Introduction
Much of the human suffering and economic disadvantages that occurred during the Great Depression (1929-1933) were a result of the boom mentality and unregulated business practices of the 1920s. People with a corrupt kind of business acumen exploited the weakest segments of society in the poorest regions. Praying on a naïve boom psychology, businessmen led a devastating attack on the Midwest that ultimately was not curbed by politicians or financial institutions until the middle 1930s. New businesses exploited weak government controls and took on many of the same exploitative practices as the Robber Baron businessmen of the 19th century. They conducted unethical business ventures, held sway over political appointments, and accumulated great wealth at the expense of the poor and middle class. The government seldom took action and was ineffective when it did.
Usually the Great Depression is characterized by photographs documenting the poor who sought to farm rural regions in Oklahoma and Kansas as well as those urban dwellers who stood in bread lines in large cities. Standing outside of and looking down on all that poverty were the men who had caused it by corrupt land fraud schemes and the implementation of corporate farm ownership. Farm prices fell as much as 68% overall during a two-and a half year period (Poppendieck 2014, p. xvi). Moreover, those prices kept falling because there was a massive surplus of agricultural products that had been stockpiled and held back in hopes of an upturn in market value. While these foodstuffs were stored, news reports and social workers told the stories of families and children who were literally facing starvation, “Deaths due to insufficient food were been reported in several cities" (Poppendieck 2014, p. xvi). Social workers told government officials to expect violence in the streets if some sort of emergency measures were not taken to provide for the unemployed. Thus, the Great Depression was not the same for everyone in the United States, the rich remained aloof from the situation, urban centers were plagued by the threat of violence and food shortages, and farmers sat by as their crops and other agricultural products went to waste.
Bizarre measures were taken by farmers to try to force up prices. According to reports from California, citrus growers dumped their fruit harvests into vats of kerosene to stop anyone from eating them in an effort to push up citrus demand. At the same time, Appalachians were eating weeds. In urban centers, businesses burned fresh corn on the cob as fuel because it was cheaper than regular fuel yet in the northwestern United States there was a devastating shortage of livestock feed (Poppendieck, 2014). By 1931, the Red Cross was sent to rural communities in places such as Arkansas and Oklahoma. However, the relief efforts were so disorganized and bogged down by bureaucratic incompetence that Red Cross representatives showed up unprepared. Red Cross representatives did not bring enough applications for the food they were supposed to hand out so stopped handing it out. What the press termed a "food riot" ensued as people there, stranded by the drought and lack of work, and seized the Red Cross food supply. In nearby Henryetta, Oklahoma, a large crowd entered the shopping district on foot one day and forcibly took food out of the grocery stores (Poppendieck, 2014).
The politics of the time did not change quickly and many leaders remained stuck in the idea that if the common man labored enough he would have enough to eat. Government spokesmen decried the idea of federal welfare, invoking the phrase “Bread and Circus” and claiming free handouts would lead to the collapse of the United States as surely as free food and circuses had undermined the authority of the Roman Empire. Oklahoma Senator Gore was especially adamant that no one give his constituents free food, “He argued that the Constitution did not permit the federal government to take money from one citizen and give it to another” ergo giving free food to the poor was unconstitutional (Poppendieck, 2014, p. 37).
President Hoover The American people blamed the ineffectiveness of their government leaders, especially President Herbert Hoover, for allowing businesses and banks to run amok during the 1920s. Additionally, when Hoover and other government agencies finally stepped in they were ineffective and disorganized. By 1932, the rural poor and urban unemployed were openly anti-Hoover. Hoover had completely miscalculated the gravity of the financial crisis in America, he considered it “a passing incident in our national lives” (Ware, 2003, p. 9). Hoover was openly against public assistance, believing that to be the job of churches and charities. He adhered to a trickle-down economic policy that assumes as the rich get richer money will filter down to the poor. The reality was that businesses did not hesitate to fire employees during the Great Depression and move in machinery to take their place. During his tenure in office, the unpopular Hoover became a symbol of poverty; an empty pocket was called a “Hoover flag” and the 1930s equivalent of cardboard box camps were called “Hooverville’s” (Ware, 2003, p. 9).
