Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 26

22 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