Both sides harden

A short intercalary chapter on how the road changes both sides. The agrarian families become migrants, and the hostility they meet welds them together. Californians of property arm themselves and talk themselves into cruelty first; the men who drill at night own nothing but a job or a drawerful of debts, and fear a debtless man who would work for less. Ten men bid each other down for one job, so wages fall while prices hold. The great owners buy canneries, cut the price of fruit below the cost of growing it, and absorb the small farms that fail. Money that might have been wages goes on gas, guns, spies and blacklists, and the companies do not see how thin the line is between hunger and anger.