Herbert Hoover was a millionaire businessman and his vision of the 1920s was consistent with the decade’s nickname, the Roaring Twenties. Before he entered the White House as President in 1929, Hoover had been U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He was completely pro-business and as a self-made man adamantly maintained that anyone who worked hard in the United States could live the rags-to-riches story. The appeal of wealth and the rampant materialism of the 1920s fit Hoover’s worldview and he fit American notions about the power of prosperity and the availability of riches. Americans viewed their collective futures with great optimism and the positive momentum of the economy “showed no signs of waning when Herbert Hoover entered the White House in March 1929” (Siracusa and Coleman, 2002, p. 21). Hoover entered his first term of office on a positive wave of pro-business euphoria, and left it under a cloud of national bitterness, “few men have entered the presidency with brighter prospects than Hoover; few, though, would leave the presidency so burned by public opinion” (Siracusa and Coleman, 2002, p. 21).
The Hundred Days
After President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, he compelled the government, business, and citizens to make many changes during the first 100 days of his presidency. During that period he outlined and implemented strategies for recovery that became the New Deal. Roosevelt took major steps toward forever reformatting the United States according to his vision and agenda. During the first part of his presidency, Roosevelt caused Congress to pass legislation that created federal programs to deal with the financial crisis in the United States (Heale, 2002). Among these were the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which aimed to assist farmers, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, which had a goal of supporting unemployed industrial workers. He also passed legislation of the financial sector, which had been running in a frenzied and out of control fashion for some time and he began attempts at controlling the stock markets and banking industry. While some of the measures taken by Roosevelt were of a temporary nature, others have become a permanent part of the United States system, “Many of the measures of the first hundred days were necessarily emergency measures, hastily patched together, and as such it is hardly surprising that some were to fall foul of the Supreme Court” (Heale, 2002, p. 18). By and large, however, the economic crisis was so huge and the support of Roosevelt so overwhelming that most of the bills passed Congress with little discussion.
The Dirty Thirties
People of the Great Plains suffered under a government that resisted Roosevelt’s interference and rejected the idea of having its people “on the dole” (Poppendieck, 2014, p. 158). Oklahoma was one of the hardest hit areas but was also plagued by some of the most brutally closed-minded politicians. They declared repeatedly that their value-system did not hold with welfare type programs. If a man was able-bodied, then he should be working. The fact that there were no jobs and the agricultural system there was in a state of collapse did not stop these politicians from fuming about Roosevelt's proposed handouts (Poppendieck, 2014, p. 158).
The region was overwhelmed by droughts during the 1930s and became one of the worst hit locations in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of square-miles across Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas were wrecked by high winds that blew across the drought scorched earth. The conditions there were so back and the land had been so exhausted by irresponsible and reckless use of machinery that approximately sixty percent of the population moved out and headed west, many to California (Poppendieck, 2014).
Grapes of Wrath
The story created by John Steinbeck depicts the people of the Great Plains as men and woman who would work if they could, but because of fate and circumstances have fallen on hard times. Steinbeck was not trying to give the politicians who were so late to help these Midwesterners a fair hearing, nor was he interested in the excuses of big business. His goal was to show the suffering of the people on the ground and the unfairness with which they had been treated by the American economic system. Famously, the book was banned, not only in Oklahoma, but also in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, California, New York, and New Jersey. Steinbeck couldn’t have bought better publicity than the front-page articles splashed across newspapers explaining how the book had been “repressed” by the Board of Education in Kansas City, Missouri (Wartzman, 2008, p. 24). The library system in Buffalo, New York publically refused to carry any copies of the The Grapes of Wrath and after that “other libraries, including those in Trenton, New Jersey; San Francisco; and Detroit confined The Grapes of Wrath to “closed shelves” only” (Wartzman, 2008, p. 24). The East St. Louis, Illinois board of directors for the library made headlines when they burned three copies of the book and the United States Postal Service barred mailing copies of the novel (Wartzman, 2008).
Steinbeck had held tough to his demand that the sale of the book include a contract for a movie and so within a year of the book banning effort, there was indeed a film. The movie begins with the protagonist, Tom Joad, (played by the popular actor Henry Fonda), after his release from prison trudging homeward, with no help or assistance from anyone. When he is finally reunited with his family, it is only to discover that their lives have been decimated by the worst ecological disasters of modern history, and a disaster that was completely manmade. Wealthy industrialists had sent massive amounts of machinery into the Great Plains with the aim of turning an area with limited water into an agricultural oasis. The idea that companies and millionaires had become absentee farm owners was a hard one for rural Americans to understand. Tom Joad summed up their confusion and helplessness in the film, “our people are living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin',” (Zanuck, 2004). This is the beginning of what would become the historical food riots across the Great Plains.
