This makes me think of the Grapes of Wrath: >Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they h

This makes me think of the Grapes of Wrath: >Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. >You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it. The squatters nodded—they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land.