Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California

California during the Depression was a battleground where socialists, labor activists and free-speech advocates faced often violent resistance from a militant right using vigilante squads, tear gas- wielding police, suppression of civil liberties, and antiunion crackdowns. In a vibrant, engrossing chronicle (the fifth volume in his Americans and the Californian Dream series), Starr, California's State Librarian, reclaims the Depression-era Golden State as an important chapter in the American experiment. He charts the struggles of Wobblies, of striking waterfront workers and of thousands of migrant dust-bowl, Mexican and Filipino farmworkers who challenged the agribusiness oligarchy. Socialist novelist Upton Sinclair's 1934 gubernatorial bid on the Democratic ticket, buttressing his End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign, was defeated by a combination of big money and Hollywood fund-raising. Although California, then a right-of-center Republican state, resisted Roosevelt's New Deal, its migrant camps aided the displaced poor, and an unprecedented public works program revitalized the economy, creating schools, dams, parks, urban improvement projects and the Golden Gate Bridge. Photos. (Dec.)