John Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath' is a story that portrayed a time of serious crisis in our country. Although fiction I think Steinbeck accurately portrayed a time of serious crisis in our country and is well worth the reading and the novel shows how the capitalist system wasn't working and calls for reform.
All throughout the novel Steinbeck points out how the rich continue to get richer while the poor continue to get poorer. The wealthy continue to take advantage of the desperateness of the poor to demand low wages and gain high profits. In chapter 21 Steinbeck writes 'When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it--fought with a low wage. If that fella'll work for thirty cents, I'll work for twenty-five... And this was good for wages went down and prices stayed up...And pretty soon now we'll have serfs again...And now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. As a cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms.' (p283). Here is a perfect example of the rich cornering the market and forcing everyone else out of farming. Steinbeck is trying to convey to the reader that it's not fair for a small group to have everything while the majority of the people are suffering both socially and economically. With the promise of better conditions/opportunities families by the thousands were heading out west only to once again find greed. 'There's thirty thosan' acres, out west of here. Layin' there. Jesus, what I could do with that, with five acres of that! Why, hell, I'd have everything to eat.' (p234) and 'The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price... The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and...