A Farmer's Worst Enemy (Chapters 1-10 Assignment G) ***

Throughout the first ten chapters of The Grapes of Wrath, before the Joads leave Oklahoma, the struggle between man and machine is shown to be a major theme. The innovations that only a few months earlier helped the farmers and increased profits now force them off their lands and are only affordable to the banks. Everyone who worked the land by hand eventually lost their jobs to the banks, who employ only a few tractor drivers that can't pass up on the good pay. Steinbeck describes these past farmers and current wage workers:

  "The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the            tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew,        and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift pas his                fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised,      had no connection with the bread." (36)

The machines distance the farmers from the ground, since they literally ride above it, causing all connection between the farmer and his crops to be lost. The working men will no longer know that everything they produced came directly from their own manual labor, but instead mostly come from the work of the machine. They will be forced to feel "proud of the straight lines [they] did not will [...] proud of the power [they] could not control" because they had to be proud of their property that could not be credited solely to the men. Having to work the land by hand also ensured work for everyone, because there is no one person who can work an entire valley of fields by his/her self.

Source

One tenant, who was kicked off his land, tried to think of a way to solve the taking over of machines. He considers:

"'There's some way to stop this. It's not like lightning of earthquakes. We've got a bad thing made by men, and by God that's something we can change.' The tenant sat in his doorway, and the driver thundered his engine and started off [...] The iron guard bit into the house-corner, crumbled the wall, and wrenched the little house from its foundation..." (39)

Without the knowledge of how widespread the problem with the machines was, this tenant believes that everything man made can be stopped by man. The machines are taking over all the work that was the sole income for these tenants. However, the machines are doing more and better work than the humans are, so no one other than the farmers want the tractors to be stopped. The tractors farm better than the farmers do, so now there is now way for the homeless to stop it. Now hopelessly helpless, the farmer is hurt as badly by the machines as he is by the drought that killed his crops.