Just a hint on your first question.

As Steinback noted in an interview, he was a bindle-stiff himself in real life. An old term used to refer migrant workers:

I was a bindle-stiff myself for quite a spell,” the author told The New York Times in 1937, employing the now archaic nickname for migrant workers. “I worked in the same country that the story is laid in.” With Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck wanted to tell the story of a community largely unheralded in literature and high culture. (MentalFloss.com)

The Green’s Dictionary of Slang dates this connotation of stiff to the late 1800s:

stiff:

(a) [late 19C+] (US) a penniless man, a wastrel, a tramp, a migratory or unskilled worker.

As Steinback noted in an interview, he was a bindle-stiff himself in real life. An old term used to refer migrant workers:

I was a bindle-stiff myself for quite a spell,” the author told The New York Times in 1937, employing the now archaic nickname for migrant workers. “I worked in the same country that the story is laid in.” With Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck wanted to tell the story of a community largely unheralded in literature and high culture. (MentalFloss.com)

The Green’s Dictionary of Slang dates this connotation of stiff to the late 1800s:

stiff:

(a) [late 19C+] (US) a penniless man, a wastrel, a tramp, a migratory or unskilled worker.