Summary Of Mary Austin's The Ford

Mary Austin’s The Ford shows how California’s natural resources, especially water, have historically been taken from the poor by large landowners. The Ford is a story of how a family of common farmers suffers when their landlord decides to sell off their land to Standard Oil, convincing the farmers to leave their homesteads by sending their water away with an aqueduct. These two issues of oil and water have figured largely in California history, since they have been the main reason for landgrabs such as what we see in The Ford. The Ford makes us root for the farmers and want them to organize against their landlord and the corporate interests that are attacking California’s natural resources. It is a book in support of nature and rural farmers,
However, the outlook in The Ford is pessimistic. Just as in California in reality, the farmers and ordinary people have historically failed in keeping their land’s natural resources, so The Ford shows prospects to be bleak. The only reason the farmers survive in the end is because the corporations get distracted by another source of water that is more convenient. That means that it is probably only a matter of time before the corporations come back to finish the job with the heroes of The Ford. Austin’s depiction of this process shows that she probably believes that corporations will continue to take the natural resources of California. The reason she has for this belief is in the failure of the farmers to properly organize against the landowners—the farmers are divided again and again by capitalist interests. These divisions keep them from being able to see their aligned interests and act on them. With The Ford, Mary Austin is saying that Californian natural resources will never be safe, until the lower classes learn to properly resist the