Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An we was born here. And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised(45). In John Steinbecks novel, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck illustrates and advocates drastic change in the economy during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the early 1930s. He depicts this transformation using the Joad family, illuminating their struggle in these hard times. In this novel there is an agricultural evolution with three distinct stages. In the beginning Grama and Grampa owned their land and they produced their product for themselves. The second stage is that of sharecropping, where Pa had lost ownership of the land but continued to farm and he makes a small profit of trade. The final stage is that where money and profit rule all, and corporations take total control and the family businesses are destroyed. The economy of this time changes dramatically and many suffered because of it. In the beginning farmers had to be the land in order to survive. The farmers had to know every detail, and they had to devote their every moment to make sure the crop would be successful. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on itThats what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership(45). At this time the land was owned by the families and they were the ones that worked on it so they could survive. They were a part of the land. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, its part of him, and its like himEven if he isnt successful hes big with his property(50).The first real step toward the economic evolution starts with the initiation of sharecropping. The families would work hard and do well and then a bad year would come and so the crop failed...
