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“Sure they liked it. Men always like to work together. There’s a hunger in men to work together. Do you know that ten men can lift nearly twelve times as big a load as one man can? It only takes a little spark to get them going. Most of the time they’re suspicious, because every time someone gets ’…

Lean-face burst out angrily. “Know what they’re payin’, fella? Fifteen cents, fifteen lousy cents!"

“Well, what do you want?” Mac demanded. “Jesus Christ, man! You ain’t got the nerve to say you want to eat? You can eat an apple while you’re workin’. All them nice apples!” His tone grew hard. “S…

Jim jumped up and stood in front of the bench and whipped the leaf skeleton across his palm. “I’m getting to this: In that cell were five men all raised in about the same condition. Some of them worse, even. And while there was anger in them, it wasn’t the same kind of anger. They didn’t hate a bos…

Nilson touched the desk here and there with his fingertips. “Even the people you’re trying to help will hate you most of the time. Do you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, why do you want to join, then?”

Jim’s grey eyes half closed in perplexity. At last he said, “In the jail there were some Party…

Steinbeck certainly did not share Jim Nolan’s aspirations to become a labor organizer by committing himself to some abstract cause beyond himself, but he did seek to influence readers’ attitudes through his fiction. He shunned commitments because ultimately he believed in himself and his talent, al…