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.
Competition and open market would promote sellers who quote lower because of abundance and consumers as well as sellers would benefit from the abundance.
Sellers who try to restrict the supply ultimately would loose in the long run because in a competitive market the seller would always choose cheap prices.
roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price
This would be valid if no one wan’t to be sellers and a all the sellers in a market cooperate together to do this or are required by law to do this.
I know we like to blame capitalism for a lot of things but this here is a different situation i think.
It would in a properly free market. But late stage capitalism’s goal is monopolization, because it maximises profit. Or to quote Marx: “Monopoly is the inevitable end of competition, which engenders it by a continual negation of itself.”
And this is exactly what Steinbeck is describing here: “you buy food from us, at our prices, or nothing at all. We’d rather destroy our product than to sell lower.” And they can do this because no one has access to the products, or the means of production (e. g. the land to grow produce).
And this is where we are today with Amazon, Nestle, Walmart and so on. They don’t have any real competition anymore.
Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
This reminds me of 2020 when they shut down slaughterhouses due to COVID. They killed hundreds of thousands (likely into the millions) of pigs using ventilation shutdown. These were not diseased pigs, it was simply to dispose of them while the slaughterhouses were shut down.
I would post that passage from Grapes of Wrath about oranges. But copy-paste doesn’t work on my phone
I got you.
Isn’t capitalism the opposite ?
Competition and open market would promote sellers who quote lower because of abundance and consumers as well as sellers would benefit from the abundance.
Sellers who try to restrict the supply ultimately would loose in the long run because in a competitive market the seller would always choose cheap prices.
I know we like to blame capitalism for a lot of things but this here is a different situation i think.
It would in a properly free market. But late stage capitalism’s goal is monopolization, because it maximises profit. Or to quote Marx: “Monopoly is the inevitable end of competition, which engenders it by a continual negation of itself.”
And this is exactly what Steinbeck is describing here: “you buy food from us, at our prices, or nothing at all. We’d rather destroy our product than to sell lower.” And they can do this because no one has access to the products, or the means of production (e. g. the land to grow produce).
And this is where we are today with Amazon, Nestle, Walmart and so on. They don’t have any real competition anymore.
Thanks. I love this quote. But it pisses me off so bad
This reminds me of 2020 when they shut down slaughterhouses due to COVID. They killed hundreds of thousands (likely into the millions) of pigs using ventilation shutdown. These were not diseased pigs, it was simply to dispose of them while the slaughterhouses were shut down.
We live in a fundamentally sick society.