In Dubious Battle

In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck, Bantam Books, 1936

It's picking time in a valley of apple orchards in depression-era California. The migrant workers who are there have been told by the growers that their per-basket wages are to undergo a 25 percent cut. The generalized discontent is helped along into a full-fledged strike by a pair of Communist Party labor activists, Mac, a veteran organizer, and Jim, a new member who has been stepped on one too many times by the system and wants to fight back. The valley is tightly controlled by the apple growers, but the strikers do get help from a smaller grower and his son, who pay dearly for their help. The authorities keep an extremely close eye on the strikers, ready to break up the strike at the slightest excuse.

Is "classic" too strong a word? Not in this case. Steinbeck does an excellent job at putting the reader among common people who are simply trying to earn enough to stay alive, and ask little more than to be treated with respect. Even though this is fiction, it's a very good choice for history classes because of the way it shows that the right to strike in theory and in practice are two very different things.