Gale is an itinerant who works jobs as a cotton picker, baker, cowboy, and oil rigger.

He participates in a number of successive, spontaneous strikes without organized unions.

[1] Vorwärts, the Social Democratic Party of Germany's newspaper, published a serialized version of The Cotton-Pickers as Die Baumwollpflücker between June 21 and July 2, 1925.

[2] Traven was influenced by the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) in Mexico as he arrived in 1924.

[1] Eleanor Brockett translated the book into English for Robert Hale in 1956.