Watching The Grapes of Wrath on TCM.

[Warpy]

3. In the book, there was a hell of a lot about how the banks had grabbed all the land

and sold it off to Agribusiness. That's basically what getting "tractored off" meant, that you'd had your debt called because the Dust Bowl had wiped out your chance of bringing in a crop that year, your land got sold to some big combine, and they sent a tractor around to wreck your house so you'd have to leave it.

And there you were, sitting in Kansas or Oklahoma, the bank holding your paper in NYC because it bought it from the local bank that they then allowed to go under, how could you fight a NYC bank? Who was a NYC bank? Was it one man or a whole bunch of them, buying up loans and stealing land out from under you?

There are a lot of compelling reasons to read the book, although the movie is certainly a good adaptations. The discussion of what was happening to family farms and why is one of those reasons.