America was already involved in a depression and starving farmers were far from most people's minds. Industrialization and agribusiness did not help matters either. Landowners took back their land and tossed these farm families aside. This mentality is evident both in the general narrative chapters and in the chapters that deal specifically with the Joads and their direct acquaintances. At the hands of greedy landowners, people like the Joads lead pitiful and difficult lives. They are barely able to feed themselves on their daily wages, and the living conditions they face are horrible. Hundreds of thousands of people suffer just so a few corporate powers can make more money off another box of peaches or another pound of cotton. Under the pressure of these working conditions, the "grapes of wrath" of the laborers ferment and grow bitterly strong. Steinbeck's novel is very much a book about social justice and what happens when people n power stop caring their fellow man.