1. Comparing the Twenties and the Thirties

12. The Great Gatsby (1925) …There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor- boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam…

13. …On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight…every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York- every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves…At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden…

14. … By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive…the bar is in full swing and the air is alive with chatter and laughter…

15. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) …and a homeless hungry man, driving the roads with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the thin children. And such a man drove along the roads and knew temptation at every field, and knew the lust to take these fields and make them grow strength for his children and a little comfort for his wife. The temptation was before him always. The fields goaded him, and the company ditches with good water flowing were a goad to him.

16. …And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low. He drove his old car into a town. He scoured the farms for work. Where can we sleep the night? He drove his old car into a town. He scoured the farms for work. Where can we sleep the night? Well, there’s a Hooverville on the edge of the river. There’s a whole raft of Okies there. Well, there’s a Hooverville on the edge of the river. There’s a whole raft of Okies there. He drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a Hooverville on the edge of every town. He drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a Hooverville on the edge of every town.

17. The rag town lay close to water; and the houses were tents, and weed-thatched enclosures, paper houses, a great junk pile. The man drove his family in and became a citizen of Hooverville--always they were called Hooverville. The man put up his own tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper. And when the rains came the house melted and washed away. He settled in Hooverville and he scoured the countryside for work, and the little money he had went for gasoline to look for work. In the evening the men gathered and talked of the land they had seen. The rag town lay close to water; and the houses were tents, and weed-thatched enclosures, paper houses, a great junk pile. The man drove his family in and became a citizen of Hooverville--always they were called Hooverville. The man put up his own tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper. And when the rains came the house melted and washed away. He settled in Hooverville and he scoured the countryside for work, and the little money he had went for gasoline to look for work. In the evening the men gathered and talked of the land they had seen.

18. “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land…We have not yet reached the goal, but, given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation”

43. Grapes of Wrath “Good land, you say? An’ they ain’t workin’ her?” “Yes sir, Good land and they ain’t! Well, sir, that’ll get you a little mad but you ain’t see nothin’. People gonna have a look in their eye. They gonna look at you an’ their face says “I don’t like you”. Gonna be deputy sheriffs, and they’ll push you around. You camp on the roadside, and they’ll move you on. You gonna see in people’s face how they hate you. And I’ll tell you something- they hate you because they’re scared. They know a hungry fella gonna get food even if he got to take it. They know that fallow land’s a sin and somebody’s gonna take it. What the hell! You never been called an ‘Okie’ yet”.

44. Tom said, “Okie? What’s that?” “Well, Okie used to mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you’re a dirty bum. Okie means you’re scum. Don’t mean nothing itself, it’s the way they say it. But I can’t tell you nothing. You got to go there. I hear there’s three hundred thousand people living like hogs because everything in California is owned. They ain’t got nothing left. And them people that owns it is gonna hang on it if they got to kill everybody in the world to do it…You ain’t gonna get no steady work. Gonna scrabble for your dinner everyday.”

47. "At Crawford, we all piled from the boxcar and went to a hobo jungle across the tracks. The jungle was generally a clearing in a clump of bushes not far from the tracks. Some jungles were nothing more than a place for a camp fire; some had improvised cooking arrangements, crates and boxes to sit on, even mattresses to flop down. Here the hobos had a fire going, with a big stew pot. An old hobo offered me some coffee in a dirty tin can. I didn't want to refuse his fine gesture, and took a sip. The worst coffee I ever tasted in my life. I swallowed it and prayed to God it wouldn't make me sick.”

48. “The stew pot was on; water from the brook was boiling. The hobos began to empty their pockets in preparation for a Mulligan stew. Do you know what goes into a Mulligan stew? I'll tell you what goes into a Mulligan stew! Whatever anybody has in his pocket, that's what you put into a Mulligan. When the old hobo lifted the lid from his stew pot, I saw all kinds of vegetables floating in a greasy mess. The carrots still had their green tops on them.” "It was just one weary, hungry mile after another. Late afternoon, my husband took his rifle from his pack. We kept our eyes peeled for a jack rabbit in the fields bordering the road. 'There's one!' my husband said. He brought his rifle to his shoulder, took quick aim and shot it. Curly started running; before he reached the rabbit, a hawk swooped down and grabbed it. Harry and I were so mad; we were nearly in tears.”

51. Clifford Burke “The Negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too much to him, The Great American Depression, as you call it. There was no such thing. The best he could be is a janitor or a porter or a shoeshine boy. It only became official when it hit the white man. If you can tell me the difference between the depression today and the Depression of 1932 for a black man, I’d like to know it.

52. “We had one big advantage. Our wives, they could go to the store and get a bag of beans or a sack of four and a piece of fat meat, and they could cook this. And we could eat it. Now you take the white fella, he couldn’t do this. His wife would tell him: Look, if you can’t do any better than this, I’m gonna leave you. I seen it happen. He couldn’t stand the idea of going on relief like a Negro. The white man that’s been out making big money, he’s taking beans home (as opposed to steak), his wife will say: Get out.” “Why did these big wheels kill themselves? They weren’t able to live up to the standards they were accustomed to, and they got ashamed in front of their women. The American white man has been superior so long, he cant’ figure out why he should come down.”