The redness of his face deepened with anger…"We had a meeting last night. Now, do you know who runs the Farmers Association? I’ll tell you. The Bank of the West. That bank owns most of this valley, and it’s got paper on everything it don’t own. So last night the member from the bank told me, he said, ‘You’re paying thirty cents an hour. You’d better cut it down to twenty-five.’ I said, ‘I’ve got good men. They’re worth thirty.’ And he says, ‘It isn’t that,’ he says. ‘The wage is twenty-five now. If you pay thirty, it’ll only cause unrest.’"
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 22. Here we meet a decent small farmer Mr. Thomas, who pay his workers as fair a wage as he can. But he is being pressured by other landowners and the banks to cut migrants wages from thirty cents to twenty-five. He is angry at having to do this, but is forced to do it by the greedy and inhumane system. This passage exposes the corruption of the Farmer’s Assocation.