They remain faceless and nameless. Very few Americans know these forgotten laborers as human beings. caught up In a treadmill of poverty. uneducated. and ravaged by disease. Dale Wrights new book "They Harvest Despair: The Migrant Worker" tells the story of the migrant laborer in very human and moving terms. I hope all my colleagues will have an opportunity to read It. Meanwhile. I bring to their attention a book review by Robert Coles which was published in the New York Herald Tribune on Sunday. JIay 23. 1965: [From the New York Herald Tribune. Sunday. (By Robert Coles) "They Harvest Despair: The Migrant Farm Worker." By Dale Wright. Beacon. 158 pages. $4.95. "The Slaves We Rent." By Truman Moore. Illustrated. Random House. 171 pages. $4.95. Here are two books that once again serve to highlight a persisting national tragedy. Growers and farm hands alike are caught up In the terrible ironies of our agricultural situation: surpluses that themselves are a problem. associated with nervous. worried farmers who never quite believe they have permanently turned a corner from their past difficulties. and millions of field hands. sharecroppers or migrant workers. whose lives are lived in such contrast to ours that the very effort to describe them must be labored and strained. If it takes effort and ingenuity to make a solid. informed. yet effective case about the conditions of life borne by opr farmworkers--one that will instruct without so horrifying the reader that his attention or sympathy are purchased at the price of a later forgetfulnessit also takes courage even to make the attempt. for the books on this subject are by no means as rare as the attention given to it by most of usthat would include government. industry and labor. The titles of the books themselves are testimony to the conditions described as well as the continuing inventiveness of writers: "Ill Fares the Land." "Factories in the Fleld." or "The Harvesters." Then there are valuable pamphlets put out by public health officials. like "They Follow the Sun" or "On the Season." The television docimentary "Harvest of Shame" stirred a bit of a controversy. just as John Steinbecks "Grapes of Wrath" did decades earlier.
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