Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours, it would be good – not mine, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things – it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people were driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14. The tractor sent in by the banks to bulldoze the tenant farmers’ land is not bad, Steinbeck says. But it doesn’t belong to the farmer. Instead it is used like a tank to intimidate, hurt and drive him off the land.