User:Rswigart/Tom Collins

--Rswigart (talk) 10:22, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Tom Collins new article content ... Tom (Thomas E.) Collins was manager of the Kern County Resettlement Administration's Arvin/Weedpatch federal "Migratory Labor Camp" during the mid 1930s. In this role he assisted John Steinbeck with research for The Harvest Gypsies, a 1936 series of articles (and later a small book) about migrant farm labor in Depression-era California. Grapes of Wrath, a fictionalized version of these articles, bore two dedications, one "To Carol who willed it," (Steinbeck's wife). The other dedication was "To Tom who lived it." In the mid 1930s Collins wrote numerous reports for the Resettlement Administration now held in the National Archives–Pacific Region (San Francisco), which Steinbeck used when writing the novel. Tom Collins was the model for the character of Jim Rawley and later served as technical director for the film.