Wealth Flashcards
The bank is not a human thing, and it’s out of control. If it is not a human thing, then it can’t possibly understand humans.
“The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”
Money is the only route to a happy, non-stressful life
“[the tenant farmers:] But if we go, where’ll we go? How’ll we go? We got no money.”
Hard times can make people greedy rather than generous. The tractor driver makes a larger wage by far than any of the tenant families can make working in California. By giving into The Man, the tractor driver saves his family.
[the tractor driver:] “Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner – and not getting it. I got a wife and kids. We got to eat.”
Do we ever meet a landowner or a banker or a businessman in this novel?
THE OWNER IS IN FULL CONTROL
“needs – wants – insists – must have”
Tractors are much more effective than manual labour
“One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families.”
There’s no money to be had anywhere in the community. Everyone is down and out. If everyone is down and out, it’s no one particular family’s fault. There’s a larger problem that can’t be blamed on the individual tenant families
“If all the neighbors weren’t the same, we’d be ashamed to go to meeting.”
The continuous greed of the wealthy economy. It has no choice but to carry on being greedy
“When the monster stops growing, it dies.”
California is the route to wealth as…
“there’s always some kind of crop to work in”
The migrant families are trapped by the system, and by the economy. They have no choice but to be cheated.
“they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them.”
We readers are cut off from the people who own things. We never get to meet the landowners or the bankers. They exist in their own bubble, a bubble to which we do not have access.
Being rich means that you forget about the community
“For the quality of owning freezes you forever into “I,” and cuts you off forever from the “we.””
