Moving to find work looms large in the historical memory surrounding the Great Depression, and migration continued in the ensuing years. The Second World War led to the largest mass migration within the United States in the nation’s history.
People in rural parts of the country learned about new jobs in different ways. Word of mouth was crucial, as people often chose to travel with a friend or relatives to new jobs in growing cities along the West Coast. Henry Kaiser, whose production company would open seven major shipyards during the war, sent buses around the country recruiting people with the promise of good housing, health care and steady, well-paying work.
Railroad companies, airplane manufacturers and dozens if not hundreds of smaller companies supporting major corporations like Boeing, Douglas and Kaiser all offered similar work opportunities. Eventually the federal government even helped out with child care. Considered against the economic hardships of the Great Depression, the promises often sounded like sweet music.
During an oral history I recorded in 2013 for the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front Oral History project, Oklahoman Doris Whitt remembered seeing an advertising poster for jobs, which sparked her interest in moving to California.
“[T]he way I got in with Douglas Aircraft was I went to the post office, and I saw these posters all over the walls. They were asking people to serve in these different projects that were opening up because the war had started.”
For a kid from the Great Plains, the notion of going to California to help build airplanes seemed like moving to another world. Whitt grew up on a farm without a telephone. Even catching a glimpse of an airplane in the sky was unusual.
Whitt applied and was hired for training almost immediately. She became a “Rosie the Riveter”: one of the estimated seven million American women who joined the labor force during the war. Even the pay Whitt began earning while training in Oklahoma City was more than she had ever made in her life to that point. When she transferred to the West Coast and arrived in Los Angeles, Whitt felt she was living the California dream.