I've always remembered this passage from THE GRAPES OF WRATH:
The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great
sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed
fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their
produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create
a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over
the State like a great sorrow.
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.
Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to
take the fruit, but this could not be. 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. A
million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over
the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it
makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along
the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter
the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the
earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a
sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here
that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree
rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of
pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And
coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because
the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
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