All of the lobbying groups in the American novels are financed by industrial wealth. Whether the checks are signed by railroaders, utilities operators, or oil men, their purpose is the same: to apply pressure which will gain concessions. And, of course, in many cases these concessions cause a direct or indirect loss to citizens in lower income brackets. In _The Plum Tree_ Harvey Sayler uses his power to make an example of one of these men, “the greediest and cruelest ‘robber baron’ in the West.” The lords of Jack London’s Oligarchy specialize in the repression of workers with frequent resort to calculated mass murder. The climate had changed by the time Dos Passos wrote _The Grand Design_, but he included the lineal descendant of these predators. Jerry Evans retains a substantial interest in his economic welfare even as coordinator of Roosevelt’s War Procurement Board. Columnist Ed James’s off-the-record analysis is that All Jerry can think of in the emergency is to use it to turn things back into the business as usual channels an’ we all know that in the southeast at least business as usual means Jerry Evans’ business. Of course he has cleared his skirts technically by resignin’ from the directorates of most of his corporations.... But they are still his corporations. Individuals of wealth in the novel may derive their money from farming rather than industry, but unenlightened self-interest is still the chief motivating factor. This is the case with the powerful ones in _A Wind Is Rising_. Mulcting their sharecroppers, they derive added revenue from convenient prohibition laws. Other Dos Passos characters like Jerry Evans retain their natural roles even within the New Deal. Driving through impoverished Southern counties, Paul Graves is told that “relief is in the hands of the politicians and the politicians are mostly landlords who save it for their own tenants.” Steinbeck’s Fruit Growers Association serves its own interests in a more spectacular way. After an offer of twenty cents an hour fails to satisfy the apple pickers, the fruit growers use strikebreakers, vigilantes, sheriff’s deputies, and then troops to insure a harvest on their terms.