Steinbeck's Bitter Fruit

In the 1930s John Steinbeck published In Dubious Battle a novel based on union organizing and anti-union sentiment in the rich and fertile central valleys of California. He followed that with a series of articles in The San Francisco News about poverty and starvation among the migrants in California. In 1939 he published The Grapes of Wrath which became an instant American classic and the premier moral vision of the 1930s. The themes were: homelessness; joblessness; poverty; starvation and the greed of the banks. Now 73 years later it is all back. Lost homes and lost jobs by the hundreds of thousands poverty starvation and the greed of the banks. Steinbecks vision of the 1930s is with us again.