The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.” The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. “And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. It's one of the most vivid portrayals of destitution and the lengths ordinary people will go to to avoid despair I've read. I read it first when I was a schoolboy I've read it twice since. During this period, phrases and sentences frombooks I've read have seemed appropriate, but there was always something of a gap: what was missing was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”įor a year or more now I (a 60-something Pommie git) have been reading and watching events in the US, especially regarding how Mr & Mrs Joe Blow are treated and throughout, the light gets ever dimmer.
![pommie git pommie git](https://sampurna-seminarhaus.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SOF_1835-1024x681.jpg)
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. 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 coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. There is a failure here that topples all our success. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Here is the rest of it ( source), and it stings:Īnd the smell of rot fills the country.
![pommie git pommie git](https://i.imgur.com/gcqu07b.jpg)
Pommie git full#
It's a pity she didn't quote the full passage. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. 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. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. “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.
![pommie git pommie git](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/08/29/01/0276F454000007D0-0-image-a-12_1472429745246.jpg)
During her invective, Ball quotes a para from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: The subject is that a Fred Meyers store in Portland called in the Polis to stop people scavenging food from the skip bin where the store had dumped fresh food during the recent power cuts. I wax and wane on Krystal Ball - she can be bang on or a mile off - but credit where it's due: this monologue hits the bullseye.