to seek work by lingering drought in the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl: Of Drought and Men The Dust Bowl An ecological and human disaster in the 1930s that lasted about a decade Hit the Great Plains: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado The Cause Years of misuse of land Sustained drought Millions of acres rendered useless Native Americans warning to leave the grass alone ignored The Fallout As land dried up, great clouds of dust and sand, carried by wind, covered everything: The Dust Bowl was born In 1937 alone, 134 dust storms recorded, creating Black Blizzards The human cost Occurred during a time of social and economic upheaval: The Depression Hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee homes Farmers who hit the road alone were often called bindlestiffs: They carried what they owned on their backs, in little bundles or bindles made up of a rolled up blanket. Of Mice and Men: Intro In just five years, 350,000 of these bindlestiffs left their homes in the Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and other states to journey to California. All of them had the same dream: to live off the fat of the land like they had back home. It was a simple goal: a few acres of land for farming, to grow just enough food to be self-sufficient. Of Mice and Men: Intro This is the world that George, Lennie, and the other migrant ranch workers inhabit in Of Mice and Men. George and Lennie represent thousands and thousands of others for whom the American Dream would remain out of reach.