In the article “Mass Exodus From the Plains”, 2.5 million people left the Plains and migrated to the west coast because of the relentless dust storms and drought. If that didn’t drive the remaining people away to California, then certainly the bank foreclosures did. Out of the 2.5 million who had left the Plains, 200,000 of them had moved to California. Unfortunately, their movement wasn’t accepted in California- the police chief of California went so far as to call forth 125 policemen to turn away the “undesirables” at the border. Those policemen were dubbed as the “bum brigade” by the press. I believe that they were treated poorly because of the amount of migrants that California was taking in- according to a 1935 excerpt from Collier’s
