In 1939, migrant agricultural workers in California stood in a queue with baskets of peas, waiting to be paid for their day’s labour. Earl Theisen made the photograph for a two-page LOOK magazine feature published on 29 August and preserved by the Library of Congress. Its catalogue summary identifies the payment queue directly.
They were not waiting for a job or for relief supplies. The work had already been performed; the line converted completed labour into wages. The baskets also represented the harvested output through which the day’s work could be assessed. Published as part of a feature on the reality behind The Grapes of Wrath, the image presented migrant labour during the Depression to a national magazine audience.
The catalogue does not give the wage rate, headcount, waiting time or farm name. What it establishes is that finishing the picking did not mean the worker could immediately leave. With baskets still in hand, labourers waited for the payment sequence to reach them. The working day extended beyond the field into the queue for wages.