John Steinbeck - Brilliant Humanitarian

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed

to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all.

Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to

take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at

twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men

with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the

crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million

people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden

mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for

fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump

potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the

hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them,

and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow

here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that

topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows,

the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra

must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners

must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food

must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for

potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in

rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed.

And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the

screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime,

watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in

the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the

hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes

of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the

vintage.”

― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath