The Joads and Muley's Epic Fail on Finance

You obviously know nothing of the economics of sharecropping in the early decades of the 20th Century, but that's not unusual among your ilk.

Families were often living on the same land (as described in the movie) for generation after generation, the sharecropping agreements might have been signed 70 years ago by your grandpa, the landowners didn't make a habit of coming around with copies of the lease agreement for the tenants to read, plus probably 90% of the tenants barely knew how to read so it wouldn't have made much difference if they had.

And of course in the good ole days of lassiez-faire capitalism before the evull evull guvvmint started interfering with biddnessmen with those onerous regulations like truth-in-lending acts, the landowners could keep "their copies" of the contracts and the contracts would be whatever they said they were unless the tenants could prove otherwise (which of course they couldn't).

And you can bet your sweet bippy the landowners kept track of how much produce was coming off of those farms and "adjusted" the rents so the tenants could barely break even in good years, in lean years they would be barely scraping by, and in bad years they would be going broke.


So yeah it was all just those lazy slackers' fault. Why didn't they just get off their butts and work. They don't have anyone to blame but themselves for their predicament.



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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.

Brisk317, you need to understand that this was a MUCH different time than today. No cell phones, no computers, no video games. And news and current events were not obtained via the internet. Like I said, it was a very different time.

It's too bad you don't know anyone who lived in that era who can tell you what it was like. My parents were born during the depression, and my grandparents (RIP) told us it was a really tough time. They didn't come from a wealthy family that they could inherit money from--my ancestors worked all day, and it was hard work. If you knew anyone who lived during the depression, they would probably tell you that child labor was just as common as slave labor (I mean white slaves--the black slavery thing was in the previous centuries, and a much different situation). Most people during the Great Depression dropped out of school early so they could work from "sun up to sun down," as they used to say.

My parents worked hard, and the depression taught them to live miserly lives, and save every penny they could. While in their 30s, they finally had enough money to pay cash for a small farmhouse and some land in Texas, and they worked that land hard, just like they did in the early part of their lives. They taught us to work hard too, and save every penny we earned. I picked cotton, tomatoes, peanuts--you name it, and by hand. They saved and sacrificed so that none of us would have to drop out of school. We all (six children) graduated from high school, and went to college. I worked while attending college to pay for my own expenses, and owe everything to all the sacrificing and values I learned from my parents.

So what is my point? The Joads were not failures--they were just born in the wrong time, and had none of the protection from landlord/employer abuses that we enjoy today. It would benefit you greatly to do some research and learn about this era.

"... something like the Dust Bowl?" There was nothing like the Dust Bowl.

Year after year the crops failed. Even if you owned your land free and clear at the beginning (a rarity) year after year of crop failure would eat your savings just to live. In reality most farmers routinely borrowed for seed and supplies to be paid for when the crop was sold. Year after year with no income. Year after year with the same expenses to try to raise a crop that never is harvested.

On top of that the dust could literally kill you. Dust would get in your lungs and choke you to death. You could get lost and die between your barn and the back door.

Areas of the country have never, to this day, regained their populations. Have your own sharecropping company? They went broke too. No crops, no income.

All this in the midst of a global economic depression.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan is a readable account of the period.

This is explained a bit in the book.

The pattern was that the farms were claimed by settlers a few generations before the time when this story takes place. As time went on, the land became exhausted and less productive. There was also a long decline in the profitability of family farms that began early in the 20th century and is still going on today.

Families took out bank loans when they couldn't make ends meet, then later couldn't make the payments and defaulted on the loans, so that the banks ended up owning the land.

Then the families were able to stay on "their" land, which they no longer owned, working as sharecroppers.

Finally, with the Dust Bowl storms and the Depression, the banks and the big companies that had bought land from the banks decided that sharecropping was no longer profitable, either, and put everybody off the land.

You know Dorothy Parker, right? Because I'm sure she was thinking of you when she said,

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to."