Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 26
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Popular Culture Review
disturbing slices of life at the bottom of society in the shelters
bitterly labeled "Hoovervilles." One passage depicted in graphic
detail how the city dumps provided a food source for hungry Chicago
residents:
There is not a garbage-dump in Chicago which is not
diligently haunted by the hungry. Last summer in the
hot weather when the smell was sickening and the
flies were thick, there were a hundred people a day
coming to one of the dumps, falling on the heap of
refuse as soon as th e truck had pulled out and digging in
it with sticks and hands. They would devour all the
pulp that was left on the old slices of watermelon and
cantaloupe till the rinds were as thin as paper; and
they would take away and wash and cook discarded
onions, turnips and potatoes (Wilson, 1936, p. 30).
Later in Travels in Two Democracies, Wilson turned his
attention to a tense milk strike being waged by farmers in Oneida
County, New York. The farmers maintained that the distributors
cheated them by not increasing their share when the price to the
consumer was raised. In protest, the farmers went on strike, picketed
the dairy plants, and dumped the milk of farmers who tried to
deliver. State troopers were brought in to disperse the pickets,
leading to a riot situation:
... the troopers assaulted the crowd, shooting gas bombs
at them and clubbing them: men and women, old and
young, alike. They pursued people into fields and
woodsheds, rushed up and beat them over the heads
when they got stuck in the barbed-wire fence. I saw
many broken heads and bruises. There was one man who
had had a gas bomb fired point-blank into his back,
injuring him severely and setting his clothes afire (pp.
79-82).
While Travels in Two Democracies offered more subjective
assessments, the format of the book was similar to The American
Jitters: an objective account of ordinary people in mundane situations