“We live in the richest country in the world. There’s plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want. And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle - the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start? There are corporations worth billions of dollars - and hundreds of thousands of people who don’t get to eat. And here in these thirteen states the exploitation of human beings is so that - that it’s a thing you got to take in with your own eyes. In my life I seen things that would make a man crazy. At least one third of all Southerners live and die no better off than the lowest peasant in any European Fascist state. The average wage of a worker on a tenant farm is only seventy-three dollars per person. The wages of sharecroppers run from thirty-five to ninety dollars per person. And thirty-five dollars a year means just about ten cents for a full day’s work. Everywhere there’s pellagra and hookworm and amaemia. And just plain, pure starvation. But!’ Jake rubbed his lips with the knuckles of his dirty fist. Sweat stood out on his forehead. ‘But!’ he repeated. ‘Those are only the evils you can see and touch. The other things are worse. I’m talking about the way that the truth has been hidden from the people. The things they have been told so they can’t see the truth. The poisonous lies. So they aren’t allowed to know.”
- from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. 1940
A powerful passage.
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