The Joad family prepares to depart their farm, and the point being made by the film producers, directors, and Steinbeck was that these had been hard-working people who had trusted in a government and country that had betrayed them. Now they were going to do what they must to keep their family together and alive. In a heart-wrenching moment that points up not only the tragedy of this betrayal but also the innate toughness of the American people, Al Joad asks Ma why she isn’t going to take one last look at the farm she loved so much. They are headed to California where they hope to get work picking fruit, and Ma Joad sees no point in looking back. Al starts to urge her to be sentimental, “Give the ol' place a last look?” (Zanuck, 2004). However, she refuses, and it is apparent that she as an individual has undergone a transformation of character. She is not like her old self and never will be again. Her faith in what was right has been shattered. Ma explains the change bluntly, “I never had my house pushed over before. Never had my family stuck out on the road. Never had to lose everything I had in life” (Zanuck, 2004). The film, as well as the book, were widely criticized, especially in Oklahoma and California. Director John Ford was considered alternately a left-wing communist for criticizing the capitalist system and a reactionary liberal and populist. Others deemed him and the producer far too conservative and wealthy in their own right to do justice to Steinbeck’s message that during the Great Depression the unregulated capitalist system broke the backs of the hardworking people who had had the most faith in it. The film actually lands a little left of center whereas the book is a full-fledged assault on the capitalist system with no relief offered at all. Ford did portray the harsh conditions of the drive from the Great Plains to California in a dilapidated old truck. The Joads lose one son along the way near a river and Grampa dies during their journey. The movie depicts the exodus from the Midwest to the West Coast in a caravan of ramshackle people and vehicles who are carting along their meager and dirty possessions. The cruelty of government officials, corrupt politicians, and the police force are in evidence as the Joads move around from camp to camp. An undercurrent in favor of pro-unionism runs through the film as men get closer and closer to banding together against the establishment (Zanuck, 2004). It was not lost on audiences that the Joads were travelled the government sponsored cross-country Route 66, which inspired many exodusters to make the journey to California in the 1930s. The subsequence influx of poor unemployed people flooded the West Coast labor market, undercut unions, and caused the California economy to dive even deeper into the existing economic depression. Once they arrive in California, the Joads live in filthy migrant camp situations where the poor turn against each other. They are labelled “Okies,” and the work they can get pays so little that they can hardly afford food (Zanuck, 2004).
Conclusion The places that the Joads live represent the historical Hooverville’s that blighted the presidency of Herbert Hoover. Hoover was not the only one in the system who despised the poor and considered the unemployed lazy. There was widespread animosity against Okies and their like; they were harassed by police and unions alike. Unions wanted the migrant workers to join them or go away and businessmen want to use the migrant workers as strike breakers. When The Grapes of Wrath, was published and later at its film debut, the story that pricked Americans’ social consciousness was grimly fascinating and abhorrent. Henry Fonda in the lead role of Tom Joad did much to legitimize the film but did not lead to the deserved Oscars. The prevailing theme of the story is an economic indictment of the capitalist system as practiced by the wealthy in the United States during the period, and that reality did not appeal to many who preferred to live in comfortable denial.
Bibliography
Heale, Michael. Franklin D. Roosevelt. London, US: Routledge, 2002.
Newlin, K. (2010). Critical insights: The grapes of wrath. Pasadena, Calif: Salem Press.
Poppendieck, Janet. Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat. Berkeley, US: University of California Press, 2014.
Steinbeck, J. (2006). The grapes of wrath. New York: Penguin Books.
Wartzman, R. (2008). Obscene in the extreme: The burning and banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
Zanuck, D. F., Ford, J., Johnson, N., Fonda, H., Darwell, J., Carradine, J., Grapewin, C., Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc. (2004). The Grapes of Wrath. Beverly Hills, Calif: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Siracusa, Joseph M., and Coleman, David G. Riding the Tiger. Westport, US: Greenwood Press, 2002.
