An exerpt from John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"


And this was good, for wages went down and prices
stayed up.  The great owners were glad and they sent out
more handbills to bring more people in. And 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.  And as cannery
owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the
price of canned goods up and kept his profit.  And the little
farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms, and they
were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the
companies who also owned the canneries.  As time went on,
there were fewer farms.  The little farmers moved into town
for awhile and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends,
their relatives.  And then they too went on the highways.
And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work,
murderour for work.

And the companies, the banks worked at their own
doom and they did not know it.  The fields were fruitful, and
starving men moved on the roads.  The granaries were full
and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the 
pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides.  The great
anger is a thin line.  And money that might have gone to
wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for
blacklists, for drilling.  On the highways the people moved
like ants and searched for work, for food.  And the anger
began to ferment. (page 313).